The next day this act of resignation was read in full Parliament, and there unanimously accepted, and received by the people with shouts of applause. If Richard had thus voluntarily abdicated, there could be no necessity for what immediately followed—a series of thirty-three articles of impeachment in order to his deposition. The chief charges contained in these were his violation of his coronation oath, his murder of the Duke of Gloucester, and his despotic and unconstitutional conduct. Of course, there was no opposition; but Merks, the Bishop of Carlisle, who had remained faithful to Richard, and continued with him to the last, stood boldly forward, claimed for him the right to be confronted with his accusers, and urged that Parliament should have the opportunity of judging whether his resignation were voluntary or not. Nothing could be more reasonable, but nothing more inconvenient where all was settled beforehand to one end; and the only answer which the high-minded prelate received was his immediate arrest by Lancaster, and consignment to the Abbey of St. Albans.
Richard was then formally deposed, with an acrimony of accusation which, to say the least, if his resignation had been, as asserted, voluntary in favour of Lancaster, was as ungracious as it was uncalled for. The chief justice, Sir William Thirning, was deputed to notify this decision of Parliament to the captive.
Lancaster, who had taken his seat during these proceedings near the throne, then rising, and crossing himself on the forehead and breast, pronounced the following words:—"In the name of Fadher, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster, challenge this rewme of Ynglonde and the crowne, with all the members and appurtenances, als I that am descendit be ryght lyne of the blode, cumyng fra the gude lord King Henry Thirde, and throghe that ryght that God of His grace has sent me, with help of my kyn and of my frendes to recover it; the whiche rewme was in poynt to be ondone for defaut of governance, and undoying of the gude lawes."
This speech was one of those which have a sound of reason to the ear, but will not bear a moment's examination. True, he was descended from Henry III., like Edward III. and Richard, but not in the true line—that being, as we have stated, the line of Lionel, and Henry being now not only the usurper of Richard's throne, but of the Earl of March's reversion.
But the pretence was enough, and more than enough, for all who heard it. They knew it was empty sound, and the real reasons for assent lay in Lancaster's will, backed by a powerful army and a willing people.
Henry, as proof of Richard's having resigned his rights into his hands, produced the ring and seal. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Arundel, his late fellow-exile, now took him by the hand, and led him to the throne. He knelt for a short time on the steps in prayer, or affected prayer; for Lancaster, amid all his grasping at his neighbour's goods, was especially careful to do outward homage to the great Being who had said, "Thou shalt not covet." On rising, the two archbishops placed him on the throne; and, as soon as the acclamations ceased, the primate made a short sermon, choosing his text, with the finished tact of a priestly courtier, from 1 Samuel ix. 17:—"Behold the man whom I spake to thee of! this same shall reign over my people;" and the sermon was worthy of the text.
Thus ended the reign of Richard II.; and, as with it ended also the authority of Parliament and the ministers of the Crown, Lancaster immediately summoned the Parliament to meet again in six days, appointed new officers, and, having received their oaths, retired to the royal palace.
The history of the progress of Parliamentary power in this reign is most important. We find Parliament at various times asserting its authority, calling on the Crown to reform its household, its courts of law, to restrain its expenditure, and dismiss its servants. By its means the Duke of Gloucester obtained his commission to regulate the administration, and to impeach the prime minister, De la Pole, the Earl of Suffolk; and though, during the latter years of his reign, Parliament, as in our time, became corrupt and subservient, yet the people, assuming the exercise of those powers which their delegates had basely surrendered, punished and deposed the monarch whom they could not reform.
Richard was dethroned in the twenty-third year of his reign, and the thirty-fourth of his age. We may anticipate the events related at greater length in subsequent pages (see Chapter XXXIV.) to briefly sketch the fate of the deposed king. Henry IV. submitted to the lords the question what should be done with the late monarch, whose life, he declared, he was at all events resolved to preserve. The lords recommended perpetual confinement in some castle, where none of his former adherents could obtain access to him. This advice was acted upon, and probably was first suggested by Henry. Richard disappeared, and no one knew anything of his place of detention. The King of France threatened war on behalf of the rights of his daughter, Isabella, and his son-in-law, the deposed king. To avert this storm Henry proposed to make various alliances between the two royal families, including the marriage of the Prince of Wales to a daughter of Charles. But the King of France rejected the proposal, declaring that he knew no King of England but Richard. The French king, however, received intelligence that Richard was dead, and therefore he avowedly ceased to prosecute his claims, but confined himself to those of his daughter, demanding that she should be restored to him, with her jewels and her dowry, according to the marriage settlement. Charles afterwards consented to receive her with her jewels only, counter claims being set up against the dowry.
From the moment, however, that the public statement of Richard's death was made by the King of France, the nation became inquisitive, and it was not long before the dead body of the deposed monarch was brought up from Pontefract Castle, and shown publicly in St. Paul's for two days, where 20,000 people are said to have gone to see it. Only the face was uncovered, and that was wonderfully emaciated. Various were the rumours of the mode of his death on all these occasions, but, as in the case of Richard's victim, the Duke of Gloucester, nothing certain ever transpired. One story was that Sir Piers Exton, with seven other assassins, entered his cell to despatch him, when Richard, aware of their purpose, snatched an axe from one of them, and felled him and several of his fellows to the earth; but that Exton, getting behind him, prostrated him with one blow, and then slew him. Another story was that he starved himself to death; and there were not wanting rumours that he had escaped, and lived many years in the guise of an ordinary man. One thing is quite certain; that the so-called Richard, who, as we shall see, was a considerable source of anxiety to the new king, can have been nothing but an arrant impostor. But Henry of Lancaster may be safely trusted to secure his dangerous captive. The features of Richard were too well known to thousands in London to be mistaken for those of the priest Maudelin, whose body, it was pretended, had been substituted for Richard's. There can be no doubt but that he died a secret and violent death; the mode of that death must for ever remain a mystery. But the evidence would seem to incline to the conclusion that he was starved to death by his keepers.