The cost and miseries incurred in England by those unsuccessful wars in France led to serious riots against the Government. It was then that Wat Tyler led his force of Kentish rebels to London, where only the courage of the king, a boy of fourteen, and the resistance of the militia of the town saved the city from the mob.
Twice towards the end of the century Richard, now the French treaty was arranged, found time to visit Ireland and claim the homage of the chiefs of the Irish clans, and it was while he was in Ireland, on the second of these expeditions, that his enemy, Henry, Earl of Bolingbroke, whom he had banished, came back to England and was joined by great forces in the country which had by now become disgusted with Richard's tyranny. For though Richard had shown extraordinary courage and manly wisdom as a boy, his later acts raise a doubt whether he was quite sane. In the last year of the century, 1399, Henry came to the throne as Henry IV.
Henry IV
It was a troublous succession. There was discontent and active rebellion of both lords and commons in England itself. Wales rose in arms against the king and was followed by Scotland. France threatened to renew the war. Gradually the king gained the victory over each of these various forces opposed to him. Wales and Scotland were subdued by arms. Against Scotland he had the help of the great Earl of Northumberland and his son famous in story as "Hotspur." Very shortly afterwards the power of Northumberland was brought into opposition to the king, but was overthrown in that battle which settled the Welsh trouble and, as Shakespeare relates to us, gave Henry, the king's son—soon to be Henry V.—the chance of distinguishing himself by killing "Hotspur" in single combat, and thus proving that he was made for better things than to be the boon companion of the drunken old knight Falstaff.
But with his own commons Henry IV. was able to make terms only by giving up a serious piece of what had been the royal privilege before. He agreed that the taxes raised to meet the expenses of the war should be received and paid out again by a committee appointed by the Parliament, and no longer by an official appointed by the king. The difference was of much importance for the liberties of the English subject.
As for the threat of war from France, that threat died away for the moment in consequence of an event which had a large effect on the course of the story during most of the fifteenth century. This event was the rise of the Duke of Burgundy to a power almost as great as that of the King of France himself, the Duke's feudal overlord.
Burgundy had for very many years been the name of a territory varying in extent, sometimes including portions of the present Italy and Switzerland, and always some of the most fertile and beautiful country in Europe. Towards the end of the fourteenth century it gained greatly in wealth and territory by uniting with itself the province of Flanders. This union came about through the marriage of the heiress of the Count of Flanders with a Duke of Burgundy. The province of Flanders included, as we have seen, semi-independent and wealthy cities such as Bruges and Ghent. Its addition to the dukedom of Burgundy made that chief vassal fully equal in possession of territory and resources with his overlord, the King of France. The story of the next many years in Europe is largely the story of the struggle between this great vassal and his lord. Possibly it was a struggle which saved our England, for England was very wearied and weakened by foreign war; she was full of discontent at home; her fleet had been beaten and broken up. If her old enemy of France had been able to attack her with any united force at this moment, it would have been hard for her to make head against it.
The threat of Burgundy gave the French king business to attend to nearer home. Unfortunately it also gave England an easy opportunity of vexing her ancient enemy by lending her aid to the Duke.