RICHARD II.
1377-1399.
The little King Richard II. was a boy ten years old, born in the year
when his father went on his ill-fated expedition to Spain to help Don
Pedro. Richard's mother was Joan, Countess of Kent, the heiress of that
unfortunate Earl Edmund, whom Mortimer beheaded in 1330. She had been a
widow when the Black Prince wedded her, and had two sons by her first
husband, Sir Thomas Holland. These two half-brothers of King Richard
were ten years his seniors, and were destined to be not unimportant
figures in the history of his reign; their names were Thomas Holland,
Earl of Kent, and John Holland, Earl of Huntingdon.
[Sidenote: =The regency.--Disasters abroad.=]
The helplessness of the young king, the son of the deeply mourned Black
Prince, at first touched the hearts of all men, and the parties which
were represented by John of Gaunt and William of Wykeham reconciled
themselves, and agreed to join in serving the king faithfully. A
council of regency was appointed, in which both were represented, and
it was agreed that Parliament alone should choose and dismiss the
king's ministers. This happy concord, however, was not to last for
long. The conduct of the foreign affairs of the nation was left in John
of Lancaster's hands, and the continued misfortunes in the French war
were laid to his charge. The troops of Charles V. were still carrying
everything before them; they conquered all Aquitaine save Bordeaux and
Bayonne, and overran the duchy of Brittany, the sole ally of England
on the continent. Moreover, fleets of Norman privateers had begun to
appear in the Channel. They landed boldly on the English coast, and
burnt Winchelsea, Portsmouth, and Gravesend.
[Sidenote: =Heavy taxation.=]
To restore the fortune of war, money was urgently needed, and Duke John
kept asking for more and more, to the discontent both of the Parliament
and the nation. He was granted in 1379 a poll-tax, wherein every man
was assessed according to his estate, from dukes and archbishops who
paid £6 13_s._ 4_d._ to agricultural labourers who paid 4_d._ In 1380
followed another tax graduated from £1 to 1_s._ on every grown man or
woman.
[Sidenote: =Discontent of labouring classes.=]
It was the collection of this very unpopular tax that precipitated
the violent outbreak of a discontent that had been smouldering among
the lower classes for the last thirty years. Ever since the Black
Death a silent but bitter contention had been in progress between the
landholding classes and their tenants, more especially those who were
still villeins, and bound to the soil. The main stress of the struggle
had come from the fact that the dearth of labourers, and the rise in
wages which resulted from the Black Death, had caused the lords of
the manors to press more hardly on their tenants. They tried to get
all the labour they could out of the villeins, and refused to take
money payments for their farms instead of days of labour on the lord's
fields. It seems, too, that they strove to claim as villeins many who
were, or wished to be, free rent-paying copyhold or leasehold tenants.
Moreover, when forced to hire free labour, they tried to under-pay it,
relying on the scale of wages fixed by the Statute of Labourers in
1350, instead of abiding by the laws of supply and demand. The pressure
on the part of the lords led to combinations in secret clubs and
societies among the tenants, who agreed to refuse the statutory wages,
and determined to agitate for the removal of all the old labour-rents.
Their idea was to commute all such service due on their little holdings
into money-rents, at the rate of 4_d._ for every acre.
[Sidenote: =Communist doctrines of the Lollards.=]
But the rising of 1380 was due to many other causes beside the
grievance of the villeins. Much discontent can be traced to the
mismanagement of the French war, which was all laid on John of Gaunt's
shoulders. Much more was due to the filtering down of the teaching of
the Lollards to the lower strata of the nation. Wicliffe had always
preached that unjust and sinful rulers, whether clerks or laymen, were
cut off from the right to use their authority by their own manifest
unworthiness, and had no just dominion over their fellow-men. He had
especially protested against the wealth and pomp of the clergy, and
urged that they ought to return to apostolic poverty. The wilder and
more headstrong of his followers had pressed his teaching to the
advocacy of pure communism, saying that riches were in themselves evil,
and that all men should be equal in all things. John Ball, the best
known of these fanatical preachers, was wont to perambulate the country
delivering sermons on his favourite text--
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
Wherever men were oppressed and discontented, they listened eagerly to
these discourses, and began to talk of putting an end to all difference
between man and man, and dividing all things equally between them. But
it was only the wilder spirits who were imbued with these doctrines;
the majority--like most discontented Englishmen in all ages--were
only set on the practical task of endeavouring to redress their own
particular grievances and to better their condition.
[Sidenote: ="Wat Tyler's rebellion."--March upon London.=]
It was in June, 1381, that the rising broke out simultaneously in
almost the whole of Eastern England, from Yorkshire to Hants. It has
gained its name of "Wat Tyler's Rebellion" from Walter the Tyler of
Maidstone, who was chief of the insurgents of Kent. Curiously enough,
four other men bearing or assuming the name of "the Tyler" were
prominent in the troubles. The main incidents of the rising took place
round London, towards which the insurgents flocked from all quarters.
Simultaneously the men of Essex, under a chief who called himself Jack
Straw, marched to Hampstead, those of Hertfordshire to Highbury, and
those of Kent to Blackheath. On their way they had done much damage;
the Essex rioters had caught and murdered the Chief Justice of England,
and the Kentishmen had slain several knights and lawyers who fell into
their hands. Everywhere they pillaged the houses of the gentry, and
sought out and burnt the manor-rolls which preserved the records of the
duties and obligations of the villeins to the lord of the manor.
[Sidenote: =Demands of the rioters.=]
The king's council at London was quite helpless, for the sudden rising
had taken them by surprise, and they had no troops ready. Seeing the
city surrounded by the rioters, they shut its gates and sent to ask
what were the grievances and demands of the mob. The claims that were
formulated by the leaders of the rising were more moderate than might
have been expected, for the wilder spirits were still kept in order by
the cooler ones. They asked that villeinage should be abolished, and
all lands held on villein-tenure be made into leasehold farms rated
at 4_d._ an acre, that the tolls and market dues which heightened the
price of provisions should be abolished, and that all who had been
engaged in the rising should receive a full pardon for the murders and
pillage that had taken place.
[Sidenote: =Attitude of the King.--Progress of the riot.=]
These demands were not too violent to be taken into consideration.
While the regency hesitated, the young king, who displayed a spirit
and resource most unusual in a boy of fourteen, announced that he
would himself go to meet the rioters and try to quiet them, for as yet
they had not said or done anything implying disrespect for the royal
name. But meanwhile the Kentish insurgents had crossed the Thames and
burnt John of Gaunt's great palace, the Savoy, which lay in the Strand
outside the walls of London. Presently the mob in the city rose and
opened the gates, so that Wat Tyler and his host were able to enter.
They slew some foreign merchants and some lawyers, the two classes
whom they seem most to have hated, but wrought no general pillage or
massacre.
On the 13th of June, Richard, persisting in his resolve of bringing
the insurgents to reason, rode out of Aldgate, and met the Essex men
at Mile End. After hearing their petitions, he declared that they
contained nothing impossible, and that he would undertake that they
should be granted. But while the king was parleying with the eastern
insurgents, the Kentishmen burst into the Tower, where the regency
had been sitting, and committed a hideous outrage. They caught Simon
of Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury--he was also Chancellor--Sir
Robert Hales, the High Treasurer, and Legge, who had farmed the
obnoxious poll-tax, dragged them forth to Tower Hill, and there slew
them.
[Sidenote: =The king meets the rioters.--Tyler slain.=]
Notwithstanding these murders, the young king persisted in his
design of treating with the insurgents. He bade Tyler and his host
meet him next day in Smithfield, outside the city gates. They came,
but Tyler, who had throughout shown himself the most violent of the
insurgents, began wrangling with the king's suite instead of keeping
to the business in hand. This so enraged William Walworth, the Mayor
of London, that he drew a short sword and hewed the rebel down from
his horse. Then one of the king's squires leapt down and stabbed him
as he lay. Walworth's act was likely to have cost the king and his
whole party their lives, for the insurgents bent their bows and shouted
that they would avenge their captain there and then. But Richard,
with extraordinary presence of mind in one so young, pushed his horse
forward and bade them stand still, for they should have their demands
granted, and he himself would be their captain since Tyler was dead. So
there in Smithfield he had a charter drawn up, conceding all that the
insurgents asked, and pardoning them for their treason. Satisfied with
this, the Kentishmen dispersed to their homes.
[Sidenote: =Punishment of the leaders.--Richard's concessions
annulled.=]
Richard returned to London in triumph, as he well deserved, vowing that
he had that day won back the realm of England, which had been as good
as lost. Soon the nobles and their armed retainers began to gather to
London, and when they found themselves in force, they began to discuss
the legality of the king's concessions to the peasants. He had not, it
was urged, the right to give away other men's property--namely, their
feudal rights over their vassals--without the consent of Parliament. It
was shocking, too, that the murderers of the archbishop, the lord chief
justice, and the treasurer, should go unpunished. So Richard's charter
was annulled and his general pardon cancelled; all the leaders of the
revolt were caught one after another and hanged; even John Ball's
priest's robe did not save him from the gallows, though clergymen were
so seldom executed in the Middle Ages.
[Sidenote: =Decay of villeinage.=]
When Parliament met, the king proposed to them that his promise to the
insurgents should stand firm so far as the abolition of villeinage
was concerned, since this had been the main cause of the rising.
But the barons and knights of the shire were loth to give up their
feudal rights, and refused to confirm the king's grant; they replied
that the trouble had really had its origin in the evil governance of
the ministers, and turned them all out of office. Nevertheless, the
rising had not failed in its object, for in future the lords of the
manors were afraid to enforce the full letter of their claims over the
peasants, and villeinage gradually sank into desuetude.
[Sidenote: =Richard assumes the government.=]
King Richard had shown his high spirit in the days of the rising,
and four years later, when he had attained the age of eighteen, he
endeavoured to take the reins of power into his own hands. His uncle of
Lancaster did not gainsay him, for he felt himself to be unpopular with
the nation, so he departed over-sea on a vain errand. In right of his
wife Constance, the daughter of Pedro the Cruel, he had a claim to the
crown of Castile, and trusted to get aid from the Portuguese, to set
him on the throne which Henry of Trastamara had usurped. So he gathered
his retainers and many hired soldiers, and sailed away to Spain; nor
was his face seen in England for more than four years.
[Sidenote: =His ministers.=]
Meanwhile the young king had placed his friends in office, and strove
to rule for himself. His chief minister was Michael de la Pole, son of
a rich merchant at Hull, whom he made Earl of Suffolk, to the disgust
of many of the barons. He also favoured greatly Robert de Vere, whom
he made Lord-Deputy of Ireland, and created Marquis of Dublin. In them
and in his two half-brothers, Thomas and John Holland, he placed his
confidence.
Richard was now twenty; he had been married some years back to Anne
of Bohemia, the daughter of the Emperor Charles IV., and might have
expected that all the world would have counted him old enough to
administer the kingdom.
[Sidenote: =Schemes of Thomas, Duke of Gloucester.=]
But he had reckoned without one man's ambition and jealousy. His
youngest uncle, Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, was an unscrupulous and
domineering prince, who had hoped to succeed to John of Gaunt's
position, and to have the chief part in ruling his nephew's realm.
Richard knew him well, and had no intention of employing him. Seeing
this, Duke Thomas began to gather a party among the greater nobles,
persuading them that the king was putting the rule of England into
the hands of mere upstarts and favourites, and that de la Pole and
de Vere were no better than Gaveston or the Despensers. Gloucester
drew into his designs many of the most important barons; the Earls
of Warwick, Arundel, and Nottingham, and Henry of Bolingbroke, the
son and heir of John of Gaunt, were the chief plotters. They stirred
up the people and Parliament by complaints of the maladministration
of the ministers, and used a threatened invasion of the French as a
lever against those entrusted with the conduct of the long unhappy war
with France. When they had excited public opinion, they had Suffolk
impeached in Parliament for maladministration of the revenue. Though
almost certainly guiltless, he was condemned and imprisoned. But when
Parliament had dispersed, the king took him out of confinement, and
restored him to favour, declaring that he had a full right to choose
his own ministers.
[Sidenote: =The "Lords Appellant."=]
There followed, shortly after, the armed rising of Thomas of Gloucester
and his accomplices. Proclaiming that they wished only to free the
king from evil councillors, Gloucester, Warwick, Arundel, Nottingham,
and the young Henry of Bolingbroke marched on London with a great body
of retainers. They called themselves the "_Lords Appellant_," because
they _appealed_ or accused of treason the king's ministers. Richard
was taken by surprise at this very unjustifiable raising of civil war.
He bade his friends arm, but de Vere, who had raised some levies in
Oxfordshire, was beaten by the rebels at Radcot Bridge, and no one else
tried to resist. De Vere and de la Pole succeeded in flying to France,
where they both died shortly after in exile. But the king and the rest
of his friends and ministers fell into the hands of the Lords Appellant.
[Sidenote: =The Merciless Parliament.=]
Under the eyes of Gloucester and his accomplices the _Merciless
Parliament_ was summoned to London. Awed by the armed men around them,
the members declared Suffolk and de Vere outlaws, and condemned to
death seven of the king's minor ministers. So Tresilian the Chief
Justice, Sir Simon Burley who had been the king's tutor, and five more
were hanged (February, 1388). This disgraceful Parliament ended by
voting £20,000 as a gift to the Lords Appellant for their services, and
then dispersed.
Gloucester and his friends were in office for something more than a
year, a period long enough to show the world that they were grasping
self-seekers, and not patriots. The only service they did the country
was to negociate truces with Scotland and France, which stopped for a
time the lingering "Hundred Years' War."
[Sidenote: =Dismissal of Gloucester.=]
By 1389 Richard had passed his majority. In a session of the royal
council, he suddenly asked his uncle Gloucester how old he was. The
duke replied that he was now in his twenty-second year. "Then," said
the king, "I am certainly old enough to manage my own affairs." So,
formally thanking Gloucester and the rest for their past services,
he dismissed them from office. If he had replaced them by his own
favourites the civil war would have broken out again, but Richard
wisely called in the good bishop William of Wykeham, and other ancient
councillors of his grandfather's, against whom no one had a word to
say. He made no attempt to punish the Lords Appellant, and acted with
such self-restraint and moderation that all the realm was soon full of
his praises. Yet all the time he was dissembling, and biding his time
for revenge on the men who had murdered his friends in 1388.
[Sidenote: =Moderation of Richard.--Growth of Lollardry.=]
Richard's wise and moderate rule lasted for eight years, 1389-97.
They were a prosperous time: the French war was suspended, and the
king seemed to have put a permanent end to it, by marrying a French
princess, Isabella, the daughter of Charles VI., after his first wife
Anne of Bohemia had died. Perhaps the most important feature of the
time was the growth of the Wicliffite movement. John Wicliffe himself
had died, at a good old age, in 1384, but his disciples the Lollards
continued to increase and multiply. We find them so powerful that
in the Parliament of 1394 their representatives in the Commons had
begun to agitate for a national declaration against some of the most
prominent doctrines of the Roman Church--such as image-worship, the
efficacy of pilgrimages, the celibacy of the clergy, and even the
Real Presence in the Lord's Supper. They were only stopped by Richard
himself, who hurried home from Ireland to rebuke them. He told them
that he would hear nothing of such changes, but he did not molest
or persecute them, and let the movement take its course. The "Great
Schism" was at this time at its height, and the Church presented
the disgraceful spectacle of two rival popes, at Rome and Avignon,
anathematizing each other, and preaching a crusade against each other's
adherents. When such was the state of affairs, and no one knew who
was orthodox and who heretical, it was natural enough that the new
doctrines should flourish.
[Sidenote: =Richard's revenge on the Lords Appellant.=]
In 1397 Richard thought himself so firmly seated on his throne that
he could venture to execute his long-cherished vengeance on the Lords
Appellant. He had won over two of them to himself, Mowbray, Earl of
Nottingham, and Henry of Bolingbroke, the heir of the old Duke of
Lancaster. On the others his vengeance suddenly fell; he accused
Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick, of plotting a new rebellion. They
were seized and thrown into prison: Arundel was tried and executed;
Gloucester was secretly murdered at Calais; Warwick was banished
for life to the Isle of Man. Nor was this all: for a time Richard
professed the greatest affection for Nottingham and Bolingbroke, the
two survivors of the plotters of 1388. He even made them Dukes of
Norfolk and Hereford. But in 1398 his vengeance fell on them also. He
induced Hereford to accuse Norfolk of treasonable conversation, and
when Mowbray denied it, proposed that they should meet in judicial
combat in the lists at Coventry. They consented, but when the champions
came ready armed before him, Richard suddenly stopped the duel, and
announced to the astonished dukes that he had determined to banish them
both from the realm--Norfolk for life, Hereford for ten years.
[Sidenote: =Tyranny of Richard.=]
Having thus wreaked his vengeance on the last of the Lords Appellant,
Richard proceeded to rule in a far more arbitrary manner than before,
and decidedly outstepped his constitutional rights. He thought that
there was no one left in the realm who would dare to oppose him,
and that he could do all that he chose. His most flagrantly illegal
step was to increase his revenue by raising forced loans from men of
wealth, an ingenious means of getting money without having to apply
to Parliament for it. But he kept up a considerable standing army of
archers, to overawe discontent, and thought himself quite secure.
When John of Gaunt died in 1399, he seized upon all the great estates
of the duchy of Lancaster, and refused to allow the exiled Henry of
Bolingbroke to claim his father's title and heritage. This roused much
sympathy for Henry, since he had been promised that his banishment
should make no difference to his rights of inheritance.
[Sidenote: =Condition of Ireland.--Richard's Irish expedition.=]
Richard's nearest kinsman and heir at this time was his cousin Roger,
Earl of March, the grandson of Lionel of Clarence, the Black Prince's
next brother. The king had sent him over to Ireland and entrusted
him with the government of that country, for he paid more attention
to Irish affairs than any of his ancestors, and had already made
one expedition across St. George's Channel in 1394. Ireland had
been in a state of complete anarchy ever since Edward Bruce broke
up the foundations of English rule eighty years before, and both
the Anglo-Norman lords of the Pale and the Irish chiefs of the west
showed an utter disregard for the royal authority. Roger of March was
killed by rebels in a skirmish at Kenlys-in-Ossory in 1398, and this
so provoked Richard that he resolved to go over himself, with all his
personal retainers and hired guards, and put an end to the anarchy.
[Sidenote: =Return of Bolingbroke.=]
Accordingly, early in 1399 the king sailed for Dublin, leaving England
in charge of his one surviving uncle, Edmund, Duke of York, a weak
old man who had always shown himself very loyal, but very incapable.
When Richard was lost to sight in the Irish bogs, all his enemies
began to take counsel against him. The barons began to murmur at his
arbitrary rule, the citizens of London at his forced loans, the clergy
at his tolerance for the Lollards. At the critical moment Henry of
Bolingbroke landed unexpectedly at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire, proclaiming
that he had only come to claim his father's duchy, which had been so
wrongfully withheld from him. He was immediately joined by Percy, Earl
of Northumberland, and many other northern lords. The regent Edmund of
York gathered an army to withstand him, but when Bolingbroke explained
to him that he came with no treasonable purpose, but only to plead for
his forfeited estates, the simple old man dismissed his troops and went
home. Thus unexpectedly freed from opposition, Bolingbroke soon showed
his real mind by catching and hanging Richard's ministers, Scrope, Earl
of Wiltshire, Bushey, and Greene.
[Sidenote: =Richard returns from Ireland--is overpowered.=]
The news of Duke Henry's landing had soon got to Ireland, and the
king at once prepared to return and resist him. But for four weeks
persistent easterly winds kept him storm-bound at Dublin. At last the
wind turned, and Richard could cross, but he came too late. York's
army had dispersed, and some Welsh levies, whom the Earl of Salisbury
had raised, had also gone home, after waiting in vain for the king's
landing. When Richard reached Flint Castle with the small following
that he had brought with him, he was surrounded by troops under the
Earl of Northumberland, who had been awaiting his arrival. Nothing but
surrender was possible, so Richard yielded himself up, trusting that
his cousin aimed merely at seizing the governance of the realm, and not
at his master's life or crown.
[Sidenote: =Richard abdicates.--Election of Henry.=]
Henry, however, had other views: he put Richard in strict custody,
and took him to London. There the Parliament assembled, overawed
by the armed retainers of the duke and his partisans. Richard was
forced by threats to abdicate, and thought that he had thus secured
his life. Then Henry caused the Parliament to accept his cousin's
resignation, and claimed the crown for himself. This was in manifest
disregard of the rights of Edmund of March, the young son of that Roger
who had fallen in Ireland a year before. The Parliament, however,
formally elected the duke to fill his cousin's throne, and saluted
him as king by the name of Henry IV. Constitutionally, no doubt, they
were acting within their rights; but it is only fair to say that
Richard--headstrong and arbitrary though he had been--had scarcely
deserved his fate. Nor was there any adequate reason for setting aside
the clear hereditary claim of Edmund of March (1399).
[Sidenote: =Murder of Richard.=]
Henry had grasped the crown, but he knew that his position was
insecure. He had only a Parliamentary title, and what one Parliament
had done another could undo. The late king had many faithful partisans,
and was not misliked by the nation at large. Therefore the unscrupulous
usurper determined to make away with him. Richard was sent to
Pontefract Castle, and never seen again; undoubtedly he was murdered,
but no one save Henry and his confidants knew how the deed was done.
The details of the dark act have never come to light.