The Maid of    John, the Red                  1306-1329
         Norway          Comyn]

[Illustration: Cross erected near Northampton by Edward I. in memory
of Queen Eleanor built between 1291 and 1294.]

10. =Disputes with Scotland and France. 1293--1295.=--The new king of
Scotland did homage to Edward for his whole kingdom. If Edward could
have contented himself with enforcing the ordinary obligations of
feudal superiority all might have gone well. Unfortunately for all
parties, he attempted to stretch them by insisting in =1293= that
appeals from the courts of the king of Scotland should lie to the
courts of the king of England. Suitors found that their rights could
not be ascertained till they had undertaken a long and costly journey
to Westminster. A national feeling of resistance was roused amongst
the Scots, and though Edward pressed his claims courteously, he
continued to press them. A temper grew up in Scotland which might be
dangerous to him if Scotland could find an ally, and an ally was not
long in presenting himself. Philip IV. now king of France, was as wily
and unscrupulous as Philip II. had been in the days of John. Edward
was his vassal in Guienne and Gascony, and Philip knew how to turn the
feudal relationship to account in France as well as Edward knew how to
turn it to account in Scotland. The Cinque Ports[16] along the
south-eastern shore of England swarmed with hardy and practised
mariners, and there had often been sea-fights between French and
English sailors quite independently of the two kings. In =1293= there
was a great battle in which the French were worsted. Though Edward was
ready to punish the offenders, Philip summoned him to appear as a
vassal before his lord's court at Paris. In =1294=, however, an
agreement was made between the two kings. Edward was for mere form's
sake to surrender his French fortresses to Philip in token of
submission, and Philip was then to return them. Philip, having thus
got the fortresses into his hands, refused to return them. In =1295= a
league was made between France and Scotland, which lasted for more
than three hundred years. Its permanence was owing to the fact that it
was a league between nations more than a league between kings.

    [Footnote 16: Sandwich, Dover, Hythe, Romney, Hastings; to which
    were added Winchelsea and Rye as 'ancient towns,' besides several
    'limbs' or dependencies.]

11. =The Model Parliament. 1295.=--Edward, attacked on two sides,
threw himself for support on the English nation. Towards the end of
=1295= he summoned a Parliament which was in most respects the model
for all succeeding Parliaments. It was attended not only by bishops,
abbots, earls, and barons, by two knights from every shire, and two
burgesses from every borough, but also by representatives of the
chapters of cathedrals and of the parochial clergy. It cannot be said
with any approach to certainty, whether the Parliament thus collected
met in one House or not. As, however, the barons and knights offered
an eleventh of the value of their movable goods, the clergy a tenth,
and the burgesses a seventh, it is not unlikely that there was a
separation into what in modern times would be called three Houses, at
least for purposes of taxation. At all events, the representatives of
the clergy subsequently refused to sit in Parliament, preferring to
vote money to the Crown in their own convocations.

[Illustration: Sir John d'Abernoun, died 1277: from his brass at Stoke
Dabernon: showing armour worn from about 1250 to 1300.]

12. =The first Conquest of Scotland. 1296.=--In =1296= Edward turned
first upon Scotland. After he crossed the border Balliol sent to him
renouncing his homage. "Has the felon fool done such folly?" said
Edward. "If he will not come to us, we will go to him." He won a
decisive victory over the Scots at Dunbar. Balliol surrendered his
crown, and was carried off, never to reappear in Scotland. Edward set
up no more vassal kings. He declared himself to be the immediate king
of Scotland, Balliol having forfeited the crown by treason. The
Scottish nobles did homage to him. On his return to England he left
behind him the Earl of Surrey and Sir Hugh Cressingham as guardians of
the kingdom, and he carried off from Scone the stone of destiny on
which the Scottish kings had been crowned, and concerning which there
had been an old prophecy to the effect that wherever that stone was
Scottish kings should rule. The stone was placed, where it still
remains, under the coronation-chair of the English kings in
Westminster Abbey, and there were those long afterwards who deemed the
prophecy fulfilled when the Scottish King James VI. came to take his
seat on that chair as James I. of England.

13. =The Resistance of Archbishop Winchelsey. 1296--1297.=--The
dispute with France and the conquest of Scotland cost much money, and
Edward, finding his ordinary revenue insufficient, had been driven to
increase it by unusual means. He gathered assemblies of the merchants,
and persuaded them without the leave of Parliament to increase the
export duties, and he also induced the clergy in the same way to grant
him large sums. The clergy were the first to resist. In =1296=
Boniface VIII., a Pope who pushed to the extreme the Papal claims to
the independence of the Church, issued the Bull, _Clericis laicos_, in
which he declared that the clergy were not to pay taxes without the
Pope's consent; and when at the end of the year Edward called on his
Parliament to grant him fresh sums, Winchelsey, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, refused, on the ground of this Bull, to allow a penny to
be levied from the clergy. Edward, instead of arguing with him,
directed the chief justice of the King's Bench to announce that, as
the clergy would pay no taxes, they would no longer be protected by
the king. The clergy now found themselves in evil case. Anyone who
pleased could rob them or beat them, and no redress was to be had.
They soon therefore evaded their obligation to obey the Bull, and paid
their taxes, under the pretence that they were making presents to the
king, on which Edward again opened his courts to them. In the days of
Henry I. or Henry II. it would not have been possible to treat the
clergy in this fashion. The fact was, that the mass of the people now
looked to the king instead of to the Church for protection, and
therefore respected the clergy less than they had done in earlier
days.

14. =The 'Confirmatio Cartarum.' 1297.=--In =1297= Edward, having
subdued the Scots in the preceding year, resolved to conduct one army
to Flanders, and to send another to Gascony to maintain his rights
against Philip IV. He therefore called on his barons to take part in
these enterprises. Amongst those ordered to go to Gascony were Roger
Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, and Humfrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford. They
declared that they were only bound to follow the king himself, and
that as Edward was not going in person to Gascony they would not go.
"By God, Sir Earl," said the king to one of them, "you shall either go
or hang." "By God," was the reply, "I will neither go nor hang." The
two earls soon found support. The barons were sore because Edward's
reforms had diminished their authority. The clergy were sore because
of their recent treatment. The merchants were sore because of the
exactions to which they had been subjected. Archbishop Winchelsey
bound the malcontents together by asking Edward to confirm _Magna
Carta_ and other charters granted by his predecessors, and by adding
other articles now proposed for the first time, so as to preclude him
from demanding taxes not granted by Parliament. Edward found that the
new articles restricted his action more than it had been restricted by
the older charters. He was deeply vexed, as he thought that he
deserved to be trusted, and that, though he had exacted illegal
payments, he had only done so out of necessity. He saw, however, that
he must yield, but he could not bring himself to yield in person, and
he therefore crossed the sea to Flanders, leaving the Prince of Wales
to make the required concession. On October 10, =1297=, the
_Confirmatio Cartarum_, as it was called, was issued in the king's
name. It differed from _Magna Carta_ in this, that whereas John had
only engaged not to exact feudal revenue from his vassals without
consent of Parliament, Edward I. also engaged not to exact customs
duties without a Parliamentary grant. From that time no general
revenue could be taken from the whole realm without a breach of the
law, though the king still continued for some time to raise tallages,
or special payments, from the tenants of his own demesne lands.

15. =Wallace's Rising. 1297--1304.=--Whilst Edward was contending with
his own people his officers had been oppressing the Scots. They had
treated Scotland as a conquered land, not as a country joined to
England by equal union. Resistance began in =1297=, and a rising was
headed by Wallace, a gentleman of moderate fortune in the western
lowlands. Wallace's bold and vigorous attacks gained him the
confidence of the lesser gentry and the people, though the nobles,
mostly of Norman descent, supported the English government, and only
joined Wallace when it was dangerous to stand aloof. In the autumn, an
English army advancing into Scotland reached the south bank of the
Forth near Stirling. Wallace, who showed on that day that he was
skilful as well as brave, drew up his army on the north bank at some
little distance from the narrow bridge over which the English must
come if they were to attack him. When half of them had crossed, he
fell upon that half before the troops in the rear could advance to its
succour. Wallace's victory was complete, and he then invaded England,
ravaging and slaughtering as far as Hexham.

16. =The Second Conquest of Scotland. 1298--1304.=--In =1298= Edward,
who had been unsuccessful on the Continent, made a truce with Philip.
Returning to England, he marched against Wallace, and came up with
him at Falkirk. The battle which ensued, like William's victory at
Senlac (see p. 96), was a triumph of inventive military skill over
valour content to rest upon ancient methods. The Scots were hardy
footmen, drawn up in three rings, and provided with long spears.
Against such a force so armed the cavalry of the feudal array would
dash itself in vain. Edward, however, had marked in his Welsh wars the
superiority of the long-bow drawn to the ear--not, as in the case of
the shorter bows of older times, to the breast of the archer--and
sending its cloth-yard shaft with a strength and swiftness hitherto
unknown. He now brought with him a large force of bowmen equipped in
this fashion. At Falkirk the long-bow was tried for the first time in
any considerable battle. The effect was overwhelming: a shower of
arrows poured upon a single point in the ring of the spearmen soon
cleared a gap. Edward's cavalry dashed in before the enemy had time to
close, and the victory was won. Wallace had had scarcely one of the
Scottish nobles with him either at Stirling or at Falkirk, and unless
all Scotland combined he could hardly be expected to succeed against
such a warrior as Edward. Wallace's merit was that he did not despair
of his country, and that by his patriotic vigour he prepared the minds
of Scotsmen for a happier day. He himself fled to France, but Scotland
struggled on without him. Some of the nobles, now that Wallace was no
longer present to give them cause of jealousy, took part in the
resistance, and only in =1304= did Edward after repeated campaigns
complete his second conquest of the country.

17. =The Incorporation of Scotland with England. 1305.=--In =1305=
Wallace, who had returned from France, but had taken no great part in
the late resistance, was betrayed to the English. His barbarity in his
raid on Northumberland in =1297= (see p. 221) had marked him out for
vengeance, and he was executed at Tyburn as a traitor to the English
king of Scotland, whose right he had never acknowledged. Edward then
proceeded to incorporate Scotland with England. Scotland was to be
treated very much as Wales had been treated before. There was to be as
little harshness as possible. Nobles who had resisted Edward were to
keep their estates on payment of fines, the Scottish law was to be
observed, and Scots were to be chosen to represent the wishes of their
fellow-countrymen in the Parliament at Westminster. On the other hand,
the Scottish nobles were to surrender their castles, and the country
was to be governed by an English Lieutenant, who, together with his
council, had power to amend the laws.

18. =Character of Edward's Dealings with Scotland.=--Edward's
dealings with Scotland, mistaken as they were, were not those of a
self-willed tyrant. If it be once admitted that he was really the lord
paramount of Scotland, everything that he did may be justified upon
feudal principles. First, Balliol forfeited his vassal crown by
breaking his obligations as a vassal. Secondly, Edward, through the
default of his vassal, took possession of the fief which Balliol had
forfeited, and thus became the immediate lord of Balliol's vassals.
Thirdly, those vassals rebelled--so at least Edward would have
said--against their new lord. Fourthly, they thereby forfeited their
estates to him, and he was therefore, according to his own view, in
the right in restoring their estates to them--if he restored them at
all--under new conditions. Satisfactory as this argument must have
seemed to Edward, it was weak in two places. The Scots might attack it
at its basis by retorting that Edward had never truly been lord
paramount of Scotland at all; or they might assert that it did not
matter whether he was so or not, because the Scottish right to
national independence was superior to all feudal claims. It is this
latter argument which has the most weight at the present day, and it
seems to us strange that Edward, who had done so much to encourage the
national growth of England, should have entirely ignored the national
growth of Scotland. All that can be said to palliate Edward's mistake
is that it was, at first, difficult to perceive that there was a
Scottish nationality at all. Changes in the political aspect of
affairs grow up unobserved, and it was not till after his death that
all classes in Scotland were completely welded together in resistance
to an English king. At all events, if he treated the claim of the
Scots to national independence with contempt, he at least strove,
according to his own notions, to benefit Scots and English alike. He
hoped that one nation, justly ruled under one government, would grow
up in the place of two divided peoples.

19. =Robert Bruce. 1306.=--It was better even for England that
Edward's hopes should fail. Scotland would have been of little worth
to its more powerful neighbour if it had been cowed into subjection;
whereas when, after struggling and suffering for her independence, she
offered herself freely as the companion and ally of England to share
in common duties and common efforts, the gift was priceless. That
Scotland was able to shake off the English yoke was mainly the work of
Robert Bruce, the grandson of the Robert Bruce who had been one of the
claimants of the Scottish crown at Norham. The Bruces, like Balliol,
were of Norman descent, and as Balliol's rivals they had attached
themselves to Edward. The time was now come when all chances of
Balliol's restoration were at an end, and thoughts of gaining the
crown stirred in the mind of the younger Bruce. After Edward's last
settlement of Scotland it was plain that there was no longer room for
a Scottish vassal king, and Bruce was therefore driven to connect his
own aspirations with those of the Scottish nation. He had, however,
one powerful rival amongst the nobles. John Comyn--the Red Comyn, as
he was called--had been one of the many claimants of the throne who
appeared before Edward at Norham, and he still looked with a jealous
eye upon all who disputed his title. He was, however, persuaded in
=1306= to meet Bruce in the Grey Friars Church at Dumfries. As Bruce
pleaded his own right to the crown, Comyn denounced him as a traitor
to Edward. Bruce answered by driving his dagger into him. "I doubt,"
cried Bruce, as he rushed from the church, "that I have slain the Red
Comyn." "I will mak sicker" (_make sure_), said Kirkpatrick, who was
in attendance upon him, and, going in, completed the murder. Bruce
made for Scone and was crowned king of Scotland in the presence of
many of the chief nobility.

20. =Edward's Last March on Scotland and Death. 1306--1307.= Edward,
to whom Bruce was but a rebel and a murderer, despatched against him
the Earl of Pembroke who routed his forces at Methven. The revolt was
suppressed and Bruce's supporters were carried off to English prisons,
and their lands divided amongst English noblemen. The Countess of
Buchan, who had taken a prominent part in Bruce's coronation, was
subjected to an imprisonment of great severity in the castle of
Berwick. Bruce almost alone escaped. He knew now that he had the
greater part of the nobility as well as the people at his side, and
even in his lonely wanderings and hairbreadth escapes he was, what
neither Balliol nor Wallace had been, the true head of the Scottish
nation. Before the end of =1306= he reappeared in Carrick, where his
own possessions lay, and where the whole population was on his side,
and inflicted heavy losses on the English garrisons. Early in July
=1307= Edward, who himself had tarried in Cumberland, once more set
out to take the field in person; but he was now old and worn out, and
he died at Burgh on Sands, a few miles on the English side of the
border.

[Illustration: Edward II.; from his monument in Gloucester Cathedral.]

21. =Edward II. and Piers Gaveston. 1307--1312.=--The new king, Edward
II., was as different as possible from his father. He was not wicked,
like William II. and John, but he detested the trouble of public
business, and thought that the only advantage of being a king was that
he would have leisure to amuse himself. During his father's life he
devoted himself to Piers Gaveston, a Gascon, who encouraged him in
his pleasures and taught him to mistrust his father. Edward I.
banished Gaveston; Edward II., immediately on his accession, not only
recalled him, but made him regent when he himself crossed to France to
be married to Isabella, the daughter of Philip IV. The barons, who
were already inclined to win back some of the authority of which
Edward I. had deprived them, were very angry at the place taken over
their heads by an upstart favourite, especially as Gaveston was
ill-bred enough to make jests at their expense. The barons found a
leader in Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, the son of that Edmund, the
brother of Edward I., who had received the title of king of Sicily
from the Pope (see p. 197). Thomas of Lancaster had very large
estates. He was an ambitious man, who tried to play the part which had
been played by Earl Simon without any of Simon's qualifications for
the position. In =1308= the king yielded to the barons so far as to
send Gaveston out of the country to Ireland as his Lieutenant. In
=1309= he recalled him. The barons were exasperated, and in the
Parliament of =1310= they brought forward a plan for taking the
king's government out of his hands, very much after the fashion of the
Provisions of Oxford. Twenty-one barons were appointed Lords
Ordainers, to draw up ordinances for the government of the country. In
=1311= they produced the ordinances. Gaveston was to be banished for
life. The king was to appoint officers only with the consent of the
barons, without which he was not to go to war nor leave the kingdom.
The ordinances may have been justified in so far as they restrained
the authority of a king so incapable as Edward II. Constitutionally
their acceptance was a retrograde step, as, like the Provisions of
Oxford, they placed power in the hands of the barons, passing over
Parliament as a whole. Edward agreed to the ordinances, but refused to
surrender Gaveston. The barons took arms to enforce their will, and in
=1312=, having captured Gaveston, they beheaded him near Warwick
without the semblance of a trial.

22. =Success of Robert Bruce. 1307--1314.=--Whilst Edward and the
barons were disputing Bruce gained ground rapidly. In =1313= Stirling
was the only fortress of importance in Scotland still garrisoned by
the English, and the English garrison bound itself to surrender on
June 24, =1314=, if it had not been previously relieved. Even Edward
II. was stirred by this doleful news, and in =1314= he put himself at
the head of an army to relieve Stirling. Lancaster, however, and all
whom he could influence refused to follow him, on the ground that the
king had not, in accordance with the ordinances, received permission
from the barons to go to war. On June 24 Edward reached Bannockburn,
within sight of Stirling. Like his father, he brought with him English
archers as well as English horsemen, but he foolishly sent his archers
far in advance of his horsemen, where they would be entirely
unprotected. Bruce, on the other hand, not only had a small body of
horse, which rode down the archers, but he strengthened the defensive
position of his spearmen by digging pits in front of his line and
covering them with turf. Into these pits the foremost horses of the
English cavalry plunged. Edward's whole array was soon one mass of
confusion, and before it could recover itself a body of gillies, or
camp-followers, appearing over a hill was taken for a fresh Scottish
army. The vast English host turned and fled. Stirling at once
surrendered, and all Scotland was lost to Edward. Materially, both
England and Scotland suffered grievously from the result of the battle
of Bannockburn. English invasions of southern Scotland and Scottish
invasions of northern England spread desolation far and wide, stifling
the germs of nascent civilisation. Morally, both nations were in the
end the gainers. The hardihood and self-reliance of the Scottish
character is distinctly to be traced to those years of struggle
against a powerful neighbour. England, too, was the better for being
balked of its prey. No nation can suppress the liberty of another
without endangering its own.

[Illustration: Lincoln Cathedral--the central tower; built about
1310.]

23. =Lancaster's Government. 1314--1322.=--Edward was thrown by his
defeat entirely under the power of Lancaster, who took the whole
authority into his hands and placed and displaced ministers at his
pleasure. Lancaster, however, was a selfish and incompetent ruler. He
allowed the Scots to ravage the north of England without venturing to
oppose them, and as he could not even keep order at home, private wars
broke out amongst the barons. In =1318= Bruce took Berwick, the great
border fortress against Scotland. It was rather by good luck than by
good management that Edward was at last able to resist Lancaster.
Edward could not exist without a personal favourite, and he found one
in Hugh le Despenser. Despenser was at least an Englishman, which
Gaveston had not been, and his father, Hugh le Despenser the elder,
did his best to raise up a party to support the king. In =1321=,
however, Parliament, under Lancaster's influence, declared against
them and sentenced them to exile. Edward took arms for his favourites,
and in =1322= defeated Lancaster at Boroughbridge, and then had him
tried and beheaded at Pontefract.

24. =A Constitutional Settlement. 1322.=--Favourites as they were, the
Despensers had at least the merit of seeing that the king could not
overpower the barons by the mere assertion of his personal authority.
At a Parliament held at York in =1322=, the king obtained the
revocation of the ordinances, and a declaration that 'matters to be
established for the estate of our lord the king and of his heirs, and
for the estate of the realm and of the people, shall be treated,
accorded, and established in Parliaments by our lord the king, and by
the consent of the prelates, earls and barons, and commonalty of the
realm, according as hath been hitherto accustomed.' Edward I. had in
=1295= gathered a full Parliament, including the commons. But there
was no law to prevent him or his successors excluding the commons on
some future occasion. Edward II. by this declaration, issued with
consent of Parliament, confirmed his father's practice by a
legislative act. Unless the law were broken or repealed, no future
statute could come into existence without the consent of the commons.

25. =The Rule of the Despensers. 1322--1326.=--For some years after
the execution of Lancaster, Edward, or rather the Despensers, retained
power, but it was power which did not work for good. In =1323= Edward
made a truce with Scotland, but the cessation of foreign war did not
bring with it a cessation of troubles at home. Edward was entirely
unable to control his favourites. The elder Despenser was covetous and
the younger Despenser haughty, and they both made enemies for
themselves and the king. Queen Isabella was alienated from her
husband, partly by his exclusive devotion to the Despensers and partly
by the contempt which an active woman is apt to feel for a husband
without a will of his own. In =1325= she went to France, and was soon
followed by her eldest son, named Edward after his father. From that
moment she conspired against her husband. In =1326= she landed,
accompanied by her paramour, Robert Mortimer, and bringing with her
foreign troops. The barons rose in her favour. London joined them, and
all resistance was speedily beaten down. The elder Despenser was
hanged by the queen at Bristol. The younger was hanged, after a form
of trial, at Hereford.

[Illustration: Sir John de Creke; from his brass at Westley Waterless,
Cambridgeshire: showing armour worn between 1300 and 1335 or 1340.
Date, about 1325.]

26. =The Deposition and Murder of Edward II. 1327.=--Early in =1327= a
Parliament met at Westminster. It was filled with the king's enemies,
and under pressure from the queen and Mortimer Edward II. was
compelled to sign a declaration of his own wrong-doing and
incompetency, after which he formally resigned the crown. He was
allowed to live for eight months, at the end of which he was brutally
murdered in Berkeley Castle. The deposition of Edward II.--for his
enforced resignation was practically nothing less than that--was the
work of a faithless wife and of unscrupulous partisans, but at least
they clothed their vengeance in the forms of Parliamentary action. It
was by the action of Parliament in loosing the feudal ties by which
vassals were bound to an unworthy king, that it rose to the full
position of being the representative of the nation, and at the same
time virtually proclaimed that the wants of the nation must be
satisfied at the expense of the feudal claims of the king. The
national headship of the king would from henceforward be the
distinguishing feature of his office, whilst his feudal right to
personal service would grow less and less important every year.

[Illustration: Howden Church, Yorkshire--the west front; built about
1310-1320. The tower was built between 1390 and 1407.]

CHAPTER XV.

FROM THE ACCESSION OF EDWARD III. TO THE TREATY OF BRETIGNI.

1327--1360.

LEADING DATES

Reign of Edward III.,   1327--1377

  Accession of Edward III.                                        1327
  Beginning of the War with France                                1337
  Battle of Creçy                                                 1346
  The Black Death                                                 1348
  Battle of Poitiers                                              1356
  Treaty of Bretigni                                              1360

1. =Mortimer's Government. 1327--1330.=--Edward III. was only fifteen
at his accession. For three years power was in the hands of his
mother's paramour, Mortimer. Robert Bruce, though old and smitten with
leprosy, was still anxious to wring from England an acknowledgment of
Scottish independence, and, in spite of the existing truce, sent an
army to ravage the northern counties of England. Edward led in person
against it an English force far superior in numbers and equipment; but
the English soldier needed many things, whilst the Scot contented
himself with a little oatmeal carried on the back of his hardy pony.
If he grew tired of that he had but to seize an English sheep or cow
and to boil the flesh in the hide. Such an army was difficult to come
up with. Fighting there was none, except once when the Scots broke
into the English camp at night and almost succeeded in carrying off
the young king. Mortimer was at his wits' end, and in =1328= agreed to
a treaty acknowledging the complete independence of Scotland. It was a
wise thing to do, but no nation likes to acknowledge failure, and
Mortimer became widely unpopular. He succeeded indeed in breaking up a
conspiracy against himself, and in =1330= even executed Edmund, Earl
of Kent, a brother of Edward II. The discontented barons found another
leader in the king, who, young as he was, had been married at fifteen
to Philippa of Hainault. Though he was already a father, he was still
treated by Mortimer as a child, and was virtually kept a prisoner. At
Nottingham he introduced a body of Mortimer's enemies into the castle
through a secret passage in the rock on which it stood. His mother
pleaded in vain for her favourite: "Fair son, have pity on the gentle
Mortimer." Mortimer was hanged, and Queen Isabella was never again
allowed to take part in public affairs.

2. =The French Succession. 1328--1331.=--Isabella's three brothers,
Louis X., Philip V., and Charles IV., had successively reigned in
France. Louis X. died in =1316=, leaving behind him a daughter and a
posthumous son, who died a week after his birth. Then Philip V. seized
the crown, his lawyers asserting that, according to the Salic law, 'no
part of the heritage of Salic land can fall to a woman,' and that
therefore no woman could rule in France. As a matter of fact this was
a mere quibble of the lawyers. The Salic law had been the law of the
Salian Franks in the fifth century, and had to do with the inheritance
of estates, not with the inheritance of the throne of France, which
was not at that time in existence. The quibble, however, was used on
the right side. What Frenchmen wanted was that France should remain an
independent nation, which it was not likely to do under a queen who
might marry the king of another country. The rule thus laid down was
permanently adopted in France. When Philip V. died in =1322= the
throne passed, not to his daughter, but to his brother, Charles IV.,
and when Charles died in =1328=, to his cousin, Philip of Valois, who
reigned as Philip VI. At that time England was still under the control
of Mortimer and Isabella, and though Isabella, being the sister of
Charles IV., thought of claiming the crown, not for herself, but for
her son, Mortimer did not press the claim. In =1329= he sent Edward to
do homage to Philip VI. for his French possessions, but Edward only
did it with certain reservations, and in =1330= preparations for war
were made in England. In =1331=, after Mortimer's fall, when Edward
was his own master, he again visited France, and a treaty was
concluded between the two kings in which he abandoned the reservations
on his homage.

[Illustration: Effigies of Edward III. and Queen Philippa; from their
tombs in Westminster Abbey.]

3. =Troubles in Scotland. 1329--1336.=--On his return, Edward looked
in another direction. In =1329= Robert Bruce died, leaving his crown
to his son, David II., a child five years old. Certain English
noblemen had in the late treaty (see p. 231) been promised restoration
of the estates of their ancestors in Scotland, and in =1332= some of
them, finding the promise unfulfilled, offered English forces to John
Balliol's son, Edward, to help him to the Scottish crown. Aided by
his English allies, Edward Balliol landed in Scotland, defeated the
Scottish army at Dupplin, and was crowned king. Before the end of the
year he was surprised at Annan, and fled to England to appeal to
Edward for help. Though Edward had all the love of enterprise of his
grandfather, Edward I., yet there was a marked contrast between the
deliberate calculation of Edward I. and the almost accidental way in
which Edward III. involved himself in an attempt to regain the
lordship of Scotland. In =1333= he laid siege to Berwick, then in the
hands of the Scots. The Scots advanced into England, and their
spearmen crossed a marsh to attack the English array of knights and
archers posted on the slope of Halidon Hill. The arrows poured like
rain on their struggling columns. The Scots were thrown into
confusion, and their whole army was almost destroyed. Berwick was
regained, and Bannockburn, it seemed, was avenged. Edward not only set
up Balliol as his vassal, but compelled him to yield all Scotland
south of the Forth to be annexed to England. Such a settlement could
not last. Balliol was as weak as his father had been, and the Scots,
recovering courage, drove him out in =1334=. Edward invaded Scotland
again and again. As long as he was in the country he was strong enough
to keep his puppet on the throne, but whenever he returned to England
David Bruce's supporters regained strength. The struggle promised to
be lengthy unless help came to the Scots.

4. =Dispute with France. 1336--1337.=--Philip VI., like Philip IV. in
the days of Edward I. (see p. 218), had his own reasons for not
allowing the Scots to be crushed. He pursued the settled policy of his
predecessors in attempting to bring the great fiefs into his power,
and especially that part of Aquitaine which was still held by the most
powerful of his vassals, the king of England. Whilst Edward was doing
his best to bring Scotland into subjection by open war, Philip was
doing his best to disturb Edward in his hold upon Aquitaine by secret
intrigues and legal chicanery. Ill-feeling increased on both sides.
Philip welcomed David Bruce and gave him protection in France, and in
=1336= French sailors attacked English shipping and landed plunderers
in the Isle of Wight. In =1337= Edward determined to resist, and the
long war roughly known as the Hundred Years' War began. It was in
reality waged to discover by an appeal to arms whether the whole of
Aquitaine was to be incorporated with France and whether Scotland was
to be incorporated with England. That which gave it its peculiar
bitterness was, however, not so much the claims of the kings, as the
passions of their subjects. The national antagonism aroused by the
plunderings of French sea-rovers would be invigorated by the
plunderings of Englishmen in the fields of France.

5. =Edward's Allies. 1337--1338.=--To Edward it was merely a question
of defending, first England, and then Aquitaine, against aggression.
He won over, with large offers of money, the alliance of the princes
of the Empire whose lands lay round the French frontier to the north
and east, and even gained the support of the Emperor Lewis the
Bavarian. His relations with Flanders were even more important. In
Flanders there had sprung up great manufacturing towns, such as Ghent,
Bruges, and Ypres, which worked up into cloth the wool which was the
produce of English sheep. These wealthy towns claimed political
independence, and thus came into collision with their feudal lord, the
Count of Flanders. Early in the reign of Philip VI., the Count, who
held the greater part of his lands from the king of France, had
appealed to Philip for support, and Philip, who, unlike his wiser
predecessors, despised the strength which he might gain from the
goodwill of citizens in a struggle against their lords, took the part
of the Count, and for a time crushed the citizens at the battle of
Cassel. After a while the cities recovered themselves, and formed an
alliance under the leadership of Jacob van Arteveldt, a Flemish
nobleman, who had ingratiated himself with them by enrolling himself
amongst the brewers of Ghent, and who was now successful in urging his
countrymen to enter into friendship with Edward.

6. =Chivalry and War.=--In the long run Edward's cause would be found
a losing one, but there were circumstances which made it prevail for a
time. In France there was a broad distinction between gentlemen on the
one side and citizens and peasants on the other. The gentlemen
despised all who were not of their own class. In earlier days there
had sprung up a view of life known as chivalry, which taught that the
knight was bound to observe the laws of honour, to fight fairly, to
treat with courtesy a defeated enemy, and to protect women and all who
were unable to help themselves. Ennobling as the idea was, it had been
narrowed by the refusal of the gentlemen to extend the rules of
chivalry beyond their own order, and they were, therefore, ready to
exercise cruelty upon those who were not gentlemen, whilst proffering
the most high-flown compliments to those who were. In France, too,
this broad distinction of ranks told upon the military strength of the
crown. The fighting force of the French king was his feudal array of
armour-protected cavalry, composed entirely of gentlemen, and aiming
at deciding battles in the old fashion by the rush of horsemen. If
foot soldiers were brought at all into the field they were, for the
most part, ill armed and ill trained peasants, exposed to be
helplessly slaughtered by the horsemen.

[Illustration: A knight--Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, who died
1345--receiving his helm and pennon from his wife. Another lady holds
his shield.]

7. =Commerce and War.=--In England, on the other hand, the various
orders of society had been welded together into a united people. The
king and his vassals indeed still talked the language of chivalry, but
they were wise enough to seek strength elsewhere. War had become in
England the affair of the nation, and no longer the affair of a class.
It must be waged with efficient archers as well as with efficient
horsemen, the archers being drawn from the class of yeomen or free
landed proprietors of small plots of land, which was entirely wanting
in France. Such an army needed pay, and the large sums required for
the purpose could only be extracted from a nation which, like the
English, had grown comparatively rich because it was at peace within
its own borders. Edward was compelled, if he wanted to fight, to
encourage trade, though it is only fair to remember that he showed
himself ready to encourage trade without any such ulterior object. He
brought Flemish weavers into England, and did his best to improve the
feeble woollen manufacture of the Eastern counties. His great
resource, however, for purposes of taxation, was the export of wool to
the Flemish manufacturing towns. Sometimes he persuaded Parliament to
raise the duties upon exported wool; sometimes he raised them, by an
evasion of the law, after making a private compact with the merchants
without consulting Parliament at all; sometimes he turned merchant
himself and bought wool cheaply in England to sell it dear in
Flanders. It was said of a great minister of later times that he made
trade flourish by means of war.[17] It might be said with greater
truth of Edward III. that he made war flourish by means of trade.

    [Footnote 17: See the inscription on the monument to the elder Pitt
    in the Guildhall, in the City of London.]

[Illustration: William of Hatfield, second son of Edward III.; from
his tomb in York Minster: showing rich costume worn by the youth of
the upper classes about 1340. The embroidery on the tunic has been
partly worn off on the effigy.]

[Illustration: York Minster:--The nave, looking west, built during the
first half of the fourteenth century. The west window was completed
and glazed in 1338.]

8. =Attacks on the North of France. 1338--1340.=--Great as was
Edward's advantage in having a united nation at his back, it hardly
seemed in the first years of the war as though he knew how to use it.
Though he had declared war against Philip in =1337=, he did not begin
hostilities till the following year. In =1338=, after landing at
Antwerp, he obtained from the Emperor Lewis the title of Imperial
Vicar, which gave him a right to the military services of the vassals
of the Empire. Crowds of German and Low Country lords pressed into his
ranks, but they all wanted high pay, and his resources, great as
they were, were soon exhausted, and he had to pawn his crowns to
satisfy their needs. These lords proved as useless as they were
expensive. In =1339= Edward crossed the French frontier, but he could
not induce Philip to fight, and being deserted by his German allies,
he was obliged to return to England. He then attempted to fall back on
the support of the Flemings, but was told by them that unless he
formally took the title of king of France, which he had only
occasionally done before, they could not fight for him, as the king of
France, whoever he might be, was their superior lord, and as such had
a claim to their services. After some hesitation, in the beginning of
=1340=, Edward satisfied their scruples by reviving the claim which he
had formerly abandoned, declaring himself to be, in right of his
mother, the lawful king of France; and quartering the French arms with
his own. A third territorial question was thus added to the other two.
Practically Edward's answer to Philip's effort to absorb all Aquitaine
in France was a counter-demand that all France should be absorbed in
England.

[Illustration: Royal arms of Edward III., adopted in 1340 and used
till about 1405. From the tomb of Edward III.]

9. =Battle of Sluys. 1340.=--Edward had not yet learnt to place
confidence in those English archers who had served him so well at
Halidon Hill. In =1340=, however, he found himself engaged in a
conflict which should have taught him where his true strength lay. The
French navy held the Channel, and had burnt Southampton. The fleet of
the Cinque Ports was no longer sufficient to cope with the enemy.
Edward proudly announced that he, like his progenitors, was the lord
of the English sea on every side, and called out every vessel upon
which he could lay hands. The result was a naval victory at Sluys, in
which well-nigh the whole French fleet was absolutely destroyed. It
was by the English archers that the day was won. So complete was the
victory that no one dared to tell the ill news to Philip, till his
jester called out to him, "What cowards those English are!" "Because,"
he explained, "they did not dare to leap into the sea as our brave
Frenchmen did."

10. =Attacks on the West of France. 1341--1345.=--If Edward was to
obtain still greater success, he had but to fight with a national
force behind him on land as he had fought at sea; but he was slow to
learn the lesson. Personally he was as chivalrous as Philip, and
thought that far more could be done by the charge of knights on
horseback than by the cloth-yard shafts of the English bowmen. For six
more years he frittered away his strength. There was a disputed
succession in Brittany, and one of the claimants, John of Montfort,
ranged himself on the side of the English. There was fighting in
Brittany and fighting on the borders of Edward's lands in Aquitaine,
but up to the end of =1345= there was no decisive result on either
side. In Scotland, too, things had been going so badly for Edward that
in =1341= David Bruce had been able to return, and was now again
ruling over his own people.

11. =The Campaign of Creçy. 1346.=--Surprising as Edward's neglect to
force on a battle in France appears to us, it must be remembered that
in those days it was far more difficult to bring on an engagement than
it is in the present day. Fortified towns and castles were then almost
impregnable, except when they were starved out; and it was therefore
seldom necessary for a commander--on other grounds unwilling to
fight--to risk a battle in order to save an important post from
capture. Edward, however, does not appear to have thought that there
was anything to be gained by fighting. In =1346= he led a large
English army into Normandy, taking with him his eldest son, afterwards
known as the Black Prince, at that time a lad of sixteen. It had been
from Normandy and Calais that the fleets had put out by which the
coasts of England had been ravaged, and Edward now deliberately
ravaged Normandy. He then marched on, apparently intending to take
refuge in Flanders. As the French had broken the bridges over the
Seine, he was driven to ascend the bank of the river almost to Paris
before he could cross. His burnings and his ravages continued till
Philip, stung to anger, pursued him with an army more than twice as
numerous as his own. Edward had the Somme to cross on his way, and the
bridges over that river had been broken by the French, as those over
the Seine had been broken; and but for the opportune discovery of a
ford at Blanche Tache Edward would have been obliged to fight with an
impassable river at his back. When he was once over the Somme he
refused--not from any considerations of generalship, but from a point
of honour--to continue his retreat further. He halted on a gentle
slope near the village of Creçy facing eastwards, as Philip's force
had swept round to avoid difficulties in the ground, and was
approaching from that direction.

[Illustration: Shooting at the butts with the long-bow.]

12. =The Tactics of Creçy. 1346.=--Great as was Edward's advantage in
possessing an army so diverse in its composition as that which he
commanded, it would have availed him little if he had not known how to
order that army for battle. At once it appeared that his skill as a
tactician was as great as his weakness as a strategist. His experience
at Halidon Hill (see p. 234) had taught him that the archers could
turn the tide of battle against any direct attack, however violent. He
knew, too, from the tradition of Bannockburn (see p. 226), that
archers could readily be crushed by a cavalry charge on the flank; and
he was well aware that his own horsemen were in too small numbers to
hold out against the vast host of the French cavalry. He therefore
drew up his line of archers between the two villages of Creçy and
Vadicourt, though his force was not large enough to extend from one to
the other. He then ordered the bulk of his horsemen to dismount and to
place themselves with levelled spears in bodies at intervals in the
line of archers. The innovation was thoroughly reasonable, as spearmen
on foot would be able to check the fiercest charge of horse, if only
the horse could be exposed to a shower of arrows. The English army was
drawn up in three corps, two of them in the front line. The Black
Prince was in command of one of the two bodies in front, whilst the
king himself took charge of the third corps, which acted as a reserve
in the rear.

13. =The Battle of Creçy. August 26, 1346.=--When Philip drew nigh in
the evening his host was weary and hungry. He ordered his knights to
halt, but each one was thinking, not of obeying orders, but of
securing a place in the front, where he might personally distinguish
himself. Those in the rear pushed on, and in a few minutes the whole
of the French cavalry became a disorganised mob. Then Philip ordered
15,000 Genoese crossbowmen to advance against the enemy. At the best a
crossbow was inferior to the English long-bow, as it was weaker in its
action and consumed more time between each shot. To make matters
worse, a heavy shower of rain had wetted the strings of the unlucky
Genoese, rendering their weapons useless. The English had covers for
their bows, and had kept them dry. The thick shower of their arrows
drove the Genoese back. Philip took their retreat for cowardice. "Kill
me those scoundrels!" he cried, and the French knights rode in amongst
them, slaughtering them at every stride. Then the French horsemen
charged the English lines. Some one amongst the Black Prince's retinue
took alarm, and hurried to the king to conjure him to advance to the
son's assistance. Edward knew better. "Is he dead?" he asked, "or so
wounded that he cannot help himself?" "No, sire, please God," was the
reply, "but he is in a hard passage of arms, and he much needs your
help." "Return," answered the king, "to those that sent you, and tell
them not to send to me again so long as my son lives; I command them
to let the boy win his spurs." The French were driven off with
terrible slaughter, and the victory was won. It was a victory of foot
soldiers over horse soldiers--of a nation in which all ranks joined
heartily together over one in which all ranks except that of the
gentry were despised. Edward III. had contributed a high spirit and a
keen sense of honour, but it was to the influence of Edward I.--to his
wide and far-reaching statesmanship, and his innovating military
genius--that the victory of Creçy was really due.

14. =Battle of Nevill's Cross, and the Siege of Calais.
1346--1347.=--Whilst Edward was fighting in France, the Scots invaded
England, but they were defeated at Nevill's Cross, and their king,
David Bruce (David II.), taken prisoner. Edward, when the news reached
him, had laid siege to Calais. In this siege cannon,[18] which had
been used in earlier sieges of the war, were employed, but they were
too badly made and loaded with too little gunpowder to do much damage.
In =1347= Calais was starved into surrender, and Edward, who regarded
the town as a nest of pirates, ordered six of the principal burgesses
to come out with ropes round their necks, as a sign that they were to
be put to death. It was only at Queen Philippa's intercession that he
spared their lives, but he drove every Frenchman out of Calais, and
peopled it with his own subjects. A truce with Philip was agreed on,
and Edward returned to England.

    [Footnote 18: It has been said that they were used at Creçy, but
    this is uncertain.]

[Illustration: Contemporary view of a fourteenth-century walled town.]

[Illustration: Gloucester Cathedral. The choir, looking east: built
between 1340 and 1350.]

15. =Constitutional Progress. 1337--1347.=--Edward III. had begun his
reign as a constitutional ruler, and on the whole he had no reason to
regret it. In his wars with France and Scotland he had the popular
feeling with him, and he showed his reliance on it when, in =1340=, he
consented to the abolition of his claim to impose tallage on his
demesne lands (see p. 221)--the sole fragment of unparliamentary
taxation legally retained by the king after the _Confirmatio
Cartarum_. In =1341= the two Houses of Parliament finally separated
from one another, and when Edward picked a quarrel with Archbishop
Stratford, the Lords successfully insisted that no member of their
House could be tried excepting by his peers. The Commons, on the other
hand, were striving--not always successfully--to maintain their hold
upon taxation. In =1341= they made Edward a large money grant on
condition of his yielding to their demands, and Edward (whose
constitutional intentions were seldom proof against his wish to retain
the power of the purse) shamelessly broke his engagement after
receiving the money. On other occasions the Commons were more
successful; yet, after all, the composition of their House was of more
importance than any special victory they might gain. In it the county
members--or knights of the shire--sat side by side with the burgesses
of the towns. In no other country in Europe would this have been
possible. The knights of the shire were gentlemen, who on the
Continent were reckoned amongst the nobility, and despised townsmen
far too much to sit in the same House with them. In England there was
the same amalgamation of classes in Parliament as on the
battle-field. When once gentlemen and burgesses formed part of the
same assembly, they would come to have common interests; and, in any
struggle in which the merchants were engaged, it would be a great gain
to them that a class of men trained to arms would be inclined to take
their part.

[Illustration: The upper chamber or solar at Sutton Courtenay
manor-house. Date, about 1350.]

[Illustration: Interior of the Hall at Penshurst, Kent: showing the
screen with minstrels' gallery over it, and the brazier for fire in
the middle: built about 1340.]

16. =Edward's Triumph. 1347.=--Edward's return after the surrender of
Calais was followed by an outburst of luxury. As the sea-rovers of
Normandy and Calais had formerly plundered Englishmen, English
landsmen now plundered Normandy and Calais. "There was no woman who
had not gotten garments, furs, feather-beds, and utensils from the
spoils." Edward surrounded himself with feasting and jollity. About
this time he instituted the Order of the Garter, and his tournaments
were thronged with gay knights and gayer ladies in gorgeous attires.
The very priests caught the example, and decked themselves in
unclerical garments. Even architecture lent itself to the prevailing
taste for magnificence. The beautiful Decorated style which had come
into use towards the end of the reign of Edward I.--and which may be
seen[19] in the central tower of Lincoln Cathedral (see p. 227), in
the west front of Howden Church (see p. 230), and in the nave of York
Minster (see p. 238)--was, in the reign of Edward III., superseded by
the Perpendicular style, in which beauty of form was abandoned for the
sake of breadth, as in the choir of Gloucester and the nave of
Winchester (see pp. 244, 276). Roofs become wide, as in the Hall of
Penshurst (see p. 246), and consequently halls were larger and better
adapted to crowded gatherings than those at Meare and Norborough (p.
247).

    [Footnote 19: Lichfield Cathedral (p. 213) is transitional.]

[Illustration: A small house or cottage at Meare, Somerset. Built
about 1350.]

[Illustration: Norborough Hall, Northamptonshire. A manor-house built
about 1350. The dormer windows and addition to the left are of much
later date.]

17. =The Black Death. 1348.=--In the midst of this luxurious society
arrived, in =1348=, a terrible plague which had been sweeping over
Asia and Europe, and which in modern times has been styled the Black
Death. No plague known to history was so destructive of life. Half of
the population certainly perished, and some think that the number of
those who died must be reckoned at two-thirds.

[Illustration: Ploughing.]

[Illustration: Harrowing. A boy slinging stones at the birds.]

[Illustration: Breaking the clods with mallets.]

[Illustration: Cutting weeds.]

[Illustration: Reaping.]

18. =The Statute of Labourers. 1351.=--This enormous destruction of
life could not fail to have important results on the economic
condition of the country. The process of substituting money rents for
labour service, which had begun some generations before (see p. 168),
had become very general at the accession of Edward III. so that the
demesne land which the lord kept in his own hands was on most estates
cultivated by hired labour. Now, when at least half of the labourers
had disappeared, those who remained, having less competition to fear,
demanded higher wages, whilst at the same time the price of the
produce of the soil was the same or less than it had been before. The
question affected not merely the great lords but the smaller gentry
as well. The House of Commons, which was filled with the smaller
gentry and the well-to-do townsmen--who were also employers of
labour--was therefore as eager as the House of Lords to keep down
wages. In =1351= the Statute of Labourers was passed, fixing a scale
of wages at the rates which had been paid before the Black Death, and
ordering punishments to be inflicted on those who demanded more. It is
not necessary to suppose that the legislators had any tyrannical
intentions. For ages all matters relating to agriculture had been
fixed by custom; and the labourers were outrageously violating custom.
Custom, however, here found itself in opposition to the forces of
nature, and though the statute was often renewed, with increasing
penalties, it was difficult to secure obedience to it in the teeth of
the opposition of the labourers. The chief result of the statute was
that it introduced an element of discord between two classes of
society.

[Illustration: Stacking corn.]

[Illustration: Threshing corn with the flail.]

19. =The Statute of Treasons. 1352.=--In =1352= was passed the Statute
of Treasons, by which the offences amounting to treason were defined,
the chief of them being levying war against the king. As no one but a
great nobleman was strong enough even to think of levying war against
the king, this statute may be regarded as a concession to the
wealthier landowners rather than to the people at large.

20. =The Black Prince in the South of France. 1355.=--In =1350= Philip
VI. of France died, and was succeeded by his son John. The truce (see
p. 243) was prolonged, and it was not till =1355= that war was
renewed. Edward himself was recalled to England by fresh troubles in
Scotland, but the Black Prince landed at Bordeaux and marched through
the south of France, plundering as he went. Neither father nor son
seems to have had any idea of gaining their ends except by driving the
French by ill-treatment into submission. "You must know," wrote a
contemporary in describing the condition of southern Languedoc, "that
this was, before, one of the fat countries of the world, the people
good and simple, who did not know what war was, and no war had ever
been waged against them before the Prince of Wales came. The English
and Gascons found the country full and gay, the rooms furnished with
carpets and draperies, the caskets and chests full of beautiful
jewels; but nothing was safe from these robbers." The Prince returned
to Bordeaux laden with spoils.

21. =The Battle of Poitiers. 1356.=--In =1356= the Black Prince swept
over central France in another similar plundering expedition. He was
on his way back with his plunder to Bordeaux with no more than 8,000
men to guard it when he learnt as he passed near Poitiers that King
John was close to him with 50,000. He drew up his little force on a
rising ground amidst thick vineyards, with a hedge in front of him
behind which he could shelter his archers. As at Creçy, the greater
part of the English horsemen were dismounted, and John, thinking that
therein lay their secret of success, ordered most of his horsemen to
dismount as well, not having discovered that though spearmen on foot
could present a formidable resistance to a cavalry charge, they were
entirely useless in attacking a strong position held by archers. Then
he sent forward 300 knights who retained their horses, bidding a
strong body of dismounted horsemen to support them. The horsemen,
followed by the footmen, charged at a gap in the hedge, but the hedge
on either side was lined with English bowmen, and men and horses were
struck down. Those who survived fled and scattered their countrymen
behind. Seeing the disorder, the Black Prince ordered the few knights
whom he had kept on horseback to sweep round and to fall upon the
confused crowd in the flank. The archers advanced to second them,
and, gallantly as the French fought, their unhorsed knights could
accomplish nothing against the combined efforts of horse and foot.
King John was taken prisoner and the battle was at an end.

22. =The Courtesy of the Black Prince.=--The Black Prince had been
cruel to townsmen and peasants, but he was a model of chivalry, and
knew how to deal with a captive king. At supper he stood behind John's
chair and waited on him, praising his bravery. "All on our side," he
said, "who have seen you and your knights, are agreed about this, and
give you the prize and the chaplet if you will wear it." After the
astounding victory of Poitiers, the Black Prince, instead of marching
upon Paris, went back to Bordeaux. In =1357= he made a truce for two
years and returned to England with his royal captive.

23. =Misery of France. 1356--1359.=--In =1356=, the year in which the
Black Prince fought at Poitiers, his father ravaged Scotland. Edward,
however, gained nothing by this fresh attempt at conquest. In his
retreat he suffered heavy loss, and in =1357=, changing his plan, he
replaced David Bruce (see p. 242) on the throne, and strove to win the
support of the Scots instead of exasperating them by violence. In the
meanwhile the two years' truce brought no good to France. The nobles
wrung from the peasants the sums needed to redeem their relatives, who
were prisoners in England, and the disbanded soldiers, French and
English, formed themselves into free companies and plundered as
mercilessly as the Black Prince had done in time of war. Worn down
with oppression, the French peasants broke into a rebellion known as
the Jacquerie, from the nickname of Jacques-Bonhomme, which the gentry
gave to them. After committing unheard-of cruelties the peasants were
repressed and slaughtered. An attempt of the States-General--a sort of
French Parliament which occasionally met--to improve the government
failed. Peace with England was talked of, but Edward's terms were too
hard to be accepted, and in =1359= war began again.

24. =Edward's Last Invasion. 1359--1360.=--So miserably devastated was
France that Edward, when he invaded the country in =1359=, had to take
with him not only men and munitions of war, but large stores of
provisions. He met no enemy in the field, but the land had been so
wasted that his men suffered much from want of food, in spite of the
supplies which they had taken with them. "I could not believe," wrote
an Italian who revisited France after an absence of some years, "that
this was the same kingdom which I had once seen so rich and
flourishing. Nothing presented itself to my eyes but a fearful
solitude, an extreme poverty, land uncultivated, houses in ruins. Even
the neighbourhood of Paris manifested everywhere marks of destruction
and conflagration. The streets were deserted; the roads overgrown with
weeds; the whole a vast solitude." In the spring of =1360= Edward
moved on towards the banks of the Loire, hoping to find sustenance
there. Near Chartres he was overtaken by a terrible storm of hail and
thunder, and in the roar of the thunder he thought that he heard the
voice of God reproving him for the misery which he had caused. He
abated his demands and signed the treaty of Bretigni.

[Illustration: West front of Edington Church, Wilts: built about 1360.
An example of the transition from the Decorated style to the
Perpendicular.]

25. =The Treaty of Bretigni. 1360.=--By the treaty of Bretigni John
was to be ransomed for an enormous sum; Edward was to surrender his
claim to the crown of France and to the provinces north of Aquitaine,
receiving in return the whole of the duchy of Aquitaine together with
the districts round Calais and Ponthieu, all of them to be held in
full sovereignty, without any feudal obligation to the king of
France. Probably it cost Edward little to abandon his claim to the
French crown, which had only been an after-thought; and it was a clear
gain to get rid of those feudal entanglements which had so frequently
been used as a pretext of aggression against the English kings. It was
hardly likely, however, that England would long be able to keep a
country like Aquitaine, which was geographically part of France and in
which French sympathies were constantly on the increase. "We will obey
the English with our lips," said the men of Rochelle, when their town
was surrendered, "but our hearts shall never be moved towards them."

CHAPTER XVI.

REIGN OF EDWARD III. AFTER THE TREATY OF BRETIGNI.

1360--1377.

LEADING DATES

Reign of Edward III., 1327-1377.

  Battle of Navarrete                                             1367
  Renewal of war with France                                      1369
  Truce with France                                               1375
  The Good Parliament                                             1376
  Death of Edward III.                                            1377

1. =The First Years of Peace. 1360--1364.=--To hold his new provinces
the better, Edward sent the Black Prince to govern them in =1363= with
the title of Duke of Aquitaine. King John had been liberated soon
after the making of the peace, and had been allowed to return to
France on payment of part of his ransom, and on giving hostages for
the payment of the remainder. In =1363= one of the hostages, his son,
the Duke of Anjou, broke his parole and fled, on which John, shocked
at such perfidy, returned to England to make excuses for him, and died
there in =1364=. If honour, he said, were not to be found elsewhere,
it ought to be found in the breasts of kings.

2. =The Spanish Troubles. 1364--1368.=--John's eldest son and
successor, Charles V., known as the Wise, or the Prudent, was less
chivalrous, but more cautious than his father, and soon found an
opportunity of stirring up trouble for the Black Prince without
exposing his own lands to danger. Pedro the Cruel, king of Castile,
who had for some time been the ally of England, had murdered his
wife, tyrannised over his nobles, and contracted an alliance with the
Mohammedans of Granada. The Pope having excommunicated him, his own
illegitimate brother, Henry of Trastamara, claimed the crown, and
sought aid of the king of France. Charles V. sent Bertrand du
Guesclin, a rising young commander, to his help. Du Guesclin's army
was made up of men of the Free Companies (see p. 252), which still
continued to plunder France on their own account after the Peace of
Bretigni. In this way Charles got rid of a scourge of his own country
at the same time that he attacked an ally of the English. In =1366= Du
Guesclin entered Spain. The tyrannical Pedro took refuge at Bayonne,
where he begged the Black Prince to help him. The Gascon nobles
pleaded with the Prince to reject the monster, but the Prince was not
to be held back. "It is not a right thing or reasonable," he said,
when they urged him to keep aloof from the unjust undertaking to which
he invited them, "that a bastard should hold a kingdom, and thrust out
of it, and of his heritage, a brother and heir of the land by legal
marriage. All kings and sons of kings should never agree nor consent
to it, for it is a great blow at the royal state." In =1367= the Black
Prince entered Spain, and with the help of his English archers
thoroughly defeated Henry at Navarrete. Then vengeance overtook him on
the side on which he had sinned. Pedro was as false as he was cruel,
and refused to pay the sums which he had engaged to furnish to the
Prince's troops. Sickness broke out in the English ranks, and the
Black Prince returned to Bordeaux with only a fifth part of his army,
and with his own health irretrievably shattered. In =1368= Henry made
his way back to Spain, defeated and slew Pedro, and undid the whole
work of the Black Prince to the south of the Pyrenees.

[Illustration: A gold noble of Edward III., struck between A.D. 1360
and 1369.]

[Illustration: Effigy of Edward the Black Prince, from his tomb at
Canterbury: showing the type of armour worn from 1335 to 1400.]

3. =The Taxation of Aquitaine. 1368--1369.=--Worse than this was in
store for the Black Prince. As his soldiers clamoured for their wages,
he levied a hearth tax to supply their needs. The Aquitanian
Parliament declared against the tax, and appealed to the king of
France to do them right. In =1369= Charles, who knew that the men of
Aquitaine would be on his side, summoned the Black Prince to Paris to
defend his conduct, on the pretext that, as there had been some
informality in the treaty of Bretigni, he was himself still the feudal
superior of the Duke of Aquitaine. "Willingly," replied the Black
Prince when he received the summons, "we will go to the court of
Paris, as the king of France orders it; but it shall be with helmet on
head and sixty thousand men with us."

4. =The Renewed War. 1369--1375.=--Edward, by the advice of
Parliament, resumed the title of King of France, and war broke out
afresh in =1369=. The result of the first war had been owing to the
blunders of the French in attacking the English archers with the
feudal cavalry. Charles V. and his commander, Du Guesclin, resolved to
fight no battles. Their troops hung about the English march, cut off
stragglers, and captured exposed towns. The English marched hither and
thither, plundering and burning, but their armies, powerful as they
were when attacked in a defensive position, could not succeed in
forcing a battle, and were worn out without accomplishing anything
worthy of their fame. The Black Prince, soured by failure and
ill-health, having succeeded in =1370= in recapturing Limoges, ordered
his men to spare no one in the town. "It was great pity," wrote the
chronicler Froissart, "for men, women, and children threw themselves
on their knees before the Prince, crying 'Mercy! mercy! gentle Sire!'"
The Prince, who had waited at table behind a captive king, hardened
his heart. More than three thousand--men, women and children--were
butchered on that day. Yet the spirit of chivalry was strong within
him, and he spared three gentlemen who fought bravely merely in order
to sell their lives dearly. In =1371= the Black Prince was back in
England. His eldest surviving brother, John of Gaunt--or Ghent--Duke
of Lancaster, continued the war in France. In =1372= the English lost
town after town. In =1373= John of Gaunt set out from Calais. He could
plunder, but he could not make the enemy fight. "Let them go," wrote
Charles V. to his commanders; "by burning they will not become masters
of your heritage. Though storms rage over a land, they disperse of
themselves. So will it be with these English." When the English
reached the hilly centre of France food failed them. The winter came,
and horses and men died of cold and want. A rabble of half-starved
fugitives was all that reached Bordeaux after a march of six hundred
miles. Aquitaine, where the inhabitants were for the most part hostile
to the English, and did everything in their power to assist the
French, was before long all but wholly lost, and in =1375= a truce was
made which put an end to hostilities for a time, leaving only Calais,
Cherbourg, Brest, Bayonne, and Bordeaux in the hands of the English.

5. =Anti-Papal Legislation. 1351--1366.=--The antagonism between
England and France necessarily led to an antagonism between England
and the Papacy. Since =1305= the Popes had fixed their abode at
Avignon, and though Avignon was not yet incorporated with France, it
was near enough to be under the control of the king of France. During
the time of this exile from Rome, known to ardent churchmen as the
Babylonian captivity of the Church, the Popes were regarded in England
as the tools of the French enemy. The Papal court, too, became
distinguished for luxury and vice, and its vast expenditure called for
supplies which England was increasingly loth to furnish. By a system
of provisions, as they were called, the Pope provided--or appointed
beforehand--his nominees to English benefices, and expected that his
nominees would be allowed to hold the benefices to the exclusion of
those of the patrons. In =1351= the Statute of Provisors[20] attempted
to put an end to the system, but it was not immediately successful,
and had to be re-enacted in later years. In =1353= a Statute of
_Præmunire_[21] was passed, in which, though the Pope's name was not
mentioned, an attempt was made to stop suits being carried before
foreign courts--in other words before the Papal court at Avignon.
Another claim of the Popes was to the 1,000 marks payable annually as
a symbol of John's vassalage, a claim most distasteful to Englishmen
as a sign of national humiliation. Since =1333=, the year in which
Edward took the government into his own hands, the payment had not
been made, and in =1366= Parliament utterly rejected a claim made by
the Pope for its revival.

    [Footnote 20: Provisors are the persons provided or appointed to a
    benefice.]

    [Footnote 21: So called from the first words of the writs appointed
    to be issued under it, _Præmunire facias_; the first of these two
    words being a corruption of _Præmoneri_.]

6. =Predominance of the English Language.=--The national spirit which
revealed itself in an armed struggle with the French and in a legal
struggle with the Papacy showed itself in the increasing predominance
of the English language. In =1362= it supplanted French in the law
courts, and in the same year Parliament was opened with an English
speech. French was still the language of the court, but it was
becoming a foreign speech, pronounced very differently from the
'French of Paris.'

7. =Piers the Plowman. 1362.=--Cruel as had been the direct results of
the English victories in France, they had indirectly contributed to
the overthrow of that feudalism which weighed heavily upon France and
upon all Continental Europe. The success of the English had been the
success of a nation strong in the union of classes. The cessation of
the war drove the thoughts of Englishmen back upon themselves. The old
spiritual channels had been, to a great extent, choked up. Bishops
were busy with the king's affairs; monks had long ceased to be
specially an example to the world; and even the friars had fallen from
their first estate, and had found out that, though they might
personally possess nothing, their order might be wealthy. The men who
won victories in France came home to spend their booty in show and
luxury. Yet, for all the splendour around, there was a general feeling
that the times were out of joint, and this feeling was strengthened by
a fresh inroad of the Black Death in =1361=. To the prevalent
yearning for a better life, a voice was given by William Langland,
whose _Vision of Piers the Plowman_ appeared in its first shape in
=1362=. In the opening of his poem he shows to his readers the
supremacy of the Maiden Meed--bribery--over all sorts and conditions
of men, lay and clerical. Then he turns to the purification of this
wicked world. They who wish to eschew evil and to do good inquire
their way to Truth--the eternal God--and find their only guide in
'Piers the Plowman.' The simple men of the plough, who do honest work
and live upright lives, know how to find the way to Truth. That way
lies not through the inventions of the official Church, the pardons
and indulgences set up for sale. "They who have done good shall go
into eternal life, but they who have done evil into eternal fire."
Langland's teaching, in short, is the same as that of the great
Italian poet, Dante, who, earlier in the century, had cried aloud for
the return of justice and true religion. He stands apart from Dante
and from all others of his time in looking for help to the despised
peasant. No doubt his peasant was idealised, as no one knew better
than himself; but it was honesty of work in the place of dishonest
idleness which he venerated. It was the glory of England to have
produced such a thought far more than to have produced the men who,
heavy with the plunder of unhappy peasants, stood boldly to their arms
at Creçy and Poitiers. He is as yet hardly prepared to say what is the
righteousness which leads to eternal life. It is not till he issues a
second edition in =1377= that he can answer. To do well, he now tells
us, is to act righteously to all in the fear of God. To do better is
to walk in the way of love: "Behold how good a thing it is for
brethren to dwell in unity." To do best is to live in fellowship with
Christ and the Church, and in all humility to bring forth the fruits
of the Divine communion.

8. =The Anti-Clerical Party. 1371.=--Langland wished to improve, not
to overthrow, existing institutions, but for all that his work was
profoundly revolutionary. They who call on those who have left their
first love to return to it are seldom obeyed, but their voice is often
welcomed by the corrupt and self-seeking crowd which is eager, after
the fashion of birds of prey, to tear the carcase from which life has
departed. A large party was formed in England, especially amongst the
greater barons, which was anxious to strip the clergy of their wealth
and power, without any thought for the better fulfilment of their
spiritual functions. In the Parliament of =1371= bishops were declared
unfit to hold offices of state. Amongst others who were dismissed was
William of Wykeham, the Bishop of Winchester. He was a great architect
and administrator, and having been deprived of the Chancellorship used
his wealth to found at Winchester the first great public school in
England. By this time a Chancellor was no longer what he had been in
earlier days (see p. 127), a secretary to the king. He was now
beginning to exercise equitable jurisdiction--that is to say, the
right of deciding suits according to equity, in cases in which the
strict artificial rules of the ordinary courts stood in the way of
justice.

[Illustration: William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, 1367-1404:
from his tomb at Winchester.]

9. =The Duke of Lancaster. 1374--1376.=--In =1374=, as soon as the
Duke of Lancaster returned from his disastrous campaign (see p. 257),
he put himself at the head of the baronial and anti-clerical party. He
was selfish and unprincipled, but he had enormous wealth, having
secured the vast estates of the Lancaster family by his marriage with
Blanche, the granddaughter of the brother of Thomas of Lancaster, the
opponent of Edward II. Rich as he was he wished to be richer, and he
saw his opportunity in an attack upon the higher clergy, which might
end in depriving them not only of political power, but of much of
their ecclesiastical property as well. His accession to the baronial
party was of the greater importance because he was now practically the
first man in the state. The king was suffering from softening of the
brain, and had fallen under the influence of a greedy and unscrupulous
mistress, Alice Perrers, whilst the Black Prince was disqualified by
illness from taking part in the management of affairs. A bargain was
struck between the Duke and Alice Perrers, who was able to obtain the
consent of the helpless king to anything she pleased. She even sat on
the bench with the judges, intimidating them into deciding in favour
of the suitors who had bribed her most highly. It seemed as if
Langland's Meed (see p. 259) had appeared in person. The king's
patronage was shared between her and Lancaster.

10. =John Wycliffe. 1366--1376.=--If Lancaster's character had been
higher, he might have secured a widespread popularity, as the feeling
of the age was adverse to the continuance of a wealthy clergy. Even as
things were, he had on his side John Wycliffe, the most able reasoner
and devoted reformer of his age, who, like others before and after
him, imagined that a high spiritual enterprise could be achieved with
the help of low and worldly politicians. Wycliffe had distinguished
himself at Oxford, and had attracted Lancaster's notice by the ability
of his argument against the Pope's claim to levy John's tribute (see
p. 258). In =1374= he had been sent to Bruges to argue with the
representatives of the Pope on the question of the provisions, and by
=1376= had either issued, or was preparing to issue, his work _On
Civil Lordship_, in which, by a curious adaptation of feudal ideas, he
declared that all men held their possessions direct from God, as a
vassal held his estate from his lord; and that as a vassal was bound
to pay certain military services, failing which he lost his estate, so
everyone who fell into mortal sin failed to pay his service to God,
and forfeited his right to his worldly possessions. In this way
dominion, as he said, was founded on grace--that is to say, the
continuance of man's right to his possessions depended on his
remaining in a state of grace. It is true that Wycliffe qualified his
argument by alleging that he was only announcing theoretical truth,
and that no man had a right to rob another of his holding because he
believed him to be living in sin. It is evident, however, that men
like Lancaster would take no heed of this distinction, and would
welcome Wycliffe as an ally in the work of despoiling the clergy for
their own purposes.

11. =Lancaster and the Black Prince. 1376.=--Ordinary citizens, who
cared nothing for theories which they did not understand, were roused
against Lancaster by the unblushing baseness of his rule. Nor was this
all. The anti-clerical party was also a baronial party, and ever since
the Knights Bachelors of England had turned to the future Edward I. to
defend them against the barons who made the Provisions of Oxford (see
p. 199), the country gentry and townsmen had learnt the lesson that
they would be the first to suffer from the unchecked rule of the
baronage. They now had the House of Commons to represent their wishes,
but as yet the House of Commons was too weak to stand alone. At last
it was rumoured that when the Black Prince died his young son Richard
was to be set aside, and that Lancaster was to claim the inheritance
of the crown, as an earlier John had claimed it in the place of the
youthful Arthur. The Black Prince awoke from his lethargy, and stood
forward as the leader of the Commons.

12. =The Good Parliament. 1376.=--A Parliament, known as the Good
Parliament, met in =1376=, and, strong through the Black Prince's
support, the Commons refused to grant supply till an account of the
receipts and expenditure had been laid before them. "What," cried
Lancaster, "do these base and ignoble knights attempt? Do they think
they be the kings and princes of the land? I think they know not what
power I am of. I will therefore, early in the morning, appear unto
them so glorious, and will show such power among them, and with such
vigour I will terrify them that neither they nor theirs shall dare
henceforth to provoke me to wrath." Lancaster soon found that his
brother was stronger than he. The Commons obtained a new Council, in
which Wykeham was included and from which Lancaster was shut out. They
then proceeded to accuse before the House of Lords Richard Lyons and
Lord Latimer of embezzling the king's revenue. Lyons, accustomed to
the past ways of the court, packed 1,000_l._ in a barrel and sent it
to the Black Prince. The Black Prince returned the barrel and the
money, and the Lords condemned Lyons to imprisonment. Latimer was also
sentenced to imprisonment, but he was allowed to give bail and
regained his liberty. These two cases are the first instances of the
exercise of the right of impeachment--that is to say, of the
accusation of political offenders by the Commons before the Lords.
Alice Perrers was next driven from court.

[Illustration: Tomb of Edward III. in Westminster Abbey.]

13. =The Last Year of Edward III. 1376--1377.=--Whilst Parliament was
still sitting the Black Prince, worn out by his exertions, died. His
son, young Richard, was at once recognised as heir to the throne.
Lancaster, however, regained his influence over his doting father.
Alice Perrers and Lord Latimer found their way back to court. The
Speaker of the House of Commons was thrown into prison. Frivolous
charges were brought against Wykeham, who was deprived of his
temporalities and banished from the court. In =1377= a new Parliament,
elected under Lancaster's influence, reversed all the proceedings of
the Good Parliament, and showed how little sympathy the baronial party
had with the people by imposing a poll tax of 4_d._ a head on all
except beggars, thus making the payment of a labourer and a duke
equal. The bishops, unable to strike at Lancaster, struck at Wycliffe,
as his creature. Wycliffe was summoned to appear before an
ecclesiastical court at St. Paul's, presided over by Courtenay, the
Bishop of London. He came supported by Lancaster and a troop of
Lancaster's followers. Hot words were exchanged between them and the
Bishop. The London crowd took their Bishop's part and the Duke was
compelled to flee for his life. In the summer of =1377= Edward III.
died, deserted by everyone, Alice Perrers making off, after robbing
him of his finger-rings.

[Illustration: Figures of Edward, the Black Prince, and Lionel, Duke
of Clarence, from the tomb of Edward III.; illustrating the ordinary
costume of gentlemen at the end of the fourteenth century.]

14. =Ireland from the Reign of John to that of Edward II.=--When
England was gradually losing its hold on France, what hold it had had
on Ireland was gradually slipping away. Henry II. had been quite
unable to effect in Ireland the kind of conquest which William the
Conqueror had effected in England. William had succeeded because he
had been able to secure order by placing himself at the head of the
conquered nation. In Ireland, in the first place, the king was a
perpetual absentee; and, in the second place, there was no Irish
national organisation at the head of which he could have placed
himself, even if he had from time to time visited the island. There
were separate tribes, each one attached to its own chief and to its
own laws and customs. They were unable to drive out their feudal
conquerors; but in the outlying parts of the country, they were able
to absorb them, just as the English in their own country absorbed
their Norman conquerors. The difference was that in England the
conquerors were absorbed into a nation: in Ireland they were absorbed
into the several tribes. The few who retained the English laws and
habits were, for the most part, confined to the part of Ireland in the
neighbourhood of Dublin, which was specially accessible to English
influences. In =1315= Edward Bruce, the brother of Robert Bruce,
invaded Ireland, and, though he was ultimately defeated and slain, he
did enough to shatter the power of the English nobility; and it was
mainly in consequence of his partial success that the authority of the
English government was, for some time to come, limited to a certain
district round Dublin, known about a century later as the English
Pale, the extent of which varied from time to time.

15. =The Statute of Kilkenny. 1367.=--As long as the French wars
lasted the attention of the English Government was diverted from
Ireland. In =1361=, however, the year after the Treaty of Bretigni,
the king's son, Lionel Duke of Clarence, was sent to extend English
rule. In =1367= he gathered a Parliament of the English colonists.
This Parliament passed the Statute of Kilkenny, by which the relations
between the two races were defined. Within the Pale English laws and
customs were to prevail, and even Irishmen living there were to be
debarred from the use of their own language. Beyond the Pale the Irish
were to be left to themselves, communication between the two peoples
being cut off as much as possible. The idea of conquering Ireland was
abandoned, and the idea of maintaining a colony on a definite part of
Irish soil was substituted for it. The Statute of Kilkenny was, in
short, a counterpart of the Treaty of Bretigni. In both cases Edward
III. preferred the full maintenance of his authority over a part of a
country to its assertion over the whole.

16. =Weakness of the English Colony. 1367--1377.=--It takes two to
make a bargain, and the Irish were not to be prevented from
encroaching on the English because the English had resolved no longer
to encroach upon them. The renewal of the war with France in =1369=
made it impossible to send help from England, and during the latter
part of the reign of Edward III. the Irish pillaged freely within the
English territory, constantly winning ground from their antagonists.

  _Genealogy of the more important Sons of Edward III._

                       EDWARD III.
                        d. 1377
    --------------------------------------------------
    |           |             |           |          |
   Edward,   Lionel,    John of Gaunt,  Edmund,   Thomas,
  the Black  Duke of      Duke of       Duke of   Duke of
  Prince,    Clarence,   Lancaster,      York,   Gloucester,
  d. 1376    d. 1368      d. 1399       d. 1402    d. 1397

CHAPTER XVII.

RICHARD II. AND THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION.

1377--1381.

LEADING DATES

Reign of Richard II., 1377-1399

  Accession of Richard II                                         1377
  The peasants' revolt                                            1381

1. =The First Years of Richard II. 1377--1378.=--"Woe to the land,"
quoted Langland from Ecclesiastes, in the second edition of _Piers the
Plowman_, "when the king is a child." Richard was but ten years of age
when he was raised to the throne. The French plundered the coast, and
the Scots plundered the Borders. In the presence of such dangers
Lancaster and Wykeham forgot their differences, and as Lancaster was
too generally distrusted to allow of his acting as regent, the council
governed in the name of the young king. Lancaster, however, took the
lead, and renewed the war with France with but little result beyond so
great a waste of money as to stir up Parliament to claim a control
over the expenditure of the Crown.

2. =Wycliffe and the Great Schism. 1378--1381.=--In =1378= began the
Great Schism. For nearly half a century from that date there were two
Popes, one at Avignon and one at Rome. Wycliffe had been gradually
losing his reverence for a single Pope, and he had none left for two.
He was now busy with a translation of the Bible into English, and sent
forth a band of "poor priests," to preach the simple gospel which he
found in it. He was thus brought into collision with the pretensions
of the priesthood, and was thereby led to question the doctrines on
which their authority was based. In =1381= he declared his disbelief
in the doctrine of transubstantiation, and thereby denied to priests
that power "of making the body of Christ," which was held to mark them
off from their fellow-men. In any case, so momentous an announcement
would have cost Wycliffe the hearts of large numbers of his
supporters. It was the more fatal to his influence as it was
coincident with social disorders, the blame for which was certain,
rightly or wrongly, to be laid at his door.

[Illustration: Richard II. and his first queen, Anne of Bohemia: from
the gilt-latten effigies on their tomb in Westminster Abbey, made by
Nicholas Broker and Godfrey Prest, coppersmiths of London, in 1395.]

3. =The Poll-taxes. 1379--1381.=--The disastrous war with France made
fresh taxation unavoidable. In =1379= a poll-tax was imposed by
Parliament on a graduated scale, reaching from the 6_l._ 13_s._ 4_d._
required of a duke, to the groat or 4_d._, representing in those days
at least the value of 4_s._ at the present day, required of the
poorest peasant. A second poll-tax in =1380= exacted no less than
three groats from every peasant, and from every one of his unmarried
children above the age of fifteen. In =1381= a tiler of Dartford in
Kent struck dead a collector who attempted to investigate his
daughter's age in an indecent fashion. His neighbours took arms to
protect him. In an incredibly short time the peasants of the east and
south of England rose in insurrection.

4. =The Peasants' Grievances.=--The peasants had other grievances
besides the weight of taxation thrown on them by a Parliament in which
they had no representatives. The landlords, finding it impossible to
compel the acceptance of the low wages provided for by the Statute of
Labourers (see p. 248), had attempted to help themselves in another
way. Before the Black Death the bodily service of villeins had been
frequently commuted into a payment of money which had been its fair
equivalent, but which, since the rise of wages consequent upon the
Black Death, could not command anything like the amount of labour
surrendered. The landlords in many places now declared the bargain to
have been unfair, and compelled the villeins to render once more the
old bodily service. The discontent which prevailed everywhere was
fanned not merely by the attacks made by Wycliffe's poor priests upon
the idle and inefficient clergy, but by itinerant preachers
unconnected with Wycliffe, who denounced the propertied classes in
general. One of these, John Ball, a notorious assailant of the gentry,
had been thrown into prison. His favourite question was--

  When Adam delved and Eve span
  Who was then a gentleman?

5. =The Peasants' Revolt. 1381.=--From one end of England to another
the revolt spread. The parks of the gentry were broken into, the deer
killed, the fish-ponds emptied. The court-rolls which testified to the
villeins' services were burnt, and lawyers and all others connected
with the courts were put to death without mercy. From Kent and Essex
100,000 enraged peasants, headed by Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, released
John Ball from gaol and poured along the roads to London. They hoped
to place the young Richard at their head against their enemies the
gentry. The boy was spirited enough, and in spite of his mother's
entreaties insisted on leaving the Tower, and being rowed across the
Thames to meet the insurgents on the Surrey shore. Those who were with
him, however, refused to allow him to land. The peasants had
sympathisers in London itself, who allowed them to break into the
city. Lancaster's palace of the Savoy and the houses of lawyers and
officials were sacked and burnt. All the lawyers who could be found
were murdered, and others who were not lawyers shared their fate. The
mob broke into the Tower, and beheaded Simon of Sudbury, Archbishop of
Canterbury, who had, as Chancellor, proposed the obnoxious taxes to
Parliament.

6. =The Suppression of the Revolt.=--The boy-king met the mob at
Mile-End, and promised to abolish villeinage in England. Charters of
manumission were drawn out and sealed, and a great part of the
insurgents returned contentedly home. About 30,000, however, remained
behind. When Richard came amongst them at Smithfield, Wat Tyler
threatened him, and Walworth, the Mayor of London, slew Wat Tyler with
his dagger. A shout for vengeance was raised. With astonishing
presence of mind Richard rode forward. "I am your king," he said; "I
will be your leader." His boldness inspired the insurgents with
confidence, and caused them to desist from their threats and to return
to their homes. In the country the gentry, encouraged by the failure
of the insurgents in London, recovered their courage. The insurrection
was everywhere vigorously suppressed. Richard ordered the payment of
all services due, and revoked the charters he had granted. The judges
on their circuits hanged the ringleaders without mercy. When
Parliament met it directed that the charters of manumission should be
cancelled. Lords and Commons alike stood up for the rich against the
poor, and the boy-king was powerless to resist them, and it is
possible that he did not wish to do so.

7. =Results of the Peasants' Revolt.=--The revolt of the peasants
strengthened the conservative spirit in the country. The villeinage
into which the peasants had been thrust back could not, indeed, endure
long, because service unwillingly rendered is too expensive to be
maintained. Men were, however, no longer in a mood to listen to
reformers. Great noblemen, whose right to the services of their
villeins had been denied, now made common cause with the great
churchmen. The propertied classes, lay and clerical, instinctively saw
that they must hang together. Wycliffe's attack on transubstantiation
finding little response, he was obliged to retire to his parsonage at
Lutterworth, where he laboured with his pen till his death in =1384=.
His followers, known by the nickname of Lollards,[22] were, however,
for some time still popular amongst the poorer classes.

    [Footnote 22: The name is said to have been derived from a low
    German word, _lollen_, to sing, from their habit of singing, but
    their clerical opponents derived it from the Latin _lolium_ (tares),
    as if they were the tares in the midst of the wheat which remained
    constant to the Church.]

[Illustration: Portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer.]

8. =Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales.'=--A combination between the great
nobles and the higher clergy might, at the end of the fourteenth
century, meet with temporary success; but English society was too
diversified, and each separate portion of it was too closely linked to
the other to make it possible for the higher classes to tyrannise over
the others for any long time. What that society was like is best seen
in Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_. Chaucer was in many ways the exact
opposite of Langland, and was the precursor of modern literature as
Wycliffe was the precursor of modern religion. He was an inimitable
story-teller, with an eye which nothing could escape. He was ready to
take men as he found them, having no yearning for the purification of
a sinful world. Heroic examples of manly constancy and of womanly
purity and devotion, are mingled in his pages with coarse and ribald
tales; still, coarse and ribald as some of his narratives are, Chaucer
never attempts to make vice attractive. He takes it rather as a matter
of course, calling, not for reproof, but for laughter, whenever those
who are doing evil place themselves in ridiculous situations.

9. =The Prologue of the 'Canterbury Tales.'=--Whilst, however, there
is not one of the _Canterbury Tales_ which fails to bring vividly
before the reader one aspect or another of the life of Chaucer's day,
it is in the prologue that is especially found evidence of the close
connection which existed between different ranks of society. Men and
women of various classes are there represented as riding together on
a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, and beguiling
the way by telling stories to one another. No baron, indeed, takes
part in the pilgrimage, and the villein class is represented by the
reeve, who was himself a person in authority, the mere cultivator of
the soil being excluded. Yet, within these limits, the whole circle of
society is admirably represented. The knight, just returned from deeds
of chivalry, is on the best of terms with the rough-spoken miller and
the reeve, whilst the clerk of Oxford, who would gladly learn and
gladly teach, and who followed in his own life those precepts which he
commended to his parishioners, has no irreconcilable quarrel with the
begging friar or with the official of the ecclesiastical courts, whose
only object is to make a gain of godliness.

[Illustration: A gentleman riding out with his hawk: from the Luttrell
Psalter.]

10. =Chaucer and the Clergy.=--In his representation of the clergy,
Chaucer shows that, like Langland, he had no reverence for the merely
official clergy. His "poor parson of a town," indeed, is a model for
all helpers and teachers. The parson is regardless of his own comfort,
ever ready to toil with mind and body for his parishioners, and, above
all, resolved to set them an example, knowing

  That if gold ruste, what schulde yren doo?
  For if a prest be foul, on whom we truste,
  No wondur is a lewid man to ruste.[23]

    [Footnote 23: _i.e._, if a priest, who is like gold, allow himself
    to rust, or fall into sloth or sin, how can he expect the 'lewid
    man' or layman, who is as iron to him, to be free from these
    faults?]

The final character given to him is:--

  A bettre preest I trowe ther nowher non is.
  He waytud after no pompe ne reverence,
  Ne maked him a spiced conscience;[24]
  But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,
  He taught, and ferst he folwed[25] it himselve.

    [Footnote 24: A nice conscience; to see offence where there is
    none.]

    [Footnote 25: Followed.]

The majority amongst Chaucer's clergy are, however, of a very
different kind. There is the parish clerk, who, when he is waving the
censer in church thinks more of the pretty women there than of his
duty; the monk who loves hunting, and hates work and reading; the
friar who is ready to grant absolution to any one who will give money
to the friars; who has a word and a jest for every man, and presents
of knives and pins for the women; who takes a farthing where he cannot
get a penny, but turns aside from those who have not even a farthing
to give; the pardoner, who has for sale sham relics--a piece of the
sail of the ship which carried St. Peter on the sea of Galilee, and a
glass of pigs' bones, which he was ready to sell as bones of saints,
if he could thereby extract something even from the poorest widow. He
would not, he said, work with his hands like the apostles. He wanted
to have money, wool, cheese, and wheat at other people's expense.
Though Wycliffe had failed to reform the Church there was evidently
much room for a reformer.

[Illustration: Carrying corn--a cart going uphill: from the Luttrell
Psalter.]

11. =Roads and Bridges.=--Such men as these latter did not go on
pilgrimages through pure religious zeal. Villeins, indeed, were "bound
to the soil," and lived and died on land which they tilled; but the
classes above them moved about freely, and took pleasure in a
pilgrimage, as a modern Englishman takes pleasure in a railway
excursion. It was considered to be a pious work to make or repair
roads and bridges, and the existence of many bridges especially was
owing to the clergy. The most famous bridge in England, London Bridge,
had been begun in the place of an old wooden one in =1176=--in the
reign of Henry II.--by a priest, Peter Colechurch, who obtained gifts
for the purpose from notable people of all kinds. It was completed in
=1209=, houses being built upon it in order that their rents might pay
for keeping it in good condition. Local taxes were sometimes levied to
maintain the roads and bridges, and in default of these, it was held
to be the duty of the owners of land to keep the communications open.

[Illustration: State carriage of the fourteenth century: from the
Luttrell Psalter.]

12. =Modes of Conveyance.=--In spite of these precautions, roads were
often neglected, so that those who were not obliged to go on foot
travelled almost entirely on horseback, women almost always riding
astride like men. It was only at the end of the fourteenth century
that a few ladies rode sideways. Kings and queens and exceedingly
great people occasionally used lumbering but gorgeously ornamented
carriages; but this was to enable them to appear in splendour, as this
way of travelling must, at least in fine weather, have been far less
agreeable than the ordinary ride. The only other wheeled vehicles in
existence were the peasants' carts on two wheels, roughly made in the
form of a square box either of boards or of a lighter framework. It
was one of the grievances of the peasants that when the king moved
from one manor to another his purveyors seized their carts to carry
his property, and that though the purveyors were bound by frequently
repeated statutes to pay for their hire, these statutes were often
broken, and the carts sent back without payment for their use. The
same purveyors often took corn and other agricultural produce, for
which they paid little or nothing.

13. =Hospitality and Inns.=--When the king arrived in the evening at a
town his numerous attendants were billeted upon the townsmen, without
asking leave. Monasteries were always ready to offer hospitality to
himself or to any great person, and even to provide rougher fare for
the poorest stranger in a special guest-house provided for the
purpose. In castles, the owner was usually glad to see a stranger of
his own rank. The halls were still furnished with movable tables, as
in the days before the Conquest (see p. 76), and at night mattresses
were placed for persons of inferior rank on the floor, which was
strewn with rushes; whilst a stranger of high rank had usually a bed
in the solar (see p. 245) with the lord of the castle. Travellers of
the middle class were not thought good enough to be welcomed in
monasteries and castles, and were not poor enough to be received out
of charity; and for them inns were provided. These inns provided beds,
of which there were several in each room, and the guests then bought
their provisions and fuel from the host, instead of being charged for
their meals as is now the custom. From a manual of French
conversation, written at the end of the fourteenth century for the use
of Englishmen, it appears that cleanliness was not always to be found
in these inns. "William," one traveller is supposed to say to another,
"undress and wash your legs, and rub them well for the love of the
fleas, that they may not leap on your legs; for there is a peck of
them lying in the dust under the rushes.... Hi! the fleas bite me so,
and do me great harm, for I have scratched my shoulders till the blood
flows."

14. =Alehouses.=--By the roadside were alehouses for temporary
refreshment, known by a bunch of twigs at the end of a pole, from
which arose the saying that "Good wine needs no bush." The ale of the
day was made without hops, which were still unknown in England, and
ale would therefore only keep good for about five days.

15. =Wanderers.=--Besides the better class of travellers the roads
were frequented by wanderers of all kinds, quack doctors, minstrels,
jugglers, beggars, and such like. Life in the country was dull, and
even great lords took pleasure in amusements which are now only to be
heard of at country fairs. Any one who could play or sing was always
welcome, and the verses sung were often exceedingly coarse. A tumbler
who could stand on his head or balance a heavy article at the end of a
stick balanced on his chin, or the leader of a performing bear, was
seldom turned away from the door, whilst the pedlar went from place to
place, supplying the wants which are now satisfied in the shop of the
village or the neighbouring town.

[Illustration: Bear-baiting: from the Luttrell Psalter.]

16. =Robbers and Criminals.=--The roads, indeed, were not always safe.
Outlaws who had escaped from the punishment due to their crimes took
refuge in the broad tracts of forest land which occupied much of the
soil which has since been cultivated, shot the king's deer, and robbed
merchants and wealthy travellers, leaving the poor untouched, like the
legendary Robin Hood of an earlier date. Such robbers were highly
esteemed by the poor, as the law from which they suffered was cruelly
harsh, hanging being the penalty for thefts amounting to a shilling.
Villeins who fled from service could be reclaimed by their masters,
unless they could succeed in passing a year in a town, and
consequently were often found amongst vagabonds who had to live as
best they might, often enough by committing fresh crimes. Prisons, in
which even persons guilty of no more than harmless vagabondage were
confined, reeked with disease, and those who were, as wanderers or
drunkards, put in the stocks, had, if an unpleasant, at least a less
dangerous experience than the prisoner. One means of escape, indeed,
was available to some, at least, of these unfortunates. They could
take refuge in the sanctuaries to be found in churches, from which no
officer of the law could take them, and, though the Church preserved
some guilty ones from just punishment, she also saved many who were
either innocent or who were exposed to punishments far too severe for
their slight offences.

[Illustration: West end of the nave of Winchester Cathedral: begun by
Bishop Edington (who built the great window) between 1360 and 1366:
carried on by Bishop William of Wykeham from 1394 to 1416, and finally
completed after his death.]

17. =Justices of the Peace.=--Even harshness is less dangerous than
anarchy, and from time to time measures were taken to provide against
anarchy. Before the Conquest order had been kept by making either the
kindred or the township liable to produce offenders, and this system
was maintained by the Norman kings. In the time of Richard I. all men
were required to swear to keep the peace, to avoid crime, and to join
in the hue and cry in pursuit of criminals. In the time of Henry III.
persons called guardians of the peace were occasionally appointed to
see that order was kept, and at the accession of Edward III. these
officials were established for a time by Act of Parliament as
conservators of the peace. In =1360=, the year of the Treaty of
Bretigni, they were permanently continued, and the name of Justices of
the Peace was given to them. They were to keep the peace in each
county, and their number was to be made up of a lord, three or four
gentlemen, and a lawyer, who was in those days always a cleric.[26]
They were to seize and imprison, and even to try persons accused of
crime. The king named these justices, but he had to name all of them
except the lawyer from amongst the local landowners. In every way, in
the fourteenth century, the chief local landowners were becoming
prominent. The kings attempted to govern with their help, both in
Parliament and in the counties.

    [Footnote 26: Many clerics took one of the minor orders so as to
    secure the immunities of the clergy, without any intention of being
    ordained a deacon or a priest.]

CHAPTER XVIII.

RICHARD II. AND THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION.

1382--1399.

LEADING DATES

Reign of Richard II., 1377--1399

  The impeachment of Suffolk                                      1386
  The Merciless Parliament                                        1388
  Richard begins his constitutional government                    1389
  Richard's coup-d'état                                           1397
  Deposition of Richard                                           1399

1. =Progress of the War with France. 1382--1386.=--In =1382= Richard
at the early age of fifteen was married to Anne of Bohemia. Though he
was a young husband he was at all events old enough to be accused of
disasters which he could not avoid. Not only was the war with France
not prospering, but English influence was declining in Flanders. In
=1382= Philip van Arteveldt, who like his father Jacob (see p. 235)
headed the resistance of Ghent against the Count of Flanders, was
defeated and slain at Roosebeke by Charles VI., the young king of
France. In =1383= an English expedition led by Henry Spencer, Bishop
of Norwich, under the pretext of a crusade against the French as the
followers of the Pope of Avignon, ended in complete failure, and
Flanders, the great purchaser of English wool, fell under the control
of France. In =1385= Richard, indeed, invaded Scotland, ravaged the
country and burnt Edinburgh, though without producing any permanent
result. In =1386= a French fleet and army was gathered at Sluys, and
an invasion of England was threatened.

2. =Richard's growing Unpopularity. 1385--1386.=--When the king
returned from Scotland in =1385= he made a large creation of peers. He
raised his two younger uncles to the Dukedoms of York and Gloucester;
his Chancellor, Michael de la Pole, to the earldom of Suffolk, and his
favourite, Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, to the marquisate of
Dublin, making him not long afterwards Duke of Ireland. Suffolk was an
able and apparently an honest administrator, who upheld the king's
prerogative against the encroachments of Parliament. Oxford was a gay
and heedless companion of Richard's pleasures, who encouraged him in
unnecessary expense, and thereby provoked to resistance those who
might have put up with an extension of the royal authority. That
resistance, however, was to a great extent due to causes not of
Richard's own making. Though the French in =1386= abandoned their
attempt at invasion, the preparations to resist them had been costly,
and Englishmen were in an unreasonable mood. Things, they said, had
not gone so in the days of Edward III. A cry for reform and
retrenchment, for more victories and less expense, was loudly raised.

3. =The Impeachment of Suffolk and the Commission of Regency.
1386.=--The discontented found a leader in Gloucester, the youngest of
the king's uncles. Wealthy, turbulent, and ambitious, he put himself
at the head of all who had a grievance against the king. Lancaster had
just sailed for Spain to prosecute a claim in right of his second wife
to the throne of Castile, and as York was without ambition, Gloucester
had it all his own way. Under his guidance a Parliament demanded the
dismissal of Richard's ministers, and, on his refusal, impeached
Suffolk. Suffolk, though probably innocent of the charges brought
against him, was condemned and driven from power, and Commissioners of
regency were appointed for a year to regulate the realm and the king's
household, as the Lords Ordainers had done in the days of Edward II.
(see p. 226).

4. =The Lords Appellant and the Merciless Parliament. 1387--1388.=--In
one way the Commissioners of regency satisfied the desire of
Englishmen. In =1387= they sent the Earl of Arundel to sea, and
Arundel won a splendid victory over a combined fleet of French,
Flemings, and Spaniards. Richard, on the other hand, fearing that they
would prolong their power when their year of office was ended,
consulted upon the legality of the commission with the judges in the
presence of Suffolk and others of his principal supporters, amongst
whom was the Duke of Ireland. With one voice the judges declared that
Parliament might not put the king in tutelage. Richard then made
preparations to prevent by force the renewal of the commission, and to
punish as traitors those who had originated it. His intention got
abroad, and five lords, the Duke of Gloucester, the Earls of Arundel,
Nottingham, Warwick, and Derby, the latter being the son of the absent
Lancaster, appeared at the head of an overwhelming force against him.
The five lords appellant, as they were called, appealed, or accused of
treason five of Richard's councillors before a Parliament which met at
Westminster in =1388=, by flinging down their gloves as a token that
they were ready to prove the truth of their charge in single combat.
The Duke of Ireland, attempting resistance, was defeated by Derby at
Radcot Bridge, and finally escaped to Ireland. The Parliament, called
by its admirers the Wonderful, and by its opponents the Merciless
Parliament, was entirely subservient to the lords appellant, who,
instead of meeting their antagonists in single combat, accused them
before the House of Lords. The Duke of Ireland, Suffolk, Chief Justice
Tresilian, and Brember, who had been Mayor of London, were condemned
to be hanged. The two first-named had escaped to the Continent, but
the others were put to death. The fifth councillor, the Archbishop of
York, escaped with virtual deprivation by the Pope. Four other
knights, amongst them Sir Simon Burley, a veteran soldier and trusted
companion of the Black Prince, were also put to death. Richard was
allowed nominally to retain the crown, but in reality he was subjected
to a council in which Gloucester and his adherents were supreme.

5. =Richard's Restoration to Power. 1389.=--Richard's entire
submission turned the scale in his favour. England had been
dissatisfied with him, but it had never loved the rule of the great
feudal lords. Gloucester's council was no more popular than had been
the Committees named in the Provisions of Oxford in the reign of Henry
III., or the Lords Ordainers in the reign of Edward II., and it fell
more easily than any government, before or afterwards. Suddenly, on
May 3, =1389=, Richard asked his uncle in full council how old he was.
"Your highness," replied Gloucester, "is in your twenty-second year."
"Then," said Richard, "I must be old enough to manage my own affairs,
as every heir is at liberty to do when he is twenty-one." No attempt
having been made to confute this argument, Richard dismissed the
council, and ruled once more in person.

6. =Richard's Constitutional Government. 1389--1396.=--This sudden
blow was followed by seven years of constitutional government. It
seemed as if Richard had solved the problem of the relations between
Crown and Parliament, which had perplexed so many generations of
Englishmen. In =1389= he appointed ministers at his own pleasure, but
when Parliament met in =1390= he commanded them to lay down their
offices in order that no one should be deterred from bringing charges
against them; and it was only upon finding that no one had any
complaint to bring against them that he restored them to their posts.
Nor did he show any signs of irritation against those by whom he had
been outraged. Not only did he forbear to recall Suffolk and his other
exiled favourites, but after a little time he admitted Gloucester and
his supporters to sit in council alongside of his own adherents.

7. =Livery and Maintenance. 1390.=--During the fourteenth century the
importance of the House of Commons had been steadily growing, and the
king on the one hand and the great nobles on the other had been sorely
tempted to influence the elections unduly. The means of doing so had
come with a change in civil relationships, the natural result of that
change in military relationships which had given a new character to
the wars of Edward III. (see p. 236). Just as the king now fought with
paid soldiers of every rank instead of fighting with vassals bound by
feudal tenure, so the great nobles surrounded themselves with
retainers instead of vassals. The vassal had been on terms of social
equality with his lord, and was bound to follow him on fixed terms.
The retainer was an inferior, who was taken into service and professed
himself ready to fight for his lord at all times and in all causes. In
return his lord kept open house for his retainers, supplied them with
coats, known as liveries, marked with his badge, and undertook to
maintain them against all men, either by open force or by supporting
them in their quarrels in the law courts; and this maintenance, as it
was called, was seldom limited to the mere payment of expenses. The
lord, by the help of his retainers, could bully witnesses and jurors,
and wrest justice to the profit of the wrongdoer. As yet, indeed, the
practice had not attained the proportions which it afterwards assumed,
but it was sufficiently developed to draw down upon it in =1390= a
statute prohibiting maintenance and the granting of liveries. Such a
statute was not merely issued in defence of private persons against
intimidation; it also helped to protect the Crown against the violence
of the great lords. The growth of the power of the House of Commons
was a good thing as long as the House of Commons represented the
wishes of the community. It would be a bad thing if it merely
represented knots of armed retainers who either voted in their own
names according to the orders of their lords, or who frightened away
those who came to vote for candidates whom their lords opposed.

8. =Richard's Domestic Policy. 1390--1391.=--It was therefore well for
the community that there should be a strong and wise king capable of
making head against the ambition of the lords. For some years Richard
showed himself wise. Not only did he seek, by opening the council to
his opponents, to win over the lords to take part in the peaceable
government of the country instead of disturbing it, but he forwarded
legislation which carried out the general wishes of the country. The
Statute of Provisors (see p. 258) was re-enacted and strengthened in
=1390=, the Statute of Mortmain (see p. 212) in =1391=, and the
Statute of Præmunire (see p. 258) in =1393=.

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.

[Illustration: Meeting of Henry of Lancaster and Richard II. at Flint:
from Harl. MS. 1319.]

14. =Henry of Lancaster in England. 1399.=--Lancaster, with a small
force, landed at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire, a harbour which has now
disappeared in the sea. At first he gave out that he had come merely
to demand his own inheritance. Then he alleged that he had come to
redress the wrongs of the realm. Northumberland brought the Percies to
his help. Armed men flocked to his support in crowds. The Duke of
York, who had been left behind by Richard as regent, accepted this
statement and joined him with all his forces. When Richard heard what
had happened, he sent the Earl of Salisbury from Ireland to Wales to
summon the Welshmen to his aid. The Welshmen rallied to Salisbury, but
the king was long in following, and when Richard landed they had all
dispersed. Richard found himself almost alone in Conway Castle, whilst
Lancaster had a whole kingdom at his back.

[Illustration: Henry of Lancaster claiming the throne: from Harl. MS.
1319.]

15. =The Deposition of Richard and the Enthronement of Henry IV.
1399.=--By lying promises Lancaster induced Richard to place himself
in his power at Flint. "My lord," said Lancaster to him, "I have now
come before you have sent for me. The reason is that your people
commonly say you have ruled them very rigorously for twenty or two and
twenty years; but, if it please God, I will help you to govern
better." The pretence of helping the king to govern was soon
abandoned. Richard was carried to London and thrown into the Tower. He
consented, probably not till after he had been threatened with the
fate of Edward II., to sign his abdication. On the following morning
the act of abdication was read in Parliament. The throne was empty
Then Lancaster stepped forward. "In the name," he said, "of the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster, challenge this
realm of England, and the crown with all its members and
appurtenances, as I am descended by right line of the blood coming
from the good lord King Henry the Third,[27] and through that right
God of his grace hath sent me, with help of my kin and of my friends,
to recover it, the which realm was in point to be undone for default
of governance and undoing of the good laws." The assent of Parliament
was given, and Lancaster took his seat in Richard's throne as King
Henry IV.