time very popular, broke into the room and took his part with warmth, he again escaped his foes. Home affairs, Good Parliament. 12. In his latter days King Edward gave less and less heed to the ruling of the kingdom, especially after the death of his good queen Philippa in 1369, and left matters much in the hands of his favourites, chief of whom were the Earl of Pembroke and John of Gaunt, who were careful to trouble him as little as possible; for he shrunk from 1360-1377. The the task of helping his ministers, William of Wyckham the Chancellor and Brantingham the Treasurer (Bishops of Winchester and Exeter), in their thankless toil of getting money to carry on a war which was growing more costly and less glorious every day. He simply let matters take their course. In 1360 he had agreed to a law fixing the number and duties of the justices of the peace, who were now taking the place and doing the work of the old hundred courts touching all offences against the king's peace. In 1362, willing to please his people, he ordered that English, not French, should be used in the courts of law, and that all records should be kept in Latin, and promised that he would lay on no tax whatever without the consent of Parliament: for hitherto he, like his father, had often got the merchants to agree to taxes on their goods so as to avoid being obliged to ask money of the Three Estates, whom they could not cajole so easily. In 1371 the Earl of Pembroke got the Parliament to beg of the king to dismiss his clerical ministers and take laymen in their stead, and he did so; and in 1372 an Act was passed forbidding lawyers or sheriffs to sit in Parliament. But the government by John of Gaunt and his friends was growing unpopular-they spent as much and did no more than their foregoers-and in 1376 the former ministers, headed by the princes of Wales and William of Wyckham, regained power in the Good Parliament. Peter de la Mare, a follower of John of Gaunt's rival, the Earl of March, was chosen Speaker, and he headed the Commons in impeaching [accusing before the Lords] Richard Lyon and Barons Latimer and Neville for embezzling the government moneys, for buying the king's debts at low prices, and getting full and instant payment to the hurt of the king's credit, for lending the king money at thirty-three per cent. interest, and for making a profit out of the customs. They were all found guilty, sent to prison, and fined. The Commons then prayed the king to issue a decree against women meddling in the law courts, by which means they were able to have Alice Perrers, his favourite, banished from court, for she had abused her power over the king to cause the judges to give unjust sentences on behalf of those who bribed her to speak for them. In the midst of this Parliament the Black Prince died, June 8, 1376, to the great grief of his party, whereon the Commons, fearing lest John of Gaunt should try to seize the crown when the old king died, got Edward to name Richard, the Prince's little son, his heir, and to add nine lords named by them to his Standing Council. But directly the Parliament broke up John of Gaunt overthrew all it had done, turned the Earl of March out of the Marshalcy, had William of Wyckham tried and banished for misuse of public moneys, imprisoned Peter de la Mare without trial, recalled Alice Perrers and the impeached lords. Moreover, he managed to get the greater number of the Commons in the Parliament of 1377 chosen from among his friends, and so ensured their approval of his acts. He was able to do this because, besides those who feared or loved him, there were still many, such as Wycliff and the friars, who upheld him as the enemy of the bishops. 13. On June 2, 1377, the old king died. Alice Perrers was with him all through his illness, for she was Edward III.'s afraid of any one else winning influence over character and him. But when she saw that he was at the death. point of death, she pulled the rings off his cold hands and fled, while the servants were busy plundering the palace; and had it not been for a priest who came in and stayed with him till the last, the helpless sufferer would have been left to die unheeded and alone. Edward was a man of a wonderfully fair face and noble bearing, as his effigies witness to this day; of exceeding grace of manner and much good-nature, as his name of the "kindly king" testifies. He did not lack book-learning, and could speak five languages. That he was a brave knight and a prudent commander even his enemies allowed. He was singularly even-tempered, not easily cast down by trouble or roused to anger by opposition or puffed up by success. But, on the other hand, he was selfish, and so preferred to be generous to his enemies rather than pay his debts to his friends, would rather be popular at other men's cost than take the blame of his own mistakes, and was ready to sacrifice his faithful servants if he could save himself the trouble of taking an active and toilsome part in the work of keeping down his expenses. His passion for pleasure stained his latter days, and his thirst for fame led to much useless and wicked bloodshed both in England and France, and brought no small disasters upon those of his race whom his great deeds dazzled and example misled. CHAPTER IV. Richard II. of Bordeaux, 1377-1399. 1. After a grand coronation, July 16, the new reign began with a reconciliation of the two parties. William of Wickham and John of Gaunt were set at one, the two parties of the Londoners under Wycliff's helper, John of Northampton, and John Philpot, the bishops' partisan, made friends. Peter de la Mare was let out of prison. The Bishops of S. Davids and Worcester were made chancellor and treasurer, a council was chosen to carry on the government with them, and the king, a lad of eleven years old, was left to the care of his mother. When Parliament met it added nine members to the Council, and laid down that Acts passed in Parliament should not be set aside save by Parliament, and that while the king was under age Parliament should choose his ministers. But John of Gaunt was still the chief man in the realm; and though he had disclaimed in full Parliament all enmity to his brother's son, and his wishes for the good of the realm, he was disliked and mistrusted by many. The French and Scots had got fleets of privateers in the Channel, and the east coast, the Isle of Wight, Rye, and Winchelsea suffered from their raids, and later on they harried Portsmouth and the Thames mouth, burning Gravesend, 1380. The expedition of Duke John and his brother Edmund to S. Malo in 1378 was of small profit, for though Charles, King of Navarre, gave up his fortresses in Normandy, amongst others Cherbourg, to get English help against the King of Castile, the French won them nearly all. Even Montfort's recall to Brittany in 1379 availed little, for the Bretons only wished to play off the one kingdom against the other, and so to keep their freedom. Thus when the Earl of Buckingham marched from Calais to Vannes to their help, they would scarcely give his host food or shelter, and in 1380 forced their duke to send them away and make peace with the new King of France, Charles VI. Lancaster's blundering and mismanagement was made the more clear by the successes of others. For Sir Hugh Calverley with his one galley saved our transports at Brest from the French and Spanish fleet; while John Philpot fitted out a few craft of his own, and took the Scottish sea-rover John the Mercer, 1380, "spending his John of Gaunt's unlucky govern ment, 13771381. money and jeoparding his life for the sake of the poor people and realm of England, and not at all to rob knights of the garland of glory" (as he told the nobles who grudged him his victory); and John Bassett won back Berwick from the Scots by his ready action. Moreover, the wanton and reckless behaviour of the duke's followers, who slew a knight in lawful sanctuary in Westminster Abbey itself, made the Londoners and bishops hate him more than ever. So that the duke would not hold Parliament in London, but got it to sit at Northampton, where by Wycliff's help he tried to get the right of sanctuary done away with, save when the refugee's life or limbs were in danger. But the Houses were taken up with the ways of meeting the sums needed for the defence of the realm. A fresh toll or subsidy was set upon wool, and a poll-tax laid upon every grown-up person in the kingdom according to his means, from the labourer or workwoman's 4d. up to the duke and archbishop's £6, 13s. 4d. But the wool-tax only brought in £6000, and the poll-tax £22,000, so that at Northampton next year the ministers reported that they should want £160,000. Astonished at this huge sum, and forgetting that the buying-power of money was less than it had been, the Parliament angrily turned out the ministry, audited the accounts, and refused to raise more than £100,000, of which the clergy, owning a third of the land, were to pay a third, the rest was to be got by a treble poll-tax, one of the results of which was the Peasants' Rising of 1381, long remembered with horror as Hurling-time. 2. Many causes met at this time to make the English poor unhappy and troubled. a. In the country The causes of the serfs, seeing the welfare of their free fellows, the Peasants' were longing to be free themselves: the free Rising. labourers were angry with the laws that tried to beat down wages; the customary tenants disliked having to give up so much of their time without pay to the lords, and grumbled at the dues of the manor: the free tenants and yeomen suffered from the heavy market-tolls, the occasional purveyance, and the continual taxes, which as far as they could see were wasted by the Government. b. In many parts of the country the forest laws were very hateful, and led to much angry feeling, outlaws and poachers, such as the songs of Robin Hood tell of, being the heroes of the country-side. In the towns the labourers suffered from the selfish guild laws, which raised the cost of food. c. The craftsmen in the guilds were struggling hard to wrest the control of the towns from the rich burgess families, who managed matters for their own benefit; while both classes hated the foreigners, whose quickness and skill enabled them to undersell and outbid them in many ways, and the speculators, "forestallers, regraters, and engrossers," who forced up the price of food, and hoarded the money that was wanted for daily trade. The enmity between the friars and the endowed clergy raged as fiercely as ever, and the poor chaplains, who since the plague had been left by the rich rectors and vicars in charge of many of the country parishes, were indignant at the remissness and greed of their richer brethren. Nor were these feelings only shown in words. In the home counties the labourers formed clubs to resist the laws fixing wages; the freed bondsmen appealed to the courts against the lords, who were trying in many cases to get them back into bondage; the customary tenants resisted the encroachments of the manor-stewards. They were encouraged by the old soldiers, who came back from the wars boasting that the yeoman's arrow was more than a match for the knight's spear, and telling how the fullers and webbers of Ghent and Bruges under James of Artaveld and John Lyon had won their freedom by standing together shoulder to shoulder against their cruel lord the Earl of Flanders. They were flattered by the friars' praise of poverty and mockery of the rich; they were emboldened by Wycliff's poor priests, who preached the doctrine that property and power were only lawfully held by those who were pious and godly, and that a bad rich man had no right to his lands or goods. But the man who more than any one else tried to get the poor to stand up for themselves and demand reforms was John Ball, the priest of S. Mary's, York, who began travelling through Kent and Essex, holding forth to the people on their wrongs and the best ways of mending them. He often used in his sermons and letters the words of William Langland, a poor clerk of London, who had written a set of English poems called Dreams about Piers the Plowman, allegories in which he boldly showed up the vices of the day, talking of Lady Bribery and her power at court, of Lord Lust and Master Simony, and their influence with the clergy and gentry; exhorting men to be patient, reasonable, kindly, and to follow the example of Piers the plowman, the honest, hardworking, dutiful man who will not be turned from his right work by hardship or temptation; calling men to come and defend Conscience, who is closely besieged by the Seven Deadly Sins; and praying them to walk in the steps of Do-well, Dobetter, and Do-best, the types of holiness, uprightness, and |