FOOTNOTES:
[22] So called from Jacques Bonhomme, the nickname of the typical French peasant.
[23] Sometimes also called Navarette; it lies beyond the Ebro, near Logroño.
CHAPTER XIV.
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.
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.
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 13s. 4d. to agricultural labourers who paid 4d. In 1380 followed another tax graduated from £1 to 1s. on every grown man or woman.
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 4d. for every acre.
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.
"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.
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 4d. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
CHAPTER XV.
HENRY IV.
1399-1413.
Position and title of Henry.
Henry of Bolingbroke had small comfort all his days on the throne which he had usurped. He was only the king of a faction, the nominee of the party which had once supported the Lords Appellant; if one half of the baronage was friendly to him for that reason, the other half was always estranged from him. It might almost be said that the "Wars of the Roses," the strife of the two great factions who adhered the one to the house of Lancaster and the other to the house of March, began on Henry's accession.
Richard's deposition had been the work, not of the whole nation, but of Henry's friends, the Percies of Northumberland, the Nevilles of Westmoreland, the Arundels—son and brother to the Arundel whom Richard had beheaded in 1397—and the Staffords [24] who represented the line of Thomas, Duke of Gloucester. The Parliament had acquiesced in Henry's usurpation rather because it had been discontented with Richard's arbitrary rule, than because it had any very great liking for his cousin. Perhaps the more far-sighted of its members had concluded that the accession of a king whose only title rested on election would be favourable to the development of constitutional liberties, since Henry would—at least for a time—be very much dependent on the good-will of the body which had chosen him, and which might some day choose another ruler if he proved unpliable.
Rebellion of the Hollands.
Before Henry had been two months on the throne, civil war had broken out. The insurgents were Richard's kinsmen and favourites. The two Hollands—Earls of Kent and Huntingdon, who were Richard's half-brothers—conspired with Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, and Lord Despenser, who had been his trusted friends. They plotted to seize King Henry, as he lay at Windsor keeping the festivities of Christmas, to slay or imprison him, and to release their old master from Pontefract Castle. Unfortunately for themselves, they took into their counsels Edward Earl of Rutland, the son of the old Duke of York. The cowardly prince, finding that he was suspected, informed the king of the plot before the conspirators were ready. Henry escaped from Windsor, and called his friends together at London. The rebel earls set out in various directions to endeavour to raise their retainers, but they were all overtaken. Kent and Salisbury fell into their enemies' hands at Cirencester, Huntingdon was caught in Essex, Despenser at Bristol. All were beheaded without any delay or form of trial. Henry's grim reply to this insurrection was the production of the dead body of King Richard, which was brought from Pontefract to London, and publicly displayed to prove his death. Nevertheless, many men refused to credit his decease, and for years after there were some who maintained that the body exposed in St. Paul's was not that of the late king, but that of his chaplain, who bore an extraordinary personal resemblance to him. They believed, or tried to believe, that Richard had escaped and was alive in Scotland. Trading on this notion, an impostor presented himself at the Scotch court, and was long entertained there as the true King of England by the simple Robert III.
Rebellion in Wales.—Owen Glendower.
Hardly was the rebellion of the Hollands put down before a second civil war arose. The Welsh had always been devoted to King Richard, and had taken his deposition very ill. In 1400, a gentleman named Owen-ap-Griffith, of Glendower, who had been one of Richard's squires, put himself at the head of a rising in North Wales. Owen was of the old princely blood of the house of Llewellyn, and proclaimed himself Prince of North Wales under the suzerainty of his master Richard, whom he declared to be still alive in Scotland. He was a guerilla captain of marked ability, and completely baffled the efforts that King Henry made to put him down. He swept all over North Wales, captured many of its castles, and extended his sway over the whole countryside. To the day of his death Owen maintained himself in independence, ravaging the English border when he was left alone, and retiring into the recesses of Snowdon when a great force took the field against him. His incursions penetrated as far as Worcester and Shrewsbury, and no man west of the Severn was safe from his plundering bands.
England harassed by Scotland and France.
As if the Welsh trouble was not enough to keep King Henry employed, other wars broke out around him. The Scots under the Earl of Douglas crossed the border to harry Northumberland, and Lewis of Orleans, the uncle of Richard's queen Isabella, began to stir up the French court to attack England, and encouraged many descents of Norman privateers on the coasts of the Channel.
Henry and the Parliament.—Persecution of the Lollards.
Henry's only resource was to keep the nation in good temper by a rigorous and punctual obedience to all the petitions and requests of his Parliament. Accordingly, he showed himself the most constitutional of sovereigns, and both now and for many years to come made himself the dutiful servant of the Commons. He also did his best to enlist the favour of Churchmen on his side by a cruel persecution of the Lollards. The disciples of Wicliffe had always favoured King Richard, who had shown them complete tolerance, and Henry felt that he was not estranging any of his own partisans when he handed over the Lollards to the mercy of the harsh and fanatical Archbishop Arundel. [25] It was under this prelate's guidance that the king assented to the infamous statute De Heretico Comburendo (1401), which condemned all convicted schismatics to the stake and fire. The first victim burnt was William Sawtree, a London clergyman, and others followed him at intervals all through Henry's reign.
Battle of Homildon Hill.
The Scotch war came to a head in 1402, at the battle of Homildon Hill. There Murdoch of Albany, the son of the Scotch regent, was completely defeated by Percy of Northumberland and his son Harry Percy, whom the Borderers nicknamed Hotspur for his speed and energy. But the victory of Homildon was fated to do England more harm than any defeat, since it was to cause a renewal of the civil war. The Percies had taken many prisoners, including Murdoch himself, and three other Scots Earls, Douglas, Moray, and Orkney. From the ransoms of these peers they trusted to get great profit; but King Henry, who was at his wits' end to scrape money together without troubling Parliament, took the prisoners out of the Percies' hands and claimed the ransoms for himself. This mortally offended Northumberland, a proud and greedy chief, who had been Henry's main support at the time of his usurpation, and thought that in return the king ought to refuse nothing to him.
Rebellion of the Percies.
In sheer lawless wrath at the king's refusal to hear him, Northumberland resolved to dethrone Henry. He secretly concerted measures with Owen Glendower for a joint attack on the king, and released his captive, the Earl of Douglas, who in return brought him a band of Scottish auxiliaries. By Owen's counsel, aid was sought from France also, and it was settled that the young Earl of March should be proclaimed king, if Richard II. proved to be really dead.
Battle of Shrewsbury.—Death of Hotspur.
In July, 1403, the Percies rose, and were joined by their kinsman the Earl of Worcester, and many more. Hotspur rapidly led his army towards Shrewsbury, where Glendower had promised to join him with a Welsh host. But King Henry was too quick for his foes; he threw himself between them, and caught the young Percy before the Welsh came up. The desperately fought battle of Shrewsbury (July 23, 1403) ended in the victory of the royal host. Hotspur was slain by an arrow, while Douglas and Worcester were taken, and the latter executed for treason. It was at this field that the king's eldest son, Henry of Monmouth, destined in later years to be the conqueror of France, first looked upon the face of war.
Second Rebellion.—Execution of Scrope.
The Earl of Northumberland, who had not been present at Shrewsbury, but had kept at home in the north, was allowed to make his peace with the king on the payment of a great fine. But Henry was wrong in thinking that the crafty and resentful old earl was no longer dangerous. Though his brave son was dead, Percy stirred up a second rebellion two years later, by the aid of Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, son of Henry's old opponent in the lists of Coventry, [26] and of Scrope, Archbishop of York, brother of that Scrope, Earl of Wilts, whom the Lancastrians had hung in 1399. But Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, who commanded for the king in the North, induced Scrope and Mowbray to lay down their arms and come to a conference, and there he seized them as traitors. They were at once put on trial, not before their peers as they claimed, but before two of the king's justices, who condemned them to death. Scrope's execution sent a thrill of horror throughout England, for no archbishop had ever before been slain by a king, save Thomas Becket, and many men counted him a martyr even as Becket. So Henry lost as much love of the clergy by this act as he had gained by his assent to the statute De Heretico Comburendo.
Northumberland escaped to Scotland in 1405, and lurked there for two years; but in 1407 he crossed the Tweed, raised his vassals, and made a dash for York. But he was intercepted at Bramham Moor, and there slain, fighting hard in spite of his seventy years.
After this King Henry was no more vexed with civil war in England, but his Welsh troubles showed no sign of ending. Owen Glendower eluded Henry, Prince of Wales, and all the other leaders who came against him, with complete success, and the English armies suffered so severely from storms among the Welsh hills that they swore that Owen was a magician and had conjured the elements against them.
Henry's submission to Parliament .—The Beauforts.
It was the constant drain of money for this interminable war that kept the king in strict submission to his Parliament, so that he was obliged to allow them to audit all his accounts, and even to dismiss his servants when they thought that he kept too large and wasteful a household. Henry much disliked this control, but he always bowed before it. His health was failing, though he was still in middle age, and bodily weakness seems to have bent his will. From 1409 to 1412 he was so feeble that the government was really carried on by his son, the Prince of Wales, and his half-brothers, the Beauforts, Henry, Bishop of Winchester, and Thomas, the Chancellor. Of the Beaufort clan we shall hear much in the future; they were the sons of John of Gaunt's old age. After the death of his wife, Constance of Castile, a lady named Katharine Swinford became his mistress and bore him several sons. He afterwards married her, and the children were legitimatized by Act of Parliament. Of these the eldest was now Earl of Somerset, and the youngest Bishop of Winchester.
Detention of Prince James of Scotland.
It was fortunate for England in these years, when the realm was ruled by a bedridden king and a very young Prince of Wales, that her neighbours to north and south had fallen on evil days. Neither Scot nor Frenchman was dangerous at this time. The Scots were bridled by the fact that the heir of the kingdom was in Henry's hands. For it chanced that King Robert III. was sending his son James to France, and that the ship was taken by an English privateer. "Why did they not send him straight to me?" said King Henry; "I could have taught him French as well as any man at Paris." So Prince James was kept at Windsor as a hostage for the good behaviour of Scotland. His jealous uncle Albany, the regent of that kingdom, did not want him released, and was quite content to leave him in Henry's power and keep the peace.
Civil War in France.—Armagnacs and Burgundians.
The cause of the quiescence of France was very different. King Charles VI. had become insane, and no longer ruled. A desperate civil war had been raging there ever since the king's brother, the Duke of Orleans, had been murdered by his cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, in 1407. The partisans of the murdered duke, who were called the Armagnacs from their leader, Bernard, Count of Armagnac, were always endeavouring to revenge his death on Burgundy. They mustered most of the feudal nobility of France in their ranks, while their opponent was supported by the burghers of Paris and many of the towns of the north. John of Burgundy was lord of Flanders as well as of his own duchy, and was well able to hold his own even though his French partisans were outnumbered by the Armagnacs. Both factions sought the help of England, and King Henry was able to play a double game, and to negociate with each of them on the terms that he should be given back some of the lost districts of Aquitaine in return for his aid. In the end he closed with the offers of the Armagnacs, and sent over a small army to Normandy under his second son, Thomas, Duke of Clarence. Clarence accomplished little, but the fact that his troops were able to march across France to Bordeaux with little hindrance taught the English that the French were too helpless and divided to be formidable (1412). The lesson was taken to heart, as we shall see in the next reign.
Prince Henry of Monmouth.
While King Henry lay slowly dying of leprosy, his son, the Prince of Wales, was gaining the experience which was to serve him so well a few years later. Henry of Monmouth was a warrior from his youth up; at the age of fifteen he had been present at Shrewsbury field, and in the succeeding years he toiled in the hard school of the Welsh wars, leading expedition after expedition against Glyndower. The legendary tales which speak of him as a debauched and idle youth, who consorted with disreputable favourites, such as Shakespeare's famous "Sir John Falstaff," are entirely worthless. Of all these fables the only one that seems to have any foundation is that which tells how Henry was suspected by his father of over-great ambition and of aiming at the crown. It appears that the prince's supporters, the two Beauforts, suggested to King Henry that he should abdicate, and pass on the sceptre to his son. The king was much angered at the proposal, turned the Beauforts out of office, and was for a time estranged from the Prince of Wales. This was the reason why he sent Clarence rather than his elder brother to conduct the war in France. He even removed Prince Henry from his position as head of the royal council. But this outburst of anger was the king's last flash of energy. He died of his lingering disease on March 20, 1413.