One of the most popular laws enacted by any prince, was the statute which passed in the twenty-fifth of this reign,[****] and which limited the cases of high treason, before vague and uncertain, to three principal heads—conspiring the death of the king, levying war against him, and adhering to his enemies and the judges were prohibited, if any other cases should occur, from inflicting the penalty of treason without an application to parliament. The bounds of treason were indeed so much limited by this statute, which still remains in force without any alteration, that the lawyers were obliged to enlarge them, and to explain a conspiracy for levying war against the king, to be equivalent to a conspiracy against his life; and this interpretation, seemingly forced, has, from the necessity of the case, been tacitly acquiesced in.

* Cotton's Abridg. p. 108, 120.

** Cotton's Abridg. p. 122.

*** Cotton's Abridg. p. 18.

**** Chap. 2.

It was also ordained that a parliament should be held once a year, or oftener, if need be; a law which, like many others, was never observed and lost its authority by disuse.[*]

Edward granted above twenty parliamentary confirmations of the Great Charter; and these concessions are commonly appealed to as proofs of his great indulgence to the people, and his tender regard for their liberties. But the contrary presumption is more natural. If the maxims of Edward's reign had not been in general somewhat arbitrary, and if the Great Charter had not been frequently violated, the parliament would never have applied for these frequent confirmations, which could add no force to a deed regularly observed, and which could serve to no other purpose, than to prevent the contrary precedents from turning into a rule, and acquiring authority. It was indeed the effect of the irregular government during those ages, that a statute which had been enacted some years, instead of acquiring, was imagined to lose, force by time, and needed to be often renewed by recent statutes of the same sense and tenor. Hence likewise that general clause, so frequent in old acts of parliament, that the statutes, enacted by the king's progenitors, should be observed;[**] a precaution which, if we do not consider the circumstances of the times, might appear absurd and ridiculous. The frequent confirmations in general terms of the privileges of the church proceeded from the same cause.

It is a clause in one of Edward's statutes, "that no man, of what estate or condition soever, shall be put out of land or tenement, nor taken, nor imprisoned, nor disherited, nor put to death, without being brought in answer by due process of the law."[***] This privilege was sufficiently secured by a clause of the Great Charter, which had received a general confirmation in the first chapter of the same statute. Why then is the clause so anxiously, and, as we may think, so superfluously repeated? Plainly, because there had been some late infringements of it, which gave umbrage to the commons.[****]

* 4 Edward III. cap. 14.

** 36 Edward III. cap. 1. 37 Edward III. cap. 1, etc.

*** 28 Edward III. cap. 3.

**** They assert, in the fifteenth of this reign, that there had been such instances. Cotton's Abridg. p. 31. They repeat the same in the twenty-first year. See p. 59.

But there is no article in which the laws are more frequently repeated during this reign, almost in the same terms, than that of purveyance which the parliament always calls an outrageous and intolerable grievance, and the source of infinite damage to the people.[*] The parliament tried to abolish this prerogative altogether, by prohibiting any one from taking goods without the consent of the owners,[**] and by changing the heinous name of purveyors, as they term it, into that of buyers;[***] but the arbitrary conduct of Edward still brought back the grievance upon them, though contrary both to the Great Charter and to many statutes. This disorder was in a great measure derived from the state of the public finances, and of the kingdom; and could therefore the less admit of remedy. The prince frequently wanted ready money; yet his family must be subsisted: he was therefore obliged to employ force and violence for that purpose, and to give tallies, at what rate he pleased, to the owners of the goods which he laid hold of. The kingdom also abounded so little in commodities, and the interior communication was so imperfect, that had the owners been strictly protected by law, they could easily have exacted any price from the king; especially in his frequent progresses, when he came to distant and poor places, where the court did not usually reside, and where a regular plan for supplying it could not be easily established. Not only the king, but several great lords, insisted upon this right of purveyance within certain districts.[****]

The magnificent Castle of Windsor was built by Edward III., and his method of conducting the work may serve as a specimen of the condition of the people in that age. Instead of engaging workmen by contracts and wages, he assessed every county in England to send him a certain number of masons, tilers, and carpenters, as if he had been levying an army.[*****]

They mistake, indeed, very much the genius of this reign, who imagine that it was not extremely arbitrary. All the high prerogatives of the crown were to the full exerted in it; but what gave some consolation, and promised in time some relief to the people, they were always complained of by the commons: such as the dispensing power;[******] the extension of the forests;[*******] erecting monopolies;[********] exacting loans—[*********]

* 36 Edward III. etc.

** 14 Edward III. cap. 19.

*** 36 Edward III. cap. 2.

**** 7 Richard II. cap. 8.

***** Ashmole's Hist, of the Garter, p. 129.

***** Cotton's Abridg. p. 148.

****** Cotton's Abridg. p. 71.

******* Cotton's Abridg. p. 56, 61, 122.

******** Rymer, vol. v. p. 491, 574. Cotton's Abridg. p. 56.

—stopping justice by particular warrants;[*] the renewal of the commission of "trailbaton;"[**] pressing men and ships into the public service;[***] levying arbitrary and exorbitant fines;[****] extending the authority of the privy council or star-chamber to the decision of private causes;[*****] enlarging the power of the mareschal's and other arbitrary courts;[******] imprisoning members for freedom of speech in parliament;[*******] obliging people without any rule to send recruits of men at arms, archers, and hoblers to the army.[********]

* Cotton, p. 114.

** Cotton, p. 67.

*** Cotton, p. 47, 79, 113.

**** Cotton, p. 32.

***** Cotton, p. 74.

****** Cotton, p. 74.

******* Walsing. p. 189, 190.

But there was no act of arbitrary power more frequently repeated in this reign, than that of imposing taxes without consent of parliament. Though that assembly granted the king greater supplies than had ever been obtained by any of his predecessors, his great undertakings, and the necessity of his affairs, obliged him to levy still more; and after his splendid success against France had added weight to his authority, these arbitrary impositions became almost annual and perpetual. Cotton's Abridgment of the records affords numerous instances of this kind, in the first[*] year of his reign, in the thirteenth year,[**] in the fourteenth,[***] in the twentieth,[****] in the twenty-first,[*****] in the twenty-second,[******] in the twenty fifth,[*******] in the thirty-eighth,[********] in the fiftieth,[*********] and in the fifty-first,[**********]

* Tyrrel's Hist. vol. iii. p. 554, from the records.

** Rymer, vol. iv. p. 363.

*** Page 17, 18.

**** Page 39.

***** Page 47.

****** Page 52, 53, 57, 58.

******* Page 69.

******** Page 76.

********* Page 101.

********** Page 138.

The king openly avowed and maintained this power of levying taxes at pleasure. At one time, he replied to the remonstrance made by the commons against it, that the impositions had been exacted from great necessity, and had been assented to by the prelates, earls, barons, and some of the commons;[*] at another, that he would advise with his council.[**] When the parliament desired that a law might be enacted for the punishment of such as levied these arbitrary impositions he refused compliance.[***]

* Page 152.

** Cotton, p. 53. He repeats the same answer in p. 60. "Some of the commons" were such as he should be pleased to consult with.

*** Cotton, p. 57.

In the subsequent year, they desired that the king might renounce this pretended prerogative; but his answer was, that he would levy no taxes without necessity for the defence of the realm, and where he reasonably might use that authority.[*] This incident passed a few days before his death; and these were, in a manner, his last words to his people. It would seem that the famous charter or statute of Edward I., "de tallagio non concedendo," though never repealed, was supposed to have already lost by age all its authority.

These facts can only show the practice of the times: for as to the right, the continual remonstrances of the commons may seem to prove that it rather lay on their side: at least, these remonstrances served to prevent the arbitrary practices of the court from becoming an established part of the constitution. In so much a better condition were the privileges of the people even during the arbitrary reign of Edward III., than during some subsequent ones, particularly those of the Tudors, where no tyranny or abuse of power ever met with any check or opposition, or so much as a remonstrance, from parliament.

In this reign, we find, according to the sentiments of an ingenious and learned author, the first strongly marked and probably contested distinction between a proclamation by the king and his privy council, and a law which had received the assent of the lords and commons.[**]

It is easy to imagine, that a prince of so much sense and spirit as Edward, would be no slave to the court of Rome. Though the old tribute was paid during some years of his minority,[***] he afterwards withheld it; and when the pope, in 1367, threatened to cite him to the court of Rome for default of payment, he laid the matter before his parliament. That assembly unanimously declared, that King John could not, without a national consent, subject his kingdom to a foreign power; and that they were therefore determined to support their sovereign against this unjust pretension.[****]

* Cotton, p. 132.

** Observations on the Statutes, p. 193.

*** Rymer, vol. iv. p. 434.

**** Cotton's Abridg. p. 110.

During this reign, the statute of provisors was enacted, rendering it penal to procure any presentations to benefices from the court of Rome, and securing the rights of all patrons and electors, which had been extremely encroached on by the pope.[*] By a subsequent statute, every person was outlawed who carried any cause by appeal to the court of Rome.[**]

The laity at this time seem to have been extremely prejudiced against the papal power, and even somewhat against their own clergy, because of their connections with the Roman pontiff. The parliament pretended, that the usurpations of the pope were the cause of all the plagues, injuries, famine, anc poverty of the realm; were more destructive to it than al the wars; and were the reason why it contained not a third of the inhabitants and commodities which it formerly possessed: that the taxes levied by him exceeded five times those which were paid to the king; that every thing was venal in that sinful city of Rome; and that even the patrons in England had thence learned to practise simony without shame or remorse.[***] At another time, they petition the king to employ no churchman in any office of state;[****] and they even speak in plain terms of expelling by force the papal authority, and thereby providing a remedy against oppressions, which they neither could, nor would, any longer endure.[*****] Men who talked in this strain, were not far from the reformation: but Edward did not think proper to second all this zeal. Though he passed the statute of provisors, he took little care of its execution; and the parliament made frequent complaints of his negligence on this head.[******] He was content with having reduced such of the Romish ecclesiastics as possessed revenues in England, to depend entirely upon him by means of that statute.

As to the police of the kingdom during this period, it was certainly better than during times of faction, civil war, and disorder, to which England was so often exposed: yet were there several vices in the constitution, the bad consequences of which all the power and vigilance of the king could not prevent. The barons, by their confederacies with those of their own order, and by supporting and defending their retainers in every iniquity,[*******] were the chief abettors of robbers, murderers, and ruffians of all kinds; and no law could be executed against those criminals.

* 25 Edward III. 27 Edward III.

** 27 Edward III. 38 Edward III.

*** Cotton, p. 74, 128, 129.

**** Cotton, p. 112.

***** Cotton, p. 41.

****** Cotton, p. 119, 128 129, 130, 143.

******* 11 Edward III. cap. 14.

******** 4 Edward III. cap.

********* 15 Edward III cap. 4.

The nobility were brought to give their promise in parliament, that they would not avow retain, or support any felon or breaker of the law;[*] yet this, engagement, which we may wonder to see exacted from men of their rank, was never regarded by them. The commons make continual complaints of the multitude of robberies, murders, rapes, and other disorders, which, they say, were become numberless in every part of the kingdom, and which they always ascribe to the protection that the criminals received from the great.[**]The king of Cyprus, who paid a visit to England in this reign, was robbed and stripped on the highway with his whole retinue.[***] Edward himself contributed to this dissolution of law, by his facility in granting pardons to felons, from the solicitation of the courtiers. Laws were made to retrench this prerogative,[****] and remonstrances of the commons were presented against the abuse of it;[*****] but to no purpose. The gratifying of a powerful nobleman continued still to be of more importance than the protection of the people. The king also granted many franchises, which interrupted the course of justice and the execution of the laws.[******]

* Cotton, p. 10.

** Cotton, p. 51, 62, 64, 70, 160.

*** Walsing. p. 170.

**** 10 Edward III. cap. 2. 27 Edward III. cap. 2.

***** Cotton, p. 75.

****** Cotton, p. 54.

Commerce and industry were certainly at a very low ebb during this period. The bad police of the country alone affords a sufficient reason. The only exports were wool, skins, hides leather, butter, tin, lead, and such unmanufactured goods, of which wool was by far the most considerable. Knyghton has asserted, that one hundred thousand sacks of wool were annually exported, and sold at twenty pounds a sack, money of that age. But he is widely mistaken both in the quantity exported and in the value. In 1349, the parliament remonstrate, that the king, by an illegal imposition of forty shillings on each sack exported, had levied sixty thousand pounds a year:[*] which reduces the annual exports to thirty thousand sacks. A sack contained twenty-six stone, and each stone fourteen pounds;[**] and at a medium was not valued at above five pounds a sack,[***] that is, fourteen or fifteen pounds of our present money. Knyghton's computation raises it to sixty pounds, which is near four times the present price of wool in England.

* Cotton, p. 48, 69.

** 34 Edward III. cap. 5.

*** Cotton, p. 29.

According to this reduced computation, the export of wool brought into the kingdom about four hundred and thousand pounds of our present money, instead of six millions, which is an extravagant sum. Even the former sum is so high, as to afford a suspicion of some mistake in the computation of the parliament with regard to the number of sacks exported. Such mistakes were very usual in those ages.

Edward endeavored to introduce and promote the woolen manufacture, by giving protection and encouragement to foreign weavers,[*] and by enacting a law, which prohibited every one from wearing any cloth but of English fabric.[*] The parliament prohibited the exportation of woollen goods, which was not so well judged, especially while the exportation of unwrought wool was so much allowed and encouraged. A like injudicious law was made against the exportation of manufactured iron.[**]

It appears from a record in the exchequer, that in 1354 the exports of England amounted to two hundred and ninety-four thousand one hundred and eighty-four pounds seventeen shillings and twopence; the imports to thirty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventy pounds three shillings and sixpence, money of that time. This is a great balance, considering that it arose wholly from the exportation of raw wool and other rough materials. The import was chiefly linen and fine cloth, and some wine. England seems to have been extremely drained at this time by Edward's foreign expeditions and foreign subsidies, which probably was the reason why the exports so much exceed the imports.

The first toll we read of in England for mending the highways, was imposed in this reign: it was that for repairing the road between St. Giles's and Temple Bar.[***]

In the first of Richard II., the parliament complain extremely of the decay of shipping during the preceding reign, and assert that one seaport formerly contained more vessels than were then to be found in the whole kingdom. This calamity they ascribe to the arbitrary seizure of ships by Edward for the service of his frequent expeditions.[****] The parliament in the fifth of Richard renew the same complaint;[*****] and we likewise find it made in the forty-sixth of Edward III.

* 11 Edward III. cap. 5. Rymer, vol. iv. p. 723. Murimuth p. 88.

** 11 Edward III. cap. 2.

*** 28 Edward III. cap. 5.

**** Rymer, vol. v. p. 520.

***** Cotton, p. 155, 164.

So false is the common opinion that this reign was favorable to commerce.

There is an order of this king, directed to the mayor and sheriffs of London, to take up all ships of forty ton and upwards, to be converted into ships of war.[*]

The parliament attempted the impracticable scheme of reducing the price of labor after the pestilence, and also that of poultry,[**] A reaper, in the first week of August, was not allowed above twopence a day, or near sixpence of our present money; in the second week, a third more. A master carpenter was limited through the whole year to threepence a day, a common carpenter to twopence, money of that age.[***] It is remarkable that, in the same reign, the pay of a common soldier, an archer, was sixpence a day; which, by the change both in denomination and value, would be equivalent to near five shillings of our present money.[****] Soldiers were then enlisted only for a very short time; they lived idle all the rest of the year, and commonly all the rest of their lives: one successful campaign, by pay and plunder, and the ransom of prisoners, was supposed to be a small fortune to a man; which was a great allurement to enter into the service.[*****]

* Rymer, vol. iv. p. 664.

** 37 Edward III. cap. 3.

**** 25 Edward III, cap. I. 3.

***** Dugdale's Baronage, vol. i. p. 784.

****** Brady's Hist. vol. ii. App No. 92.

The staple of wool, wool-fells, leather, and lead, was fixed by act of parliament in particular towns of England.[*] Afterwards it was removed by law to Calais: but Edward, who commonly deemed his prerogative above law, paid little regard to these statutes; and when the parliament remonstrated with him on account of those acts of power, he plainly told them, that he would proceed in that matter as he thought proper.[**] It is not easy to assign the reason of this great anxiety for fixing a staple; unless, perhaps, it invited foreigners to a market, when they knew beforehand, that they should there meet with great choice of any particular species of commodity. This policy of inviting foreigners to Calais was carried so far, that all English merchants were prohibited by law from exporting any English goods from the staple; which was in a manner the total abandoning of all foreign navigation, except that to Calais;[***] a contrivance seemingly extraordinary.

*Brady, ibid.

** Commodities seem to have risen since the conquest. Instead of being ten times cheaper than at present, they were, in the age of Edward III., only three or four times. This change seems to have taken place in a great measure since Edward I. The allowance granted by Edward III. to the earl of Murray, then a prisoner in Nottingham Castle, is one pound a week; whereas the bishop of St. Andrews, the primate of Scotland, had only sixpence a day allowed him by Edward I.

*** 27 Edward III.

The pay of a man at arms was quadruple. We may therefore conclude, that the numerous armies mentioned by historians in those times, consisted chiefly of ragamuffins who followed the camp, and lived by plunder. Edward's army before Calais consisted of thirty-one thousand and ninety-four men; yet its pay for sixteen months was only one hundred and twenty-seven thousand two hundred and one pounds.

It was not till the middle of this century that the English began to extend their navigation even to the Baltic;[*] nor till the middle of the subsequent, that they sailed to the Mediterranean.[**]

Luxury was complained of in that age, as well as in others of more refinement; and attempts were made by parliament to restrain it, particularly on the head of apparel, where surely it is the most obviously innocent and inoffensive. No man under a hundred a year was allowed to wear gold, silver, or silk in his clothes; servants, also, were prohibited from eating flesh meat, or fish, above once a day.[***] By another law it was ordained, that no one should be allowed, either for dinner or supper, above three dishes in each course, and not above two courses; and it is likewise expressly declared that "soused" meat is to count as one of these dishes.[****] It was easy to foresee that such ridiculous laws must prove ineffectual, and could never be executed.

The use of the French language, in pleadings and public deeds, was abolished.[*****] It may appear strange, that the nation should so long have worn this badge of conquest: but the king and nobility seem never to have become thoroughly English, or to have forgotten their French extraction, till Edward's wars with France gave them an antipathy to that nation. Yet still it was long before the use of the English tongue came into fashion. The first English paper which we meet with in Rymer is in the year 1386, during the reign of Richard II.[******]

* Cotton, p. 117.

** 27 Edward III. cap. 7.

*** Anderson, vol. i. p. 151.

**** Anderson, vol. i. p. 177.

***** 37 Edward III. cap. 8, 9, 10, etc.

****** 10 Edward III., 36 Edward III. cap. 15.

******* Rymer, vol. vii. p. 526. This paper, by the style, seems to have been drawn by the Scots, and was signed by the wardens of the marches only.

There are Spanish papers in that collection of more ancient date:[*] and the use of the Latin and French still continued. We may judge of the ignorance of this age in geography, from a story told by Robert of Avesbury. Pope Clement VI having, in 1344, created Lewis of Spain prince of the Fortunate Islands, meaning the Canaries, then newly discovered, the English ambassador at Rome and his retinue were seized with an alarm, that Lewis had been created king of England; and they immediately hurried home, in order to convey this important intelligence. Yet such was the ardor for study at this time, that Speed in his Chronicle informs us, there were then thirty thousand students in the university of Oxford alone. What was the occupation of all these young men? To learn very bad Latin, and still worse logic.

In 1364, the commons petitioned, that, in consideration of the preceding pestilence, such persons as possessed manors holding of the king in chief, and had let different leases without obtaining licenses, might continue to exercise the same power, till the country were become more populous.[**] The commons were sensible, that this security of possession was a good means for rendering the kingdom prosperous and flourishing; yet durst not apply, all at once, for a greater relaxation of their chains.

* Rymer, vol. vi. p. 654.

** Cotton, p. 97.

There is not a reign among those of the ancient English monarchs, which deserves more to be studied than that of Edward III., nor one where the domestic transactions will better discover the true genius of that kind of mixed government, which was then established in England. The struggles with regard to the validity and authority of the Great Charter were now over: the king was acknowledged to lie under some limitations: Edward himself was a prince of great capacity, not governed by favorites, nor led astray by any unruly passion, sensible that nothing could be more essential to his interests than to keep on good terms with his people: yet, on the whole, it appears that the government at best was only a barbarous monarchy, not regulated by any fixed maxims, or bounded by any certain undisputed rights, which in practice were regularly observed. The king conducted himself by one set of principles, the barons by another, the commons by a third, the clergy by a fourth. All these systems of government were opposite and incompatible: each of them prevailed in its turn, as incidents were favorable to it: a great prince rendered the monarchical power predominant; the weakness of a king gave reins to the aristocracy; a superstitious age saw the clergy triumphant; the people, for whom chiefly government was instituted, and who chiefly deserve consideration, were the weakest of the whole. But the commons, little obnoxious to any other order, though they sunk under the violence of tempests, silently reared their head in more peaceable times; and while the storm was brewing, were courted by all sides, and thus received still some accession to their privileges, or, at worst, some confirmation of them.

It has been an established opinion that gold coin was not struck till this reign; but there has lately been found proof that it is as ancient as Henry III.[*]

* See Observations on the more ancient Statutes, p. 375, 3d edit.



CHAPTER XVII.



RICHARD II.

{1377.} THE parliament which was summoned soon after the king's accession, was both elected and assembled in tranquillity; and the great change, from a sovereign of consummate wisdom and experience to a boy of eleven years of age, was not immediately felt by the people. The habits of order and obedience which the barons had been taught, during the long reign of Edward, still influenced them; and the authority of the king's three uncles, the dukes of Lancaster, York, and Glocester, sufficed to repress, for a time, the turbulent spirit to which that order, in a weak reign, was so often subject. The dangerous ambition, too, of these princes themselves was checked, by the plain and undeniable title of Richard, by the declaration of it made in parliament, and by the affectionate regard which the people bore to the memory of his father, and which was naturally transferred to the young sovereign upon the throne. The different characters, also, of these three princes rendered them a counterpoise to each other; and it was natural to expect, that any dangerous designs which might be formed by one brother, would meet with opposition from the others. Lancaster, whose age and experience, and authority under the late king, gave him the ascendant among them, though his integrity seemed not proof against great temptations, was neither of an enterprising spirit, nor of a popular and engaging temper. York was indolent, inactive, and of slender capacity. Glocester was turbulent, bold, and popular; but being the youngest of the family, was restrained by the power and authority of his elder brothers. There appeared, therefore, no circumstance in the domestic situation of England which might endanger the public peace, or give any immediate apprehensions to the lovers of their country.

But as Edward, though he had fixed the succession to the crown, had taken no care to establish a plan of government during the minority of his grandson, it behoved the parliament to supply this defect; and the house of commons distinguished themselves by taking the lead on the occasion. This house, which had been rising to consideration during the whole course of the late reign, naturally received an accession of power during the minority; and as it was now becoming a scene of business, the members chose for the first time a speaker, who might preserve order in their debates, and maintain those forms which are requisite in all numerous assembles. Peter de la Mare was the man pitched on; the same person that had been imprisoned and detained in custody by the late king for his freedom of speech, in attacking the mistress and the ministers of that prince. But though this election discovered a spirit of liberty in the commons, and was followed by further attacks, both on these ministers and on Alice Pearce,[*] they were still too sensible of their great inferiority to assume at first any immediate share in the administration of government, or the care of the king's person. They were content to apply by petition to the lords for that purpose, and desire them both to appoint a council of nine, who might direct the public business, and to choose men of virtuous life and conversation, who might inspect the conduct and education of the young prince. The lords complied with the first part of this request, and elected the bishops of London, Carlisle, and Salisbury, the earls of Marche and Stafford, Sir Richard de Stafford, Sir Henry le Scrope, Sir John Devereux, and Sir Hugh Segrave, to whom they gave authority for a year to conduct the ordinary course of business.[**] But as to the regulation of the king's household, they declined interposing in an office which, they said, both was invidious in itself, and might prove disagreeable to his majesty.

* Walsing. p. 150.

** Rymer, vol. vii. p. 161.

The commons, as they acquired more courage, ventured to proceed a step farther in their applications. They presented a petition, in which they prayed the king to check the prevailing custom among the barons of forming illegal confederacies, and supporting each other, as well as men of inferior rank, in the violations of law and justice. They received from the throne a general and an obliging answer to this petition: but another part of their application, that all the great officers should, during the king's minority, be appointed by parliament, which seemed to require the concurrence of the commons, as well as that of the upper house, in the nomination, was not complied with: the lords alone assumed the power of appointing these officers. The commons tacitly acquiesced in the choice; and thought that, for, the present, they themselves had proceeded a sufficient length, if they but advanced their pretensions, though rejected, of interposing in these more important matters of state.

On this footing then the government stood. The administration was conducted entirely in the king's name: no regency was expressly appointed: the nine counsellors and the great officers named by the peers, did their duty each in his respective department; and the whole system was for some years kept together, by the secret authority of the king's uncles, especially of the duke of Lancaster, who was in reality the regent.

The parliament was dissolved, after the commons had represented the necessity of their being reassembled once every year, as appointed by law; and after having elected two citizens as their treasurers, to receive and disburse the produce of two fifteenths and tenths, which they had voted to the crown. In the other parliaments called during the minority, the commons still discover a strong spirit of freedom, and a sense of their own authority, which, without breeding any disturbance, tended to secure their independence and that of the people.[*] [11]

* See note K, at the end of the volume.

Edward had left his grandson involved in many dangerous wars. The pretensions of the duke of Lancaster to the crown of Castile, made that kingdom still persevere in hostilities against England. Scotland, whose throne was now filled by Robert Stuart, nephew to David Bruce, and the first prince of that family, maintained such close connections with France, that war with one crown almost inevitably produced hostilities with the other. The French monarch, whose prudent conduct had acquired him the surname of Wise, as he had already baffled all the experience and valor of the two Edwards, was likely to prove a dangerous enemy to a minor king: but his genius, which was not naturally enterprising, led him not at present to give any disturbance to his neighbors; and he labored, besides, under many difficulties at home, which it was necessary for him to surmount, before he could think of making conquests in a foreign country. England was master of Calais, Bordeaux, and Bayonne; had lately acquired possession of Cherbourg from the cession of the king of Navarre, and of Brest from that of the duke of Brittany;[*] and having thus an easy entrance into France from every quarter, was able, even in its present situation, to give disturbance to his government. Before Charles could remove the English from these important posts, he died in the flower of his age, and left his kingdom to a minor son who bore the name of Charles VI.

{1378.} Meanwhile the war with France was carried on in a manner somewhat languid, and produced no enterprise of great lustre or renown. Sir Hugh Calverly, governor of Calais, making an inroad into Picardy with a detachment of the garrison, set fire to Boulogne.[**] The duke of Lancaster conducted an army into Brittany, but returned without being able to perform any thing memorable.

{1380.} In a subsequent year, the duke of Glocester marched out of Calais with a body of two thousand cavalry and eight thousand infantry, and scrupled not, with his small army, to enter into the heart of France, and to continue his ravages through Picardy, Champaigne, the Brie, the Beausse, the Gatinois, the Orleanois, till he reached his allies in the province of Brittany.[***] The duke of Burgundy, at the head of a more considerable army, came within sight of him; but the French were so overawed by the former successes of the English, that no superiority of numbers could tempt them to venture a pitched battle with the troops of that nation. As the duke of Brittany, soon after the arrival of these succors, formed an accommodation with the court of France, this enterprise also proved in the issue unsuccessful, and made no durable impression upon the enemy.

* Rymer, vol. vii. p. 190.

** Walsing, p. 209.

*** Froissard, liv. ii. chap. 50, 51. Walsing. p. 239.

The expenses of these armaments, and the usual want of economy attending a minority, much exhausted the English treasury, and obliged the parliament, besides making some alterations in the council, to impose a new and unusual tax of three groats on every person, male and female, above fifteen years of age; and they ordained that, in levying that tax, the opulent should relieve the poor by an equitable compensation. This imposition produced a mutiny, which was singular in its circumstances. All history abounds with examples where the great tyrannize over the meaner sort; but here the lowest populace rose against their rulers, committed the most cruel ravages upon them, and took vengeance for all former oppressions.

{1381.} The faint dawn of the arts and of good government in that age, had excited the minds of the populace, in different states of Europe, to wish for a better condition, and to murmur against those chains which the laws enacted by the haughty nobility and gentry, had so long imposed upon them. The commotions of the people in Flanders, the mutiny of the peasants in France, were the natural effects of this growing spirit of independence; and the report of these events being brought into England, where personal slavery, as we learn from Froissard,[*] was more general than in any other country in Europe, had prepared the minds of the multitude for an insurrection. One John Ball, also, a seditious preacher, who affected low popularity, went about the country and inculcated on his audience the principles of the first origin of mankind from one common stock, their equal right to liberty and to all the goods of nature, the tyranny of artificial distinctions, and the abuses which had arisen from the degradation of the more considerable part of the species, and the aggrandizement of a few insolent rulers.[**] These doctrines, so agreeable to the populace, and so conformable to the ideas of primitive equality which are engraven in the hearts of all men, were greedily received by the multitude, and scattered the sparks of that sedition which the present tax raised into a conflagration.[***]

* Liv. ii. chap. 74.

** Froissard, liv. ii. chap. 74. Walsing. p. 275.

*** There were two verses at that time in the mouths of all the common people, which, in spite of prejudice, one cannot but regard with some degree of approbation:—

When Adam delv'd and Eve span, Where was then the gentleman?

The imposition of three groats a head had been farmed out to tax-gatherers in each county, who levied the money on the people with rigor; and the clause, of making the rich ease their poorer neighbors of some share of the burden, being so vague and undeterminate, had doubtless occasioned many partialities, and made the people more sensible of the unequal lot which Fortune had assigned them in the distribution of her favors. The first disorder was raised by a blacksmith in a village of Essex. The tax-gatherers came to this man's shop while he was at work, and they demanded payment for his daughter, whom he asserted to be below the age assigned by the statute. One of these fellows offered to produce a very indecent proof to the contrary, and at the same time laid hold of the maid; which the father resenting, immediately knocked out the ruffian's brains with his hammer. The bystanders applauded the action, and exclaimed, that it was full time for the people to take vengeance on their tyrants, and to vindicate their native liberty. They immediately flew to arms: the whole neighborhood joined in the sedition: the flame spread in an instant over the county: it soon propagated itself into that of Kent, of Hertford, Surrey, Sussex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge, and Lincoln. Before the government had the least warning of the danger, the disorder had grown beyond control or opposition: the populace had shaken off all regard to their former masters; and being headed by the most audacious and criminal of their associates, who assumed the feigned names of Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, Hob Carter, and Tom Miller, by which they were fond of denoting their mean origin, they committed every where the most outrageous violence on such of the gentry or nobility as had the misfortune to fall into their hands.

The mutinous populace, amounting to a hundred thousand men, assembled on Blackheath under their leaders, Tyler and Straw; and as the princess of Wales, the king's mother, returning from a pilgrimage to Canterbury, passed through the midst of them, they insulted her attendants, and some of the most insolent among them, to show their purpose of levelling all mankind, forced kisses from her; but they allowed her to continue her journey, without attempting any further injury.[*] They sent a message to the king, who had taken shelter in the Tower; and they desired a conference with him. Richard sailed down the river in a barge for that purpose; but on his approaching the shore, he saw such symptoms of tumult and insolence, that he put back and returned to that fortress.[**]

* Froissard, liv. ii. chap. 74.

** Froissard, liv. ii. chap 75.

The seditious peasants, meanwhile, favored by the populace of London, had broken into the city; had burned the duke of Lancaster's palace of the Savoy; cut off the heads of all the gentlemen whom they laid hold of; expressed a particular animosity against the lawyers and attorneys; and pillaged the warehouses of the rich merchants.[*] A great body of them quartered themselves at Mile End; and the king, finding no defence in the Tower, which was weakly garrisoned and ill supplied with provisions, was obliged to go out to them and ask their demands. They required a general pardon, the abolition of slavery, freedom of commerce in market towns without toll or impost, and a fixed rent on lands, instead of the services due by villainage. These requests, which, though extremely reasonable in themselves, the nation was not sufficiently prepared to receive, and which it was dangerous to have extorted by violence, were, however, complied with; charters to that purpose were granted them; and this body immediately dispersed, and returned to their several homes.[**]

During this transaction, another body of the rebels had broken into the Tower; had murdered Simon Sudbury, the primate and chancellor, with Sir Robert Hales, the treasurer, and some other persons of distinction; and continued their ravages in the city.[***]

* Froissard, liv. ii, chap. 76. Walsing. p. 248, 249.

** Froissard, liv. ii chap. 77.

*** Walsing, p. 250, 251.



The king, passing along Smithfield, very slenderly guarded, met with Wat Tyler at the head of these rioters, and entered into a conference with him. Tyler, having ordered his companions to retire till he should give them a signal, after which they were to murder all the company except the king himself, whom they were to detain prisoner, feared not to come into the midst of the royal retinue. He there behaved himself in such a manner, that Walworth, the mayor of London, not able to bear his insolence, drew his sword, and struck him so violent a blow as brought him to the ground, where he was instantly despatched by others of the king's attendants. The mutineers, seeing their leader fall, prepared themselves for revenge; and this whole company, with the king himself, had undoubtedly perished on the spot, had it not been for an extraordinary presence of mind which Richard discovered on the occasion. He ordered his company to stop; he advanced alone towards the enraged multitude, and accosting them with an affable and intrepid countenance, he asked them, "What is the meaning of this disorder my good people? Are ye angry that ye have lost your leader? I am your king: I will be your leader." The populace, overawed by his presence, implicitly followed him. He led them into the fields, to prevent any disorder which might have arisen by their continuing in the city. Being there joined by Sir Robert Knolles, and a body of well-armed veteran soldiers, who had been secretly drawn together, he strictly prohibited that officer from falling on the rioters, and committing an undistinguished slaughter upon them; and he peaceably dismissed them with the same charters which had been granted to their fellows.[*] Soon after, the nobility and gentry, hearing of the king's danger, in which they were all involved, flocked to London, with their adherents and retainers; and Richard took the field at the head of an army forty thousand strong.[**] It then behoved all the rebels to submit: the charters of enfranchisement and pardon were revoked by parliament; the low people were reduced to the same slavish condition as before; and several of the ringleaders were severely punished for the late disorders. Some were even executed without process or form of law.[***] It was pretended, that the intentions of the mutineers had been to seize the king's person, to carry him through England at their head; to murder all the nobility, gentry, and lawyers, and even all the bishops and priests, except the mendicant friars; to despatch afterwards the king himself, and, having thus reduced all to a level, to order the kingdom at their pleasure.[****] It is not impossible but many of them, in the delirium of their first success, might have formed such projects: but of all the evils incident to human society, the insurrections of the populace, when not raised and supported by persons of higher quality, are the least to be dreaded: the mischiefs consequent to an abolition of all rank and distinction become so great, that they are immediately felt, and soon bring affairs back to their former order and arrangement.

* Froissard, liv. ii. chap. 77. Walsing. p. 252. Knyghton, p. 2637.

** Walsing. p. 267.

*** 5 Rich. II. cap. ult., as quoted in the Observations on Ancient Statutes, p. 262.

**** Walsing. p. 265.



A youth of sixteen, (which was at this time the king's age) who had discovered so much courage, presence of mind, and address, and had so dexterously eluded the violence of this tumult, raised great expectations in the nation; and it was natural to hope that he would, in the course of his life, equal the glories which had so uniformly attended his father and his grandfather in all their undertakings. {1385.} But in proportion as Richard advanced in years, these hopes vanished; and his want of capacity, at least of solid judgment, appeared in every enterprise which he attempted. The Scots, sensible of their own deficiency in cavalry, had applied to the regency of Charles VI.; and John de Vienne, admiral of France, had been sent over with a body of one thousand five hundred men at arms, to support them in their incursions against the English. The danger was now deemed by the king's uncles somewhat serious; and a numerous army of sixty thousand men was levied, and they marched into Scotland with Richard himself at their head. The Scots did not pretend to make resistance against so great a force: they abandoned without scruple their country to be pillaged and destroyed by the enemy: and when De Vienne expressed his surprise at this plan of operations, they told him, that all their cattle was driven into the forests and fastnesses; that their houses and other goods were of small value; and that they well knew how to compensate any losses which they might sustain in that respect, by making an incursion into England. Accordingly, when Richard entered Scotland by Berwick and the east coast, the Scots, to the number of thirty thousand men, attended by the French, entered the borders of England by the west, and carrying their ravages through Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, collected a rich booty, and then returned in tranquillity to their own country. Richard, meanwhile, advanced towards Edinburgh, and destroyed in his way all the towns and villages on each side of him: he reduced that city to ashes: he treated in the same manner Perth, Dundee, and other places in the low countries; but when he was advised to march towards the west coast, to await there the return of the enemy, and to take revenge on them for their devastations, his impatience to return to England, and enjoy his usual pleasures and amusements, outweighed every consideration; and he led back his army without effecting any thing by all these mighty preparations. The Scots, soon after, finding the heavy bodies of French cavalry very useless in that desultory kind of war to which they confined themselves, treated their allies so ill, that the French returned home, much disgusted with the country and with the manners of its inhabitants.[*] And the English, though they regretted the indolence and levity of their king, saw themselves for the future secured against any dangerous invasion from that quarter.

{1386.} But it was so material an interest of the French court to wrest the seaport towns from the hands of their enemy, that they resolved to attempt it by some other expedient, and found no means so likely as an invasion of England itself. They collected a great fleet and army at Sluise; for the Flemings were now in alliance with them: all the nobility of France were engaged in this enterprise: the English were kept in alarm: great preparations were made for the reception of the invaders: and though the dispersion of the French ships by a storm, and the taking of many of them by the English, before the embarkation of the troops, freed the kingdom from the present danger, the king and council were fully sensible that this perilous situation might every moment return upon them.[**]

There were two circumstances, chiefly, which engaged the French at this time to think of such attempts. The one was the absence of the duke of Lancaster, who had carried into Spain the flower of the English military force, in prosecution of his vain claim to the crown of Castile; an enterprise in which, after some promising success, he was finally disappointed: the other was, the violent dissensions and disorders which had taken place in the English government.

The subjection in which Richard was held by his uncles, particularly by the duke of Glocester, a prince of ambition and genius, though it was not unsuitable to his years and slender capacity, was extremely disagreeable to his violent temper; and he soon attempted to shake off the yoke imposed upon him. Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, a young man of a noble family, of an agreeable figure, but of dissolute manners, had acquired an entire ascendant over him, and governed him with an absolute authority. The king set so little bounds to his affection, that he first created his favorite marquis of Dublin, a title before unknown in England, then duke of Ireland; and transferred to him by patent, which was confirmed in parliament, the entire sovereignty for life of that island.[***]

* Froissard, liv. ii. chap. 149, 150, etc., liv. iii. chap. 52. Walsing p. 316, 317.

** Froissard, liv. iii. chap. 41, 53. Walsing. p. 322, 323.

*** Cotton, p. 310, 311. Cox, Hist. of Ireland, p. 129. Walsing, p. 324.

He gave him in marriage his cousin-german, the daughter of Ingelram de Couci, earl of Bedford; but soon after he permitted him to repudiate that lady, though of an unexceptionable character, and to marry a foreigner, a Bohemian, with whom he had become enamored.[*] These public declarations of attachment turned the attention of the whole court towards the minion: all favors passed through his hands: access to the king could only be obtained by his mediation: and Richard seemed to take no pleasure in royal authority, but so far as it enabled him to load with favors, and titles, and dignities, this object of his affections.

* Walsing. p. 228.

The jealousy of power immediately produced an animosity Between the minion and his creatures on the one hand, and the princes of the blood and chief nobility on the other; and the usual complaints against the insolence of favorites were loudly echoed, and greedily received, in every part of the kingdom. Moubray, earl of Nottingham, the mareschal, Fitz-Alan, earl of Arundel, Piercy, earl of Northumberland, Montacute, earl of Salisbury, Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, were all connected with each other, and with the princes, by friendship or alliance, and still more by their common antipathy to those who had eclipsed them in the king's favor and confidence. No longer kept in awe by the personal character of the prince, they scorned to submit to his ministers; and the method which they took to redress the grievance complained of well suited the violence of the age, and proves the desperate extremities to which every opposition was sure to be instantly carried.

Michael de la Pole, the present chancellor, and lately created earl of Suffolk, was the son of an eminent merchant; but had risen by his abilities and valor during the wars of Edward III., had acquired the friendship of that monarch, and was esteemed the person of greatest experience and capacity among those who were attached to the duke of Ireland and the king's secret council. The duke of Glocester, who had the house of commons at his devotion, impelled them to exercise that power which they seem first to have assumed against Lord Latimer during the declining years of the late king; and an impeachment against the chancellor was carried up by them to the house of peers, which was no less at his devotion. The king foresaw the tempest preparing against him and his ministers. After attempting in vain to rouse the Londoners to his defence, he withdrew from parliament, and retired with his court to Eltham. The parliament sent a deputation, inviting him to return, and threatening that, if he persisted in absenting himself, they would immediately dissolve, and leave the nation, though at that time in imminent danger of a French invasion, without any support or supply for its defence. At the same time, a member was encouraged to call for the record containing the parliamentary deposition of Edward II.; a plain intimation of the fate which Richard, if he continued refractory, had reason to expect from them. The king, finding himself unable to resist, was content to stipulate that, except finishing the present impeachment against Suffolk, no attack should be made upon any other of his ministers; and on that condition he returned to the parliament.[*] [12]

Nothing can prove more fully the innocence of Suffolk, than the frivolousness of the crimes which his enemies, in the present plenitude of their power, thought proper to object against him.[**] It was alleged, that being chancellor, and obliged by his oath to consult the king's profit, he had purchased lands of the crown below their true value; that he had exchanged with the king a perpetual annuity of four hundred marks a year, which he inherited from his father, and which was assigned upon the customs of the port of Hull, for lands of an equal income; that having obtained for his son the priory of St. Anthony, which was formerly possessed by a Frenchman, an enemy and a schismatic, and a new prior being at the same time named by the pope, he had refused to admit this person, whose title was not legal, till he made a composition with his son, and agreed to pay him a hundred pounds a year from the income of the benefice; that he had purchased, from one Tydeman, of Limborch, an old and forfeited annuity of fifty pounds a year upon the crown, and had engaged the king to admit that bad debt; and that, when created earl of Suffolk, he had obtained a grant of five hundred pounds a year to support the dignity of that title.[***]

* See note L, at the end of the volume.

** Cotton, p. 315. Knyghton, p. 2683.

*** It is probable that the earl of Suffolk was not rich, nor able to support the dignity without the bounty of the crown; for his father, Michael de la Pole, though a great merchant, had been ruined by lending money to the late king. See Cotton, p. 194.

We may even the proof of these articles, frivolous as they are, was found very deficient upon the trial: it appeared that Suffolk had made no purchase from the crown while he was chancellor, and that all his bargains of that kind were made before he was advanced to that dignity.[*] It is almost needless to add, that he was condemned, notwithstanding his defence; and that he was deprived of his office.

Glocester and his associates observed their stipulation with the king, and attacked no more of his ministers: but they immediately attacked himself and his royal dignity, and framed a commission after the model of those which had been attempted almost in every reign since that of Richard I., and which had always been attended with extreme confusion.[**] By this commission, which was ratified by parliament, a council of fourteen persons was appointed, all of Glocester's faction, except Nevil, archbishop of York: the sovereign power was transferred to these men for a twelvemonth: the king, who had now reached the twenty-first year of his age, was in reality dethroned: the aristocracy was rendered supreme: and though the term of the commission was limited, it was easy to foresee that the intentions of the party were to render it perpetual, and that power would with great difficulty be wrested from those grasping hands to which it was once committed. Richard, however, was obliged to submit: he signed the commission which violence had extorted from him; he took an oath never to infringe it; and though at the end of the session he publicly entered a protest, that the prerogatives of the crown, notwithstanding his late concession, should still be deemed entire and unimpaired,[***] the new commissioners, without regarding this declaration, proceeded to the exercise of their authority.

* Rymer, vol. vii. p. 481. Cotton, p. 31.

** Cotton, p. 315.

*** Knyghton, p. 2686. Statutes at large, 10 Rich. II. chap. I.

{1887.} The king, thus dispossessed of royal power, was soon sensible of the contempt into which he was fallen. His favorites and ministers, who were as yet allowed to remain about his person, failed not to aggravate the injury which without any demerit on his part, had been offered to him. And his eager temper was of itself sufficiently inclined to remark that the dukes of Glocester and York, though vastly rich received at the same time each of them a thousand pounds a year top support their dignity and to seek the means, both of recovering his authority, and of revenging himself on those who had invaded it. As the house of commons appeared now of weight in the constitution, he secretly tried some expedients for procuring a favorable election: he sounded some of the sheriffs, who, being at that time both the returning officers, and magistrates of great power in the counties, had naturally considerable influence in elections.[*] But as most of them had been appointed by his uncles, either during his minority or during the course of the present commission, he found them in general averse to his enterprise. The sentiments and inclinations of the judges were more favorable to him. He met at Nottingham Sir Robert Tresilian, chief justice of the king's bench, Sir Robert Belknappe, chief justice of the common pleas, Sir John Gary, chief baron of the exchequer, Holt, Fulthorpe, and Bourg, inferior justices, and Lockton, serjeant at law; and he proposed to them some queries, which these lawyers, either from the influence of his authority or of reason, made no scruple of answering in the way he desired. They declared that the late commission was derogatory to the royalty and prerogative of the king; that those who procured it, or advised the king to consent to it, were punishable with death; that those who necessitated and compelled him were guilty of treason; that those were equally criminal who should persevere in maintaining it; that the king has the right of dissolving parliaments at pleasure; that the parliament, while it sits, must first proceed upon the king's business; and that this assembly cannot without his consent impeach any of his ministers and judges.[**] Even according to our present strict maxims with regard to law and the royal prerogative, all these determinations, except the two last, appear justifiable: and as the great privileges of the commons, particularly that of impeachment, were hitherto new and supported by few precedents, there want not plausible reasons to justify these opinions of the judges.[***]

* In the preamble to 5 Henry IV. cap. vii. it is implied, that the sheriffs in a manner appointed the members of the house of commons, not only in this parliament, but in many others.

** Knyghton, p. 2694. Ypod. Neust. p. 541.

*** The parliament, in 1341, exacted of Edward III., that on the third day of every session, the king should resume all the great offices; and that the ministers should then answer to any accusation that should be brought against them; which plainly implies, that, while ministers they could not be accused or impeached in parliament, therefore, their answer to the king's queries before the archhishops of York and Dublin, the bishops of Durham, Chichester, and Bangor, the duke of Ireland, the earl of Suffolk, and two other counsellors of inferior quality. Henry IV. told the commons that the usage of parliament required them to go first through the king's business In granting supplies; which order the king intended not to alter. Parl. Hist. vol. ii. p. 65. Upon the whole, it must be allowed that, according to ancient practice and principles, there are at least plausible grounds for all these opinions of the judges. It must be remarked, that this affirmation of Henry IV. was given deliberately, after consulting the house of peers, who were much better acquainted with the usage of parliament than the ignorant commons. And it has the greater authority, because Henry IV. had made this very principle a considerable article of charge against his predecessor; and that a very few years before. So ill grounded were most of the imputations thrown on the unhappy Richard.

They obliged the king to summon a parliament, which was entirely at their devotion, they had full power, by observing a few legal forms, to take vengeance on all their enemies. Five great peers, men whose combined power was able at any time to shake the throne,—the duke of Glocester, the king's uncle; the earl of Derby, son of the duke of Lancaster; the earl of Arundel; the earl of Warwick; and the earl of Nottingham, mareschal of England,—entered before the parliament an accusation, or appeal, as it was called, against the five counsellors whom they had already accused before the king. The parliament, who ought to have been judges, were not ashamed to impose an oath on all their members, by which they bound themselves to live and die with the lords appellants, and to defend them against all opposition with their lives and fortunes.[*]

* Cotton, p. 322.

The duke of Glocester and his adherents soon got intelligence of this secret consultation, and were naturally very much alarmed at it. They saw the king's intentions; and they determined to prevent the execution of them. As soon as he came to London, which they knew was well disposed to their party, they secretly assembled their forces, and appeared in arms at Haringay Park, near Highgate, with a power which Richard and his ministers were not able to resist. They sent him a message by the archbishop of Canterbury, and the lords Lovel Cobham, and Devereux, and demanded that the persons who had seduced him by their pernicious counsel, and were traitors both to him and to the kingdom, should be delivered up to them. A few days after, they appeared in his presence, armed, and attended with armed followers; and they accused by name the archbishop of York, the duke of Ireland, the earl of Suffolk, Sir Robert Tresilian, and Sir Nicholas Brembre, as public and dangerous enemies to the state. They threw down their gauntlets before the king, and fiercely offered to maintain the truth of their charge by duel. The persons accused, and all the other obnoxious ministers, had withdrawn or had concealed themselves.

The duke of Ireland fled to Cheshire, and levied some forces, with which he advanced to relieve the king from the violence of the nobles. Glocester encountered him in Oxfordshire with much superior forces; routed him, dispersed his followers, and obliged him to fly into the Low Countries, where he died in exile a few years after.

The other proceedings were well suited to the violence and iniquity of the times. A charge consisting of thirty-nine articles, was delivered in by the appellants; and as none of the accused counsellors, except Sir Nicholas Brembre, was in custody, the rest were cited to appear; and upon their absenting themselves, the house of peers, after a very short interval, without hearing a witness, without examining a fact, or deliberating on one point of law, declared them guilty of high treason. Sir Nicholas Brembre, who was produced in court, had the appearance, and but the appearance, of a trial: the peers, though they were not by law his proper judges, pronounced, in a very summary manner, sentence of death upon him; and he was executed, together with Sir Robert Tresilian, who had been discovered and taken in the interval.

It would be tedious to recite the whole charge delivered in against the five counsellors; which is to be met with in several collections.[*]

* Knyghton, p. 2715. Tyrrel, vol iii. part ii p. 919, from the records. Parl. Hist. vol. i. p. 414

It is sufficient to observe in general, that if we reason upon the supposition, which is the true one, that the royal prerogative was invaded by the commission extorted by the duke of Glocester and his associates, and that the king's person was afterwards detained in custody by rebels, many of the articles will appear not only to imply no crime in the duke of Ireland and the ministers, but to ascribe to them actions which were laudable, and which they were bound by their allegiance to perform. The few articles impeaching the conduct of these ministers before that commission, which subverted the constitution, and annihilated all justice and legal authority, are vague and general; such as their engrossing the king's favor, keeping his barons at a distance from him, obtaining unreasonable grants for themselves or their creatures, and dissipating the public treasure by useless expenses. No violence is objected to them; no particular illegal act;[*] no breach of any statute; and their administration may therefore be concluded to have been so far innocent and inoffensive. All the disorders indeed seem to have proceeded not from any violation of the laws, or any ministerial tyranny, but merely from a rivalship of power, which the duke of Glocester and the great nobility, agreeably to the genius of the times, carried to the utmost extremity against their opponents, without any regard to reason, justice, or humanity.

But these were not the only deeds of violence committed during the triumph of the party. All the other judges who had signed the extrajudicial opinions at Nottingham, were condemned to death, and were, as a grace or favor, banished to Ireland; though they pleaded the fear of their lives, and the menaces of the king's ministers as their excuse. Lord Beauchamp of Holt, Sir James Berners, and John Salisbury, were also tried and condemned for high treason, merely because they had attempted to defeat the late commission: but the life of the latter was spared. The fate of Sir Simon Burley was more severe: this gentleman was much beloved for his personal merit, had distinguished himself by many honorable actions,[*] [13] was created knight of the garter, and had been appointed governor to Richard, by the choice of the late king and of the Black Prince: he had attended his master from the earliest infancy of that prince, and had ever remained extremely attached to him: yet all these considerations could not save him from falling a victim to Glocester's vengeance.

* See note M, at the end of the volume.

This execution, more than all the others, made a deep impression on the mind of Richard; his queen too (for he was already married to the sister of the emperor Winceslaus, King of Bohemia) interested herself in behalf of Burley: she remained three hours on her knees before the duke of Glocester, pleading for that gentleman's life; but though she was become extremely popular by her amiable qualities, which had acquired her the appellation of "the good Queen Anne," her petition was sternly rejected by the inexorable tyrant.[*] [14]

* At least this is the character given of him by Froissard, (liv. ii.) who knew him personally. Walsingham (p. 334) gives a very different character of him; but he is a writer somewhat passionate and partial; and the choice made of this gentleman, by Edward III. and the Black Prince, for the education of Richard, makes the character given him by Froissard much more probable.

The parliament concluded this violent scene by a declaration, that none of the articles decided on these trials to be treason, should ever afterwards be drawn into precedent by the judges, who were still to consider the statute of the twenty-fifth of Edward as the rule of their decisions. The house of lords seem not at that time to have known or acknowledged the principle, that they themselves were bound, in their judicial capacity, to follow the rules which they, in conjunction with the king and commons, had established in their legislature.[*] [14] It was also enacted, that every one should swear to the perpetual maintenance and support of the forfeitures and attainders, and of all the other acts passed during this parliament. The archbishop of Canterbury added the penalty of excommunication, as a further security to these violent transactions.

* See note N, at the end of the volume.

{1389.} It might naturally be expected, that the king, being reduced to such slavery by the combination of the princes and chief nobility, and having appeared so unable to defend his servants from the cruel effects of their resentment, would long remain in subjection to them; and never would recover the royal power, without the most violent struggles and convulsions: but the event proved contrary. In less than a twelvemonth, Richard, who was in his twenty-third year, declared in council, that, as he had now attained the full age which entitled him to govern by his own authority his kingdom and household, he resolved to exercise his right of sovereignty; and when no one ventured to contradict so reasonable an intention, he deprived Fitz-Alan, archbishop of Canterbury, of the dignity of chancellor, and bestowed that high office on William of Wickham, bishop of Winchester; the bishop of Hereford was displaced from the office of treasurer; the earl of Arundel from that of admiral; even the duke of Glocester and the earl of Warwick were removed for a time from the council: and no opposition was made to these great changes. The history of this reign is imperfect, and little to be depended on, except where it is supported by public records; and it is not easy for us to assign the reason of this unexpected event. Perhaps some secret animosities, naturally to be expected in that situation, had crept in among the great men, and had enabled the king to recover his authority. Perhaps the violence of their former proceedings had lost them the affections of the people, who soon repent of any cruel extremities to which they are carried by their leaders. However this may be, Richard exercised with moderation the authority which he had resumed. He seemed to be entirely reconciled to his uncles[*] and the other great men, of whom he had so much reason to complain: he never attempted to recall from banishment the duke of Ireland, whom he found so obnoxious to them: he confirmed by proclamation the general pardon which the parliament had passed for all offences; and he courted the affections of the people, by voluntarily remitting some subsidies which had been granted him: a remarkable, and almost singular instance of such generosity.

After this composure of domestic differences, and this restoration of the government to its natural state, there passes an interval of eight years which affords not many remarkable events. The duke of Lancaster returned from Spain; having resigned to his rival all pretensions to the crown of Castile upon payment of a large sum of money,[**] and having married his daughter, Philippa, to the king of Portugal. The authority of this prince served to counterbalance that of the duke of Glocester, and secured the power of Richard, who paid great court to his eldest uncle, by whom he had never been offended, and whom he found more moderate in his temper than the younger. He made a cession to him for life of the duchy of Guienne,[***] which the inclinations and changeable humor of the Gascons had restored to the English government; but as they remonstrated loudly against this deed, it was finally, with the duke's consent, revoked by Richard.[****]

* Dugdale, vol. ii. p. 170.

** Knyghton, p 2677. Walsing p. 342.

*** Rymer, vol. vii. p. 659.

**** Rymer, vol. vii. p. 687. 298 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

There happened an incident which produced a dissension between Lancaster and his two brothers. After the death of the Spanish princess, he espoused Catharine Swineford, daughter of a private knight of Hainault, by whose alliance York and Glocester thought the dignity of their family much injured; but the king gratified his uncle by passing in parliament a charter of legitimation to the children whom that lady had borne him before marriage, and by creating the eldest earl of Somerset.[*]

The wars, meanwhile, which Richard had inherited with his crown, still continued; though interrupted by frequent truces, according to the practice of that age, and conducted with little vigor, by reason of the weakness of all parties. The French war was scarcely heard of; the tranquillity of the northern borders was only interrupted by one inroad of the Scots, which proceeded more from a rivalship between the two martial families of Piercy and Douglas, than from any national quarrel: a fierce battle or skirmish was fought at Otterborne,[**] in which young Piercy, surnamed Hotspur, from his impetuous valor, was taken prisoner, and Douglas slain; and the victory remained undecided.[***] Some insurrections of the Irish obliged the king to make an expedition into that country, which he reduced to obedience; and he recovered, in some degree, by this enterprise, his character of courage, which had suffered a little by the inactivity of his reign.

{1396.} At last, the English and French courts began to think in earnest of a lasting peace; but found it so difficult to adjust their opposite pretensions, that they were content to establish a truce of twenty-five years: Brest and Cherbourg were restored, the former to the duke of Brittany, the latter to the king of Navarre: both parties were left in possession of all the other places which they held at the time of concluding the truce; and to render the amity between the two crowns more durable, Richard,[****] who was now a widower, was affianced to Isabella, the daughter of Charles. This princess was only seven years of age; but the king agreed to so unequal a match, chiefly that he might fortify himself by this alliance against the enterprises of his uncles, and the incurable turbulence, as well as inconstancy, of his barons.

The administration of the king, though it was not in this interval sullied by any unpopular act, except the seizing of the charter of London,[******] which was soon after restored, tended not much to corroborate his authority; and his personal character brought him into contempt, even while his public government appeared in a good measure unexceptionable.

* Cotton, p. 365. Walsing, p. 352.

** 15th August, 1388.

*** Froissard, liv. iii. chap. 124, 125, 126. Walsing, p. 355.

**** Rymer, vol. vii. p. 820.

***** Rymer, vol. vii. p. 811.

****** Rymer, vol. vii. p. 727. Walsing. p. 347.

Indolent, profuse, addicted to low pleasures, he spent his whole time in feasting and jollity, and dissipated, in idle show, or in bounties to favorites of no reputation, that revenue which the people expected to see him employ in enterprises directed to public honor and advantage. He forgot his rank by admitting all men to his familiarity; and he was not sensible, that their acquaintance with the qualities of his mind was not able to impress them with the respect which he neglected to preserve from his birth and station. The earls of Kent and Huntingdon, his half brothers, were his chief confidants and favorites; and though he never devoted himself to them with so profuse an affection as that with which he had formerly been attached to the duke of Ireland, it was easy for men to see, that every grace passed through their hands, and that the king had rendered himself a mere cipher in the government. The small regard which the public bore to his person, disposed them to murmur against his administration, and to receive with greedy ears every complaint which the discontented or ambitious grandees suggested to them.

{1397.} Glocester soon perceived the advantages which this dissolute conduct gave him; and finding that both resentment and jealousy on the part of his nephew still prevented him from acquiring any ascendant over that prince, he determined to cultivate his popularity with the nation, and to revenge himself on those who eclipsed him in favor and authority. He seldom appeared at court or in council; he never declared his opinion but in order to disapprove of the measures embraced by the king and his favorites; and he courted the friendship of every man whom disappointment or private resentment had rendered an enemy to the administration. The long truce with France was unpopular with the English, who breathed nothing but war against that hostile nation; and Glocester took care to encourage all the vulgar prejudices which prevailed on this subject. Forgetting the misfortunes which attended the English arms during the later years of Edward, he made an invidious comparison between the glories of that reign and the inactivity of the present; and he lamented that Richard should have degenerated so much from the heroic virtues by which his father and his grandfather were distinguished. The military men were inflamed with a desire of war when they heard him talk of the signal victories formerly obtained, and of the easy prey which might be made of French riches by the superior valor of the English; the populace readily embraced the same sentiments; and all men exclaimed, that this prince, whose counsels were so much neglected, was the true support of English honor and alone able to raise the nation to its former power and splendor. His great abilities, his popular manners, his princely extraction, his immense riches, his high office of constable;[*] all these advantages, not a little assisted by his want of court favor, gave him a mighty authority in the kingdom, and rendered him formidable to Richard and his ministers.

Froissard,[**] a contemporary writer, and very impartial, but whose credit is somewhat impaired by his want of exactness in material facts, ascribes to the duke of Glocester more desperate views, and such as were totally incompatible with the government and domestic tranquillity of the nation. According to that historian, he proposed to his nephew, Roger Mortimer, earl of Marche, whom Richard had declared his successor, to give him immediate possession of the throne, by the deposition of a prince so unworthy of power and authority: and when Mortimer declined the project, he resolved to make a partition of the kingdom between himself, his two brothers, and the earl of Arundel; and entirely to dispossess Richard of the crown. The king, it is said, being informed of these designs, saw that either his own ruin, or that of Glocester, was inevitable; and he resolved by a hasty blow to prevent the execution of such destructive projects. This is certain, that Glocester, by his own confession, had often affected to speak contemptuously of the king's person and government; had deliberated concerning the lawfulness of throwing off allegiance to him; and had even borne part in a secret conference, where his deposition was proposed, and talked of, and determined:[***] but it is reasonable to think, that his schemes were not so far advanced.

* Rymer, vol. vii. p. 152.

** Liv. iv. chap. 86.

*** Cotton, p. 378. Tyrrel, vol. iii. part ii. p. 972, from the records. Par. Hist. vol. i. p. 473. That this confession was genuine, and obtained without violence, may be entirely depended on. Judge Rickhill, who brought it over from Calais, was tried on that account, and acquitted in the first parliament of Henry IV., when Glocester's party was prevalent. His acquittal, notwithstanding his innocence, may even appear marvellous, considering the times. See Cotton, p. 393. putting them immediately in execution. The danger probably was still too distant to render a desperate remedy entirely necessary for the security of government.

But whatever opinion we may form of the danger arising from Glocester's conspiracies, his aversion to the French truce and alliance was public and avowed; and that court which had now a great influence over the king, pushed him to provide for his own safety, by punishing the traitorous designs of his uncle. The resentment against his former acts of violence revived; the sense of his refractory and uncompliant behavior was still recent; and a man whose ambition had once usurped royal authority, and who had murdered all the faithful servants of the king, was thought capable, on a favorable opportunity, of renewing the same criminal enterprises. The king's precipitate temper admitted of no deliberation: he ordered Glocester to be unexpectedly arrested; to be hurried on board a ship which was lying in the river; and to be carried over to Calais, where alone, by reason of his numerous partisans, he could safely be detained in custody.[*] The earls of Arundel and Warwick were seized at the same time: the malecontents so suddenly deprived of their leaders, were astonished and overawed; and the concurrence of the dukes of Lancaster and York in those measures, together with the earls of Derby and Rutland, the eldest sons of these princes,[**] bereaved them of all possibility of resistance.

A parliament was immediately summoned at Westminster; and the king doubted not to find the peers, and still more the commons, very compliant with his will. This house had in a former parliament given him very sensible proofs of their attachment;[***] [15] and the present suppression of Glocester's party made him still more assured of a favorable election. As a further expedient for that purpose, he is also said to have employed the influence of the sheriffs; a practice which, though not unusual, gave umbrage, but which the established authority of that assembly rendered afterwards still more familiar to the nation. Accordingly, the parliament passed whatever acts the king was pleased to dictate to them:[****] they annulled forever the commission which usurped upon the royal authority, and they declared it treasonable to attempt, in any future period, the revival of any similar commission: they abrogated all the acts which attainted the king's ministers, and which that parliament who passed them, and the whole nation had sworn inviolably to maintain: and they declared the general pardon then granted to be invalid, as extorted by force, and never ratified by the free consent of the king.

* Froissard, liv. iv. chap. 90. Walsing. p. 354.

** Rymer, vol. viii. p. 7.

*** See note O, at the end of the volume.

**** The nobles brought numerous retainers with them to give them*

Though Richard, after he resumed the government, and lay no longer under constraint, had voluntarily, by proclamation, confirmed that general indemnity, this circumstance seemed not, in their eyes, to merit any consideration. Even a particular pardon, granted six years after to the earl of Arundel, was annulled by parliament, on pretence that it had been procured by surprise, and that the king was not then fully apprized of the degree of guilt incurred by that nobleman.

The commons then preferred an impeachment against Fitz-Alan, archbishop of Canterbury, and brother to Arundel, and accused him for his concurrence in procuring the illegal commission, and in attainting the king's ministers. The primate pleaded guilty; but as he was protected by the ecclesiastical privileges, the king was satisfied with a sentence which banished him the kingdom, and sequestered his temporalities.[*] An appeal or accusation was presented against the duke of Glocester, and the earls of Arundel and Warwick, by the earls of Rutland, Kent, Huntingdon, Somerset, Salisbury, and Nottingham, together with the lords Spenser and Scrope, and they were accused of the same crimes which had been imputed to the archbishop, as well as of their appearance against the king in a hostile manner at Haringay Park. The earl of Arundel, who was brought to the bar, wisely confined all his defence to the pleading of both the general and particular pardon of the king; but his plea being overruled, he was condemned and executed.[**]

* Cotton, p. 368.

** Cotton, p 377. Froissard, liv. iv. chap. 90. Walsing. p. 354.

The earl of Warwick, who was also convicted of high treason, was, on account of his submissive behavior, pardoned as to his life, but doomed to perpetual banishment in the Isle of Man. No new acts of treason were imputed to either of these noblemen. The only crimes for which they were condemned, were the old attempts against the crown, which seemed to be obliterated both by the distance of time and by repeated pardons.[*] The reasons of this method of proceeding it is difficult to conjecture. The recent conspiracies of Glocester seem certain from his own confession; but perhaps the king and ministry had not at that time in their hands any satisfactory proof of their reality; perhaps it was difficult to convict Arundel and Warwick of any participation in them; perhaps an inquiry into these conspiracies would have involved in the guilt some of those great noblemen who now concurred with the crown, and whom it was necessary to cover from all imputation; or perhaps the king, according to the genius of the age, was indifferent about maintaining even the appearance of law and equity, and was only solicitous by any means to insure success in these prosecutions. This point, like many others in ancient history, we are obliged to leave altogether undetermined.

A warrant was issued to the earl mareschal, governor of Calais, to bring over the duke of Glocester, in order to his trial; but the governor returned for answer, that the duke had died suddenly of an apoplexy in that fortress. Nothing could be more suspicious, from the time, than the circumstances of that prince's death: it became immediately the general opinion, that he was murdered by orders from his nephew: in the subsequent reign, undoubted proofs were produced in parliament, that he had been suffocated with pillows by his keepers:[**] and it appeared that the king, apprehensive lest the public trial and execution of so popular a prince, and so near a relation, might prove both dangerous and invidious, had taken this base method of gratifying, and, as he fancied, concealing, his revenge upon him. Both parties, in their successive triumphs, seem to have had no further concern than that of retaliating upon their adversaries; and neither of them were aware that, by imitating, they indirectly justified, as far as it lay in their power, all the illegal violence of the opposite party.

* Tyrrel, vol. iii. part ii. p. 968, from the records.

** Cotton, p. 399, 400. Dugdale, vol. ii. p. 171.

This session concluded with the creation or advancement of several peers: the earl of Derby was made duke of Hereford; the earl of Rutland, duke of Albemarle; the earl of Kent, duke of Surrey; the earl of Huntingdon, duke of Exeter; the earl of Nottingham, duke of Norfolk; the earl of Somerset, marquis of Dorset; Lord Spenser, earl of Glocester; Rulph Nevil, earl of Westmoreland; Thomas Piercy, earl of Worcester; William Scrope, earl of Wiltshire.[*] The parliament, after a session of twelve days, was adjourned to Shrewsbury. The king, before the departure of the members, exacted from them an oath for the perpetual maintenance and establishment of all their acts; an oath similar to that which had formerly been required by the duke of Glocester and his party, and which had already proved so vain and fruitless.

{1398.} Both king and parliament met in the same dispositions at Shrewsbury. So anxious was Richard for the security of these acts, that he obliged the lords and commons to swear anew to them on the cross of Canterbury;[**] and he soon after procured a bull from the pope, by which they were, as he imagined, perpetually secured and established.[***] The parliament, on the other hand, conferred on him for life the duties on wool, wool-fells, and leather, and granted him, besides, a subsidy of one tenth and a half, and one fifteenth and a half. They also reversed the attainder of Tresilian and the other judges; and, with the approbation of the present judges, declared the answers for which these magistrates had been impeached to be just and legal:[****] and they carried so far their retrospect as to reverse, on the petition of Lord Spenser, earl of Glocester, the attainder pronounced against the two Spensers in the reign of Edward II.[*****] The ancient history of England is nothing but a catalogue of reversals: every thing is in fluctuation and movement: one faction is continually undoing what was established by another: and the multiplied oaths which each party exacted for the security of the present acts, betray a perpetual consciousness of their instability.

The parliament, before they were dissolved, elected a committee of twelve lords and six commoners,[******] whom they invested with the whole power both of lords and commons, and endowed with full authority to finish all business which had been laid before the houses, and which they had not had leisure to bring to a conclusion.[*******]

* Cotton, p. 370, 371

** Cotton, p. 371.

** Walsing. p. 355.

**** Statutes at large, 21 Rich. II.

***** Cotton, p. 372.

****** The names of the commissioners were, the dukes of Lancaster, York, Albemarle, Surrey, and Exeter, the marquis of Dorset, the earls of Marche, Salisbury, Northumberland, Glocester, Winchester, and Wiltshire; John Bussey, Henry Green, John Russel, Robert Teyne, Henry Chelmeswicke, and John Golofre. It is to be remarked, that the duke of Lancaster always concurred with the rest in all their proceedings, even in the banishment of his son, which was afterwards so much complained of.

******* Cotton, p. 372. Walsing. p. 355.

This was an unusual concession; and though it was limited in the object, might, either immediately or as a precedent, have proved dangerous to the constitution; but the cause of that extraordinary measure was an event singular and unexpected, which engaged the attention of the parliament.

After the destruction of the duke of Glocester and the heads of that party, a misunderstanding broke out among those noblemen who had joined in the prosecution; and the king wanted either authority sufficient to appease it, or foresight to prevent it. The duke of Hereford appeared in parliament, and accused the duke of Norfolk of having spoken to him, in private, many slanderous words of the king, and of having imputed to that prince an intention of subverting and destroying many of his principal nobility.[**] Norfolk.. denied the charge, gave Hereford the lie, and offered to prove his own innocence by duel. The challenge was accepted: the time and place of combat were appointed: and as the event of this important trial by arms might require the interposition of legislative authority, the parliament thought it more suitable to delegate their power to a committee, than to prolong the session beyond the usual time which custom and general convenience had prescribed to it.[***]

The duke of Hereford was certainly very little delicate in the point of honor, when he revealed a private conversation to the ruin of the person who had intrusted him; and we may thence be more inclined to believe the duke of Norfolk's denial, than the other's asseveration. But Norfolk had in these transactions betrayed an equal neglect of honor, which brings him entirely on a level with his antagonist. Though he had publicly joined with the duke of Glocester and his party in all the former acts of violence against the king.

** Cotton, p. 372. Parl. Hist. vol. i. p. 490.

*** In the first year of Henry VI., when the authority of parliament was great, and when that assembly could least be suspected of lying under violence, a like concession was made to the privy council from like motives of convenience. See Cotton, p. 564. his name stands among the appellants who accused the duke of Ireland and the other ministers, yet was he not ashamed publicly to impeach his former associates for the very crimes which he had concurred with them in committing; and his name increases the list of those appellants who brought them to a trial. Such were the principles and practices of those ancient knights and barons, during the prevalence of the aristocratical government, and the reign of chivalry.

The lists for this decision of truth and right were appointed at Coventry before the king: all the nobility of England banded into parties, and adhered either to the one duke or the other: the whole nation was held in suspense with regard to the event; but when the two champions appeared in the field accoutred for the combat, the king interposed, to prevent both the present effusion of such noble blood, and the future consequences of the quarrel. By the advice and authority of the parliamentary commissioners, he stopped the duel; and to show his impartiality, he ordered, by the same authority both the combatants to leave the kingdom;[*] assigning one country for the place of Norfolk's exile, which he declared perpetual, another for that of Hereford, which he limited to ten years.

* Cotton, p. 380. Walsing. p. 356.

Hereford was a man of great prudence and command of temper; and he behaved himself with so much submission in these delicate circumstances, that the king, before his departure, promised to shorten the term of his exile four years; and he also granted him letters patent, by which he was empowered, in case any inheritance should in the interval accrue to him, to enter immediately in possession, and to postpone the doing of homage till his return.

The weakness and fluctuation of Richard's counsels appear nowhere more evident than in the conduct of this affair. No sooner had Hereford left the kingdom, than the king's jealousy of the power and riches of that prince's family revived; and he was sensible that by Glocester's death he had only removed a counterpoise to the Lancastrian interest which was now become formidable to his crown and kingdom. Being informed that Hereford had entered into a treaty of marriage with the daughter of the duke of Berry, uncle to the French king, he determined to prevent the finishing of an alliance which would so much extend the interest of his cousin in foreign countries; and he sent over the earl of Salisbury to Paris with a commission for that purpose.

{1399.} The death of the duke of Lancaster, which happened soon after, called upon him to take new resolutions with regard to that opulent succession. The present duke, in consequence of the king's patent, desired to be put in possession of the estate and jurisdictions of his father; but Richard, afraid of strengthening the hands of a man whom he had already so much offended, applied to the parliamentary commissioners, and persuaded them that this affair was but an appendage to that business which the parliament had delegated to them. By their authority he revoked his letters patent, and retained possession of the estate of Lancaster; and by the same authority he seized and tried the duke's attorney, who had procured and insisted on the letters, and he had him condemned as a traitor for faithfully executing that trust to his master;[*] an extravagant act of power! even though the king changed, in favor of the attorney, the penalty of death into that of banishment.

Henry, the new duke of Lancaster, had acquired by his conduct and abilities the esteem of the public; and having served with distinction against the infidels in Lithuania, he had joined to his other praises those of piety and valor, virtues which have at all times a great influence over mankind, and were, during those ages, the qualities chiefly held in estimation.[**] He was connected with most of the principal nobility by blood, alliance, or friendship; and as the injury done him by the king might in its consequences affect all of them, he easily brought them, by a sense of common interest, to take part in his resentment. The people, who must have an object of affection, who found nothing in the king's person which they could love or revere, and who were even disgusted with many parts of his conduct[***] easily transferred to Henry that attachment which the death of the duke of Glocester had left.

* Tyrrel, vol. iii. part ii. p. 991, from the records.

** Walsing. p. 343.

*** He levied fines upon those who had ten years before joined the duke of Glocester and his party: they were obliged to pay him money, before he would allow them to enjoy the benefit of the indemnity; and in the articles of charge against him it is asserted that the payment of one fine did not suffice. It is indeed likely that his ministers would abuse the power put into their hands; and this grievance extended to very many people. Historians agree in representing this practice as a great oppression. See Otterborne, p. 199. without any fixed direction. His misfortunes were lamented the injustice which he had suffered was complained of; and all men turned their eyes towards him as the only person that could retrieve the lost honor of the nation, or redress the supposed abuses in the government.

While such were the dispositions of the people, Richard had the imprudence to embark for Ireland, in order to revenge the death of his cousin, Roger, earl of Marche, the presumptive heir of the crown, who had lately been slain in a skirmish by the natives; and he thereby left the kingdom of England open to the attempts of his provoked and ambitious enemy. Henry, embarking at Nantz with a retinue of sixty persons, among whom were the archbishop of Canterbury and the young earl of Arundel, nephew to that prelate, landed at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire; and was immediately joined by the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, two of the most potent barons in England. He here took a solemn oath, that he had no other purpose hi this invasion than to recover the duchy of Lancaster, unjustly detained from him; and he invited all his friends in England, and all lovers of their country, to second him in this reasonable and moderate pretension. Every place was in commotion: the malecontents in all quarters flew to arms: London discovered the strongest symptoms of its disposition to mutiny and rebellion: and Henry's army, increasing on every day's march, soon amounted to the number of sixty thousand combatants.