Edward renounced his claim to the crown of France, as well as to Normandy, Maine, Touraine, and Anjou, and was invested with Poitou and other provinces in the south, besides Guienne, which had not been lost, free from all homage to the king of France. John was released and conducted with honour to France; but, being unable to fulfil all the conditions of the treaty, he surrendered himself again in 1363, and soon after died in the Savoy, the palace where he had resided during his captivity.

In 1367 the Black Prince took part in the war of succession in Castile, between Pedro the Cruel and his brother Henry, on the side of the former. He gained much glory in a bad cause, but incurred debts which led him to impose new taxes on his French subjects, who carried their complaints to Charles, the new king of France. In violation of the treaty of Bretigni, Charles tried to play the suzerain; upon which Edward resumed the title of king of France, and the war was renewed (1369). The Black Prince, disabled by sickness, returned to England, where he died in the 46th year of his age, on the 8th of June, 1376, leaving behind the reputation of all the virtues of perfect chivalry, though stained with some acts of cruelty. His departure from France was the ruin of the English cause; and before his death his father had lost nearly all his old possessions, as well as his new conquests, retaining little besides the cities of Calais, Bordeaux, and Bayonne. Edward concluded a truce with France in 1374.

During the short remnant of his reign he sought relief from the disappointments that thickened round him in the pleasures which he had formerly despised. He had outlived his popularity; and he died, almost deserted, at Shene (Richmond) in the 65th year of his age and the 51st of his reign, on the 21st of June, 1377, and was buried at Westminster.

England has scarcely had a king of more consummate ability and personal virtue than Edward III. He tempered a firm and just administration of the law with a munificent generosity and a noble courtesy. The glory of his foreign wars was tarnished by the badness of his cause and overshadowed by the loss of his conquests; but they contributed most to the welfare of our country by the opportunities which they offered for obtaining new grants of liberty in return for the means of prosecuting them.

One of the most important reforms in the criminal law was effected in the 25th year of Edward III. by the "Statute of Treasons," which strictly defined the limits of high treason to the crimes of compassing the death of the king, levying war against him, and abetting his foreign enemies. The courts of justice rose into higher reputation than ever for the learning both of judges and pleaders.

66

“At the latter part of this king's reign," says Sir Matthew Hale, the law seemed to be near its meridian." A new era was opened for commerce by statutes allowing foreign traders within the realm, and by the king's encouragement of Flemish weavers who wished to settle in the kingdom. The progress of literature and art will be noticed at the end of the chapter.

The family of Edward III. is given in the genealogical table at the end of the volume. An accurate knowledge of it is necessary for the understanding of the subsequent history. The dignity of Duke, borne by the royal princes, had been introduced by Edward III.

RICHARD II., of BORDEAUX (1377-1399) was the grandson of Edward III., and the son of Edward the Black Prince. He ascended the throne at the age of 11, having been born at Bordeaux in 1366. His fair aspect, and the memory of his father, excited a general feeling in his favour, which was doomed to utter disappointment. His minority was passed nominally under a council named by parliament, but really under the tutelage of his ambitious uncles, the dukes of Lancaster and Gloucester.

The wars with France and Scotland were carried on without any events of importance, but the taxes required to support them led to the celebrated insurrection of the common people under Wat Tyler. In 1380 a poll-tax of three groats (twelve pence) imposed on every person above fifteen led to an almost universal discontent among the lower orders, on whom it of course pressed most severely. The flame was kindled by an outrage committed at Dartford by one of the collectors upon a peasant girl, under the pretence of assuring himself of her age. Her father, one Walter, a tiler, struck him dead upon the spot with a blow of his hammer. The men of Kent flew to arms, and the insurrection spread to all the eastern and south-eastern counties. Besides Wat Tyler, the insurgents had leaders, whose names, partly real and partly affected, proclaimed their mean origin, as Hob Carter, Tom Miller, and Jack Straw, whose name survives on Hampstead Heath. They assembled, to the number of 100,000, on Blackheath, June 12, 1381, where an itinerant preacher, named John Ball, addressed them on the natural equality of all men, asking

"When Adam delved, and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman ?"

Their demands were in accordance with this text: the abolition of villenage, fixed rents in lieu of compulsory service, and freedom in exercising their trades. The king, meeting them in person, promised compliance; but, at another meeting in Smithfield, Walworth, the mayor of London, stabbed Wat Tyler, who was despatched by

the king's attendants. His fall was about to be terribly avenged, when Richard rode forward alone, telling them that he himself would be their leader. He succeeded in leading them out of the city and dispersing them; and soon after he took the field with a large army, and executed many of the insurgents, while parliament sanctioned the revocation of his promises.

The spirit shown by Richard on this occasion bore no lasting fruits. He surrendered himself to favourites-Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, and Michael de la Pole, a foreigner, whom he created earl of Suffolk and chancellor. But his uncle Gloucester overthrew them both by open force, and obtained his own appointment by parliament as the head of a council of regency (1387). In the following year, however, the king publicly proclaimed his own intention of governing, and procured an opinion from the judges that the council of regency was illegal. Gloucester again took up arms and seized the judges, who were condemned to death, and one of them, Tresilian, was actually executed (1388).

These troubles were somewhat composed by the return to England of the king's elder uncle

"Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster,"

who had been engaged in a fruitless contest for the crown of Castile (1389). A truce was concluded with France, while the war with Scotland had become a mere border fray. One of its incidents, however, the battle of Otterbourne, between Douglas and Percy (Aug. 10, 1388), gave occasion to one of the finest ballads in our language, that of Chevy Chase.' The truce with France, after being more than once renewed, became at length virtually a peace, by an extension for twenty-five years; and thus ended the first series of the great wars between England and France (1396). At the same time Richard married Isabella, the daughter of the French king. He had lost his first wife, Anne of Bohemia, two years before.

He now resolved to make a bold stroke for his personal independence, by seizing the duke of Gloucester, with several of his adherents. His uncles, the dukes of Lancaster and York, supported him. A subservient parliament annulled the commission of regency. Several great nobles were executed or banished, and Gloucester himself was privately murdered in his prison at Calais (1397).

In 1398 a new parliament ratified the acts of the king, and granted him ample supplies. His power seemed firmly established, when he was ruined by his own want of prudence and temper. HENRY duke of Hereford, the son of John of Gaunt, had accused the duke of Norfolk of slandering the king, and a judicial combat had been arranged, when, in the very lists, the king forbade the fight, and

banished Hereford for ten years and Norfolk for life. On succeeding to the dukedom of Lancaster, by his father's death, in the following year, Henry prepared, not only to avenge his banishment and the forfeiture of his estates, but also to frustrate the king's design of settling the crown on Roger Mortimer, earl of March, grandson of Lionel duke of Clarence, the third son of Edward III. (Edward's second son, William, had died without issue). John of Gaunt was Edward III.'s fourth son, but he had married Blanche, the heiress of Henry duke of Lancaster, who was the grandson of Edmund earl of Lancaster, the brother of Edward I. A story had been invented that this Edmund was really the elder brother, but had been set aside for his personal deformity; and thus Henry claimed to be doubly the representative of Henry III.

Taking advantage of Richard's absence in Ireland, Henry sailed from Nantes, attended by several of the banished nobles of Gloucester's party. He had only sixty persons with him when he landed in Yorkshire, but he was soon at the head of 60,000 men; and the adhesion of his uncle, the duke of York, with the royal army, made him master of the kingdom. Richard hastened back from Ireland, but only to be taken prisoner and forced into an abdication. The parliament, summoned in the king's name at Westminster (Sept. 30, 1399), declared him to have forfeited the crown for his tyranny and incapacity. Lancaster then came forward, and in a set speech claimed the crown by right of blood. His claim was unanimously admitted, and he was placed in the vacant throne by the archbishops of Canterbury and York. The same parliament, assembled six days afterwards, reversed most of Richard's acts, and consigned him to an imprisonment, from which he was soon released, probably by a violent death, in the 34th year of his age and the 23rd of his reign, March, 1400.

He was not destitute of ability; but a weak judgment and a violent temper rendered him unfit to govern. When he at length succeeded in asserting his own will, he became a tyrant; and the unanimous consent of the parliament to his deposition, manifestly expressing the desire of the people, gave a solid title to the house of Lancaster. He left no issue.

With his death closed the fourteenth century, a period during which England made a progress in civilization as great as her advance in military fame, and far more lasting in its results. We have seen the growth of constitutional liberty, and of freedom in the administration of justice, under the Edwards. Though villenage was not yet finally abolished, it had been mitigated by degrees, and the doctrine of man's right to personal freedom was all but established. In ecclesiastical matters, the ground surrendered by preceding kings

to the see of Rome was in a great measure recovered. The parliament, in the 20th year of Edward III., declared the homage to the pope, which had been imposed on John, to be null and void (1367); and in the 16th of Richard II. was passed the celebrated statute of Præmunire, outlawing all persons who should introduce into the realm any papal bull or other instrument affecting the king (1393). But, more than this, the new doctrine of liberty of conscience had been openly proclaimed, and that even more clearly than it was asserted by the reformers in the next century. JOHN DE WICKLIFFE, a clergyman of Oxford, announced, in the latter part of Edward III.'s reign, the great principle of the reformation-that the doctrines and practices of religion should be conformed to the Holy Scriptures, which he himself translated for the first time into English. Protected by John of Gaunt, he survived the attempts of the church to crush him, and closed his life peacefully at his rectory of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, in 1385. The royal descendants of his patron cruelly persecuted his followers, who were known by the nickname of Lollards.

The latter part of this century was a bright epoch in English literature. GEOFFREY CHAUCER, the friend of Wickliffe, uniting to a poetic genius, which only a very few of his successors have surpassed, a culture derived from the Italian models, and especially from Dante, produced, in his Canterbury Tales, a work immeasurably superior to all the efforts of our earlier writers. In this work, and Wickliffe's translation of the Bible, the English Language is at length seen perfected in all essential points; and in the reign of Edward III. our own tongue took the place of French in public documents. Latin was, however, still much used, and the earliest state paper that exists in English belongs to the year 1386. Natural science began to shake off the trammels of superstition, and ROGER BACON announced, from his retreat at Oxford, some great discoveries in mechanics and chemistry, including a hint of the discovery of gunpowder.

The glorious art of English architecture advanced to perfection: many cathedrals and churches were built or enlarged; and Edward III. erected the truly regal monument of Windsor Castle; and Westminster Hall, the grandest single chamber in the Pointed style of architecture, was built by Richard II. The splendid works of William of Wykeham at Winchester and Oxford exhibit the noblest use of art in the service of learning and religion. In one word, England had achieved that greatness in arms and law, in arts and letters, which has never since been forfeited.