CHAPTER XVII.

[Illustration: 1_237_richard2.jpg RICHARD II.]

RICHARD II.

{1377.} THE parliament which was summoned soon after the king’s

accession, was both elected and assembled in tranquillity; and the great

change, from a sovereign of consummate wisdom and experience to a boy of

eleven years of age, was not immediately felt by the people. The habits

of order and obedience which the barons had been taught, during the long

reign of Edward, still influenced them; and the authority of the king’s

three uncles, the dukes of Lancaster, York, and Glocester, sufficed to

repress, for a time, the turbulent spirit to which that order, in a

weak reign, was so often subject. The dangerous ambition, too, of these

princes themselves was checked, by the plain and undeniable title

of Richard, by the declaration of it made in parliament, and by the

affectionate regard which the people bore to the memory of his father,

and which was naturally transferred to the young sovereign upon the

throne. The different characters, also, of these three princes rendered

them a counterpoise to each other; and it was natural to expect, that

any dangerous designs which might be formed by one brother, would meet

with opposition from the others. Lancaster, whose age and experience,

and authority under the late king, gave him the ascendant among them,

though his integrity seemed not proof against great temptations, was

neither of an enterprising spirit, nor of a popular and engaging temper.

York was indolent, inactive, and of slender capacity. Glocester was

turbulent, bold, and popular; but being the youngest of the family,

was restrained by the power and authority of his elder brothers. There

appeared, therefore, no circumstance in the domestic situation of

England which might endanger the public peace, or give any immediate

apprehensions to the lovers of their country.

But as Edward, though he had fixed the succession to the crown, had

taken no care to establish a plan of government during the minority of

his grandson, it behoved the parliament to supply this defect; and the

house of commons distinguished themselves by taking the lead on the

occasion. This house, which had been rising to consideration during the

whole course of the late reign, naturally received an accession of power

during the minority; and as it was now becoming a scene of business, the

members chose for the first time a speaker, who might preserve order

in their debates, and maintain those forms which are requisite in all

numerous assembles. Peter de la Mare was the man pitched on; the same

person that had been imprisoned and detained in custody by the late king

for his freedom of speech, in attacking the mistress and the ministers

of that prince. But though this election discovered a spirit of liberty

in the commons, and was followed by further attacks, both on these

ministers and on Alice Pearce,[*] they were still too sensible of

their great inferiority to assume at first any immediate share in the

administration of government, or the care of the king’s person. They

were content to apply by petition to the lords for that purpose, and

desire them both to appoint a council of nine, who might direct the

public business, and to choose men of virtuous life and conversation,

who might inspect the conduct and education of the young prince. The

lords complied with the first part of this request, and elected the

bishops of London, Carlisle, and Salisbury, the earls of Marche and

Stafford, Sir Richard de Stafford, Sir Henry le Scrope, Sir John

Devereux, and Sir Hugh Segrave, to whom they gave authority for a year

to conduct the ordinary course of business.[**] But as to the regulation

of the king’s household, they declined interposing in an office which,

they said, both was invidious in itself, and might prove disagreeable to

his majesty.

* Walsing. p. 150.

** Rymer, vol. vii. p. 161.

The commons, as they acquired more courage, ventured to proceed a step

farther in their applications. They presented a petition, in which

they prayed the king to check the prevailing custom among the barons of

forming illegal confederacies, and supporting each other, as well as men

of inferior rank, in the violations of law and justice. They received

from the throne a general and an obliging answer to this petition: but

another part of their application, that all the great officers should,

during the king’s minority, be appointed by parliament, which seemed

to require the concurrence of the commons, as well as that of the upper

house, in the nomination, was not complied with: the lords alone assumed

the power of appointing these officers. The commons tacitly acquiesced

in the choice; and thought that, for, the present, they themselves had

proceeded a sufficient length, if they but advanced their pretensions,

though rejected, of interposing in these more important matters of

state.

On this footing then the government stood. The administration was

conducted entirely in the king’s name: no regency was expressly

appointed: the nine counsellors and the great officers named by the

peers, did their duty each in his respective department; and the whole

system was for some years kept together, by the secret authority of the

king’s uncles, especially of the duke of Lancaster, who was in reality

the regent.

The parliament was dissolved, after the commons had represented the

necessity of their being reassembled once every year, as appointed

by law; and after having elected two citizens as their treasurers, to

receive and disburse the produce of two fifteenths and tenths, which

they had voted to the crown. In the other parliaments called during the

minority, the commons still discover a strong spirit of freedom, and a

sense of their own authority, which, without breeding any disturbance,

tended to secure their independence and that of the people.[*] [11]

* See note K, at the end of the volume.

Edward had left his grandson involved in many dangerous wars. The

pretensions of the duke of Lancaster to the crown of Castile, made that

kingdom still persevere in hostilities against England. Scotland, whose

throne was now filled by Robert Stuart, nephew to David Bruce, and the

first prince of that family, maintained such close connections with

France, that war with one crown almost inevitably produced hostilities

with the other. The French monarch, whose prudent conduct had acquired

him the surname of Wise, as he had already baffled all the experience

and valor of the two Edwards, was likely to prove a dangerous enemy to

a minor king: but his genius, which was not naturally enterprising,

led him not at present to give any disturbance to his neighbors; and

he labored, besides, under many difficulties at home, which it was

necessary for him to surmount, before he could think of making conquests

in a foreign country. England was master of Calais, Bordeaux, and

Bayonne; had lately acquired possession of Cherbourg from the cession of

the king of Navarre, and of Brest from that of the duke of Brittany;[*]

and having thus an easy entrance into France from every quarter,

was able, even in its present situation, to give disturbance to his

government. Before Charles could remove the English from these important

posts, he died in the flower of his age, and left his kingdom to a minor

son who bore the name of Charles VI.

{1378.} Meanwhile the war with France was carried on in a manner

somewhat languid, and produced no enterprise of great lustre or renown.

Sir Hugh Calverly, governor of Calais, making an inroad into Picardy

with a detachment of the garrison, set fire to Boulogne.[**] The duke

of Lancaster conducted an army into Brittany, but returned without being

able to perform any thing memorable.

{1380.} In a subsequent year, the duke of Glocester marched out of

Calais with a body of two thousand cavalry and eight thousand infantry,

and scrupled not, with his small army, to enter into the heart of

France, and to continue his ravages through Picardy, Champaigne, the

Brie, the Beausse, the Gatinois, the Orleanois, till he reached his

allies in the province of Brittany.[***] The duke of Burgundy, at the

head of a more considerable army, came within sight of him; but the

French were so overawed by the former successes of the English, that no

superiority of numbers could tempt them to venture a pitched battle with

the troops of that nation. As the duke of Brittany, soon after the

arrival of these succors, formed an accommodation with the court of

France, this enterprise also proved in the issue unsuccessful, and made

no durable impression upon the enemy.

* Rymer, vol. vii. p. 190.

** Walsing, p. 209.

*** Froissard, liv. ii. chap. 50, 51. Walsing. p. 239.

The expenses of these armaments, and the usual want of economy attending

a minority, much exhausted the English treasury, and obliged the

parliament, besides making some alterations in the council, to impose

a new and unusual tax of three groats on every person, male and female,

above fifteen years of age; and they ordained that, in levying that tax,

the opulent should relieve the poor by an equitable compensation. This

imposition produced a mutiny, which was singular in its circumstances.

All history abounds with examples where the great tyrannize over the

meaner sort; but here the lowest populace rose against their rulers,

committed the most cruel ravages upon them, and took vengeance for all

former oppressions.

{1381.} The faint dawn of the arts and of good government in that age,

had excited the minds of the populace, in different states of Europe,

to wish for a better condition, and to murmur against those chains which

the laws enacted by the haughty nobility and gentry, had so long imposed

upon them. The commotions of the people in Flanders, the mutiny of the

peasants in France, were the natural effects of this growing spirit of

independence; and the report of these events being brought into England,

where personal slavery, as we learn from Froissard,[*] was more general

than in any other country in Europe, had prepared the minds of the

multitude for an insurrection. One John Ball, also, a seditious

preacher, who affected low popularity, went about the country and

inculcated on his audience the principles of the first origin of mankind

from one common stock, their equal right to liberty and to all the goods

of nature, the tyranny of artificial distinctions, and the abuses which

had arisen from the degradation of the more considerable part of the

species, and the aggrandizement of a few insolent rulers.[**] These

doctrines, so agreeable to the populace, and so conformable to the ideas

of primitive equality which are engraven in the hearts of all men, were

greedily received by the multitude, and scattered the sparks of that

sedition which the present tax raised into a conflagration.[***]

* Liv. ii. chap. 74.

** Froissard, liv. ii. chap. 74. Walsing. p. 275.

*** There were two verses at that time in the mouths of all

the common people, which, in spite of prejudice, one cannot

but regard with some degree of approbation:--

When Adam delv’d and Eve span,

Where was then the gentleman?

The imposition of three groats a head had been farmed out to

tax-gatherers in each county, who levied the money on the people with

rigor; and the clause, of making the rich ease their poorer neighbors

of some share of the burden, being so vague and undeterminate, had

doubtless occasioned many partialities, and made the people more

sensible of the unequal lot which Fortune had assigned them in

the distribution of her favors. The first disorder was raised by a

blacksmith in a village of Essex. The tax-gatherers came to this man’s

shop while he was at work, and they demanded payment for his daughter,

whom he asserted to be below the age assigned by the statute. One of

these fellows offered to produce a very indecent proof to the contrary,

and at the same time laid hold of the maid; which the father resenting,

immediately knocked out the ruffian’s brains with his hammer. The

bystanders applauded the action, and exclaimed, that it was full time

for the people to take vengeance on their tyrants, and to vindicate

their native liberty. They immediately flew to arms: the whole

neighborhood joined in the sedition: the flame spread in an instant over

the county: it soon propagated itself into that of Kent, of Hertford,

Surrey, Sussex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge, and Lincoln. Before the

government had the least warning of the danger, the disorder had grown

beyond control or opposition: the populace had shaken off all regard

to their former masters; and being headed by the most audacious and

criminal of their associates, who assumed the feigned names of Wat

Tyler, Jack Straw, Hob Carter, and Tom Miller, by which they were fond

of denoting their mean origin, they committed every where the most

outrageous violence on such of the gentry or nobility as had the

misfortune to fall into their hands.

The mutinous populace, amounting to a hundred thousand men, assembled on

Blackheath under their leaders, Tyler and Straw; and as the princess

of Wales, the king’s mother, returning from a pilgrimage to Canterbury,

passed through the midst of them, they insulted her attendants, and some

of the most insolent among them, to show their purpose of levelling all

mankind, forced kisses from her; but they allowed her to continue her

journey, without attempting any further injury.[*] They sent a message

to the king, who had taken shelter in the Tower; and they desired a

conference with him. Richard sailed down the river in a barge for that

purpose; but on his approaching the shore, he saw such symptoms

of tumult and insolence, that he put back and returned to that

fortress.[**]

* Froissard, liv. ii. chap. 74.

** Froissard, liv. ii. chap 75.

The seditious peasants, meanwhile, favored by the populace of London,

had broken into the city; had burned the duke of Lancaster’s palace of

the Savoy; cut off the heads of all the gentlemen whom they laid hold

of; expressed a particular animosity against the lawyers and attorneys;

and pillaged the warehouses of the rich merchants.[*] A great body of

them quartered themselves at Mile End; and the king, finding no

defence in the Tower, which was weakly garrisoned and ill supplied with

provisions, was obliged to go out to them and ask their demands. They

required a general pardon, the abolition of slavery, freedom of commerce

in market towns without toll or impost, and a fixed rent on lands,

instead of the services due by villainage. These requests, which, though

extremely reasonable in themselves, the nation was not sufficiently

prepared to receive, and which it was dangerous to have extorted by

violence, were, however, complied with; charters to that purpose were

granted them; and this body immediately dispersed, and returned to their

several homes.[**]

During this transaction, another body of the rebels had broken into the

Tower; had murdered Simon Sudbury, the primate and chancellor, with Sir

Robert Hales, the treasurer, and some other persons of distinction; and

continued their ravages in the city.[***]

* Froissard, liv. ii, chap. 76. Walsing. p. 248, 249.

** Froissard, liv. ii chap. 77.

*** Walsing, p. 250, 251.

[Illustration: 1_239_tyler.jpg WAT TYLER]

The king, passing along Smithfield, very slenderly guarded, met with Wat

Tyler at the head of these rioters, and entered into a conference with

him. Tyler, having ordered his companions to retire till he should give

them a signal, after which they were to murder all the company except

the king himself, whom they were to detain prisoner, feared not to come

into the midst of the royal retinue. He there behaved himself in such

a manner, that Walworth, the mayor of London, not able to bear his

insolence, drew his sword, and struck him so violent a blow as brought

him to the ground, where he was instantly despatched by others of the

king’s attendants. The mutineers, seeing their leader fall, prepared

themselves for revenge; and this whole company, with the king

himself, had undoubtedly perished on the spot, had it not been for an

extraordinary presence of mind which Richard discovered on the occasion.

He ordered his company to stop; he advanced alone towards the enraged

multitude, and accosting them with an affable and intrepid countenance,

he asked them, “What is the meaning of this disorder my good people? Are

ye angry that ye have lost your leader? I am your king: I will be your

leader.” The populace, overawed by his presence, implicitly followed

him. He led them into the fields, to prevent any disorder which might

have arisen by their continuing in the city. Being there joined by Sir

Robert Knolles, and a body of well-armed veteran soldiers, who had

been secretly drawn together, he strictly prohibited that officer from

falling on the rioters, and committing an undistinguished slaughter upon

them; and he peaceably dismissed them with the same charters which had

been granted to their fellows.[*] Soon after, the nobility and gentry,

hearing of the king’s danger, in which they were all involved, flocked

to London, with their adherents and retainers; and Richard took the

field at the head of an army forty thousand strong.[**] It then behoved

all the rebels to submit: the charters of enfranchisement and pardon

were revoked by parliament; the low people were reduced to the same

slavish condition as before; and several of the ringleaders were

severely punished for the late disorders. Some were even executed

without process or form of law.[***] It was pretended, that the

intentions of the mutineers had been to seize the king’s person, to

carry him through England at their head; to murder all the nobility,

gentry, and lawyers, and even all the bishops and priests, except the

mendicant friars; to despatch afterwards the king himself, and,

having thus reduced all to a level, to order the kingdom at their

pleasure.[****] It is not impossible but many of them, in the delirium

of their first success, might have formed such projects: but of all the

evils incident to human society, the insurrections of the populace, when

not raised and supported by persons of higher quality, are the least

to be dreaded: the mischiefs consequent to an abolition of all rank and

distinction become so great, that they are immediately felt, and soon

bring affairs back to their former order and arrangement.

* Froissard, liv. ii. chap. 77. Walsing. p. 252. Knyghton,

p. 2637.

** Walsing. p. 267.

*** 5 Rich. II. cap. ult., as quoted in the Observations on

Ancient Statutes, p. 262.

**** Walsing. p. 265.

[Illustration: 1_246_richard.jpg RICHARD II. ENTRY INTO LONDON]

A youth of sixteen, (which was at this time the king’s age) who had

discovered so much courage, presence of mind, and address, and had

so dexterously eluded the violence of this tumult, raised great

expectations in the nation; and it was natural to hope that he would,

in the course of his life, equal the glories which had so uniformly

attended his father and his grandfather in all their undertakings.

{1385.} But in proportion as Richard advanced in years, these hopes

vanished; and his want of capacity, at least of solid judgment, appeared

in every enterprise which he attempted. The Scots, sensible of their own

deficiency in cavalry, had applied to the regency of Charles VI.; and

John de Vienne, admiral of France, had been sent over with a body of one

thousand five hundred men at arms, to support them in their incursions

against the English. The danger was now deemed by the king’s uncles

somewhat serious; and a numerous army of sixty thousand men was levied,

and they marched into Scotland with Richard himself at their head. The

Scots did not pretend to make resistance against so great a force: they

abandoned without scruple their country to be pillaged and destroyed

by the enemy: and when De Vienne expressed his surprise at this plan

of operations, they told him, that all their cattle was driven into the

forests and fastnesses; that their houses and other goods were of small

value; and that they well knew how to compensate any losses which they

might sustain in that respect, by making an incursion into England.

Accordingly, when Richard entered Scotland by Berwick and the east

coast, the Scots, to the number of thirty thousand men, attended by the

French, entered the borders of England by the west, and carrying their

ravages through Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, collected

a rich booty, and then returned in tranquillity to their own country.

Richard, meanwhile, advanced towards Edinburgh, and destroyed in his way

all the towns and villages on each side of him: he reduced that city to

ashes: he treated in the same manner Perth, Dundee, and other places

in the low countries; but when he was advised to march towards the west

coast, to await there the return of the enemy, and to take revenge on

them for their devastations, his impatience to return to England,

and enjoy his usual pleasures and amusements, outweighed every

consideration; and he led back his army without effecting any thing by

all these mighty preparations. The Scots, soon after, finding the heavy

bodies of French cavalry very useless in that desultory kind of war to

which they confined themselves, treated their allies so ill, that the

French returned home, much disgusted with the country and with the

manners of its inhabitants.[*] And the English, though they regretted

the indolence and levity of their king, saw themselves for the future

secured against any dangerous invasion from that quarter.

{1386.} But it was so material an interest of the French court to wrest

the seaport towns from the hands of their enemy, that they resolved to

attempt it by some other expedient, and found no means so likely as an

invasion of England itself. They collected a great fleet and army

at Sluise; for the Flemings were now in alliance with them: all the

nobility of France were engaged in this enterprise: the English were

kept in alarm: great preparations were made for the reception of the

invaders: and though the dispersion of the French ships by a storm, and

the taking of many of them by the English, before the embarkation of the

troops, freed the kingdom from the present danger, the king and council

were fully sensible that this perilous situation might every moment

return upon them.[**]

There were two circumstances, chiefly, which engaged the French at this

time to think of such attempts. The one was the absence of the duke of

Lancaster, who had carried into Spain the flower of the English military

force, in prosecution of his vain claim to the crown of Castile; an

enterprise in which, after some promising success, he was finally

disappointed: the other was, the violent dissensions and disorders which

had taken place in the English government.

The subjection in which Richard was held by his uncles, particularly by

the duke of Glocester, a prince of ambition and genius, though it

was not unsuitable to his years and slender capacity, was extremely

disagreeable to his violent temper; and he soon attempted to shake off

the yoke imposed upon him. Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, a young man

of a noble family, of an agreeable figure, but of dissolute manners, had

acquired an entire ascendant over him, and governed him with an absolute

authority. The king set so little bounds to his affection, that he

first created his favorite marquis of Dublin, a title before unknown in

England, then duke of Ireland; and transferred to him by patent, which

was confirmed in parliament, the entire sovereignty for life of that

island.[***]

* Froissard, liv. ii. chap. 149, 150, etc., liv. iii. chap.

52. Walsing p. 316, 317.

** Froissard, liv. iii. chap. 41, 53. Walsing. p. 322,

323.

*** Cotton, p. 310, 311. Cox, Hist. of Ireland, p. 129.

Walsing, p. 324.

He gave him in marriage his cousin-german, the daughter of Ingelram de

Couci, earl of Bedford; but soon after he permitted him to repudiate

that lady, though of an unexceptionable character, and to marry a

foreigner, a Bohemian, with whom he had become enamored.[*] These public

declarations of attachment turned the attention of the whole court

towards the minion: all favors passed through his hands: access to the

king could only be obtained by his mediation: and Richard seemed to take

no pleasure in royal authority, but so far as it enabled him to load

with favors, and titles, and dignities, this object of his affections.

* Walsing. p. 228.

The jealousy of power immediately produced an animosity Between the

minion and his creatures on the one hand, and the princes of the blood

and chief nobility on the other; and the usual complaints against the

insolence of favorites were loudly echoed, and greedily received, in

every part of the kingdom. Moubray, earl of Nottingham, the mareschal,

Fitz-Alan, earl of Arundel, Piercy, earl of Northumberland, Montacute,

earl of Salisbury, Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, were all connected with

each other, and with the princes, by friendship or alliance, and still

more by their common antipathy to those who had eclipsed them in the

king’s favor and confidence. No longer kept in awe by the personal

character of the prince, they scorned to submit to his ministers; and

the method which they took to redress the grievance complained of well

suited the violence of the age, and proves the desperate extremities to

which every opposition was sure to be instantly carried.

Michael de la Pole, the present chancellor, and lately created earl

of Suffolk, was the son of an eminent merchant; but had risen by his

abilities and valor during the wars of Edward III., had acquired the

friendship of that monarch, and was esteemed the person of greatest

experience and capacity among those who were attached to the duke of

Ireland and the king’s secret council. The duke of Glocester, who had

the house of commons at his devotion, impelled them to exercise that

power which they seem first to have assumed against Lord Latimer during

the declining years of the late king; and an impeachment against the

chancellor was carried up by them to the house of peers, which was no

less at his devotion. The king foresaw the tempest preparing against him

and his ministers. After attempting in vain to rouse the Londoners to

his defence, he withdrew from parliament, and retired with his court to

Eltham. The parliament sent a deputation, inviting him to return, and

threatening that, if he persisted in absenting himself, they would

immediately dissolve, and leave the nation, though at that time in

imminent danger of a French invasion, without any support or supply for

its defence. At the same time, a member was encouraged to call for the

record containing the parliamentary deposition of Edward II.; a plain

intimation of the fate which Richard, if he continued refractory, had

reason to expect from them. The king, finding himself unable to resist,

was content to stipulate that, except finishing the present impeachment

against Suffolk, no attack should be made upon any other of his

ministers; and on that condition he returned to the parliament.[*] [12]

Nothing can prove more fully the innocence of Suffolk, than the

frivolousness of the crimes which his enemies, in the present plenitude

of their power, thought proper to object against him.[**] It was

alleged, that being chancellor, and obliged by his oath to consult the

king’s profit, he had purchased lands of the crown below their true

value; that he had exchanged with the king a perpetual annuity of four

hundred marks a year, which he inherited from his father, and which was

assigned upon the customs of the port of Hull, for lands of an equal

income; that having obtained for his son the priory of St. Anthony,

which was formerly possessed by a Frenchman, an enemy and a schismatic,

and a new prior being at the same time named by the pope, he had

refused to admit this person, whose title was not legal, till he made a

composition with his son, and agreed to pay him a hundred pounds a

year from the income of the benefice; that he had purchased, from one

Tydeman, of Limborch, an old and forfeited annuity of fifty pounds a

year upon the crown, and had engaged the king to admit that bad debt;

and that, when created earl of Suffolk, he had obtained a grant of five

hundred pounds a year to support the dignity of that title.[***]

* See note L, at the end of the volume.

** Cotton, p. 315. Knyghton, p. 2683.

*** It is probable that the earl of Suffolk was not rich, nor

able to support the dignity without the bounty of the crown;

for his father, Michael de la Pole, though a great merchant,

had been ruined by lending money to the late king. See

Cotton, p. 194.

We may even the proof of these articles, frivolous as they are, was

found very deficient upon the trial: it appeared that Suffolk had made

no purchase from the crown while he was chancellor, and that all

his bargains of that kind were made before he was advanced to that

dignity.[*] It is almost needless to add, that he was condemned,

notwithstanding his defence; and that he was deprived of his office.

Glocester and his associates observed their stipulation with the king,

and attacked no more of his ministers: but they immediately attacked

himself and his royal dignity, and framed a commission after the model

of those which had been attempted almost in every reign since that

of Richard I., and which had always been attended with extreme

confusion.[**] By this commission, which was ratified by parliament, a

council of fourteen persons was appointed, all of Glocester’s faction,

except Nevil, archbishop of York: the sovereign power was transferred

to these men for a twelvemonth: the king, who had now reached the

twenty-first year of his age, was in reality dethroned: the aristocracy

was rendered supreme: and though the term of the commission was limited,

it was easy to foresee that the intentions of the party were to render

it perpetual, and that power would with great difficulty be wrested from

those grasping hands to which it was once committed. Richard, however,

was obliged to submit: he signed the commission which violence had

extorted from him; he took an oath never to infringe it; and though

at the end of the session he publicly entered a protest, that the

prerogatives of the crown, notwithstanding his late concession, should

still be deemed entire and unimpaired,[***] the new commissioners,

without regarding this declaration, proceeded to the exercise of their

authority.

* Rymer, vol. vii. p. 481. Cotton, p. 31.

** Cotton, p. 315.

*** Knyghton, p. 2686. Statutes at large, 10 Rich. II. chap.

I.

{1887.} The king, thus dispossessed of royal power, was soon sensible of

the contempt into which he was fallen. His favorites and ministers, who

were as yet allowed to remain about his person, failed not to aggravate

the injury which without any demerit on his part, had been offered to

him. And his eager temper was of itself sufficiently inclined to remark

that the dukes of Glocester and York, though vastly rich received at

the same time each of them a thousand pounds a year top support their

dignity and to seek the means, both of recovering his authority, and of

revenging himself on those who had invaded it. As the house of commons

appeared now of weight in the constitution, he secretly tried some

expedients for procuring a favorable election: he sounded some of the

sheriffs, who, being at that time both the returning officers, and

magistrates of great power in the counties, had naturally considerable

influence in elections.[*] But as most of them had been appointed by his

uncles, either during his minority or during the course of the present

commission, he found them in general averse to his enterprise. The

sentiments and inclinations of the judges were more favorable to him.

He met at Nottingham Sir Robert Tresilian, chief justice of the king’s

bench, Sir Robert Belknappe, chief justice of the common pleas, Sir John

Gary, chief baron of the exchequer, Holt, Fulthorpe, and Bourg, inferior

justices, and Lockton, serjeant at law; and he proposed to them some

queries, which these lawyers, either from the influence of his authority

or of reason, made no scruple of answering in the way he desired. They

declared that the late commission was derogatory to the royalty and

prerogative of the king; that those who procured it, or advised the

king to consent to it, were punishable with death; that those who

necessitated and compelled him were guilty of treason; that those were

equally criminal who should persevere in maintaining it; that the

king has the right of dissolving parliaments at pleasure; that the

parliament, while it sits, must first proceed upon the king’s business;

and that this assembly cannot without his consent impeach any of his

ministers and judges.[**] Even according to our present strict maxims

with regard to law and the royal prerogative, all these determinations,

except the two last, appear justifiable: and as the great privileges

of the commons, particularly that of impeachment, were hitherto new and

supported by few precedents, there want not plausible reasons to justify

these opinions of the judges.[***]

* In the preamble to 5 Henry IV. cap. vii. it is implied,

that the sheriffs in a manner appointed the members of the

house of commons, not only in this parliament, but in many

others.

** Knyghton, p. 2694. Ypod. Neust. p. 541.

*** The parliament, in 1341, exacted of Edward III., that on

the third day of every session, the king should resume all

the great offices; and that the ministers should then answer

to any accusation that should be brought against them; which

plainly implies, that, while ministers they could not be

accused or impeached in parliament, therefore, their answer

to the king’s queries before the archhishops of York and

Dublin, the bishops of Durham, Chichester, and Bangor, the

duke of Ireland, the earl of Suffolk, and two other

counsellors of inferior quality. Henry IV. told the

commons that the usage of parliament required them to go

first through the king’s business In granting supplies;

which order the king intended not to alter. Parl. Hist. vol.

ii. p. 65. Upon the whole, it must be allowed that,

according to ancient practice and principles, there are at

least plausible grounds for all these opinions of the

judges. It must be remarked, that this affirmation of Henry

IV. was given deliberately, after consulting the house of

peers, who were much better acquainted with the usage of

parliament than the ignorant commons. And it has the greater

authority, because Henry IV. had made this very principle a

considerable article of charge against his predecessor; and

that a very few years before. So ill grounded were most of

the imputations thrown on the unhappy Richard.

They obliged the king to summon a parliament, which was entirely at

their devotion, they had full power, by observing a few legal forms,

to take vengeance on all their enemies. Five great peers, men whose

combined power was able at any time to shake the throne,--the duke

of Glocester, the king’s uncle; the earl of Derby, son of the duke of

Lancaster; the earl of Arundel; the earl of Warwick; and the earl of

Nottingham, mareschal of England,--entered before the parliament an

accusation, or appeal, as it was called, against the five counsellors

whom they had already accused before the king. The parliament, who ought

to have been judges, were not ashamed to impose an oath on all their

members, by which they bound themselves to live and die with the lords

appellants, and to defend them against all opposition with their lives

and fortunes.[*]

* Cotton, p. 322.

The duke of Glocester and his adherents soon got intelligence of this

secret consultation, and were naturally very much alarmed at it. They

saw the king’s intentions; and they determined to prevent the execution

of them. As soon as he came to London, which they knew was well disposed

to their party, they secretly assembled their forces, and appeared in

arms at Haringay Park, near Highgate, with a power which Richard and

his ministers were not able to resist. They sent him a message by the

archbishop of Canterbury, and the lords Lovel Cobham, and Devereux,

and demanded that the persons who had seduced him by their pernicious

counsel, and were traitors both to him and to the kingdom, should be

delivered up to them. A few days after, they appeared in his presence,

armed, and attended with armed followers; and they accused by name the

archbishop of York, the duke of Ireland, the earl of Suffolk, Sir Robert

Tresilian, and Sir Nicholas Brembre, as public and dangerous enemies to

the state. They threw down their gauntlets before the king, and fiercely

offered to maintain the truth of their charge by duel. The persons

accused, and all the other obnoxious ministers, had withdrawn or had

concealed themselves.

The duke of Ireland fled to Cheshire, and levied some forces, with

which he advanced to relieve the king from the violence of the nobles.

Glocester encountered him in Oxfordshire with much superior forces;

routed him, dispersed his followers, and obliged him to fly into the Low

Countries, where he died in exile a few years after.

The other proceedings were well suited to the violence and iniquity of

the times. A charge consisting of thirty-nine articles, was delivered

in by the appellants; and as none of the accused counsellors, except

Sir Nicholas Brembre, was in custody, the rest were cited to appear; and

upon their absenting themselves, the house of peers, after a very

short interval, without hearing a witness, without examining a fact, or

deliberating on one point of law, declared them guilty of high treason.

Sir Nicholas Brembre, who was produced in court, had the appearance, and

but the appearance, of a trial: the peers, though they were not by law

his proper judges, pronounced, in a very summary manner, sentence of

death upon him; and he was executed, together with Sir Robert Tresilian,

who had been discovered and taken in the interval.

It would be tedious to recite the whole charge delivered in against the

five counsellors; which is to be met with in several collections.[*]

* Knyghton, p. 2715. Tyrrel, vol iii. part ii p. 919, from

the records. Parl. Hist. vol. i. p. 414

It is sufficient to observe in general, that if we reason upon the

supposition, which is the true one, that the royal prerogative was

invaded by the commission extorted by the duke of Glocester and his

associates, and that the king’s person was afterwards detained in

custody by rebels, many of the articles will appear not only to imply no

crime in the duke of Ireland and the ministers, but to ascribe to

them actions which were laudable, and which they were bound by their

allegiance to perform. The few articles impeaching the conduct of these

ministers before that commission, which subverted the constitution, and

annihilated all justice and legal authority, are vague and general; such

as their engrossing the king’s favor, keeping his barons at a distance

from him, obtaining unreasonable grants for themselves or their

creatures, and dissipating the public treasure by useless expenses. No

violence is objected to them; no particular illegal act;[*] no breach of

any statute; and their administration may therefore be concluded to have

been so far innocent and inoffensive. All the disorders indeed seem to

have proceeded not from any violation of the laws, or any ministerial

tyranny, but merely from a rivalship of power, which the duke of

Glocester and the great nobility, agreeably to the genius of the times,

carried to the utmost extremity against their opponents, without any

regard to reason, justice, or humanity.

But these were not the only deeds of violence committed during

the triumph of the party. All the other judges who had signed the

extrajudicial opinions at Nottingham, were condemned to death, and were,

as a grace or favor, banished to Ireland; though they pleaded the fear

of their lives, and the menaces of the king’s ministers as their excuse.

Lord Beauchamp of Holt, Sir James Berners, and John Salisbury, were also

tried and condemned for high treason, merely because they had attempted

to defeat the late commission: but the life of the latter was spared.

The fate of Sir Simon Burley was more severe: this gentleman was much

beloved for his personal merit, had distinguished himself by many

honorable actions,[*] [13] was created knight of the garter, and had

been appointed governor to Richard, by the choice of the late king

and of the Black Prince: he had attended his master from the earliest

infancy of that prince, and had ever remained extremely attached to him:

yet all these considerations could not save him from falling a victim to

Glocester’s vengeance.

* See note M, at the end of the volume.

This execution, more than all the others, made a deep impression on the

mind of Richard; his queen too (for he was already married to the sister

of the emperor Winceslaus, King of Bohemia) interested herself in behalf

of Burley: she remained three hours on her knees before the duke of

Glocester, pleading for that gentleman’s life; but though she was become

extremely popular by her amiable qualities, which had acquired her the

appellation of “the good Queen Anne,” her petition was sternly rejected

by the inexorable tyrant.[*] [14]

* At least this is the character given of him by Froissard,

(liv. ii.) who knew him personally. Walsingham (p. 334)

gives a very different character of him; but he is a writer

somewhat passionate and partial; and the choice made of this

gentleman, by Edward III. and the Black Prince, for the

education of Richard, makes the character given him by

Froissard much more probable.

The parliament concluded this violent scene by a declaration, that

none of the articles decided on these trials to be treason, should ever

afterwards be drawn into precedent by the judges, who were still to

consider the statute of the twenty-fifth of Edward as the rule of their

decisions. The house of lords seem not at that time to have known or

acknowledged the principle, that they themselves were bound, in their

judicial capacity, to follow the rules which they, in conjunction with

the king and commons, had established in their legislature.[*] [14]

It was also enacted, that every one should swear to the perpetual

maintenance and support of the forfeitures and attainders, and of

all the other acts passed during this parliament. The archbishop of

Canterbury added the penalty of excommunication, as a further security

to these violent transactions.

* See note N, at the end of the volume.

{1389.} It might naturally be expected, that the king, being reduced to

such slavery by the combination of the princes and chief nobility, and

having appeared so unable to defend his servants from the cruel effects

of their resentment, would long remain in subjection to them; and never

would recover the royal power, without the most violent struggles and

convulsions: but the event proved contrary. In less than a twelvemonth,

Richard, who was in his twenty-third year, declared in council, that, as

he had now attained the full age which entitled him to govern by his own

authority his kingdom and household, he resolved to exercise his right

of sovereignty; and when no one ventured to contradict so reasonable

an intention, he deprived Fitz-Alan, archbishop of Canterbury, of the

dignity of chancellor, and bestowed that high office on William of

Wickham, bishop of Winchester; the bishop of Hereford was displaced from

the office of treasurer; the earl of Arundel from that of admiral; even

the duke of Glocester and the earl of Warwick were removed for a time

from the council: and no opposition was made to these great changes. The

history of this reign is imperfect, and little to be depended on, except

where it is supported by public records; and it is not easy for us

to assign the reason of this unexpected event. Perhaps some secret

animosities, naturally to be expected in that situation, had crept in

among the great men, and had enabled the king to recover his authority.

Perhaps the violence of their former proceedings had lost them the

affections of the people, who soon repent of any cruel extremities to

which they are carried by their leaders. However this may be, Richard

exercised with moderation the authority which he had resumed. He seemed

to be entirely reconciled to his uncles[*] and the other great men, of

whom he had so much reason to complain: he never attempted to recall

from banishment the duke of Ireland, whom he found so obnoxious to them:

he confirmed by proclamation the general pardon which the parliament had

passed for all offences; and he courted the affections of the people,

by voluntarily remitting some subsidies which had been granted him: a

remarkable, and almost singular instance of such generosity.

After this composure of domestic differences, and this restoration of

the government to its natural state, there passes an interval of eight

years which affords not many remarkable events. The duke of Lancaster

returned from Spain; having resigned to his rival all pretensions to the

crown of Castile upon payment of a large sum of money,[**] and having

married his daughter, Philippa, to the king of Portugal. The authority

of this prince served to counterbalance that of the duke of Glocester,

and secured the power of Richard, who paid great court to his eldest

uncle, by whom he had never been offended, and whom he found more

moderate in his temper than the younger. He made a cession to him for

life of the duchy of Guienne,[***] which the inclinations and changeable

humor of the Gascons had restored to the English government; but as they

remonstrated loudly against this deed, it was finally, with the duke’s

consent, revoked by Richard.[****]

* Dugdale, vol. ii. p. 170.

** Knyghton, p 2677. Walsing p. 342.

*** Rymer, vol. vii. p. 659.

**** Rymer, vol. vii. p. 687. 298 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

There happened an incident which produced a dissension between Lancaster

and his two brothers. After the death of the Spanish princess, he

espoused Catharine Swineford, daughter of a private knight of Hainault,

by whose alliance York and Glocester thought the dignity of their family

much injured; but the king gratified his uncle by passing in parliament

a charter of legitimation to the children whom that lady had borne him

before marriage, and by creating the eldest earl of Somerset.[*]

The wars, meanwhile, which Richard had inherited with his crown, still

continued; though interrupted by frequent truces, according to the

practice of that age, and conducted with little vigor, by reason of

the weakness of all parties. The French war was scarcely heard of; the

tranquillity of the northern borders was only interrupted by one inroad

of the Scots, which proceeded more from a rivalship between the two

martial families of Piercy and Douglas, than from any national quarrel:

a fierce battle or skirmish was fought at Otterborne,[**] in which young

Piercy, surnamed Hotspur, from his impetuous valor, was taken prisoner,

and Douglas slain; and the victory remained undecided.[***] Some

insurrections of the Irish obliged the king to make an expedition into

that country, which he reduced to obedience; and he recovered, in some

degree, by this enterprise, his character of courage, which had suffered

a little by the inactivity of his reign.

{1396.} At last, the English and French courts began to think in earnest

of a lasting peace; but found it so difficult to adjust their opposite

pretensions, that they were content to establish a truce of twenty-five

years: Brest and Cherbourg were restored, the former to the duke of

Brittany, the latter to the king of Navarre: both parties were left

in possession of all the other places which they held at the time of

concluding the truce; and to render the amity between the two crowns

more durable, Richard,[****] who was now a widower, was affianced to

Isabella, the daughter of Charles. This princess was only seven years

of age; but the king agreed to so unequal a match, chiefly that he might

fortify himself by this alliance against the enterprises of his uncles,

and the incurable turbulence, as well as inconstancy, of his barons.

The administration of the king, though it was not in this interval

sullied by any unpopular act, except the seizing of the charter of

London,[******] which was soon after restored, tended not much to

corroborate his authority; and his personal character brought him into

contempt, even while his public government appeared in a good measure

unexceptionable.

* Cotton, p. 365. Walsing, p. 352.

** 15th August, 1388.

*** Froissard, liv. iii. chap. 124, 125, 126. Walsing, p.

355.

**** Rymer, vol. vii. p. 820.

***** Rymer, vol. vii. p. 811.

****** Rymer, vol. vii. p. 727. Walsing. p. 347.

Indolent, profuse, addicted to low pleasures, he spent his whole time

in feasting and jollity, and dissipated, in idle show, or in bounties

to favorites of no reputation, that revenue which the people expected to

see him employ in enterprises directed to public honor and advantage. He

forgot his rank by admitting all men to his familiarity; and he was not

sensible, that their acquaintance with the qualities of his mind was

not able to impress them with the respect which he neglected to preserve

from his birth and station. The earls of Kent and Huntingdon, his half

brothers, were his chief confidants and favorites; and though he never

devoted himself to them with so profuse an affection as that with which

he had formerly been attached to the duke of Ireland, it was easy for

men to see, that every grace passed through their hands, and that the

king had rendered himself a mere cipher in the government. The small

regard which the public bore to his person, disposed them to murmur

against his administration, and to receive with greedy ears every

complaint which the discontented or ambitious grandees suggested to

them.

{1397.} Glocester soon perceived the advantages which this dissolute

conduct gave him; and finding that both resentment and jealousy on the

part of his nephew still prevented him from acquiring any ascendant over

that prince, he determined to cultivate his popularity with the nation,

and to revenge himself on those who eclipsed him in favor and authority.

He seldom appeared at court or in council; he never declared his opinion

but in order to disapprove of the measures embraced by the king and

his favorites; and he courted the friendship of every man whom

disappointment or private resentment had rendered an enemy to the

administration. The long truce with France was unpopular with the

English, who breathed nothing but war against that hostile nation;

and Glocester took care to encourage all the vulgar prejudices which

prevailed on this subject. Forgetting the misfortunes which attended

the English arms during the later years of Edward, he made an invidious

comparison between the glories of that reign and the inactivity of the

present; and he lamented that Richard should have degenerated so much

from the heroic virtues by which his father and his grandfather were

distinguished. The military men were inflamed with a desire of war when

they heard him talk of the signal victories formerly obtained, and of

the easy prey which might be made of French riches by the superior valor

of the English; the populace readily embraced the same sentiments;

and all men exclaimed, that this prince, whose counsels were so much

neglected, was the true support of English honor and alone able to raise

the nation to its former power and splendor. His great abilities, his

popular manners, his princely extraction, his immense riches, his high

office of constable;[*] all these advantages, not a little assisted by

his want of court favor, gave him a mighty authority in the kingdom, and

rendered him formidable to Richard and his ministers.

Froissard,[**] a contemporary writer, and very impartial, but whose

credit is somewhat impaired by his want of exactness in material facts,

ascribes to the duke of Glocester more desperate views, and such as were

totally incompatible with the government and domestic tranquillity of

the nation. According to that historian, he proposed to his nephew,

Roger Mortimer, earl of Marche, whom Richard had declared his successor,

to give him immediate possession of the throne, by the deposition of a

prince so unworthy of power and authority: and when Mortimer declined

the project, he resolved to make a partition of the kingdom between

himself, his two brothers, and the earl of Arundel; and entirely to

dispossess Richard of the crown. The king, it is said, being informed of

these designs, saw that either his own ruin, or that of Glocester, was

inevitable; and he resolved by a hasty blow to prevent the execution of

such destructive projects. This is certain, that Glocester, by his own

confession, had often affected to speak contemptuously of the king’s

person and government; had deliberated concerning the lawfulness of

throwing off allegiance to him; and had even borne part in a secret

conference, where his deposition was proposed, and talked of, and

determined:[***] but it is reasonable to think, that his schemes were

not so far advanced.

* Rymer, vol. vii. p. 152.

** Liv. iv. chap. 86.

*** Cotton, p. 378. Tyrrel, vol. iii. part ii. p. 972, from

the records. Par. Hist. vol. i. p. 473. That this confession

was genuine, and obtained without violence, may be entirely

depended on. Judge Rickhill, who brought it over from

Calais, was tried on that account, and acquitted in the

first parliament of Henry IV., when Glocester’s party was

prevalent. His acquittal, notwithstanding his innocence, may

even appear marvellous, considering the times. See Cotton,

p. 393. putting them immediately in execution. The danger

probably was still too distant to render a desperate remedy

entirely necessary for the security of government.

But whatever opinion we may form of the danger arising from Glocester’s

conspiracies, his aversion to the French truce and alliance was public

and avowed; and that court which had now a great influence over the

king, pushed him to provide for his own safety, by punishing the

traitorous designs of his uncle. The resentment against his former

acts of violence revived; the sense of his refractory and uncompliant

behavior was still recent; and a man whose ambition had once usurped

royal authority, and who had murdered all the faithful servants of the

king, was thought capable, on a favorable opportunity, of renewing the

same criminal enterprises. The king’s precipitate temper admitted of no

deliberation: he ordered Glocester to be unexpectedly arrested; to be

hurried on board a ship which was lying in the river; and to be carried

over to Calais, where alone, by reason of his numerous partisans, he

could safely be detained in custody.[*] The earls of Arundel and Warwick

were seized at the same time: the malecontents so suddenly deprived of

their leaders, were astonished and overawed; and the concurrence of the

dukes of Lancaster and York in those measures, together with the earls

of Derby and Rutland, the eldest sons of these princes,[**] bereaved

them of all possibility of resistance.

A parliament was immediately summoned at Westminster; and the king

doubted not to find the peers, and still more the commons, very

compliant with his will. This house had in a former parliament given

him very sensible proofs of their attachment;[***] [15] and the present

suppression of Glocester’s party made him still more assured of a

favorable election. As a further expedient for that purpose, he is also

said to have employed the influence of the sheriffs; a practice which,

though not unusual, gave umbrage, but which the established authority

of that assembly rendered afterwards still more familiar to the nation.

Accordingly, the parliament passed whatever acts the king was pleased

to dictate to them:[****] they annulled forever the commission which

usurped upon the royal authority, and they declared it treasonable to

attempt, in any future period, the revival of any similar commission:

they abrogated all the acts which attainted the king’s ministers, and

which that parliament who passed them, and the whole nation had sworn

inviolably to maintain: and they declared the general pardon then

granted to be invalid, as extorted by force, and never ratified by the

free consent of the king.

* Froissard, liv. iv. chap. 90. Walsing. p. 354.

** Rymer, vol. viii. p. 7.

*** See note O, at the end of the volume.

**** The nobles brought numerous retainers with them to give

them*

Though Richard, after he resumed the government, and lay no longer under

constraint, had voluntarily, by proclamation, confirmed that general

indemnity, this circumstance seemed not, in their eyes, to merit any

consideration. Even a particular pardon, granted six years after to the

earl of Arundel, was annulled by parliament, on pretence that it had

been procured by surprise, and that the king was not then fully apprized

of the degree of guilt incurred by that nobleman.

The commons then preferred an impeachment against Fitz-Alan, archbishop

of Canterbury, and brother to Arundel, and accused him for his

concurrence in procuring the illegal commission, and in attainting the

king’s ministers. The primate pleaded guilty; but as he was protected

by the ecclesiastical privileges, the king was satisfied with a sentence

which banished him the kingdom, and sequestered his temporalities.[*]

An appeal or accusation was presented against the duke of Glocester,

and the earls of Arundel and Warwick, by the earls of Rutland, Kent,

Huntingdon, Somerset, Salisbury, and Nottingham, together with the lords

Spenser and Scrope, and they were accused of the same crimes which had

been imputed to the archbishop, as well as of their appearance against

the king in a hostile manner at Haringay Park. The earl of Arundel, who

was brought to the bar, wisely confined all his defence to the pleading

of both the general and particular pardon of the king; but his plea

being overruled, he was condemned and executed.[**]

* Cotton, p. 368.

** Cotton, p 377. Froissard, liv. iv. chap. 90. Walsing. p.

354.

The earl of Warwick, who was also convicted of high treason, was, on

account of his submissive behavior, pardoned as to his life, but doomed

to perpetual banishment in the Isle of Man. No new acts of treason were

imputed to either of these noblemen. The only crimes for which they were

condemned, were the old attempts against the crown, which seemed to be

obliterated both by the distance of time and by repeated pardons.[*] The

reasons of this method of proceeding it is difficult to conjecture. The

recent conspiracies of Glocester seem certain from his own confession;

but perhaps the king and ministry had not at that time in their hands

any satisfactory proof of their reality; perhaps it was difficult to

convict Arundel and Warwick of any participation in them; perhaps an

inquiry into these conspiracies would have involved in the guilt some of

those great noblemen who now concurred with the crown, and whom it was

necessary to cover from all imputation; or perhaps the king, according

to the genius of the age, was indifferent about maintaining even the

appearance of law and equity, and was only solicitous by any means to

insure success in these prosecutions. This point, like many others in

ancient history, we are obliged to leave altogether undetermined.

A warrant was issued to the earl mareschal, governor of Calais, to bring

over the duke of Glocester, in order to his trial; but the governor

returned for answer, that the duke had died suddenly of an apoplexy in

that fortress. Nothing could be more suspicious, from the time, than the

circumstances of that prince’s death: it became immediately the

general opinion, that he was murdered by orders from his nephew: in the

subsequent reign, undoubted proofs were produced in parliament, that

he had been suffocated with pillows by his keepers:[**] and it appeared

that the king, apprehensive lest the public trial and execution of so

popular a prince, and so near a relation, might prove both dangerous and

invidious, had taken this base method of gratifying, and, as he fancied,

concealing, his revenge upon him. Both parties, in their successive

triumphs, seem to have had no further concern than that of retaliating

upon their adversaries; and neither of them were aware that, by

imitating, they indirectly justified, as far as it lay in their power,

all the illegal violence of the opposite party.

* Tyrrel, vol. iii. part ii. p. 968, from the records.

** Cotton, p. 399, 400. Dugdale, vol. ii. p. 171.

This session concluded with the creation or advancement of several

peers: the earl of Derby was made duke of Hereford; the earl of Rutland,

duke of Albemarle; the earl of Kent, duke of Surrey; the earl of

Huntingdon, duke of Exeter; the earl of Nottingham, duke of Norfolk; the

earl of Somerset, marquis of Dorset; Lord Spenser, earl of Glocester;

Rulph Nevil, earl of Westmoreland; Thomas Piercy, earl of Worcester;

William Scrope, earl of Wiltshire.[*] The parliament, after a session of

twelve days, was adjourned to Shrewsbury. The king, before the departure

of the members, exacted from them an oath for the perpetual maintenance

and establishment of all their acts; an oath similar to that which had

formerly been required by the duke of Glocester and his party, and which

had already proved so vain and fruitless.

{1398.} Both king and parliament met in the same dispositions at

Shrewsbury. So anxious was Richard for the security of these acts, that

he obliged the lords and commons to swear anew to them on the cross

of Canterbury;[**] and he soon after procured a bull from the pope,

by which they were, as he imagined, perpetually secured and

established.[***] The parliament, on the other hand, conferred on him

for life the duties on wool, wool-fells, and leather, and granted him,

besides, a subsidy of one tenth and a half, and one fifteenth and

a half. They also reversed the attainder of Tresilian and the other

judges; and, with the approbation of the present judges, declared the

answers for which these magistrates had been impeached to be just and

legal:[****] and they carried so far their retrospect as to reverse,

on the petition of Lord Spenser, earl of Glocester, the attainder

pronounced against the two Spensers in the reign of Edward II.[*****]

The ancient history of England is nothing but a catalogue of reversals:

every thing is in fluctuation and movement: one faction is continually

undoing what was established by another: and the multiplied oaths

which each party exacted for the security of the present acts, betray a

perpetual consciousness of their instability.

The parliament, before they were dissolved, elected a committee of

twelve lords and six commoners,[******] whom they invested with the

whole power both of lords and commons, and endowed with full authority

to finish all business which had been laid before the houses, and which

they had not had leisure to bring to a conclusion.[*******]

* Cotton, p. 370, 371

** Cotton, p. 371.

** Walsing. p. 355.

**** Statutes at large, 21 Rich. II.

***** Cotton, p. 372.

****** The names of the commissioners were, the dukes of

Lancaster, York, Albemarle, Surrey, and Exeter, the marquis

of Dorset, the earls of Marche, Salisbury, Northumberland,

Glocester, Winchester, and Wiltshire; John Bussey, Henry

Green, John Russel, Robert Teyne, Henry Chelmeswicke, and

John Golofre. It is to be remarked, that the duke of

Lancaster always concurred with the rest in all their

proceedings, even in the banishment of his son, which was

afterwards so much complained of.

******* Cotton, p. 372. Walsing. p. 355.

This was an unusual concession; and though it was limited in the object,

might, either immediately or as a precedent, have proved dangerous to

the constitution; but the cause of that extraordinary measure was

an event singular and unexpected, which engaged the attention of the

parliament.

After the destruction of the duke of Glocester and the heads of that

party, a misunderstanding broke out among those noblemen who had joined

in the prosecution; and the king wanted either authority sufficient to

appease it, or foresight to prevent it. The duke of Hereford appeared in

parliament, and accused the duke of Norfolk of having spoken to him,

in private, many slanderous words of the king, and of having imputed

to that prince an intention of subverting and destroying many of his

principal nobility.[**] Norfolk.. denied the charge, gave Hereford the

lie, and offered to prove his own innocence by duel. The challenge was

accepted: the time and place of combat were appointed: and as the event

of this important trial by arms might require the interposition of

legislative authority, the parliament thought it more suitable to

delegate their power to a committee, than to prolong the session beyond

the usual time which custom and general convenience had prescribed to

it.[***]

The duke of Hereford was certainly very little delicate in the point of

honor, when he revealed a private conversation to the ruin of the person

who had intrusted him; and we may thence be more inclined to believe the

duke of Norfolk’s denial, than the other’s asseveration. But Norfolk had

in these transactions betrayed an equal neglect of honor, which brings

him entirely on a level with his antagonist. Though he had publicly

joined with the duke of Glocester and his party in all the former acts

of violence against the king.

** Cotton, p. 372. Parl. Hist. vol. i. p. 490.

*** In the first year of Henry VI., when the authority of

parliament was great, and when that assembly could least be

suspected of lying under violence, a like concession was

made to the privy council from like motives of convenience.

See Cotton, p. 564. his name stands among the appellants who

accused the duke of Ireland and the other ministers, yet was

he not ashamed publicly to impeach his former associates for

the very crimes which he had concurred with them in

committing; and his name increases the list of those

appellants who brought them to a trial. Such were the

principles and practices of those ancient knights and

barons, during the prevalence of the aristocratical

government, and the reign of chivalry.

The lists for this decision of truth and right were appointed at

Coventry before the king: all the nobility of England banded into

parties, and adhered either to the one duke or the other: the whole

nation was held in suspense with regard to the event; but when the

two champions appeared in the field accoutred for the combat, the king

interposed, to prevent both the present effusion of such noble blood,

and the future consequences of the quarrel. By the advice and authority

of the parliamentary commissioners, he stopped the duel; and to show his

impartiality, he ordered, by the same authority both the combatants to

leave the kingdom;[*] assigning one country for the place of Norfolk’s

exile, which he declared perpetual, another for that of Hereford, which

he limited to ten years.

* Cotton, p. 380. Walsing. p. 356.

Hereford was a man of great prudence and command of temper; and he

behaved himself with so much submission in these delicate circumstances,

that the king, before his departure, promised to shorten the term of his

exile four years; and he also granted him letters patent, by which he

was empowered, in case any inheritance should in the interval accrue to

him, to enter immediately in possession, and to postpone the doing of

homage till his return.

The weakness and fluctuation of Richard’s counsels appear nowhere more

evident than in the conduct of this affair. No sooner had Hereford left

the kingdom, than the king’s jealousy of the power and riches of that

prince’s family revived; and he was sensible that by Glocester’s death

he had only removed a counterpoise to the Lancastrian interest which

was now become formidable to his crown and kingdom. Being informed that

Hereford had entered into a treaty of marriage with the daughter of the

duke of Berry, uncle to the French king, he determined to prevent the

finishing of an alliance which would so much extend the interest of his

cousin in foreign countries; and he sent over the earl of Salisbury to

Paris with a commission for that purpose.

{1399.} The death of the duke of Lancaster, which happened soon after,

called upon him to take new resolutions with regard to that opulent

succession. The present duke, in consequence of the king’s patent,

desired to be put in possession of the estate and jurisdictions of his

father; but Richard, afraid of strengthening the hands of a man whom

he had already so much offended, applied to the parliamentary

commissioners, and persuaded them that this affair was but an appendage

to that business which the parliament had delegated to them. By their

authority he revoked his letters patent, and retained possession of the

estate of Lancaster; and by the same authority he seized and tried the

duke’s attorney, who had procured and insisted on the letters, and he

had him condemned as a traitor for faithfully executing that trust

to his master;[*] an extravagant act of power! even though the king

changed, in favor of the attorney, the penalty of death into that of

banishment.

Henry, the new duke of Lancaster, had acquired by his conduct and

abilities the esteem of the public; and having served with distinction

against the infidels in Lithuania, he had joined to his other praises

those of piety and valor, virtues which have at all times a great

influence over mankind, and were, during those ages, the qualities

chiefly held in estimation.[**] He was connected with most of the

principal nobility by blood, alliance, or friendship; and as the injury

done him by the king might in its consequences affect all of them, he

easily brought them, by a sense of common interest, to take part in his

resentment. The people, who must have an object of affection, who found

nothing in the king’s person which they could love or revere, and

who were even disgusted with many parts of his conduct[***] easily

transferred to Henry that attachment which the death of the duke of

Glocester had left.

* Tyrrel, vol. iii. part ii. p. 991, from the records.

** Walsing. p. 343.

*** He levied fines upon those who had ten years before joined

the duke of Glocester and his party: they were obliged to

pay him money, before he would allow them to enjoy the

benefit of the indemnity; and in the articles of charge

against him it is asserted that the payment of one fine did

not suffice. It is indeed likely that his ministers would

abuse the power put into their hands; and this grievance

extended to very many people. Historians agree in

representing this practice as a great oppression. See

Otterborne, p. 199. without any fixed direction. His

misfortunes were lamented the injustice which he had

suffered was complained of; and all men turned their eyes

towards him as the only person that could retrieve the lost

honor of the nation, or redress the supposed abuses in the

government.

While such were the dispositions of the people, Richard had the

imprudence to embark for Ireland, in order to revenge the death of his

cousin, Roger, earl of Marche, the presumptive heir of the crown, who

had lately been slain in a skirmish by the natives; and he thereby

left the kingdom of England open to the attempts of his provoked and

ambitious enemy. Henry, embarking at Nantz with a retinue of sixty

persons, among whom were the archbishop of Canterbury and the young earl

of Arundel, nephew to that prelate, landed at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire;

and was immediately joined by the earls of Northumberland and

Westmoreland, two of the most potent barons in England. He here took

a solemn oath, that he had no other purpose hi this invasion than to

recover the duchy of Lancaster, unjustly detained from him; and he

invited all his friends in England, and all lovers of their country, to

second him in this reasonable and moderate pretension. Every place was

in commotion: the malecontents in all quarters flew to arms: London

discovered the strongest symptoms of its disposition to mutiny and

rebellion: and Henry’s army, increasing on every day’s march, soon

amounted to the number of sixty thousand combatants.

The duke of York was left guardian of the realm; a place to which

his birth entitled him, but which both his slender abilities, and his

natural connections with the duke of Lancaster, rendered him utterly

incapable of filling in such a dangerous emergency. Such of the chief

nobility as were attached to the crown, and could either have seconded

the guardian’s good intentions, or have overawed his infidelity, had

attended the king into Ireland; and the efforts of Richard’s friends

were every where more feeble than those of his enemies. The duke of

York, however, appointed the rendezvous of his forces at St. Albans, and

soon assembled an army of forty thousand men; but found them entirely

destitute of zeal and attachment to the royal cause, and more inclined

to join the party of the rebels. He hearkened therefore very readily to

a message from Henry, who entreated him not to oppose a loyal and humble

supplicant in the recovery of his legal patrimony; and the guardian even

declared publicly that he would second his nephew in so reasonable a

request. His army embraced with acclamations the same measures; and the

duke of Lancaster, reenforced by them, was now entirely master of the

kingdom. He hastened to Bristol, into which some of the king’s ministers

had thrown themselves; and soon obliging that place to surrender, he

yielded to the popular wishes, and without giving them a trial, ordered

the earl of Wiltshire, Sir John Bussy, and Sir Henry Green, whom he

there took prisoners, to be led to immediate execution.

The king, receiving intelligence of this invasion and insurrection,

hastened over from Ireland, and landed in Milford Haven with a body of

twenty thousand men: but even this army, so much inferior to the enemy,

was either overawed oy the general combination of the kingdom, or seized

with the same spirit of disaffection; and they gradually deserted him,

till he found that he had not above six thousand men who followed his

standard. It appeared, therefore, necessary to retire secretly from this

small body, which served only to expose him to danger; and he fled to

the Isle of Anglesea, where he purposed to embark either for Ireland or

France, and there await the favorable opportunities which the return of

his subjects to a sense of duty, or their future discontents against

the duke of Lancaster, would probably afford him. Henry, sensible of

the danger, sent to him the earl of Northumberland, with the strongest

professions of loyalty and submission; and that nobleman, by treachery

and false oaths, made himself master of the king’s person, and carried

him to his enemy at Flint Castle. Richard was conducted to London by the

duke of Lancaster, who was there received with the acclamations of the

mutinous populace. It is pretended that the recorder met him on the

road, and in the name of the city entreated him, for the public safety,

to put Richard to death, with all his adherents who were prisoners; but

the duke prudently determined to make many others participate in his

guilt, before he would proceed to these extremities. For this purpose he

issued writs of election in the king’s name, and appointed the immediate

meeting of a parliament at Westminster.

Such of the peers as were most devoted to the king, were either fled

or imprisoned; and no opponents, even among the barons, dared to appear

against Henry, amidst that scene of outrage and violence which commonly

attends revolutions, especially in England during those turbulent ages,

It is also easy to imagine, that a house of commons, elected during this

universal ferment, and this triumph of the Lancastrian party, would be

extremely attached to that cause, and ready to second every suggestion

of their leaders. That order, being an yet of too little weight to

stem the torrent, was always carried along with it, and served only

to increase the violence which the public interest required it should

endeavor to control. The duke of Lancaster, therefore, sensible that he

should be entirely master, began to carry his views to the crown itself;

and he deliberated with his partisans concerning the most proper means

of effecting his daring purpose. He first extorted a resignation from

Richard;[*] but as he knew that this deed would plainly appear the

result of force and fear, he also purposed, notwithstanding the danger

of the precedent to himself and his posterity, to have him solemnly

deposed in parliament for his pretended tyranny and misconduct. A

charge, consisting of thirty-three articles, was accordingly drawn up

against him, and presented to that assembly.[**]

If we examine these articles, which are expressed with extreme acrimony

against Richard, we shall find that, except some rash speeches, which

are imputed to him,[***] and of whose reality, as they are said to

have passed in private conversation, we may reasonably entertain some

doubt,--the chief amount of the charge is contained in his violent

conduct during the two last years of his reign, and naturally divides

itself into two principal heads. The first and most considerable is the

revenge which he took on the princes and great barons who had formerly

usurped, and still persevered in controlling and threatening his

authority; the second is the violation of the laws and general

privileges of his people. But the former, however irregular in many of

its circumstances, was fully supported by authority of parliament, and

was but a copy of the violence which the princes and barons themselves,

during their former triumph, had exercised against him and his party.

The detention of Lancaster’s estate was, properly speaking a revocation,

by parliamentary authority, of a grace which the King himself had

formerly granted him. The murder of Glocester (for the secret execution,

however merited, of that prince certainly deserves this appellation) was

a private deed formed not any precedent, and implied not any usurped

or arbitrary power of the crown which could justly give umbrage to the

people. It really proceeded from a defect of power in the king, rather

than from his ambition; and proves that, instead of being dangerous to

the constitution, he possessed not even the authority necessary for the

execution of the laws.

* Knyghton, p. 2744. Otterborne, p. 212.

** Tyrrel, vol. iii. part ii. p. 1008, from the records,

Knyghton, p, 2746. Otterborne, p. 214.

*** Art 16, 26.

Concerning the second head of accusation, as it mostly consists of

general facts, was framed by Richard’s inveterate enemies, and was never

allowed to be answered by him or his friends, it is more difficult

to form a judgment. The greatest part of these grievances imputed to

Richard, seems to be the exertion of arbitrary prerogatives; such as the

dispensing power,[*] levying purveyance,[**] employing the mareschal’s

court,[***] extorting loans,[****] granting protections from

lawsuits;[*****] prerogatives, which, though often complained of, had

often been exercised by his predecessors, and still continued to be so

by his successors. But whether his irregular acts of this kind were more

frequent, and injudicious and violent than usual, or were only laid hold

of and exaggerated by the factions to which the weakness of his reign

had given birth, we are not able at this distance to determine with

certainty. There is, however, one circumstance in which his conduct is

visibly different from that of his grandfather: he is not accused of

having imposed one arbitrary tax, without consent of parliament, during

his whole reign;[******] scarcely a year passed during the reign of

Edward, which was free from complaints with regard to this dangerous

exertion of authority. But, perhaps, the ascendant which Edward had

acquired over the people, together with his great prudence, enabled

him to make a use very advantageous to his subjects of this and other

arbitrary prerogatives, and rendered them a smaller grievance in his

hands, than a less absolute authority in those of his grand son.

* Art 13,17,18.

** Art. 22.

*** Art 27.

**** Art, 14.

***** Art. 16.

****** We learn from Cotton (p. 362) that the king, by his

chancellor, told the commons, “that they were sunderly bound

to him, and namely, in forbearing to charge them with dismes

and fifteens, the which he meant _no more_ to charge

them in his own person,” These words “no more” allude to the

practice of his predecessors; he had not himself imposed any

arbitrary taxes: even the parliament, in the articles of his

deposition, though they complain of heavy taxes, affirm not

that they were imposed illegally or by arbitrary will.

This is a point which it would be rash for us to decide positively on

either side; but it is certain, that a charge drawn up by the duke

of Lancaster, and assented to by a parliament, situated in those

circumstances, forms no manner of presumption with regard to the unusual

irregularity or violence of the king’s conduct in this particular.[*]

[16]

* See note P, at the end of the volume.

When the charge against Richard was presented to the parliament, though

it was liable, almost in every article, to objections, it was not

canvassed, nor examined, nor disputed in either house, and seemed to

be received with universal approbation. One man alone, the bishop of

Carlisle, had the courage, amidst this general disloyalty and violence,

to appear in defence of his unhappy master, and to plead his cause

against all the power of the prevailing party. Though some topics

employed by that virtuous prelate may seem to favor too much the

doctrine of passive obedience, and to make too large a sacrifice of

the rights of mankind, he was naturally pushed into that extreme by his

abhorrence of the present licentious factions; and such intrepidity,

as well as disinterestedness of behavior, proves that, whatever his

speculative principles were his heart was elevated far above the

meanness and abject submission of a slave. He represented to the

parliament, that all the abuses of government which could justly be

imputed to Richard, instead of amounting to tyranny, were merely the

result of error, youth, or misguided counsel, and admitted of a remedy

more easy and salutary than a total subversion of the constitution.

That even had they been much more violent and dangerous than they really

were, they had chiefly proceeded from former examples of resistance,

which, making the prince sensible of his precarious situation,

had obliged him to establish his throne by irregular and arbitrary

expedients. That a rebellious disposition in subjects was the principal

cause of tyranny in kings; laws could never secure the subject, which

did not give security to the sovereign; and if the maxim of inviolable

loyalty, which formed the basis of the English government, were once

rejected, the privileges belonging to the several orders of the state,

instead of being fortified by that licentiousness, would thereby

lose the surest foundation of their force and stability. That the

parliamentary deposition of Edward II., far from making a precedent

which could control this maxim, was only an example of successful

violence; and it was sufficiently to be lamented, that crimes were so

often committed in the world, without establishing principles which

might justify and authorize them.

That even that precedent, false and dangerous as it was, could never

warrant the present excesses; which were so much greater, and which

would entail distraction and misery on the nation, to the latest

posterity. That the succession, at least, of the crown, was then

preserved inviolate: the lineal heir was placed on the throne; and the

people had an opportunity, by their legal obedience to him, of making

atonement for the violence which they had committed against his

predecessor. That a descendant of Lionel, duke of Clarence, the elder

brother of the late duke of Lancaster, had been declared in parliament

successor to the crown; he had left posterity; and their title, however

it might be overpowered by present force and faction, could never

be obliterated from the minds of the people. That if the turbulent

disposition alone of the nation had overturned the well-established

throne of so good a prince as Richard, what bloody commotions must

ensue, when the same cause was united to the motive of restoring the

legal and undoubted heir to his authority? That the new government

intended to be established, would stand on no principle; and would

scarcely retain any pretence by which it could challenge the obedience

of men of sense and virtue. That the claim of lineal descent was

so gross, as scarcely to deceive the most ignorant of the populace:

conquest could never be pleaded by a rebel against his sovereign; the

consent of the people had no authority in a monarchy not derived from

consent, but established by hereditary right; and however the nation

might be justified in deposing the misguided Richard, it could never

have any reason for setting aside his lawful heir and successor, who was

plainly innocent. And that the duke of Lancaster would give them but a

bad specimen of the legal moderation which might be expected from

his future government, if he added,[**typo?] to the crime of his past

rebellion, the guilt of excluding the family, which, both by right of

blood and by declaration of parliament, would, in case of Richard’s

demise or voluntary resignation, have been received as the undoubted

heirs of the monarchy.[*]

* Sir John Heywarde, p. 101.

All the circumstances of this event, compared to those which attended

the late revolution in 1688, show the difference between a great and

civilized nation, deliberately vindicating its established privileges,

and a turbulent and barbarous aristocracy, plunging headlong from the

extremes of one faction into those of another. This noble freedom of

the bishop of Carlisle, instead of being applauded, was not so much

as tolerated: he was immediately arrested by order of the duke of

Lancaster, and sent a prisoner to the abbey of St. Albans. No further

debate was attempted: thirty-three long articles of charge were, in one

meeting, voted against Richard; and voted unanimously by the same peers

and prelates who, a little before, had voluntarily and unanimously

authorized those very acts of violence of which they now complained.

That prince was deposed by the suffrages of both houses; and the throne

being now vacant, the duke of Lancaster stepped forth, and having

crossed himself on the forehead and on the breast, and called upon the

name of Christ,[*] he pronounced these words, which we shall give in the

original language, because of their singularity.

“In the name of Fadher, Son, and Holy Ghost, I Henry of Lancaster,

challenge this rewme of Ynglande, and the croun with all the membres,

and the appurtenances; als I that am descendit by right line of the

blode, coming fro the gude king Henry therde, and throge that right that

God of his grace hath sent me, with helpe of kyn, and of my frendes

to recover it; the which rewme was in poynt to be ondone by defaut of

governance, and ondoying of the gude lawes.” [**]

In order to understand this speech, it must be observed, that there was

a silly story, received among some of the lowest vulgar, that Edmond,

earl of Lancaster, son of Henry III., was really the elder brother of

Edward I.; but that, by reason of some deformity in his person, he had

been postponed in the succession, and his younger brother imposed on

the nation in his stead. As the present duke of Lancaster inherited

from Edmond by his mother, this genealogy made him the true heir of

the monarchy, and it is therefore insinuated in Henry’s speech: but

the absurdity was too gross to be openly avowed either by him or by the

parliament. The case is the same with regard to his right of conquest:

he was a subject who rebelled against his sovereign: he entered the

kingdom with a retinue of no more than sixty persons.

* Cotton, p. 389.

** Knyghton, p. 2757. could not therefore be the conqueror

of England; and this right is accordingly insinuated, not

avowed. Still there is a third claim, derived from his

merits in saving the nation from tyranny and oppression; and

this claim is also insinuated: but as it seemed, by its

nature, better calculated as a reason for his being elected

king by a free choice, than for giving him an immediate

right of possession, he durst not speak openly even on this

head; and to obviate any notion of election, he challenges

the crown as his due, either by acquisition or inheritance.

The whole forms such a piece of jargon and nonsense, as is

almost without example: no objection, however, was made to

it in parliament: the unanimous voice of lords and commons

placed Henry on the throne: he became king, nobody could

tell how or wherefore: the title of the house of Marche,

formerly recognized by parliament, was neither invalidated

nor repealed, but passed over in total silence: and as a

concern for the liberties of the people seems to have had no

hand in this revolution, their right to dispose of the

government, as well as all their other privileges, was left

precisely on the same footing as before. But Henry having,

when he claimed the crown, dropped some obscure hint

concerning conquest, which, it was thought, might endanger

these privileges, he soon after made a public declaration,

that he did not thereby intend to deprive any other of his

franchises or liberties; which was the only circumstances

where we shall find meaning or common sense in all these

transactions.

The subsequent events discover the same headlong violence of conduct,

and the same rude notions of civil government. The deposition of Richard

dissolved the parliament: it was necessary to summon a new one: and

Henry, in six days after, called together, without any new election, the

same members; and this assembly he denominated a new parliament. They

were employed in the usual task of reversing every deed of the opposite

party. All the acts o£ the last parliament of Richard, which had been

confirmed by their oaths, and by a papal bull, were abrogated: all the

acts which had passed in the parliament where Glocester prevailed:

which had also been confirmed by their oaths, but which had been

abrogated by Richard, were anew established:[**] the answers of

Tresifian and the other judges, which a parliament had annulled, but

which a new parliament and new judges had approved, here received a

second condemnation.

* Knyghton, p. 2759. Otterborne, p. 220.

** Cotton, p. 390.

The peers who had accused Glocester, Arundel, and Warwick, and who

had received higher titles for that piece of service, were all of them

degraded from their new dignities; even the practice of prosecuting

appeals in parliament, which bore the air of a violent confederacy

against an individual, rather than of a legal indictment, was wholly

abolished, and trials were restored to the course of common law.* The

natural effect of this conduct was, to render the people giddy with such

rapid and perpetual changes, and to make them lose all notions of right

and wrong in the measures of government.

The earl of Northumberland made a motion, in the house of peers, with

regard to the unhappy prince whom they had deposed. He asked them, what

advice they would give the king for the future treatment of him; since

Henry was resolved to spare his life. They unanimously replied, that

he should be imprisoned under a secure guard, in some secret place, and

should be deprived of all commerce with any of his friends or partisans.

It was easy to foresee, that he would not long remain alive in the hands

of such barbarous and sanguinary enemies. Historians differ with regard

to the manner in which he was murdered. It was long the prevailing

opinion, that Sir Piers Exton, and others of his guards, fell upon him

in the Castle of Pomfret, where he was confined, and despatched him with

their halberts. But it is more probable that he was starved to death

in prison; and after all sustenance was denied him, he prolonged his

unhappy life, it is said, for a fortnight, before he reached the end of

his miseries. This account is more consistent with the story, that his

body was exposed in public, and that no marks of violence were

observed upon it. He died in the thirty-fourth year of his age, and the

twenty-third of his reign. He left no posterity, either legitimate or

illegitimate.

All the writers who have transmitted to us the history of Richard, lived

during the reigns of the Lancastrian princes, and candor requires,

that we should not give entire credit to the reproaches which they have

thrown upon his memory. But after making all proper allowances, he still

appears to have been a weak prince, and unfit for government, less for

want of natural parts and capacity, than of solid judgment and a good

education. He was violent in his temper, profuse in his expenses, fond

of idle show and magnificence, devoted to favorites, and addicted to

pleasure; passions, all of them the most inconsistent with a prudent

economy, and consequently dangerous in a limited and mixed government.

Had he possessed the talents of gaining, and still more those of

overawing, his great barons, he might have escaped all the misfortunes

of his reign, and been allowed to carry much further his oppressions

over the people, if he really was guilty of any, without their daring

to rebel, or even to murmur against him. But when the grandees were

tempted, by his want of prudence and of vigor, to resist his authority,

and execute the most violent enterprises upon him, he was naturally led

to seek an opportunity of retaliation: justice was neglected; the lives

of the chief nobility were sacrificed; and all these enormities seem

to have proceeded less from a settled design of establishing arbitrary

power, than from the insolence of victory, and the necessities of the

king’s situation. The manners indeed of the age were the chief source of

such violence: laws, which were feebly executed in peaceable times, lost

all their authority during public convulsions: both parties were alike

guilty: or, if any difference may be remarked between them, we shall

find, that the authority of the crown, being more legal, was commonly

carried, when it prevailed, to less desperate extremities, than was that

of the aristocracy.

On comparing the conduct and events of this reign with those of the

preceding, we shall find equal reason to admire Edward and to blame

Richard; but the circumstance of opposition, surely, will not lie in the

strict regard paid by the former to national privileges, and the neglect

of them by the latter. On the contrary, the prince of small abilities,

as he felt his want of power, seems to have been more moderate in this

respect than the other. Every parliament assembled during the reign of

Edward, remonstrates against the exertion of some arbitrary prerogative

or other: we hear not any complaints of that kind during the reign of

Richard, till the assembling of his last parliament, which was summoned

by his inveterate enemies, which dethroned him, which framed their

complaints during the time of the most furious convultions, and whose

testimony must therefore have, on that account, much less authority

with every equitable judge.[*] Both these princes experienced the

encroachments of the great upon their authority. Edward, reduced to

necessities, was obliged to make an express bargain with his parliament

and to sell some of his prerogatives for present supply; but as they

were acquainted with his genius and capacity, they ventured not to

demand any exorbitant concessions, or such as were incompatible

with regal and sovereign power: the weakness of Richard tempted the

parliament to extort a commission, which, in a manner, dethroned the

prince, and transferred the sceptre into the hands of the nobility. The

events of these encroachments were also suitable to the character of

each. Edward had no sooner gotten the supply, than he departed from the

engagements which had induced the parliament to grant it; he openly told

his people, that he had but dissembled with them when he seemed to

make them these concessions; and he resumed and retained all his

prerogatives. But Richard, because he was detected in consulting

and deliberating with the judges on the lawfulness of restoring the

constitution, found his barons immediately in arms against him; was

deprived of his liberty; saw his favorites, his ministers, his tutor,

butchered before his face, or banished and attainted; and was obliged

to give way to all this violence. There cannot be a more remarkable

contrast between the fortunes of two princes: it were happy for society,

did this contrast always depend on the justice or injustice of the

measures which men embrace; and not rather on the different degrees of

prudence and vigor with which those measures are supported.

There was a sensible decay of ecclesiastical authority during this

period. The disgust which the laity had received from the numerous

usurpations both of the court of Rome and of their own clergy, had very

much weaned the kingdom from superstition; and strong symptoms appeared,

from time to time, of a general desire to shake off the bondage of the

Romish church. In the committee of eighteen, to whom Richard’s last

parliament delegated their whole power, there is not the name of one

ecclesiastic to be found; a neglect which is almost without example,

while the Catholic religion subsisted in England.[**] [17]

* Peruse, in this view, the Abridgment of the Records, by

Sir Robert Cotton, during these two reigns.

** See note Q, at the end of the volume.

The aversion entertained against the established church soon found

principles, and tenets, and reasonings, by which it could justify and

support itself. John Wickliffe, a secular priest, educated at Oxford,

began in the latter end of Edward III. to spread the doctrine of

reformation by his discourses, sermons, and writings; and he made many

disciples among men of all ranks and stations. He seems to have been a

man of parts and learning; and has the honor of being the first person

in Europe that publicly called in question those principles which had

universally passed for certain and undisputed during so many ages.

Wickliffe himself, as well as his disciples, who received the name of

Wickliffites, or Lollards, was distinguished by a great austerity

of life and manners; a circumstance common to almost all those who

dogmatize in any new way; both because men who draw to them the

attention of the public, and expose themselves to the odium of great

multitudes, are obliged to be very guarded in their conduct, and because

few who have a strong propensity to pleasure or business, will enter

upon so difficult and laborious an undertaking. The doctrines of

Wickliffe being derived from his search into the Scriptures and into

ecclesiastical antiquity, were nearly the same with those which were

propagated by the reformers in the sixteenth century: he only carried

some of them farther than was done by the more sober part of these

reformers. He denied the doctrine of the real presence, the supremacy of

the church of Rome, the merit of monastic vows: he maintained, that the

Scriptures were the sole rule of faith; that the church was dependent

on the state, and should be reformed by it; that the clergy ought to

possess no estates; that the begging friars were a nuisance, and ought

not to be supported;[*] that the numerous ceremonies of the church

were hurtful to true piety: he asserted that oaths were unlawful, that

dominion was founded in grace, that everything was subject to fate and

destiny, and that all men were preordained either to eternal salvation

or reprobation,[**] From the whole of his doctrines, Wickliffe appears

to have been strongly tinctured with enthusiasm, and to have

been thereby the better qualified to oppose a church whose chief

characteristic is superstition.

* Walsing. p. 191, 208, 283, 284. Spel. Concil. vol. ii. p.

680.

** Harpsfield, p. 668, 673, 674. Waldens. lib. iii. art. i.

cap. 8.

The propagation of these principles gave great alarm to the clergy; and

a bull was issued by Pope Gregory XI. for taking Wickliffe into custody,

and examining into the scope of his opinions.[*] Courteney, bishop of

London, cited him before his tribunal; but the reformer had now

acquired powerful protectors, who screened him from the ecclesiastical

jurisdiction. The duke of Lancaster, who then governed the kingdom,

encouraged the principles of Wickliffe; and he made no scruple, as well

as Lord Piercy, the mareschal, to appear openly in court with him, in

order to give him countenance upon his trial: he even insisted, that

Wickliffe should sit in the bishop’s presence while his principles

were examined: Courteney exclaimed against the insult: the Londoners,

thinking their prelate affronted, attacked the duke and mareschal, who

escaped from their hands with some difficulty.[**] And the populace,

soon after, broke into the houses of both these noblemen, threatened

their persons, and plundered their goods. The bishop of London had the

merit of appeasing their fury and resentment.

The duke of Lancaster, however, still continued his protection to

Wickliffe, during the minority of Richard; and the principles of that

reformer had so far propagated themselves, that when the pope sent to

Oxford a new bull against these doctrines, the university deliberated

for some time whether they should receive the bull; and they never took

any vigorous measures in consequence of the papal orders.[***] Even

the populace of London were at length brought to entertain favorable

sentiments of this reformer: when he was cited before a synod at

Lambeth, they broke into the assembly, and so overawed the prelates, who

found both the people and the court against them, that they dismissed

him without any further censure.

* Spel. Concil. vol. ii. p. 621. Walsing. p. 201, 202, 203.

** Harpsfield in Hist. Wickl. p. 683.

*** Wood’s Ant. Oxon. lib. i. p. 191, etc. Walsing, p 201.

The clergy, we may well believe, were more wanting in power than in

inclination to punish this new heresy which struck at all their credit,

possessions, and authority. But there was hitherto no law in England

by which the secular arm was authorized to support orthodoxy; and the

ecclesiastics endeavored to supply the defect by an extraordinary and

unwarrantable artifice. In the year 1381, there was an act passed,

requiring sheriffs to apprehend the preachers of heresy and their

abettors; but this statute had been surreptitiously obtained by the

clergy, and had the formality of an enrolment without the consent of the

commons. In the subsequent session, the lower house complained of the

fraud; affirmed, that they had no intention to bind themselves to the

prelates further than their ancestors had done before them; and

required that the pretended statute should be repealed, which was done

accordingly.* But it is remarkable, that notwithstanding this vigilance

of the commons, the clergy had so much art and influence, that the

repeal was suppressed, and the act, which never had any legal authority,

remains to this day upon the statute book;[*] though the clergy still

thought proper to keep it in reserve and not proceed to the immediate

execution of it.

But besides this defect of power in the church, which saved Wickliffe,

that reformer himself, notwithstanding his enthusiasm, seems not to have

been actuated by the spirit of martyrdom; and in all subsequent trials

before the prelates, he so explained away his doctrine by tortured

meanings, as to render it quite innocent and inoffensive.[**] Most of

his followers imitated his cautious disposition, and saved themselves

either by recantations or explanations. He died of a palsy, in the year

1385, at his rectory of Lutterworth, in the county of Leicester; and

the clergy, mortified that he should have escaped their vengeance, took

care, besides assuring the people of his eternal damnation, to represent

his last distemper as a visible judgment of Heaven upon him for his

multiplied heresies and impieties.[***]

The proselytes, however, of Wickliffe’s opinions still increased in

England:[****] some monkish writers represent one half of the kingdom as

infected by those principles: they were carried over to Bohemia by some

youth of that nation, who studied at Oxford: but though the age seemed

strongly disposed to receive them, affairs were not yet fully ripe for

this great revolution; and the finishing blow to ecclesiastical power

was reserved to a period of more curiosity, literature, and inclination

for novelties.

* Cotton’s Abridg. p. 285.

** 5 Richard II. chap. 5.

*** Walsing. p. 206. Knyghton, p. 2655, 2656.

**** Knyghton, p. 2663.

Meanwhile the English parliament continued to check the clergy and the

court of Rome, by more sober and more legal expedients. They enacted

anew the statute of “provisors,” and affixed higher penalties to the

transgression of it, which, in some instances, was even made capital.[*]

The court of Rome had fallen upon a new device, which increased their

authority over the prelates: the pope, who found that the expedient

of arbitrarily depriving them was violent, and liable to opposition,

attained the same end by transferring such of them as were obnoxious to

poorer sees, and even to nominal sees, “in partibus infidelium.” It

was thus that the archbishop of York, and the bishops of Durham and

Chichester, the king’s ministers, had been treated after the prevalence

of Glocester’s faction: the bishop of Carlisle met with the same fate

after the accession of Henry IV. For the pope always joined with

the prevailing powers, when they did not thwart his pretensions. The

parliament, in the reign of Richard, enacted a law against this abuse:

and the king made a general remonstrance to the court of Rome against

all those usurpations, which he calls “horrible excesses” of that

court.[**]

It was usual for the church, that they might elude the mortmain act, to

make their votaries leave lands in trust to certain persons, under whose

name the clergy enjoyed the benefit of the bequest: the parliament also

stopped the progress of this abuse.[***] In the seventeenth of the king,

the commons prayed, “that remedy might be had against such religious

persons as cause their villains to marry free women inheritable, whereby

the estate comes to those religious hands by collusion.” [****] This was

a new device of the clergy.

* 13 Richard II. cap. 3. 16 Richard II. cap. 4.

** Rymer, vol. vii. p. 672.

**** Knyghton, p. 27, 38. Cotton, p. 355.

**** Cotton, p. 355.

The papacy was at this time somewhat weakened by a schism, which lasted

during forty years, and gave great scandal to the devoted partisans of

the holy see. After the pope had resided many years at Avignon, Gregory

XI. was persuaded to return to Rome; and upon his death, which happened

in 1380, the Romans, resolute to fix, for the future, the seat of the

papacy in Italy, besieged the cardinals in the conclave, and compelled

them, though they were mostly Frenchmen, to elect Urban VI., an Italian,

into that high dignity. The French cardinals, as soon as they recovered

their liberty, fled from Rome, and protesting against the forced

election, chose Robert, son of the count of Geneva, who took the name of

Clement VII., and resided at Avignon. All the Kingdoms of Christendom,

according to their several interests and inclinations, were divided

between these two pontiffs. The court of France adhered to Clement,

and was followed by its allies, the king of Castile and the king

of Scotland: England of course was thrown into the other party, and

declared for Urban. Thus the appellation of Clementines and Urbanists

distracted Europe for several years; and each party damned the other

as schismatics, and as rebels to the true vicar of Christ. But this

circumstance, though it weakened the papal authority, had not so great

an effect as might naturally be imagined. Though any king could easily,

at first, make his kingdom embrace the party of one pope or the other,

or even keep it some time in suspense between them, he could not

so easily transfer his obedience at pleasure: the people attached

themselves to their own party, as to a religious opinion; and conceived

an extreme abhorrence to the opposite party, whom they regarded as

little better than Saracens, or infidels. Crusades were even undertaken

in this quarrel; and the zealous bishop of Norwich, in particular,

led over, in 1382 near sixty thousand bigots into Flanders against the

Clementines; but after losing a great part of his followers, he returned

with disgrace into England.[*] Each pope, sensible, from this prevailing

spirit among the people, that the kingdom which once embraced his cause

would always adhere to him, boldly maintained all the pretensions of his

see, and stood not much more in awe of the temporal sovereigns, than if

his authority had not been endangered by a rival.

We meet with this preamble to a law enacted at the very beginning of

this reign: “Whereas divers persons of small garrison of land or other

possessions do make great retinue of people, as well of esquires as of

others, in many parts of the realm, giving to them hats and other livery

of one suit by year taking again towards them the value of the same

livery, or percase the double value, by such covenant and assurance,

that every of them shall maintain other in all quarrels, be they

reasonable or unreasonable, to the great mischief and oppression of the

people, etc.” [**]

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 133, 134. Walsing. p. 298, 299,

300. etc. Knyghtor., p. 2671.

** I Richard, II. chap. 7

This preamble contains a true picture of the state of the kingdom. The

laws had been so feebly executed, even during the long, active, and

vigilant reign of Edward III., that no subject could trust to their

protection. Men openly associated themselves, under the patronage of

some great baron, for their mutual defence. They wore public badges, by

which their confederacy was distinguished. They supported each other

in all quarrels, iniquities, extortions, murders, robberies, and other

crimes. Their chief was more their sovereign than the king himself; and

their own band was more connected with them than their country. Hence

the perpetual turbulence, disorders, factions, and civil wars of those

times: hence the small regard paid to a character, or the opinion of the

public: hence the large discretionary prerogatives of the crown, and the

danger which might have ensued from the too great limitation of them. If

the king had possessed no arbitrary powers, while all the nobles assumed

and exercised them, there must have ensued an absolute anarchy in the

state.

One great mischief attending these confederacies was, the extorting

from the king pardons for the most enormous crimes. The parliament

often endeavored, in the last reign, to deprive the prince of this

prerogative; but, in the present, they were content with an abridgment

of it. They enacted, that no pardon for rapes, or for murder from malice

prepense, should be valid, unless the crime were particularly specified

in it.[*] There were also some other circumstances required for passing

any pardon of this kind: an excellent law, but ill observed, like most

laws that thwart the manners of the people, and the prevailing customs

of the times.

* 13 Richard II. chap. 1

It is easy to observe, from these voluntary associations among the

people, that the whole force of the feudal system was in a manner

dissolved, and that the English had nearly returned, in that particular,

to the same situation in which they stood before the Norman conquest.

It was, indeed, impossible that that system could long subsist under the

perpetual revolutions to winch landed property is every where subject.

When the great feudal baronies were first erected, the lord lived in

opulence in the midst of his vassals: he was in a situation to protect,

and cherish and defend them: the quality of patron naturally united

itself to that of superior: and these two principles of authority

mutually supported each other. But when by the various divisions and

mixtures of property, a man’s superior came to live at a distance

from him, and could no longer give him shelter or countenance, the

tie gradually became more fictitious than real: new connections from

vicinity or other causes were formed: protection was sought by voluntary

services and attachment: the appearance of valor spirit, abilities in

any great man, extended his interest very far, and if the sovereign were

deficient in these qualities, he was no less, if not more exposed to the

usurpations of the aristocracy, than even during the vigor of the feudal

system.

The greatest novelty introduced into the civil government during this

reign was the creation of peers by patent. Lord Beauchamp, of Holt, was

the first peer that was advanced to the house of lords in this manner.

The practice of levying benevolences is also first mentioned in the

present reign. This prince lived in a more magnificent manner than

perhaps any of his predecessors or successors. His household consisted

of ten thousand persons: he had three hundred in his kitchen; and all

the other offices were furnished in proportion.[*] It must be remarked,

that this enormous train had tables supplied them at the king’s expense,

according to the mode of that age. Such prodigality was probably the

source of many exactions by purveyors, and was one chief reason of the

public discontents.

* Harding: this poet says, that he speaks from the authority

of a clerk of the green cloth.