Chapter Five.
Changes and Chances of this Mortal Life.
“Now is done thy long day’s work;
Fold thy palms across thy breast,
Fold thine arms, turn to thy rest,
Let them rave.”
Tennyson.
The Earl and Countess were away from home, during the whole spring of the next year; but Constance stayed at Langley, and so did Alvena and Maude. There was a grand gala day in the following August, when the Lord of Langley was raised from the dignity of Earl of Cambridge to the higher title of Duke of York: but three days later, the cloth of gold was changed for mourning serge. A royal courier, on his way from Reading to London, stayed a few hours at Langley; and he brought word that the mother of the King, “the Lady Princess,” was lying dead at Wallingford.
The blow was in reality far heavier than it appeared on the surface, and to the infant Church of the Lollards the loss was irreparable. For the Princess was a Lollard; and being a woman of most able and energetic character, she had been until now the de facto Queen of England. She must have been possessed of consummate tact and prudence, for she contrived to live on excellent terms with half-a-dozen people of completely incompatible tempers. When the reins dropped from her dead hand a struggle ensued among these incompatible persons, who should pick them up. The struggle was sharp, but short. The elder brothers retired from the contest, and the reins were left in the Duke of Gloucester’s hand. And woe to the infant Church of the Lollards, when Gloucester held the reins!
He began his reign—for henceforward he was virtually King—by buying over his brother of York. Edmund, already the passive servant of Gloucester, was bribed to active adherence by a grant of a thousand pounds. The Duke of Lancaster, who was not his brother’s tool, was quietly disposed of for the moment, by making him so exceedingly uncomfortable, that with the miserable laisser-aller, which was the bane of his fine character, he went home to enjoy himself as a country gentleman, leaving politics to take care of themselves.
But an incident happened which disconcerted for a moment the plans of the Regent. The young King, without consulting his powerful uncle, declared his second cousin, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, heir presumptive of England, and—in obedience to a previous suggestion of the Princess—broke off March’s engagement with a lady of the Arundel family, and married him to Richard’s own niece, the Lady Alianora de Holand.
The annoyance to Gloucester, consisted in two points: first, that it recognised female inheritance and representation, which put him a good deal further from the throne; and secondly, that Roger Mortimer, owing to the education received from his Montacute grandmother, had stepped out of his family ranks, and was the sole Lollard ever known in the House of March.