Cassell's History of England, Vol. 1 (of 8) / From the Roman Invasion to the Wars of the Roses

by Anonymous

When the storm was at its height, Henry interposed, and, while the conflicting peers were in fiery antagonism with each other, he let fall his intended blow on the party which had supported Richard against his uncle Gloucester and himself. The lords appellant were stripped of the honours and estates which they had obtained from Richard as the rewards of their appeal; and the Dukes of Albemarle, Surrey, and Exeter, the Marquis of Dorset, and the Earl of Gloucester, descended again to their former ranks of Earls of Rutland, Kent, Huntingdon, Somerset, and Lord le Despenser.

To prevent the repetition of such scenes in future, appeals of treason to Parliament were prohibited, and such appeals were directed to be carried to the established courts of law. Treason itself was again limited to the offences named in the celebrated Act of Edward III. The abuse introduced by Richard of delegating all the powers of Parliament to a mere committee of both Houses was declared unconstitutional and utterly inadmissible; and the heaviest penalties were enacted against any person but the king giving liveries to his retainers.

HENRY IV.

Henry proceeded to reward his friends. As he had punished his enemies by deprivation of honours and estates, he now restored the Earls of Warwick and Arundel to their former ranks and properties. He constituted the Earl of Northumberland constable, and Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, marshal of England; and, as he had bestowed the Isle of Man on Northumberland, he now gave the earldom of Richmond to Westmoreland. Besides these, he conferred many other honours, grants, and offices.

Before dismissing Parliament, he submitted to the lords spiritual and temporal, through the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Earl of Northumberland, an especial matter for their advice, and they were charged to keep the subject an inviolable secret. This was no other than the disposal of the deposed king. Henry declared, as we have already stated, that at all events he was resolved on the preservation of his life. The lords gave it as their advice that he should be placed under the custody of trusty officers, who should convey him secretly to some castle, where no concourse of people could assemble, and where he should be strictly excluded from all approach of those who had formerly been in his service. Four days after this the king went to the house, expressed his approval of the advice of the lords for the secure detention of Richard, and ordered it to be carried into instant and permanent effect.

Henry appeared now firmly seated on the throne of his unhappy cousin. There can be no doubt that it had been the dream and object of his life's ambition. His father before him, and his uncle Gloucester, had shown no equivocal signs of a desire to seize the crown of that unfortunate prince, and one after another they had usurped the actual power into their own hands. But Henry, more crafty and calculating, watched his opportunity, and did not make a decided grasp at it till he felt sure of the favour of the people. Though he had now reached the height of his ambition, he still as carefully courted the favour of the people and the Church, in order to consolidate his new power. To give the people an idea of the auspicious change they had made in their sovereign, he issued a proclamation commanding all the blank bonds which had been extorted from them by Richard and his courtiers to be made null, and committed to the flames. To ensure the continued favour of the clergy, he now took a very different course to that which both he and his father, John of Gaunt, had done formerly. Then they were the great champions of Wycliffe; now he withdrew his countenance from the Reformers, and paid the most marked attention to the interests and ceremonies of the Church, and to the persons and wishes of the clergy.

But no precautions, no subtlety of policy, could give peace and security to a throne raised so palpably on injustice and treachery as that of Henry of Lancaster. From within and from without he found himself menaced by danger. France rejected his alliance and threatened war. The Scots, expecting the French to make a descent on England in favour of Richard, burst into Northumberland in one of their favourite excursions of plunder, took and destroyed the castle of Wark, and committed extensive devastations. Henry sent the Earl of Westmoreland to negotiate with these troublesome neighbours, and the Scots, finding no French army arrive, accepted the offered terms, and retreated to their own country.

But a conspiracy was forming at this very time in his immediate neighbourhood. The lords appellants, who had been stripped of the honours and wealth heaped upon them by Richard, though they had probably escaped, to their own surprise, with their lives, incapable of sitting down satisfied, entered into a conspiracy to assassinate the usurper. During the Christmas holidays they met frequently at the lodgings of the Abbot of Westminster to plan his destruction, and the following scheme was the result of their deliberations. They agreed to celebrate a splendid tournament, to be held at Oxford, on the 3rd of January, 1400. Henry was to be invited to preside, and while intent on the spectacle, a number of picked men were to kill him and his sons.

The king was keeping his Christmas at Windsor, whither the Earl of Huntingdon, the notorious John Holland, who had a particular proclivity towards murder, presented himself, and gave him the invitation. Henry accepted it, Huntingdon, notwithstanding his partisanship with Richard, and his recent disgrace, being still the king's brother-in-law.