A vigorous opposition to the dominant faction was formed. At its head was the Black Prince. Hardly less important and much more active than the dying hero of Poitiers was Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, the husband of Philippa of Clarence, and the father of the little Roger Mortimer whom nothing but the uncertain lives of the Prince of Wales and the sickly Richard of Bordeaux separated from the English throne. Hereditary antagonism accentuated incompatibility of personal interests. The ancient feuds of the houses of Mortimer and Lancaster still lived on in the hostility of their representatives. The understanding between the Prince of Wales and the Earl of March seems to have been complete. They had as their most powerful supporters the outraged dignitaries of the Church, who saw themselves kept out of office and threatened in their temporalities by the dominant faction. William of Wykeham, who had been the guardian of the Earl of March during his long minority, was the most experienced and wary of the clerical opposition to the lawyers and courtiers of the Lancaster faction. He had an eager and enthusiastic backer in the young and high-born Bishop of London, William Courtenay, the son of the Earl of Devon, and through his mother, Margaret Bohun, a great-grandson of Edward I. Office and descent combined to make Bishop Courtenay the custodian of the constitutional tradition, which was equally strong among the great baronial houses of ancient descent and such highly placed ecclesiastics as were zealous for the nation as well as for their order. His support was the more necessary since Simon of Sudbury, who in 1375 succeeded Whittlesea on the throne of St. Augustine, was a weak and time-serving politician.
The storm, which had long been brewing, burst at last in the parliament of April, 1376. Of the acts of this memorable assembly, famous as the Good Parliament, and of the other concluding troubles of the reign we are fortunate in possessing not only copious official records, but a minute and highly dramatic account from the pen of a St. Alban's monk, who, alone of the monastic chroniclers of his age, represented the spirit which, in the days of Matthew Paris, made the great Hertfordshire abbey so famous a school of historiography.[1]
[1] Chron. Angliæ, 1328-88, ed. E.M. Thompson (Rolls Ser.). Compare Mr. S. Armitage-Smith's John of Gaunt for an unfavourable estimate of its value.
The Good Parliament showed from the beginning a strong animosity against the courtiers. The time was not yet come when the commons could take the initiative, or supply leaders from its own ranks, and even among the commons capacity was unequally divided. Authority and influence were exclusively with the knights of the shire, and the citizens and burgesses were content to allow the country gentry to speak and act in their name. The knights of the shire demanded that, in accordance with the precedent of 1373, a committee of magnates should be associated with them in determining the policy to be adopted. The lords spiritual and temporal were as eager as the knights to attack the government, and a committee, of which the leading spirits included the Earl of March and the Bishop of London, supplied the element of direction and initiation in which the commons were lacking. The resolution which prevailed was shown by the estates agreeing to make no grant until grievances had been redressed, and by the choice of Sir Peter de la Mare as spokesman of the commons before the king. Sir Peter was elected, we are told, because he possessed abundant wisdom and eloquence, and enough boldness to say what was in his mind, regardless of the good-will of the great. Perhaps a further and more weighty reason was that he was steward of the Earl of March. He was the first person to hold an office indistinguishable in all essentials from that of the later Speaker. Under his guidance the commons worked out an elaborate policy of revenge and reform. The contempt with which John of Gaunt and the courtiers had at first regarded their action, gave place to fear. The duke found it prudent to stand aside, while a clean sweep of the administration was made.
Charges were brought against the leading ministers of state, after a fashion in which the constitutional historian sees the beginnings of the process of the removal of great offenders by impeachment. Lord Latimer was the first victim. He had appropriated the king's money to his own uses; he had shown remissness and treachery during the last campaign in Brittany; he had taken bribes; he was, in a word, "useless to king and kingdom". His fate was promptly shared by Lyons, the London merchant, the accomplice of his frauds, who had availed himself of his court influence to make a "corner" in nearly all imported articles, to the impoverishment of the common people and the disorganisation of trade. Lord Neville, whose eager partisanship of Latimer had led him to insult Sir Peter de la Mare, was threatened with similar proceedings. Even Alice Perrers was attacked, though, says the chronicler, the natural affection of Englishmen for their king was so great that they were slow to molest the lady whom the king loved. However, Alice's unblushing interference with the course of justice, her appearance in the courts at Westminster, sitting on the judges' bench, clamouring for the condemnation of her enemies and the acquittal of her friends, roused the knights of the shire to action. An ordinance against women being allowed to practise in the law courts was made the pretext for her removal from court, and Alice, fearful that worse might happen, took oath that she would have no further dealings with the king. Meantime Latimer and Lyons were condemned to forfeiture and imprisonment.
In the midst of these proceedings the knights lost their strongest support by the death of the Black Prince on June 8. John of Gaunt at once went down to the house of commons, and boldly suggested that the English should follow the example of the French and allow no woman to become heiress of the kingdom. This was a direct assertion of his own claims to stand next to the throne after Richard of Bordeaux, and before Roger Mortimer. Alarmed at the blow thus levelled against their chief remaining champion, the knights courageously held to their position. "The king," said they, "though old is still healthy, and may outlive us all. Moreover he has an heir in the ten-year-old prince Richard. While these are alive there is no need to discuss the question of the succession." They completed the drawing up of the long list of petitions, whose grudging and partial acceptance by the crown made the roll of the parliament of 1376 memorable as asserting principles, if not as vindicating practical ends. They forced Lancaster to agree to a council of twelve peers nominated in parliament to act as a standing committee of advisers, without which the king might do nothing of any importance. After this revival of the methods of the Mad Parliament and the lords ordainers, the Good Parliament separated on July 6. It had sat longer than any previous parliament of which there is record. It had persevered to the end in the teeth of discouragements of all kinds, and, even after his brother's death, Duke John dared not lift up his hand against it so long as the session continued.
When the estates separated Lancaster threw off the mask. The king, sunk in extreme dotage, was entirely in the hands of his unscrupulous son. The old man was kept quiet by the return of Alice Perrers to court. She had sworn on the rood never to see the king again, but the prelates were "like dumb dogs unable to bark" against her; and no effort was made to prosecute her for perjury. Latimer and Lyons returned from their luxurious imprisonment in the Tower to their places at court. The duke roundly declared that the late parliament was no parliament at all. No statute was based upon its petitions, the council of twelve was rudely dissolved, and Sir Peter de la Mare was imprisoned in Nottingham castle. William of Wykeham was deprived of his temporalities, and the rumour spread that his disgrace was due to his possession of a state secret, revealed to him by the dying queen Philippa, that John of Gaunt was no true son of the royal pair but a changeling. So timid was the disgraced bishop that he vied with the weak primate in his subserviency to Alice. The Earl of March, who was marshal of England, was ordered to inspect the fortresses beyond sea, whereupon, fearing a plot to assassinate him, he resigned his office, "preferring," says a friend, "to lose his marshal's staff rather than his life". The powerful north-country lord, Henry Percy, who had hitherto acted with the opposition, was bribed by the office of marshal to join the Lancastrian party.
Grave difficulties still beset the government, and in January, 1377, John of Gaunt had to face another parliament. Every precaution was taken to pack the commons with his partisans. Of the knights of the shire of the Good Parliament only eight were members of its successor,[1] while in the place of the imprisoned De la Mare, Sir Thomas Hungerford, steward of the Duke of Lancaster, was chosen Speaker, on this occasion by that very name. A packed committee of lords was assigned to advise the commons. In these circumstances it was not difficult to procure the reversal of the acts against Alice Perrers and Latimer, and the grant of a poll tax of a groat a head. The only measure of conciliation was a general pardon, a pretext for which was found in the jubilee of the king's accession. From this William of Wykeham was expressly excepted.
[1] Return of Members of Parliament, pt. i., 193-97; Chron. Angliæ, p. 112, understates the case.
The convocation of Canterbury proved less accommodating than the parliament. Under the able leadership of Bishop Courtenay, it took up the cause of the Bishop of Winchester, refused to join in a grant of money until he had taken his place in convocation, and, triumphing at last over the time-serving of Sudbury and the hesitation of Wykeham himself, persuaded the bishop to join their deliberations. Lancaster met the opposition of convocation by calling to his aid the Oxford doctor whom the clergy had already begun to look upon as the enemy of the privileges of their order. Wycliffe was not as yet under suspicion of direct dogmatic heresy. He had not yet clothed himself in the armour of his Balliol predecessor, Fitzralph, to wage war against the mendicant orders. But he had already formulated his theory that dominion was founded on grace, had declared that the pope had no right to excommunicate any one, or if he had that any simple priest could absolve the culprit from his sentence, and he had shown a hatred so bitter of clerical worldliness and clerical property that he was looked upon as the special enemy of the great land-holding prelates and of the "possessioner" monks, whose lands, he maintained, could be resumed by the representatives of the donors at their will. The strenuous advocate for reducing the clergy to apostolic poverty was not likely to find favour among the prelates. Wycliffe's only clerical supporters at this stage were the mendicant friars, from whose characteristic opinions as regards "evangelical poverty" he never at any time swerved.[1] He was, however, eloquent and zealous, and he had a following. Fear either of Wycliffe or of his mendicant allies forced the bishops to take decisive action. Even Sudbury awoke, "as from deep sleep".[2] The duke's dangerous supporter was summoned to answer before the bishops at St. Paul's.