9. Richard's Foreign Policy. 1389—1396.—Richard's foreign policy was based upon a French alliance. In 1389 he made a truce with France for three years. Negotiations for a permanent peace were frustrated because the French would make no peace unless Calais were surrendered to them, and English feeling was against the surrender of the claims sanctioned by the Treaty of Bretigni. The truce was, however, prolonged from time to time, and in 1396, when Richard, who was by that time a widower, married Isabella, the daughter of Charles VI., a child of eight, it was prolonged for twenty-eight years. Wise as this policy was, it was distasteful to Englishmen, and their dissatisfaction rose when they learnt that Richard had surrendered Brest and Cherbourg to the French. It was true that these places had been pledged to him for money, and that he had only given them up as he was bound to do when the money was paid, but his subjects drew no fine distinctions, and fancied that he was equally ready to surrender Calais and Bordeaux.
10. Richard's Coup d'État. 1397.—Richard knew that Gloucester was ready to avail himself of any widespread dissatisfaction, and that he had recently been allying himself with Lancaster against him. To please Lancaster, who had married his mistress, Catherine Swynford, as his third wife, Richard had legitimatised the Beauforts, his children by her, for all purposes except the succession of the crown, thus giving personal offence to Gloucester. Lancaster's son Derby, and Nottingham, another of the lords appellant (see p. [279]), were now favourable to the king, and when rumours reached Richard that Gloucester was plotting against him, he resolved to anticipate the blow. He arrested the three of the lords appellant whom he still distrusted, Gloucester, Warwick, and Arundel, and charged them before Parliament, not with recent malpractices, of which he had probably no sufficient proof, but with the slaughter of his ministers in the days of the Merciless Parliament. Warwick was banished to the Isle of Man, Arundel was executed, and Gloucester imprisoned at Calais, where he was secretly murdered, as was generally believed by the order of the king. Archbishop Arundel, brother of the Earl of Arundel, was also banished. In such contradiction was this sudden outburst of violence to the prudence of Richard's recent conduct, that it has sometimes been supposed that, he had been dissimulating all the time. It is more probable that, without being actually insane, his mind had to some extent given way. He was always excitable, and in his better days his alertness of mind carried him forward to swift decisions, as when he met the mob at Smithfield, and when he vindicated his authority from the restraint of his uncle. Signs had not been wanting that his native energy was no longer balanced by the restraints of prudence. In 1394 he had actually struck Arundel in Westminster Abbey. In 1397 there was much to goad him to hasty and ill-considered action. The year before complaints had been raised against the extravagance of his household. The peace which he had given to his country was made the subject of bitter reproach against him, and he seems to have believed that Gloucester was plotting to bring him back into the servitude to which he had been subjected by the Commissioners of regency.
11. The Parliament of Shrewsbury. 1398.—Whether Richard was mad or not, he at all events acted like a madman. In 1398 he summoned a packed Parliament to Shrewsbury, which declared all the acts of the Merciless Parliament to be null and void, and announced that no restraint could legally be put on the king. It then delegated all parliamentary power to a committee of twelve lords and six commoners chosen from the king's friends. Richard was thus made an absolute ruler unbound by the necessity of gathering a Parliament again. He had freed himself not merely from turbulent lords but also from all constitutional restraints.
12. The Banishment of Hereford and Norfolk. 1398.—Richard had shown favour to the two lords appellant who had taken his side. Derby became Duke of Hereford, and Nottingham Duke of Norfolk. Before long Hereford came to the king with a strange tale. Norfolk, he said, had complained to him that the king still distrusted them, and had suggested that they should guard themselves against him. Norfolk denied the truth of the story, and Richard ordered the two to prove their truthfulness by a single combat at Coventry. When the pair met in the lists in full armour Richard stopped the fight, and to preserve peace, as he said, banished Norfolk for life and Hereford for ten years, a term which was soon reduced to six. There was something of the unwise cunning of a madman in the proceeding.
13. Richard's Despotism. 1398—1399.—Richard, freed from all control, was now, in every sense of the word, despotic. He extorted money without a semblance of right, and even compelled men to put their seals to blank promises to pay, which he could fill up with any sum he pleased. He too, like the lords, gathered round him a vast horde of retainers, who wore his badge and ill-treated his subjects at their pleasure. He threatened the Percies, the Earl of Northumberland and his son, Harry Hotspur, with exile, and sent them off discontented to their vast possessions in the North. Early in 1399 the Duke of Lancaster died. His son, the banished Hereford, was now Duke of Lancaster. Richard, however, seized the lands which ought to have descended to him from his father. Every man who had property to lose felt that Lancaster's cause was his own. Richard at this inopportune moment took occasion to sail to Ireland. He had been there once before in 1394 in the vain hope of protecting the English colonists (see p. [265]). His first expedition had been a miserable failure: his second expedition was cut short by bad news from England.