John of Gaunt had returned from Castile; he had become reconciled with his brothers. Concord appeared re-established in the royal family; a truce had been concluded with France and Scotland. The King of Scotland, Robert II., had died on the 19th of April, 1390, and his eldest son had assumed the title of Robert III. Queen Anne had also died, in 1394, and King Richard, who had no children, married two years later, much against the wishes of his subjects, the Princess Isabel, daughter of Charles VI., king of France. She was but seven years old; but the king conceived the liveliest affection for her, and conducted her everywhere with him upon his travels. An expedition in Ireland against the insurgent chiefs had been very successful; but the Duke of Gloucester protested with all his might against the alliance with France. "Our Edwards," he said, "caused Paris to tremble even in its entrails; but, under Richard, we court the French, who make us tremble within London." The duke had his reasons for trembling: the king had not forgotten the execution of his favorites, nor the men who had signed their indictment. The Earl of Warwick, one of the accomplices of Gloucester, was already arrested; the Earl of Arundel soon followed. The Duke of Gloucester had retired to Pleshy Castle, in Essex; his nephew repaired there in gay company: all the family came forward to meet the king; but, while the duchess was conversing with him, Gloucester was arrested by the marshal of England, dragged as far as the river, thrown into a boat, and from thence a vessel bore him towards Calais. A rumor was thereupon spread that he had been assassinated; the king published a proclamation declaring that the arrests had been made with the approval of his uncles of Lancaster and York, as well as of his cousin, the Earl of Derby. He had even obtained, by a ruse, their signatures to the impeachment. Lord Arundel was condemned by the Parliament, and immediately executed; his brother, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was not even admitted to plead his cause, for the king dreaded his eloquence; he was banished for life, and the Earl of Warwick, at first condemned to death, was imprisoned in the Isle of Man. The House of Lords then called the Duke of Gloucester for judgment; but the marshal replied that he could not bring the Lord Duke, who had for several days been dead at Calais. He was condemned, however, and all his goods were confiscated; it was said that he had been suffocated between two mattresses. The judges were not without uneasiness concerning the application which they had just made of the high treason law: nearly all had been, at different periods, compromised in plots or insurrections. They obtained of the king an amnesty for the past; and, as a reward for present services, Richard made his cousin the Earl of Derby, Duke of Hereford; the Earl of Nottingham became Duke of Norfolk, and John Holland, the murderer, was made Duke of Exeter. The Parliament completed its work of complaisance by granting to the king, for life, a subsidy upon woollens, and by forming a commission, entrusted to watch affairs. King Richard was no longer in a hurry to appeal to his people, or to convoke the Parliament.
The conduct of the king towards his uncle the Duke of Gloucester and his friends, the vengeance which had overtaken, after so many years, the enemies of the favorites, revealed the character of the sovereign in a light which caused uneasiness in the country. Indolent and prodigal, habitually engrossed in the pleasures of luxury and magnificence, Richard was not only capable of momentary energy, but he maintained in the bottom of his heart projects which he shaped to his purposes with patient perseverance. Once delivered of the Parliament and of the Duke of Gloucester, the Duke of Lancaster aged and in retirement in his castle, Richard gave himself up to all his whims, certain, as he thought, of encountering no serious opposition. "At that time," says Froissart, "no one was great enough in England to dare to speak against the will of the king. He had a council obedient to his wishes, who begged him to do as he pleased; and he had in his pay ten thousand archers, who guarded him day and night." The extravagances of the court were insensate, and the people began to complain, looking back regretfully upon the government of the king's uncles, who had shown some consideration, they said, for the nation, and consulted it in its own affairs.
Two great noblemen alone remained of those who had, in 1386, seconded the efforts of the Duke of Gloucester against the favorites of the king; and, notwithstanding the favor shown to them by Richard, they did not feel secure in their positions. The Duke of Norfolk, galloping upon the road to Windsor, in the month of December, 1397, encountered the Duke of Hereford. "We are ruined," said he to his friend. "Wherefore?" asked Bolingbroke. "For that affair at Radcot Bridge." [Footnote 5]
[Footnote 5: The Duke of Ireland (Robert de Vere) had been defeated by Gloucester and his companions, at Radcot Bridge.]
"What! after so many pardons and declarations by the Parliament?" rejoined Bolingbroke. "He will annul all that, and we shall pass through the ordeal like the others; the world in which we live is strangely perfidious." The Duke of Norfolk soon had reason to be convinced of this. Either through thoughtlessness or through treachery, the conversation was reported to the king; he convoked the Parliament, and his first care in the month of January, 1398, was to summon Henry Bolingbroke to render an account of the words of the Duke of Norfolk. The latter was not present, but upon the summons of the Parliament, he came to throw down his glove at the feet of the Duke of Hereford, declaring him a traitor and a perjurer: the combat was authorized between the two noblemen. "I shall then at length have peace," muttered the king, while proceeding to Coventry, on the 16th of September, to be present at the tournament. But having once confronted the two antagonists, he became fearful of a victory for one of them, and, forbidding the ordeal, he submitted the question to a Parliamentary commission chosen by himself. The Duke of Hereford was condemned to an exile of ten years. The Duke of Norfolk was banished forever. He thereupon started for the Holy Land, and died of grief at Venice. But Henry Bolingbroke did not go far away; he remained in France, watching the movements of his cousin Richard, who lavished the riches of England with so thoughtless a hand, that his treasury was constantly empty. His favorites would then help him to replenish it by exactions of every kind. The Duke of Lancaster had died three months after the departure of his son; his immense property was confiscated, notwithstanding the protests of Bolingbroke. A decree outlawed seventeen counties of England, as having been favorable to the enemies of the king; they were compelled to buy back their rights with enormous fines. The disaffection increased, but the king took no heed whatever of it. He embarked towards the end of May, 1390, for Ireland, where his cousin and heir-apparent, the Earl of March, had recently been assassinated. He had just taken the field against the rebels, when Henry Bolingbroke landed, on the 4th of July, at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire, having escaped from France under the pretext of paying a visit to the Duke of Brittany.
Bolingbroke had brought with him a feeble following, the exiled Archbishop of Canterbury, and his nephew, the Earl of Arundel, fifteen knights and men-at-arms, and a few servants; but scarcely had he touched the English soil, when the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland joined him, bringing with them considerable forces. Henry did not disclose his ulterior projects to anybody; he came, he said, to claim his right, the inheritance of his father, which the king had wrongly confiscated, and moreover the public feeling was so favorable to him, the nation was so weary of seeing itself ill-governed, that the malcontents rose in all parts to place themselves under his standard. He was, it is said, at the head of an army of sixty thousand men when he advanced towards London. The Duke of York, regent of the kingdom in the absence of Richard, did not rely upon the burgesses of the City; he had quitted the capital, and displayed the royal standard at St. Alban's. Terror began to seize the creatures of the king: instead of marching against the rebels, they cowardly shut themselves up in fortified castles. The Duke of York had taken the western road, pending the return of King Richard; but Bolingbroke had used diligence, and he arrived at the Severn on the same day as the regent. The latter placed little confidence in his troops; he was aware of the general discontent, and he retained in the bottom of his heart a bitter resentment for the murder of his brother Gloucester. He granted an interview to his nephew Bolingbroke: the firm, bold and cunning mind of Henry triumphed easily over the feeble will of the Duke of York; the two armies were amalgamated, and the regent helped the usurper to take Bristol Castle. There the members of the commission which had formerly condemned Bolingbroke had taken refuge; they were executed without any form of trial, and the Duke of Lancaster marched upon Chester, leaving his uncle at Bristol.
For three weeks Richard had remained in ignorance of what was taking place in his kingdom. When he at length learnt the news of the landing of Henry and his formidable progresses, he exclaimed bitterly, "Ah! my good uncle of Lancaster, the Lord have mercy on your soul! If I had believed you, although this man might be your son, he would never have harmed me. Three times I have forgiven him; this is his fourth offence." The Earl of Salisbury immediately set sail to assemble together some troops in England; he had raised pretty considerable forces in Wales; but the king delayed, the soldiers murmured and dispersed by degrees; a large number went and joined the rebels. The king at length disembarked with his cousin, the Duke of Albemarle, and his two brothers, the Dukes of Exeter and Surrey. The little army which he had taken to Ireland followed him: but at the second halting-place, when the king, having risen very early, looked through the window towards the camp, where on the previous evening, six thousand soldiers had slept, he no longer saw but a handful of archers and men-at-arms: all had deserted during the night. The king was advised to take refuge at Bordeaux. "That would be to abdicate," said his brother, the Duke of Exeter. It was resolved that they should join the Earl of Salisbury, and the king, disguised as a priest, took the road to Conway, with his brothers and a few servants, while the Duke of Albemarle, following the example of his father, the Duke of York, fled by night to join the army of he usurper.