in the rolls of parliament; an account the accuracy of which is liable
to strong suspicion. It is difficult to believe that Richard had so much
command over his feelings as to behave with that cheerfulness which is
repeatedly noticed in the record; and the assertion that he had promised
to resign the crown when he saw Northumberland in the castle of Conway,
is not only contradictory to the statement of the two eye-witnesses, but
also in itself highly improbable. From the fate of Edward II, with which
he had so often been threatened, he must have known that it was better
to flee to his transmarine dominions, which were still open to him, than
to resign his crown and remain a prisoner in the custody of his
successor.
The next day the two houses met amid a great concourse of people in
Westminster hall. The Duke occupied his usual seat near the throne,
which was empty and covered with cloth of gold. The resignation of the
King was read; each member, standing in his place, signified his
acceptance of it aloud; and the people with repeated shouts expressed
their approbation. Henry now proceeded to the second part of his plan,
the act of deposition. For this purpose the coronation oath was first
read; thirty-three articles of impeachment followed, in which it was
contended that Richard had violated that oath; and thence it was
concluded that he had by his misconduct forfeited his title to the
throne. Of the articles, those which bear the hardest on the King are:
the part which he was supposed to have had in the death of the Duke of
Gloucester, his revocation of the pardons formerly granted to that
Prince and his adherents, and his despotic conduct since the dissolution
of parliament. Of the remainder, some are frivolous; many might, with
equal reason, have been objected to each of his predecessors; and the
others rest on the unsupported assertion of men whose interest it was to
paint him in the blackest colors.
No opposition had been anticipated, nor is any mentioned on the rolls;
but we are told that the Bishop of Carlisle, to the astonishment of the
Lancastrians, rose and demanded for Richard what ought not to be refused
to the meanest criminal, the right of being confronted with his
accusers; and for parliament what it might justly claim, the opportunity
of learning from the King's own mouth whether the resignation of the
crown, which had been attributed to him, were his own spontaneous act.
If Merks actually made such a speech, he must have stood alone; no one
was found to second it; the house voted the deposition of Richard; and
eight commissioners, ascending a tribunal erected before the throne,
pronounced him degraded from the state and authority of king, on the
ground that he notoriously deserved such punishment, and had
acknowledged it under his hand and seal on the preceding day. Sir
William Thirnyng, chief justice, was appointed to notify the sentence to
the captive, who meekly replied that he looked not after the royal
authority, but hoped his cousin would be good lord to him.
The rightful possessor was now removed from the throne. But, supposing
it to be vacant, what pretensions could Henry of Lancaster advance to
it? By the law of succession it belonged to the descendants of Lionel,
the third son of Edward III; and their claim, it is said, had been
formally recognized in parliament. All waited in anxious suspense till
the Duke, rising from his seat, and forming with great solemnity the
sign of the cross on his forehead and breast, pronounced the following
words: "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of
Lancaster, challenge this realm of England, and the crown, with all the
members and appurtenances, as that I am descended by right line of
blood, coming from the good lord King Henry III, and through that right
that God, of his grace, hath sent me with help of my kin and of my
friends to recover it; the which realm was in point to be undone for
default of governance and undoing of good laws."
In these extraordinary terms did Lancaster advance his pretensions,
artfully intermixing an undefined claim of inheritance[73] with those of
conquest and expediency, and rather hinting at each than insisting on
either. But, however difficult it might be to understand the ground, the
object of his challenge was perfectly intelligible. Both houses admitted
it unanimously; and, as a confirmation, Henry produced the ring and seal
which Richard had previously delivered to him. The Archbishop of
Canterbury now took him by the hand, and led him to the throne. He knelt
for a few minutes in prayer on the steps, arose, and was seated in it by
the two archbishops. As soon as the acclamations had subsided, the
Primate, stepping forward, made a short harangue, in which he undertook
to prove that a monarch in the vigor of manhood was a blessing, a young
and inexperienced prince was a curse to a people. At the conclusion the
King rose. "Sirs," said he, "I thank God, and you, spiritual and
temporal, and all estates of the land; and do you to wit, it is not my
will that no man think that by way of conquest I would disinherit any
man of his heritage, franchises, or other rights that him ought to have,
nor put him out of that that he has and has had by the good laws and
customs of the realm; except those persons that have been against the
good purpose and the common profit of the realm."
With the authority of Richard had expired that of the parliament and of
the royal officers. Henry immediately summoned the same parliament to
meet again in six days, appointed new officers of the crown, and as soon
as he had received their oaths retired in state to the royal apartments.
Thus ended this eventful day, with the deposition of Richard of
Bordeaux, and the succession of his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke.
DISCOVERY OF THE CANARY ISLANDS
AND THE AFRICAN COAST
BEGINNING OF NEGRO SLAVE TRADE
A.D. 1402
SIR ARTHUR HELPS
The Canary Islands--the "Elysian Fields" and "Fortunate
Islands" of antiquity--have perhaps figured in fabulous lore
more extensively than any others, and have been discovered,
invaded, and conquered more frequently than any country in
the world. There has scarcely been a nation of any maritime
enterprise that has not had to do with them, and in one
manner or another made its appearance in them.
During the period following the death of ancient empires,
the Canary Islands lay hidden in the general darkness which
fell upon the world. With the modern revival came new and
greater mariners, and the islands were once more discovered.
It is well to note the connection between these modern
rediscoveries and the origin of negro slavery.
In Europe the old pagan slavery existed in many nations, and
in the early Christian centuries underwent many
modifications through the advance of the new religion and
civilization. The modern form of slavery began with the
first importation of negroes into Europe, as shown in the
following account, from which it appears that the history of
modern slavery begins with the history of African discovery.
Petrarch is referred to by Viera to prove that the Genoese sent out an
expedition to the Canary Islands. Las Casas mentions that an English or
French vessel bound from France or England to Spain was driven by
contrary winds to these Islands, and on its return spread abroad in
France an account of the voyage. The information thus obtained--or
perhaps in other ways of which there is no record--stimulated Don Luis
de la Cerda, Count of Clermont, great-grandson of Don Alonzo the Wise of
Castile, to seek for the investiture of the crown of the Canaries, which
was given to him with much pomp by Clement VI, at Avignon, in 1344,
Petrarch being present. This sceptre proved a barren one. The affairs of
France, with which state the new King of the Canaries was connected,
drew off his attention; and he died without having visited his
dominions. The next authentic information that we have of the Canary
Islands is that, in the times of Don Juan I of Castile, and of Don
Enrique, his son, these islands were much visited by the Spaniards. In
1399, we are told, certain Andalusians, Biscayans, Guipuzcoans, with the
consent of Don Enrique, fitted out an expedition of five vessels, and
making a descent on the island of Lanzarote, one of the Canaries, took
captive the King and Queen, and one hundred and seventy of the
islanders.
Hitherto there had been nothing but discoveries, rediscoveries, and
invasions of these islands; but at last a colonist appears upon the
scene. This was Juan de Béthencourt, a great Norman baron, lord of St.
Martin le Gaillard in the County of Eu, of Béthencourt, of Granville, of
Sancerre, and other places in Normandy, and chamberlain to Charles VI of
France. Those who are at all familiar with the history of that period,
and with the mean and cowardly barbarity which characterized the
long-continued contests between the rival factions of Orleans and
Burgundy, may well imagine that any Frenchman would then be very glad to
find a career in some other country. Whatever was the motive of Juan de
Béthencourt, he carried out his purpose in the most resolute manner.
Leaving his young wife, and selling part of his estate, he embarked at
Rochelle in 1402, with men and means for the purpose of conquering, and
establishing himself in, the Canary Islands. It is not requisite to give
a minute description of this expedition. Suffice it to say that
Béthencourt met with fully the usual difficulties, distresses,
treacheries, and disasters that attach themselves to this race of
enterprising men. After his arrival at the Canaries, finding his means
insufficient, he repaired to the court of Castile, did acts of homage to
the King, Enrique III, and afterward renewed them to his son Juan II,
thereby much strengthening the claim which the Spanish monarchs already
made to the dominion of these islands. Béthencourt, returning to the
islands with renewed resources, made himself master of the greater part
of them, reduced several of the natives to slavery, introduced the
Christian faith, built churches, and established vassalage.
On the occasion of quitting his colony in A.D. 1405, he called all his
vassals together, and represented to them that he had named for his
lieutenant and governor Maciot de Béthencourt, his relation; that he
himself was going to Spain and to Rome to seek for a bishop for them;
and he concluded his oration with these words: "My loved vassals, great
or small, plebeians or nobles, if you have anything to ask me or to
inform me of, if you find in my conduct anything to complain of, do not
fear to speak; I desire to do favor and justice to all the world." The
assembly he was addressing contained none of the slaves he had made. We
are told, however, and that by eye-witnesses, that the poor natives
themselves bitterly regretted his departure, and, wading through the
water, followed his vessel as far as they could. After his visit to
Spain and to Rome, he returned to his paternal domains in Normandy,
where, while meditating another voyage to his colony, he died in 1425.
Maciot de Béthencourt ruled for some time successfully; but afterward,
falling into disputes with the Bishop, and his affairs generally not
prospering, he sold his rights to Prince Henry of Portugal--also, as it
strangely appears, to another person--and afterward settled in Madeira.
The claims to the government of the Canaries were, for many years, in a
most entangled state; and the right to the sovereignty over these
islands was a constant ground of dispute between the crowns of Spain and
Portugal.
Thus ended the enterprise of Juan de Béthencourt, which, though it
cannot be said to have led to any very large or lasting results, yet, as
it was the first modern attempt of the kind, deserves to be chronicled
before commencing with Prince Henry of Portugal's long-continued and
connected efforts in the same direction. The events also which preceded
and accompanied Béthencourt's enterprise need to be recorded, in order
to show the part which many nations, especially the Spaniards, had in
the first discoveries on the coast of Africa.
We now turn to the history of the discoveries made, or rather caused to
be made, by Prince Henry of Portugal. This Prince was born in 1394. He
was the third son of John I of Portugal and Philippa, the daughter of
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. That good Plantagenet blood on the
mother's side was, doubtless, not without avail to a man whose life was
to be spent in continuous and insatiate efforts to work out a great
idea. Prince Henry was with his father at the memorable capture of
Ceuta, the ancient Septem, in 1415. This town, which lies opposite to
Gibraltar, was of great magnificence, and one of the principal marts in
that age for the productions of the East. It was here that the
Portuguese nation first planted a firm foot in Africa; and the date of
this town's capture may, perhaps, be taken as that from which Prince
Henry began to meditate further and far greater conquests. His aims,
however, were directed to a point long beyond the range of the mere
conquering soldier. He was especially learned, for that age of the
world, being skilled in mathematical and geographical knowledge. And it
may be noticed here that the greatest geographical discoveries have been
made by men conversant with the book knowledge of their own time. A
work, for instance, often seen in the hands of Columbus, which his son
mentions as having had much influence with him, was the learned treatise
of Cardinal Petro de Aliaco (Pierre d'Ailly), the _Imago Mundi_.
But to return to Prince Henry of Portugal. We learn that he had
conversed much with those who had made voyages in different parts of the
world, and particularly with Moors from Fez and Morocco, so that he came
to hear of the Azeneghis, a people bordering on the country of the
negroes of Jalof. Such was the scanty information of a positive kind
which the Prince had to guide his endeavors. Then there were the
suggestions and the inducements which to a willing mind were to be found
in the shrewd conjectures of learned men, the fables of chivalry, and,
perhaps, in the confused records of forgotten knowledge once possessed
by Arabic geographers. The story of Prister John, which had spread over
Europe since the crusades, was well known to the Portuguese Prince. A
mysterious voyage of a certain wandering saint, called St. Brendan, was
not without its influence upon an enthusiastic mind. Moreover, there
were many sound motives urging the Prince to maritime discovery; among
which, a desire to fathom the power of the Moors, a wish to find a new
outlet for traffic, and a longing to spread the blessings of the faith
may be enumerated. The especial reason which impelled Prince Henry to
take the burden of discovery on himself was that neither mariner nor
merchant would be likely to adopt an enterprise in which there was no
clear hope of profit. It belonged, therefore, to great men and princes,
and among such he knew of no one but himself who was inclined to it.
The map of the world being before us, let us reduce it to the
proportions it filled in Prince Henry's time: let us look at our infant
world. First, take away those two continents, for so we may almost call
them, each much larger than a Europe, to the far west. Then cancel that
square, massive-looking piece to the extreme southeast; happily there
are no penal settlements there yet. Then turn to Africa: instead of that
form of inverted cone which it presents, and which we now know there are
physical reasons for its presenting, make a cimetar shape of it, by
running a slightly curved line from Juba on the eastern side to Cape Nam
on the western. Declare all below that line unknown. Hitherto, we have
only been doing the work of destruction; but now scatter emblems of
hippogriffs and anthropophagi on the outskirts of what is left in the
map, obeying a maxim, not confined to the ancient geographers
only--where you know nothing, place terrors. Looking at the map thus
completed, we can hardly help thinking to ourselves, with a smile, what
a small space, comparatively speaking, the known history of the world
has been transacted in, up to the last four hundred years. The idea of
the universality of the Roman dominions shrinks a little; and we begin
to fancy that Ovid might have escaped his tyrant. The ascertained
confines of the world were now, however, to be more than doubled in the
course of one century; and to Prince Henry of Portugal, as to the first
promoter of these vast discoveries, our attention must be directed.
This Prince, having once the well-grounded idea in his mind that Africa
did not end where it was commonly supposed, namely, at Cape Nam (Not),
but that there was a world beyond that forbidding negative, seems never
to have rested until he had made known that quarter of the globe to his
own. He fixed his abode upon the promontory of Sagres, at the southern
part of Portugal, whence, for many a year, he could watch for the rising
specks of white sail bringing back his captains to tell him of new
countries and new men. We may wonder that he never went himself; but he
may have thought that he served the cause better by remaining at home
and forming a centre whence the electric energy of enterprise was
communicated to many discoverers, and then again collected from them.
Moreover, he was much engaged in the public affairs of his country. In
the course of his life he was three times in Africa, carrying on war
against the Moors; and at home, besides the care and trouble which the
state of the Portuguese court and government must have given him, he was
occupied in promoting science and encouraging education.
In 1415, as before noticed, he was at Ceuta. In 1418 he was settled on
the promontory of Sagres. One night in that year he is thought to have
had a dream of promise, for on the ensuing morning he suddenly ordered
two vessels to be got ready forthwith, and to be placed under the
command of two gentlemen of his household, Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and
Tristam Vaz, whom he ordered to proceed down the Barbary coast on a
voyage of discovery.
A contemporary chronicler, Azurara, whose work has recently been
discovered and published, tells the story more simply, and merely states
that these captains were young men, who, after the ending of the Ceuta
campaign, were as eager for employment as the Prince for discovery; and
that they were ordered on a voyage having for its object the general
molestation of the Moors, as well as that of making discoveries beyond
Cape Nam. The Portuguese mariners had a proverb about this cape--"He who
would pass Cape Not, either will return or not"; intimating that, if he
did not turn before passing the cape, he would never return at all. On
the present occasion it was not destined to be passed; for these
captains, Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz, were driven out of
their course by storms, and accidentally discovered a little island,
where they took refuge, and from that circumstance called the island
Porto Santo. "They found there a race of people living in no settled
polity, but not altogether barbarous or savage, and possessing a kindly
and most fertile soil."
I give this description of the first land discovered by Prince Henry's
captains, thinking it would well apply to many other lands about to be
found out by his captains and by other discoverers. Joham Gonçalvez
Zarco and Tristam Vaz returned. Their master was delighted with the news
they brought him, more on account of its promise than its substance. In
the same year he sent them out again, together with a third captain,
named Bartholomew Perestrelo, assigning a ship to each captain. His
object was not only to discover more lands, but also to improve those
which had been discovered. He sent, therefore, various seeds and animals
to Porto Santo. This seems to have been a man worthy to direct
discovery. Unfortunately, however, among the animals some rabbits were
introduced into the new island; and they conquered it, not for the
Prince, but for themselves. Hereafter, we shall find that they gave his
people much trouble, and caused no little reproach to him.
We come now to the year 1419. Perestrelo, for some unknown cause,
returned to Portugal at that time. After his departure, Joham Gonçalvez
Zarco and Tristam Vaz, seeing from Porto Santo something that seemed
like a cloud, but yet different--the origin of so much discovery, noting
the difference in the likeness--built two boats, and, making for this
cloud, soon found themselves alongside a beautiful island, abounding in
many things, but most of all in trees, on which account they gave it the
name of "Madeira" (Wood). The two discoverers entered the island at
different parts. The Prince, their master, afterward rewarded them with
the captaincies of those parts. To Perestrelo he gave the island of
Porto Santo to colonize it. Perestrelo, however, did not make much of
his captaincy, but after a strenuous contest with the rabbits, having
killed an army of them, died himself. This captain has a place in
history as being the father-in-law of Columbus, who, indeed, lived at
Porto Santo for some time, and here, on new-found land, meditated far
bolder discoveries.
Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz began the cultivation of their
island of Madeira, but met with an untoward event at first. In clearing
the wood, they kindled a fire among it, which burned for seven years, we
are told; and in the end, that which had given its name to the island,
and which, in the words of the historian, overshadowed the whole land,
became the most deficient commodity. The captains founded churches in
the island; and the King of Portugal, Don Duarte, gave the temporalities
to Prince Henry, and all the spiritualities to the Knights of Christ.
While these things were occurring at Madeira and at Porto Santo, Prince
Henry had been prosecuting his general scheme of discovery, sending out
two or three vessels each year, with orders to go down the coast from
Cape Nam, and make what discoveries they could; but these did not amount
to much, for the captains never advanced beyond Cape Bojador, which is
situated seventy leagues to the south of Cape Nam. This Cape Bojador was
formidable in itself, being terminated by a ridge of rocks with fierce
currents running round them, but was much more formidable from the
fancies which the mariners had formed of the sea and land beyond it. "It
is clear," they were wont to say, "that beyond this cape there is no
people whatever; the land is as bare as Libya--no water, no trees, no
grass in it; the sea so shallow that at a league from the land it is
only a fathom deep; the currents so fierce that the ship which passes
that cape will never return;" and thus their theories were brought in to
justify their fears. This outstretcher--for such is the meaning of the
word _bojador_--was, therefore, as a bar drawn across that advance in
maritime discovery which had for so long a time been the first object of
Prince Henry's life.