The Earl of Salisbury had not a hundred men with him when the king arrived at Conway. In this deplorable situation, the brothers of King Richard proposed to go to Henry at Chester, in order to ascertain his pretensions. The two dukes did not return; their cousin Bolingbroke received them kindly, but he positively refused to release them: all his efforts were directed towards seizing the king in person. The Earl of Northumberland was entrusted with this mission. By false promises he enticed the king out of Conway, proposing an interview with Bolingbroke at Flint. Richard was almost alone, abandoned; he followed the earl with the friends who remained to him. They galloped along slowly, when suddenly the king cried, "I am betrayed! Lord in Heaven, help me! Do you not see banners and pennants flying in the valley?" Northumberland advanced at the same time. "My lord," the unhappy monarch said to him abruptly, "if I thought you capable of betraying me, I could yet retreat." "No," replied the Earl, who had laid hold of his bridle; "I have promised to conduct you to the Duke of Lancaster." The soldiers of Northumberland began to appear; the king yielded to necessity. "Our Saviour was sold and delivered into the hands of His enemies," he murmured.
They arrived at Flint. Henry Bolingbroke, in all his armor, came forward to meet his royal cousin, and bent his knee on approaching. "Good cousin of Lancaster," said Richard courteously, "you are welcome." "My lord," replied Henry, "I have come before my time, but I will tell you the reason: your people complain that you have governed them harshly for twenty-two years; if it please God, I will help you rule them better." "Since it pleases you, it pleases me also," meekly replied the fallen monarch; and, seated upon a wretched courser, like a prisoner, King Richard took the road to Chester, side by side with Henry Bolingbroke. Froissart relates that his very dog abandoned him to lick the hand of the usurper.
At Lichfield Richard attempted to escape; but he was seized as he had just issued forth through a window, and thereafter was narrowly guarded. The people of London received him with yells and insults. The usurper repaired to St. Paul's, prayed upon the tomb of his father, and then took possession of the palace. The king had been led to the Tower.
The Parliament was convoked, and ready to depose Richard II., as it had formerly deposed his great-grand-father; but Henry Bolingbroke, with a bitter foresight of the mutability of human things, wished to secure the personal consent and the voluntary abdication of the king. He held him narrowly confined within the Tower. "Why do you cause me to be thus guarded?" Richard angrily exclaimed one day; "Am I your king or your prisoner?" "You are my king," replied the duke; "but the council of your kingdom have seen fit to place a guard beside your person." On the eve of the opening of Parliament, a deputation of prelates and barons paid a visit to the unhappy king in the Tower, and asked him to abdicate. Richard felt himself powerless in the hands of his enemies; he yielded, "willingly and joyfully," say the acts of Parliament; and, releasing his subjects from their oath, he consigned his royal ring to his cousin of Lancaster, saying that he would choose him for his successor, if he had the right to designate him. These details are open to doubt, but the Parliament held them good, and on the 30th of September, before the empty throne, in Westminster Hall, the abdication of Richard was read aloud, all the members giving their consent to it. The people uttered cries of joy. The coronation oath was then brought, and, at each article, proclaimed aloud, the impeachment of King Richard was drawn up. He was accused of the murder of his uncle Gloucester; of having revoked the amnesties, and of having squandered the public money. Nobody raised his voice for the dethroned monarch until the Bishop of Carlisle, Thomas Merks, rose and publicly denied the right of the Parliament to depose the king and to change the order of succession, at the same time defending Richard against his accusers. Scarcely had he finished his discourse, when he was arrested. While he was being conducted to St. Alban's, the Parliament pronounced the deposition of Richard, and the Lord Chief Justice was instructed to announce his fall to him. "I care not to court the regal authority," said the deposed king; "I only hope that my good cousin will be a good master to me."
His good cousin was not yet legally king; the descendants of Lionel, the third son of Edward III., were the legitimate heirs to the throne; no one, however, thought of them. The Duke of Lancaster had remained in his seat; his surrounders waited in profound silence. He rose, and, solemnly making the sign of the cross, said in a very loud voice, "In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster, lay claim to this kingdom of England and to the crown, as a descendant of the good King Henry III., and by the right which God has given me, by granting to me the favor, through the support of my friends, to come to the assistance of this country, which was about to perish under bad laws and for want of government."
This mixture of hereditary pretensions with popular rights was skilful. The Parliament responded to the appeal of Henry Bolingbroke; acclamations broke out in all parts; the duke showed the ring which Richard had consigned to him; the Archbishop of Canterbury took him by the hand and led him to the foot of the throne. Henry knelt there for a moment; he then ascended the steps and seated himself resolutely. The plaudits recommenced during the discourse of the archbishop. "I thank you, my lord," said the new monarch; "and I wish everybody to know that, by right of conquest, I will disinherit nobody of his rights, but wish that all may be governed by the good laws of the kingdom, and may hold what he has by right." The officers of the crown and the great noblemen also vowed fealty and homage: Henry IV. was king of England.
In the first days of his reign, the new sovereign was enabled to believe that public opinion fully confirmed his usurpation. All the great noblemen were eager to fulfil at his coronation their hereditary offices; the Earl of Northumberland alone, who had rendered eminent services to him, marched beside him in the procession, holding aloft in sight of all the sword worn by Bolingbroke on landing at Ravenspur. The House of Commons responded to the slightest wishes of the king, and the greater number of the unpopular measures of the last reign were withdrawn by common consent. A great uproar arose in the House of Lords: the peers who had appealed against the Duke of Gloucester were summoned to exculpate themselves; all took their stand upon the wish of King Richard, upon the fear which he inspired, and upon the unanimous vote of the House. Recriminations poured down in every part; forty gauntlets were thrown upon the ground as challenges to combat. A weak and timid monarch would have taken alarm in the midst of this violent confusion: Henry IV. was enabled to calm the agitation. He divested the "lords appellant," as they were styled, of the titles which Richard had given to them as rewards; the Dukes of Albemarle, Surrey and Exeter, the Marquis of Dorset and the Earl of Gloucester, became once more the Earls of Rutland, Kent, Huntingdon, and Somerset, and Lord Le Despencer; but the new king wreaked no other vengeance upon them. The high treason law was restored to more limited and less vague formulae; appeals to the Houses in cases of treason were abolished, and the Parliament was forbidden to delegate its authority to a commission. The eldest son of the king was declared Prince of Wales, Duke of Guienne, Lancaster, and Cornwall, as well as heir presumptive to the throne. Henry was too prudent to again raise the question of the law of succession which he had so boldly disregarded: he did not wish his hereditary right to the throne to be discussed; he well knew that the little Earl of March, so carefully installed in Windsor Castle, was the real heir to the throne, as great-grand-son of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of John of Gaunt. The child was not nine years of age; the king caused him to be well brought up, as well as his brother, and neither was destined to recover his liberty during his lifetime; but their sister, soon afterwards married to the Earl of Cambridge, had transmitted to the House of York those rights or those pretensions which condemned England to half a century of civil war.