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

by Anonymous

But once more at large, and in communication with his friends and confederates, Cobham became all the more active in his plans for the maintenance of the great cause. The Church had now manifested its intentions; it had shown that it was not conversion, but destruction of the whole body of the reformers that it was resolved upon; and the question, therefore, with the persecuted sect naturally was, by what means it was to prevent the fate which menaced it. If we are to believe the chroniclers of the times, the Lollards resolved to anticipate their enemies, to take up arms, and to repel force by force. Seeing clearly that war to the death was determined against them by the Church, and that the king had yielded at least a tacit consent to this iniquitous policy, they came to the conclusion to kill not only the bishops, but the king and all his kin.

So atrocious a conspiracy is not readily to be credited against men who contended for a greater purity of gospel truth, nor against men of the practical and military knowledge of Lord Cobham. But over the whole of these transactions there hangs a veil of impenetrable mystery, and we can only say that the Lollards are charged with endeavouring to surprise the king and his brother at Eltham, as they were keeping their Christmas festivities there, and that this attempt failed through the court receiving intimation of the design, and suddenly removing to Westminster. Disappointed in this scheme, the Lollards were next summoned from all quarters to march towards London, there to secure and kill all the principal clergy. They were, according to these accounts, to meet in St. Giles's Fields, on the night of the 6th of January.

The king, it is stated, being warned of this movement, gave due notice to the city, and on the day previous to the proposed meeting, the Mayor of London made various arrests of suspected persons, amongst others of a squire of Lord Cobham's, at the sign of the "Ark," in Bishopsgate Without. The aldermen were ordered to keep strict watch each in his own ward, and at midnight Henry himself issued forth with a strong force. He is represented as being greatly alarmed for the public safety, from the popular insurrections which had lately been raging in Paris, and to which we shall presently have to draw attention. He ordered all the city gates to be closed, to keep the Lollards who were within the walls separate from those without, hastening then to the place of rendezvous.

Here again the narratives of this unaccountable affair contradict each other. One declares that all the roads were covered with the adherents of Lord Cobham, hastening to the appointed spot in St. Giles's Fields; that on asking the first overtaken whom they were for, they replied by the preconcerted watchword—"For Sir John Oldcastle;" and that these being seized, the rest took the alarm and fled. By other accounts there were expected to be 25,000 men collected in the same fields, but only fourscore were found there. Cobham made his escape, but about forty of the captives were drawn and hanged as traitors, and then burnt; amongst them Sir Roger Acton, whose body, instead of being burnt, was buried under the gallows.

Nevertheless Parliament was eager for Church reform. We find in Hall, folio 35, that on the king demanding supplies, they renewed the offer which they had made to his father to seize all the ecclesiastical revenues, and convert them to the use of the Crown. The clergy were greatly alarmed by this demonstration from their own coadjutors, and feeling that the age was ripe for compelling them to disgorge a good portion of their enormous wealth, they agreed to confer upon Henry all the alien priories which depended on capital abbeys in Normandy, and had been bequeathed to those abbeys when that province continued united to England. It was now that the new Archbishop Chicheley, endeavoured to turn the attention of the king by recommending him to carry war into France.

Henry was himself already meditating that very step. It was the dying advice of his father not to permit his subjects to remain long in inaction, which, in an age which possessed few resources but hunting or war to sufficiently occupy the minds of the great barons, was sure to breed domestic factions, while successful war kept them about the person of their prince, and attached them to him by every motive of honour and advantage. The state of France at that epoch was such as rendered a fresh attempt to conquer it most alluring, and even to suggest the idea to a monarch like Henry, chivalrous and ambitious of glory, that he was, in a manner, called by God to the salutary work of rescuing a great nation from its own suicidal frenzy, and punishing the iniquity of its people—which was actually monstrous—as the Israelites were led up to punish the corrupt inhabitants of Canaan. Having, therefore, consented to the desires of the Church, and of Parliament, that all judges and magistrates should arrest any persons suspected even of Lollardism, and deliver them over to the tender mercies of the ecclesiastical courts, and that these unfortunate schismatics should, on conviction, forfeit all their lands, goods, and chattels, as in cases of felony—he addressed himself to his great enterprise, the conquest of France.

That unfortunate country was in the most deplorable condition. The dissension, the unbounded dissoluteness, and the mutual murder of the princes, seemed to have utterly debauched and demoralised the people. From head to foot, the whole body, political and social, was diseased. Every principle of honour and of rectitude, every feeling of conscience or of pity appeared extinct. Cruelty, rapacity, crime, and lawlessness were become the grand features of the nation. It was high time that some power should interpose to scourge that debased generation and restore some sense of patriotism and virtue through a better régime, if possible; and this was, in truth, the only title which Henry had to interfere. Bad as had been the claims set up by the Edwards, his was far worse; for he was the son of the usurper even in his own country, and if any just right to the crown of France could be established by the English Plantagenets, it resided in the Earl of March, and not at all in him. But, while Henry, in an amusingly confident manner, still talked of his hereditary title to the French throne, he did not omit to add what really was more obvious, that he was the appointed instrument of Providence to chastise the flagrant iniquity of the rulers of France.

That reconciliation of the Duke of Orleans to Burgundy, the murderer of his father, which we have recorded, did not last three months. After the retirement of the Duke of Clarence to Guienne, this feud broke out with fresh fury. The Count of Armagnac, the father-in-law of Orleans, one of the most clear-sighted men amongst them, indeed, never laid down his arms. Burgundy continued in Paris, and there he got up a popular faction which gradually drew the whole city into scenes and outrages which remind us of the Parisian revolutions of our own times. He made a league with the butchers, who came out with ferocious alacrity, glad of such a sanction to play a conspicuous part on that great theatre of national confusion. They adopted a white hood as their badge; and, being in alliance with the Duke of Burgundy, they also opened a communication with his revolutionary subjects in Flanders. The judges, the barristers, the members of Parliament, the noblesse, the professors and students of the university, the clergy, the monks, every class of the community, in short, were obliged to wear the white hood, as the only livery of patriotism. A reign of terror now commenced; the whole of the populace were ranged under the white hood, and had acquired the name of Cabochiens from one of their most ferocious leaders. They had reduced the upper classes of all descriptions to an ostensible submission to their despotism, and they now began to perpetrate every species of disorder.

To make confusion worse confounded, the dissolute and heartless Louis, the dauphin, quarrelled with the Duke of Burgundy, and fomented intrigues and parties against him. Chief was arrayed against chief, and mob against mob. The respectable portion of the citizens, long made dumb with terror, took heart as the host of their plebeian tyrants began to direct their terrible energies against each other, and sent secretly to the Armagnacs. From being stout Burgundians thousands now declared openly for Orleans and his father-in-law; and when the Duke of Berri endeavoured to force on the city a heavy tax, to carry on the war against the Armagnacs, they rebelled resolutely. In vain were the master butchers employed to levy the hateful impost; their rude compulsion only drove the burghers more rapidly into the arms of the opposite faction. The butchers mustered in formidable force in the Place de Grève, so memorable for its horrors on a more recent day; but, after a vigorous fight, they were vanquished, and were eventually driven out of Paris. The Duke of Burgundy was soon compelled to follow his butcher faction, and in August, after making an abortive attempt to carry off the king, he retired to Flanders. The Duke of Orleans entered the city with the Armagnacs. Everything, except disorder, was changed. The ministers and magistrates were removed, and replaced by others of the party in the ascendant. Those who had imprisoned and persecuted, now had the same, or a severer measure meted out to themselves. The faction of the dauphin was there struggling with that of the Armagnacs, and that of the queen against her own son, Louis, who had been amongst the first to call in the Armagnacs, now as earnestly implored the return of the Duke of Burgundy.