It was the last public act of King Edward; this body so active and robust, this spirit so bold, this will so firm, had nevertheless undergone the effects of premature old age. The ministers were ranging themselves beside the Duke of Lancaster; the opposition was grouped around the young Prince Richard and the Princess of Wales; the old king was dying alone, with Alice Perrers. It is even said that she deserted him in his agony, after having taken the royal ring from him. The king lay in this isolation; the servants having dispersed in the manor of Shene, to plunder at their leisure. A monk entered, crucifix in hand; he approached the unhappy monarch, praying beside him, and supporting his expiring head until the last sigh. Thus died, on the 21st of June, 1377, the great Edward III., who had at one time appeared destined to unite upon his head the two crowns of France and England. He died alone, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, leaving to his grandson, a child, instead of the whole of Aquitaine, which he had received from his father, a few towns only upon that soil of France of which he claimed possession. The blood of the two nations had flowed during more than thirty years, and the struggle was as yet only at its beginning.
The little King Richard was much fatigued on the 16th of July, 1377; it was found necessary to place him in a litter to bring him back to the palace, after his coronation. All the former popularity of his grandfather Edward III., all the affection which his father the Black Prince had inspired, appeared to have accumulated upon his head, by reason of the fear and aversion which were felt towards John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. The prelates and barons assembled on the morrow of the coronation, and selected a council of regency of twelve members. The uncles of the king did not form part of this body, and John of Gaunt retired to his castle of Kenilworth; but several members of the council remained devoted to him, and his influence soon began to be complained of.
The King of France, Charles V., had lost no time in taking advantage of the weakness of the English government: his fleets overran the Channel, fettering commerce and seizing the British vessels; a descent was even made upon the Isle of Wight. The Parliament was convoked, and the Earl of Buckingham, the uncle of the king, was placed at the head of the naval forces; his expedition against the French fleet miscarried, and his defeat increased the discontent of the nation. The Parliament was composed chiefly of the enemies of the Duke of Lancaster, and when a kind of reconciliation had been effected between the latter and the House of Commons, that assembly demanded that two citizens of London should be entrusted to receive the money voted for the defence of the country. John of Gaunt started for France with a large army (1378).
The King of Navarre, still at war with Charles V., held a portion of Normandy; he had surrendered Cherbourg to the English. The Duke of Brittany, John de Montfort, being reduced to the last extremity by the successes of Bertrand du Guesclin, had consigned Brest to them; but these acquisitions were due to the freewill of the allies of England, and not to its arms. John of Gaunt was defeated before St. Malo; and, being pursued by Du Guesclin, was compelled to return to England, while the Scots, at the instigation of France, invaded the northern counties and took possession of Berwick Castle. A Scottish pirate, named John Mercer, devastated the coast as far as Scarborough. A London merchant, named John Philpot, on the other hand, armed a small fleet, and hastening to the encounter of Mercer, recaptured from him all the vessels which the latter had seized; captured, besides, fifteen Spanish ships, and returned triumphantly into the Thames, amid the plaudits of his fellow-citizens, and to the indignation of the council, which reprimanded the alderman for the boldness of his undertaking.
The Parliament had assembled at Gloucester, disaffected and exacting. The Commons asked to examine the accounts, which was granted to them as a favor. John de Montfort had recently taken refuge in England, banished from his dominions by King Charles V., who committed the imprudent act of officially annexing the duchy of Brittany to France. This declaration immediately rallied all the different factions against him. John de Montfort was recalled; the States-general of Brittany wrote to the King of France, asking him to authorize them to retain their independent ruler. At the same time an English army, under the command of the Earl of Buckingham, landed at Calais and ravaged the provinces of Artois, Picardy, and Champagne without ever encountering the necessity of a serious combat. The English were arriving in Brittany when King Charles V. died (1378), and the Bretons, reassured by the weakness of the young King Charles VI., began to look coldly upon their English allies. De Montfort negotiated with the French council of regency, and Buckingham was only indebted for his safety to the valor of his troops and to the provisions which he had brought. He retired in the spring of 1379. Great events were in preparation in England.
For some years a double movement, religious and social, had begun secretly to agitate the English people. A priest, John Wycliffe, born towards 1324, in Yorkshire, had attracted attention at the university of Oxford by his rare faculties, and had commenced, in the year 1356, to denounce the abuses of the papal authority; he had then attacked the mendicant monks, accusing the Church in general of greed and corruption. Summoned to appear before the Bishop of London, in the last year of the reign of Edward III., to answer for his opinions, he had been supported by the Duke of Lancaster and his friend Lord Percy; both had even insulted the bishop, which had brought about an insurrection in the city. Wycliffe had retracted some of his ideas, he had explained others; and, thanks to his powerful protectors, he had obtained the living of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, where he spent the remainder of his life, surrounded by priests, whom he brought up in truly apostolic poverty, and who subsequently spread his opinions among the people. Wycliffe is the first of the Reformers, or rather, their precursor. His doctrines acted more powerfully abroad than in his own country; it is to his books that were due the first germs of the Reformation in Bohemia; for England, his greatest work was the translation of the Bible into the vernacular. The most important of his ideas was the appeal to the private judgment of the faithful upon the very text of the Holy Scriptures. Wycliffe had shaken the traditions of submission to the clergy; he had at the same time preached a dangerous doctrine. "All possessions," he said, "come of grace, and may be forfeited by sin." The poor serfs, who possessed nothing, might be anxious to profit in their turn by the grace which insured estates. Wycliffe died peacefully at Lutterworth in 1384.
Already, for two years past, his illustrious friend, Geoffrey Chaucer, the first creator of English poetry, had been compelled to quit England, compromised by his attachment to the new ideas; he had retired into Hainault, where he lived in peace, protected by the friendship of the Duke of Lancaster. The first works of Chaucer, The Court of Love, the poem of Troilus and Cresseide, The Temple of Fame, had been published several years before, and had assured to him a reputation which had largely contributed to his fortune. The English language at this time, still largely intermixed with French, and difficult to understand at the present time, assumed, under the pen of Chaucer, a native grace to which sometimes succeeds an energy which prepared the way for Spenser and Shakespeare. Chaucer again established himself in England when John of Gaunt returned from his expedition to Castile; he lived to an advanced age, and composed in his retreat of Dumington his Canterbury Tales, written in the style of the Decameron of Boccaccio, and the only one of his books which is still read at the present day. He died in 1400, the year following the accession of Henry Bolingbroke, the son of his protector. Like Wycliffe, he had seen the commencement of the popular agitations. The poll-tax voted by the Parliament in 1379 was their first opportunity.
A general movement towards the enfranchisement of the lower classes manifested itself everywhere in Europe. The insurrection of the Jacquerie in France; the resistance of the Flemish citizens and artisans, first, to the conduct of Jacques van Arteveldt and afterwards to that of Philip, his son, had testified to the awakening of the serfs, the peasants, and the artisans, so long reduced to the condition of beasts of burden. The kings had been in need of money, and the taxes weighing upon all their subjects, it had been necessary to conciliate them. The soldiery had acquired a new importance; the English archers, in particular, nearly all peasants by origin, had played an important part in the wars. When the tax-collectors began in 1380 to demand payment of the poll-tax, of a people already impoverished by a long series of exactions, they met with a resistance which increased with the oppression. The tax, at first collected with leniency, was let out to some courtiers; they borrowed in advance of the Lombards and Flemings; repayment became necessary, and the revenue was exacted with great severity. The peasants became exasperated; they began to assemble and confer together; the insurrection broke out in Essex. The "Commons of England," as the insurgents styled themselves, broke into several dwelling-houses in the neighborhood; they obeyed a seditious priest who assumed the name of Jack Straw. The contagion rapidly spread into the counties of Kent, Suffolk, and Norfolk. The tax was payable only in the case of persons above fourteen years of age. A Kentish collector maintained that the daughter of a tiler had attained the specified age; her mother maintained the contrary; the collector insulted the young girl, and was brained with a hammer by the father. A knight had reclaimed a serf who thought he was entitled to enfranchisement, and had imprisoned him in Rochester Castle; the peasants attacked the castle and compelled the garrison to surrender the prisoner. The Kentish insurgents marched under the command of a chief named Wat Tyler (Wat the tiler). On the Monday of Trinity week, in 1381, they entered Canterbury, threatening death to the archbishop, who was absent. The monks of the chapter-house were compelled to swear fidelity to King Richard and the commons of England. Three wealthy burgesses were beheaded, and the crowd proceeded towards London. It is related that one hundred thousand men followed close upon the steps of Wat Tyler, when he arrived on the 11th of June at Blackheath.
The Princess of Wales, the mother of the young king, was returning from a pilgrimage. The crowd of insurgents surrounded her retinue. She was popular by reason of her husband's memory and her ransom cost her only some kisses bestowed on the more audacious of the leaders, who had not forgotten that she had formerly been called "the fair maid of Kent;" she passed by without further difficulty. The malcontents thronged round an itinerant preacher whom they had brought with them, and who displayed to them this text, now famous:—
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman?"
The doctrine of equality was received with enthusiasm by these poor people, hitherto trodden under foot. The outskirts of London were laid waste when the king proceeded down the Thames, on the 12th of June, to receive the petition of the insurgents. Ten thousand men awaited his arrival at Rotherhithe; but at the sight of the royal barge they uttered "such cries," says Froissart, "that one would have thought that all the demons of hell were in their midst." The noblemen who accompanied Richard became alarmed, and dragged him with them as far as the Tower. "The Commons of England," in a state of fury, advanced along the right bank of the river as far as Lambeth, burnt down the prisons, and plundered the palace of the Archbishop. On the other side of the Thames the insurgents marched along the course of the river, and at length obtaining a passage over London Bridge, they joined their brothers of Kent. The whole city was in their power; the population of London had joined them, and the rich citizens, to please them, had thrown open their cellars to them. Hitherto, the multitude had behaved with a certain amount of order, but intoxication being once added to the joy of triumph, they could no longer be restrained; the palace of the Duke of Lancaster was invaded and burnt down; plunder was strictly forbidden; the gold was reduced to powder, and the precious stones were broken. A peasant had taken a bowl of money; he was thrown into the river with his booty. The prisons being opened and destroyed brought fresh reinforcements to the insurgents. The Temple was burnt, with all the valuable books which had been collected by the knights. The priory of St. John of Jerusalem, recently constructed by Sir Thomas Hales, a prior of the order and Chancellor of the Kingdom, was also delivered up to the flames. A thirst for blood began to take possession of the populace. Every passer-by was challenged. "For whom are you?" was asked. If the answer was not "For King Richard and the true commons," the person answering was immediately slaughtered. All the Flemings fell by the knife or the hatchet; the popular hatred sought them out even in the churches. Wine and blood flowed in the streets; the counsellors of the king resolved to try concessions.
On the morning of the 14th of June a proclamation was spread throughout London, recommending the crowd which surrounded the Tower and demanded the heads of the chancellor and treasurer, to retreat towards Mile End. The king promised there to come to them and to grant their requests. A portion of the mob obeyed; when Richard arrived with a weak retinue at the meeting-place (his brothers, the Earl of Kent and Lord John Holland, had quitted him on the road), he saw himself surrounded by sixty thousand peasants. Their tone was respectful, and their requests, which then appeared monstrous, do not create the same impression at the present day. They demanded the definitive abolition of servitude; the power to sell and purchase in all markets; and a general amnesty for the past. To this they added a strange claim to fix the amount of rental on lands. The king promised all that they wished, and immediately caused to be made a large number of copies of the charter which he had thus granted. These were distributed among the insurgents; the men of Essex and Hertford retired in a body; but the malcontents of Kent had remained in the capital, and had not appeared at the meeting-place in Mile End. Scarcely had the king retired when these dangerous foes attacked the Tower, beheading the councillors who had taken refuge therein, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the treasurer, Sir Thomas Hale, and several others. The Princess of Wales, while yet in bed, saw a furious mob spring into her chamber. No injury was done to her, and her attendants were enabled to throw her, fainting with fright, into a little boat; she was conveyed to a house in the city belonging to the king, who there came and joined her when he had learnt the sad news of the massacre at the Tower.
In the morning, Richard issued forth with a small escort, and advanced fearlessly towards Smithfield. The multitude thronged the streets and squares. The king drew up at St. Bartholomew's Priory. "I will go no further," he said, "without having pacified the insurgents." Wat Tyler had perceived him, and urging his horse towards him, "There is the king: I go to speak to him," he cried to his supporters; "do not move a hand or foot unless I give you the signal." The horse of the popular chief touched heads with that of the king. "Sir king," said Wat Tyler, "do you see those men yonder?" "Yes," replied the young prince without stirring. "They are at my disposal, and ready to do as I bid them." And he toyed with his dagger, holding the bridle of the royal courser; then, perceiving behind Richard an esquire who had displeased him, "Ah, you here?" he said, "give me your sword." The esquire refused; Wat Tyler made a motion to take possession of it; the followers of the king were roused. The Lord Mayor of London, William Walworth, urged forward his horse, and advancing towards the rebel, struck him a blow with a dagger; the horse reared. Tyler endeavored to return to his followers; an esquire of the king thrust his sword through his body; he fell, beating the air with his hands. The mob became agitated. "Our captain is slain," was the cry, and the bowstrings began to vibrate. Richard advanced alone towards the crowd. "What do you, my friends?" he exclaimed. "Tyler was a traitor; it is I who am your captain and your guide." And he drew after him this irresolute mob, deprived of their chief, and who marched without knowing whither they were bound. They arrived in the fields near Islington. The friends of the king had rallied round him. One of the chiefs of his free bands, Sir Robert Knowles, brought a body of men-at-arms. The insurgents took alarm, threw down their bows, and cried "Mercy!" The king would not suffer them to be slaughtered in a mass, to the great exasperation of Sir Robert Knowles. "He said that he would be even with them on another occasion," says Froissart; "in which he did not fail."
The insurrections subsided everywhere. The Bishop of Norwich had armed his household and his friends, and hastening to throw himself upon the peasants, he had easily defeated these confused masses, little accustomed to arms. He had himself drawn up their indictment and pronounced their sentence; then resuming his clerical costume, he had exhorted them, received their confession, absolved them, and finally accompanied them to the gallows. The king was at the head of a small army, and had marched against the remainder of the insurgents of Essex. It was no longer a question of charters; the courts of commission were everywhere assembling to try the guilty.
Death of Wat Tyler.
The two priests, Jack Straw and John Ball, were hanged. Lester and Wistbroom, who had assumed the title of "Kings of the Commons" in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, suffered the same fate. About fifteen hundred rioters were executed. It was found necessary to fix them to the gibbet with iron chains; their friends came by night to carry off their bodies.
The Parliament had assembled, publicly approving of the abolition of the concessions granted to the villeins during the struggle. "We would never have consented to them," said the barons, "even had we all been compelled to perish on the same day." For the moment, there was some talk of abolishing servitude; but the opposition was so strenuous, the proprietors of fiefs declared so loudly that their serfs belonged to them by right, and that they could not be deprived of them without their consent, that the idea was immediately abandoned, and the high treason law was voted, condemning "riots, disturbances, and other analogous things," in terms as dangerous as they were vague. The king demanded money, the commons claimed a complete amnesty; neither would begin to make concessions. The Parliament at length yielded; the tax upon wool and leather was prolonged for five years, and the king proclaimed the amnesty; he was about to wed Anne of Bohemia, soon known throughout the whole of her kingdom as "the good queen." The Bishop of Norwich was fighting in Flanders, in support of the citizens of Ghent hard pressed by their count, recently a victor at the battle of Rosebecque, where Philip van Arteveldt had been killed; and the uncles of the king contended with each other for the authority in England. The Earl of Cambridge had been made Duke of York, and the Earl of Buckingham Duke of Gloucester. Henry Bolingbroke, son of the Duke of Lancaster, had become Earl of Derby; at the same time, the king had made Earl of Suffolk and Duke of Ireland, his favorites Michael de la Pole and Robert de Vere, obscure persons, whom the Princess of Wales had placed beside her son, by reason of her jealousy towards his uncles; and who contributed, by their influence, to the struggles and disputes of the government. The princess had recently died, having succumbed beneath the weight of the anxieties caused by one of her sons, Lord John Holland; he had recently assassinated one of the servants of the king, and was unable to quit the church in which he had taken refuge. Plot succeeded plot—denunciation to denunciation. At length, the Duke of Lancaster started out for Spain, in order to sustain the pretensions of his wife to the throne of Castile; and he contrived, after two campaigns, to marry his eldest daughter to the heir of Henry of Transtamare, thus assuring the crown to her children. The Scots had crossed the frontier, and King Richard entered Scotland. France was preparing a great armament.
Amidst these external preoccupations, the Duke of Gloucester had seized the reins of government; and, when the young king threatened to dissolve a Parliament devoted to his uncle, the Commons brought forward the Act which had deposed Edward II. A council of barons for a while governed the kingdom, under the presidency of Gloucester. Blood flowed everywhere; the duke avenged himself upon the favorites of the king, who were as odious to him as to the English people. He had impeached them before the Parliament: the innocent were involved in the ruin of the guilty. Gloucester did not even spare Sir Simon Burley, formerly the tutor of the king, the friend of Edward III. and the Black Prince, and who had conducted the negotiations for the marriage of Richard. The queen in vain threw herself at his feet asking for mercy; in vain did Henry Bolingbroke, who had seconded his uncle in all his undertakings, claim as a right the pardon of the condemned man: Burley was executed, and Bolingbroke became definitively at variance with Gloucester.
The disorder which prevailed in England did not prevent constant hostilities upon the frontiers of Scotland; it was on August 15th, 1388, that there took place at Otterbourn, the famous battle celebrated in the ballads under the name of Chevy Chase, between the Earl of Douglas and Lord Henry Percy, the Hotspur of Shakespeare. Douglas was slain, but the English ended by being repulsed from the battle-field. Hotspur and his brother were prisoners. The king was beginning to weary of the yoke which he had so long borne. He was subject to gleams of resolution and courage, which soon disappeared in a long spell of indolence, and which took by surprise those who calculated upon his habitual apathy. A council was being held in the month of May, 1389; the king suddenly addressed the Duke of Gloucester. "How old do you suppose I am, uncle?" he asked. "Your highness is in your twenty-second year," replied the duke, much surprised. "Then," replied the king, "I am at an age when I should govern my own affairs. Nobody in my kingdom has been so long held under tutelage. I thank you for your services, my lord, but I no longer require them." And he immediately caused the great seal and the keys of the treasury to be given up to himself, compelling the Duke of Gloucester to leave the council, and announcing publicly to the nation that he had henceforth assumed the direction of the government. But his fleeting energy had already abandoned him. The Duke of York and Henry Bolingbroke were his masters, instead of the Duke of Gloucester.
John of Gaunt had returned from Castile; he had become reconciled with his brothers. Concord appeared re-established in the royal family; a truce had been concluded with France and Scotland. The King of Scotland, Robert II., had died on the 19th of April, 1390, and his eldest son had assumed the title of Robert III. Queen Anne had also died, in 1394, and King Richard, who had no children, married two years later, much against the wishes of his subjects, the Princess Isabel, daughter of Charles VI., king of France. She was but seven years old; but the king conceived the liveliest affection for her, and conducted her everywhere with him upon his travels. An expedition in Ireland against the insurgent chiefs had been very successful; but the Duke of Gloucester protested with all his might against the alliance with France. "Our Edwards," he said, "caused Paris to tremble even in its entrails; but, under Richard, we court the French, who make us tremble within London." The duke had his reasons for trembling: the king had not forgotten the execution of his favorites, nor the men who had signed their indictment. The Earl of Warwick, one of the accomplices of Gloucester, was already arrested; the Earl of Arundel soon followed. The Duke of Gloucester had retired to Pleshy Castle, in Essex; his nephew repaired there in gay company: all the family came forward to meet the king; but, while the duchess was conversing with him, Gloucester was arrested by the marshal of England, dragged as far as the river, thrown into a boat, and from thence a vessel bore him towards Calais. A rumor was thereupon spread that he had been assassinated; the king published a proclamation declaring that the arrests had been made with the approval of his uncles of Lancaster and York, as well as of his cousin, the Earl of Derby. He had even obtained, by a ruse, their signatures to the impeachment. Lord Arundel was condemned by the Parliament, and immediately executed; his brother, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was not even admitted to plead his cause, for the king dreaded his eloquence; he was banished for life, and the Earl of Warwick, at first condemned to death, was imprisoned in the Isle of Man. The House of Lords then called the Duke of Gloucester for judgment; but the marshal replied that he could not bring the Lord Duke, who had for several days been dead at Calais. He was condemned, however, and all his goods were confiscated; it was said that he had been suffocated between two mattresses. The judges were not without uneasiness concerning the application which they had just made of the high treason law: nearly all had been, at different periods, compromised in plots or insurrections. They obtained of the king an amnesty for the past; and, as a reward for present services, Richard made his cousin the Earl of Derby, Duke of Hereford; the Earl of Nottingham became Duke of Norfolk, and John Holland, the murderer, was made Duke of Exeter. The Parliament completed its work of complaisance by granting to the king, for life, a subsidy upon woollens, and by forming a commission, entrusted to watch affairs. King Richard was no longer in a hurry to appeal to his people, or to convoke the Parliament.
The conduct of the king towards his uncle the Duke of Gloucester and his friends, the vengeance which had overtaken, after so many years, the enemies of the favorites, revealed the character of the sovereign in a light which caused uneasiness in the country. Indolent and prodigal, habitually engrossed in the pleasures of luxury and magnificence, Richard was not only capable of momentary energy, but he maintained in the bottom of his heart projects which he shaped to his purposes with patient perseverance. Once delivered of the Parliament and of the Duke of Gloucester, the Duke of Lancaster aged and in retirement in his castle, Richard gave himself up to all his whims, certain, as he thought, of encountering no serious opposition. "At that time," says Froissart, "no one was great enough in England to dare to speak against the will of the king. He had a council obedient to his wishes, who begged him to do as he pleased; and he had in his pay ten thousand archers, who guarded him day and night." The extravagances of the court were insensate, and the people began to complain, looking back regretfully upon the government of the king's uncles, who had shown some consideration, they said, for the nation, and consulted it in its own affairs.
Two great noblemen alone remained of those who had, in 1386, seconded the efforts of the Duke of Gloucester against the favorites of the king; and, notwithstanding the favor shown to them by Richard, they did not feel secure in their positions. The Duke of Norfolk, galloping upon the road to Windsor, in the month of December, 1397, encountered the Duke of Hereford. "We are ruined," said he to his friend. "Wherefore?" asked Bolingbroke. "For that affair at Radcot Bridge." [Footnote 5]
[Footnote 5: The Duke of Ireland (Robert de Vere) had been defeated by Gloucester and his companions, at Radcot Bridge.]
"What! after so many pardons and declarations by the Parliament?" rejoined Bolingbroke. "He will annul all that, and we shall pass through the ordeal like the others; the world in which we live is strangely perfidious." The Duke of Norfolk soon had reason to be convinced of this. Either through thoughtlessness or through treachery, the conversation was reported to the king; he convoked the Parliament, and his first care in the month of January, 1398, was to summon Henry Bolingbroke to render an account of the words of the Duke of Norfolk. The latter was not present, but upon the summons of the Parliament, he came to throw down his glove at the feet of the Duke of Hereford, declaring him a traitor and a perjurer: the combat was authorized between the two noblemen. "I shall then at length have peace," muttered the king, while proceeding to Coventry, on the 16th of September, to be present at the tournament. But having once confronted the two antagonists, he became fearful of a victory for one of them, and, forbidding the ordeal, he submitted the question to a Parliamentary commission chosen by himself. The Duke of Hereford was condemned to an exile of ten years. The Duke of Norfolk was banished forever. He thereupon started for the Holy Land, and died of grief at Venice. But Henry Bolingbroke did not go far away; he remained in France, watching the movements of his cousin Richard, who lavished the riches of England with so thoughtless a hand, that his treasury was constantly empty. His favorites would then help him to replenish it by exactions of every kind. The Duke of Lancaster had died three months after the departure of his son; his immense property was confiscated, notwithstanding the protests of Bolingbroke. A decree outlawed seventeen counties of England, as having been favorable to the enemies of the king; they were compelled to buy back their rights with enormous fines. The disaffection increased, but the king took no heed whatever of it. He embarked towards the end of May, 1390, for Ireland, where his cousin and heir-apparent, the Earl of March, had recently been assassinated. He had just taken the field against the rebels, when Henry Bolingbroke landed, on the 4th of July, at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire, having escaped from France under the pretext of paying a visit to the Duke of Brittany.
Bolingbroke had brought with him a feeble following, the exiled Archbishop of Canterbury, and his nephew, the Earl of Arundel, fifteen knights and men-at-arms, and a few servants; but scarcely had he touched the English soil, when the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland joined him, bringing with them considerable forces. Henry did not disclose his ulterior projects to anybody; he came, he said, to claim his right, the inheritance of his father, which the king had wrongly confiscated, and moreover the public feeling was so favorable to him, the nation was so weary of seeing itself ill-governed, that the malcontents rose in all parts to place themselves under his standard. He was, it is said, at the head of an army of sixty thousand men when he advanced towards London. The Duke of York, regent of the kingdom in the absence of Richard, did not rely upon the burgesses of the City; he had quitted the capital, and displayed the royal standard at St. Alban's. Terror began to seize the creatures of the king: instead of marching against the rebels, they cowardly shut themselves up in fortified castles. The Duke of York had taken the western road, pending the return of King Richard; but Bolingbroke had used diligence, and he arrived at the Severn on the same day as the regent. The latter placed little confidence in his troops; he was aware of the general discontent, and he retained in the bottom of his heart a bitter resentment for the murder of his brother Gloucester. He granted an interview to his nephew Bolingbroke: the firm, bold and cunning mind of Henry triumphed easily over the feeble will of the Duke of York; the two armies were amalgamated, and the regent helped the usurper to take Bristol Castle. There the members of the commission which had formerly condemned Bolingbroke had taken refuge; they were executed without any form of trial, and the Duke of Lancaster marched upon Chester, leaving his uncle at Bristol.
For three weeks Richard had remained in ignorance of what was taking place in his kingdom. When he at length learnt the news of the landing of Henry and his formidable progresses, he exclaimed bitterly, "Ah! my good uncle of Lancaster, the Lord have mercy on your soul! If I had believed you, although this man might be your son, he would never have harmed me. Three times I have forgiven him; this is his fourth offence." The Earl of Salisbury immediately set sail to assemble together some troops in England; he had raised pretty considerable forces in Wales; but the king delayed, the soldiers murmured and dispersed by degrees; a large number went and joined the rebels. The king at length disembarked with his cousin, the Duke of Albemarle, and his two brothers, the Dukes of Exeter and Surrey. The little army which he had taken to Ireland followed him: but at the second halting-place, when the king, having risen very early, looked through the window towards the camp, where on the previous evening, six thousand soldiers had slept, he no longer saw but a handful of archers and men-at-arms: all had deserted during the night. The king was advised to take refuge at Bordeaux. "That would be to abdicate," said his brother, the Duke of Exeter. It was resolved that they should join the Earl of Salisbury, and the king, disguised as a priest, took the road to Conway, with his brothers and a few servants, while the Duke of Albemarle, following the example of his father, the Duke of York, fled by night to join the army of he usurper.
The Earl of Salisbury had not a hundred men with him when the king arrived at Conway. In this deplorable situation, the brothers of King Richard proposed to go to Henry at Chester, in order to ascertain his pretensions. The two dukes did not return; their cousin Bolingbroke received them kindly, but he positively refused to release them: all his efforts were directed towards seizing the king in person. The Earl of Northumberland was entrusted with this mission. By false promises he enticed the king out of Conway, proposing an interview with Bolingbroke at Flint. Richard was almost alone, abandoned; he followed the earl with the friends who remained to him. They galloped along slowly, when suddenly the king cried, "I am betrayed! Lord in Heaven, help me! Do you not see banners and pennants flying in the valley?" Northumberland advanced at the same time. "My lord," the unhappy monarch said to him abruptly, "if I thought you capable of betraying me, I could yet retreat." "No," replied the Earl, who had laid hold of his bridle; "I have promised to conduct you to the Duke of Lancaster." The soldiers of Northumberland began to appear; the king yielded to necessity. "Our Saviour was sold and delivered into the hands of His enemies," he murmured.
They arrived at Flint. Henry Bolingbroke, in all his armor, came forward to meet his royal cousin, and bent his knee on approaching. "Good cousin of Lancaster," said Richard courteously, "you are welcome." "My lord," replied Henry, "I have come before my time, but I will tell you the reason: your people complain that you have governed them harshly for twenty-two years; if it please God, I will help you rule them better." "Since it pleases you, it pleases me also," meekly replied the fallen monarch; and, seated upon a wretched courser, like a prisoner, King Richard took the road to Chester, side by side with Henry Bolingbroke. Froissart relates that his very dog abandoned him to lick the hand of the usurper.
At Lichfield Richard attempted to escape; but he was seized as he had just issued forth through a window, and thereafter was narrowly guarded. The people of London received him with yells and insults. The usurper repaired to St. Paul's, prayed upon the tomb of his father, and then took possession of the palace. The king had been led to the Tower.
The Parliament was convoked, and ready to depose Richard II., as it had formerly deposed his great-grand-father; but Henry Bolingbroke, with a bitter foresight of the mutability of human things, wished to secure the personal consent and the voluntary abdication of the king. He held him narrowly confined within the Tower. "Why do you cause me to be thus guarded?" Richard angrily exclaimed one day; "Am I your king or your prisoner?" "You are my king," replied the duke; "but the council of your kingdom have seen fit to place a guard beside your person." On the eve of the opening of Parliament, a deputation of prelates and barons paid a visit to the unhappy king in the Tower, and asked him to abdicate. Richard felt himself powerless in the hands of his enemies; he yielded, "willingly and joyfully," say the acts of Parliament; and, releasing his subjects from their oath, he consigned his royal ring to his cousin of Lancaster, saying that he would choose him for his successor, if he had the right to designate him. These details are open to doubt, but the Parliament held them good, and on the 30th of September, before the empty throne, in Westminster Hall, the abdication of Richard was read aloud, all the members giving their consent to it. The people uttered cries of joy. The coronation oath was then brought, and, at each article, proclaimed aloud, the impeachment of King Richard was drawn up. He was accused of the murder of his uncle Gloucester; of having revoked the amnesties, and of having squandered the public money. Nobody raised his voice for the dethroned monarch until the Bishop of Carlisle, Thomas Merks, rose and publicly denied the right of the Parliament to depose the king and to change the order of succession, at the same time defending Richard against his accusers. Scarcely had he finished his discourse, when he was arrested. While he was being conducted to St. Alban's, the Parliament pronounced the deposition of Richard, and the Lord Chief Justice was instructed to announce his fall to him. "I care not to court the regal authority," said the deposed king; "I only hope that my good cousin will be a good master to me."
His good cousin was not yet legally king; the descendants of Lionel, the third son of Edward III., were the legitimate heirs to the throne; no one, however, thought of them. The Duke of Lancaster had remained in his seat; his surrounders waited in profound silence. He rose, and, solemnly making the sign of the cross, said in a very loud voice, "In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster, lay claim to this kingdom of England and to the crown, as a descendant of the good King Henry III., and by the right which God has given me, by granting to me the favor, through the support of my friends, to come to the assistance of this country, which was about to perish under bad laws and for want of government."
This mixture of hereditary pretensions with popular rights was skilful. The Parliament responded to the appeal of Henry Bolingbroke; acclamations broke out in all parts; the duke showed the ring which Richard had consigned to him; the Archbishop of Canterbury took him by the hand and led him to the foot of the throne. Henry knelt there for a moment; he then ascended the steps and seated himself resolutely. The plaudits recommenced during the discourse of the archbishop. "I thank you, my lord," said the new monarch; "and I wish everybody to know that, by right of conquest, I will disinherit nobody of his rights, but wish that all may be governed by the good laws of the kingdom, and may hold what he has by right." The officers of the crown and the great noblemen also vowed fealty and homage: Henry IV. was king of England.
In the first days of his reign, the new sovereign was enabled to believe that public opinion fully confirmed his usurpation. All the great noblemen were eager to fulfil at his coronation their hereditary offices; the Earl of Northumberland alone, who had rendered eminent services to him, marched beside him in the procession, holding aloft in sight of all the sword worn by Bolingbroke on landing at Ravenspur. The House of Commons responded to the slightest wishes of the king, and the greater number of the unpopular measures of the last reign were withdrawn by common consent. A great uproar arose in the House of Lords: the peers who had appealed against the Duke of Gloucester were summoned to exculpate themselves; all took their stand upon the wish of King Richard, upon the fear which he inspired, and upon the unanimous vote of the House. Recriminations poured down in every part; forty gauntlets were thrown upon the ground as challenges to combat. A weak and timid monarch would have taken alarm in the midst of this violent confusion: Henry IV. was enabled to calm the agitation. He divested the "lords appellant," as they were styled, of the titles which Richard had given to them as rewards; the Dukes of Albemarle, Surrey and Exeter, the Marquis of Dorset and the Earl of Gloucester, became once more the Earls of Rutland, Kent, Huntingdon, and Somerset, and Lord Le Despencer; but the new king wreaked no other vengeance upon them. The high treason law was restored to more limited and less vague formulae; appeals to the Houses in cases of treason were abolished, and the Parliament was forbidden to delegate its authority to a commission. The eldest son of the king was declared Prince of Wales, Duke of Guienne, Lancaster, and Cornwall, as well as heir presumptive to the throne. Henry was too prudent to again raise the question of the law of succession which he had so boldly disregarded: he did not wish his hereditary right to the throne to be discussed; he well knew that the little Earl of March, so carefully installed in Windsor Castle, was the real heir to the throne, as great-grand-son of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of John of Gaunt. The child was not nine years of age; the king caused him to be well brought up, as well as his brother, and neither was destined to recover his liberty during his lifetime; but their sister, soon afterwards married to the Earl of Cambridge, had transmitted to the House of York those rights or those pretensions which condemned England to half a century of civil war.
Difficulties abound in the path of usurpers. King Richard had not protested, he had asked for nothing, but he still lived in the Tower. Before dissolving the Parliament, King Henry IV. despatched the Earl of Northumberland to the House of Lords. The latter asked that the message with which he was entrusted should be kept secret; he then consulted the House upon the manner in which the dispossessed king was to be treated; "for my master Henry," he added, "has resolved, at any cost, to preserve the life of Richard." The Lords all replied that King Richard should be secretly led away to some castle, and placed in the hands of faithful custodians, who should prevent all communication with his friends. This was the sanction which Henry IV. wished for; the dispossessed monarch was conducted to Leeds Castle, in Kent, and then transferred by night from castle to castle, as had been his great-grandfather, Edward II. In the month of January, Richard had arrived in Pontefract Castle, in Yorkshire.
The removal of the dethroned king could not suffice to strengthen the power; conspiracies were already beginning. The lords appellant had scarcely been punished, but their fears as well as their resentment urged them to revenge. They had formed the project of assassinating Henry and of replacing Richard upon the throne. A tournament was announced at Oxford for the 3rd of January, and the Earl of Huntingdon, the brother-in-law of the king, invited the latter to be present thereat. The invitation was accepted. The murder was to be accomplished during the jousts; the king and his son were to succumb beneath numbers. The day came; the king had not arrived, and the Earl of Rutland was absent from the place of meeting. The conspirators saw themselves betrayed; but a bold stroke might yet save them; they galloped to Windsor, and took possession of the castle. The king was no longer there: warned in time, he had taken refuge in London. The arrest warrants were already issued against the traitors, and, on the morrow, Henry marched against them, at the head of a considerable force. They did not await him, and fled to arm their vassals. Civil war appeared imminent; but public opinion was with King Henry: it administered justice to the conspirators, without the king being obliged to interfere. The citizens of the Cirencester seized the Earls of Kent and Salisbury, and struck off their heads; Lord Le Despencer was beheaded by the citizens of Bristol; the Earl of Huntingdon was dismembered at Pleshy by the servants of the late Duke of Gloucester. The King had only to cause the trial of a few accomplices of low degree, but the attempt of the lords appellant probably cost the life of King Richard; it was learnt, towards the end of January, that he had died at Pontefract. It was related that he had refused to take any food since the death of his brothers, the Earls of Kent and Huntingdon; distrustful people asserted that he had been starved to death. Others maintained that he had been attacked in his prison by some assassins, and that, after having valiantly defended himself, he had been killed by a blow behind the head. When the body of the unhappy monarch was brought to London, before being interred at Langley, a portion only of the face was uncovered. The details of his death were forever unknown, and many people were resolute in denying it.