BOOK V. THE STRUGGLES OF YORK AND LANCASTER AT HOME AND ABROAD. CHAPTER I. Henry IV. of Bolingbroke, 1399-1413. 1. THE new king was crowned with great pomp 13th October 1399. Forty-six young squires were made Knights of the Bath, and walked to church with green silken shoulderknots on their mantles. Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, who had married Henry's half-sister, Joan Beaufort, was made Marshal; Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland, was made Constable and Lord of Man; his son Harry, Lord of Anglesey and Lieutenant of North Wales; and his brother Thomas, Earl of Worcester, named Admiral and Lieutenant of South Wales. Arundel was again acknowledged as archbishop. Parliament met on the 15th, and ordered the Acts of last Parliament to be cancelled, and those of 1388 restored; the blank charters were to be destroyed. Henry, the king's son, was made Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of Chester, and the king promised that the power of the Estates should not again be given to a small Board. On the 16th, Sir William Bagot, Richard's former minister, charged Aumâle with the murder of Gloucester. But Aumâle, Surrey, and Exeter challenged him to wager of battle. All the parties were Henry IV. and arrested. On the 23d, the Lords condemned the nobles, 1399. King Richard to perpetual prison, the Commons saying that they would not be parties to any judgments given in parliament. On the 3d November, those of the appellants of 1397 who were still alive were judged: Aumâle, Surrey, Exeter were to lose their dukedoms, and remain Earls of Rutland, Kent, and Huntingdon; Marquis Dorset and the Earl of Gloucester to come back to their old titles of Earl of Somerset and Lord Despenser; the Earl of Salisbury was to prove his guiltlessness by battle with Lord Morley, his challenger. Later, the Earls of Suffolk, Arundel, and Warwick were restored to their former rights, and the earldoms of Aquitaine and Lancaster given to the Prince of Wales. Yet the outlook was not very bright. Many in England disliked or feared Henry. France, and Scotland, and Flanders were openly unfriendly to him, and Wales staunch to Richard. The king's help came chiefly from Arundel (who led the stronger half of the English Church) and those great northern barons to whom he was largely beholden for his crown. His aims were peace and cheap government at home, the reconquest of his heritage abroad, and the upholding of the Church by the crushing of heresy. But he was not able to carry out one of these plans fully, for he could never gain the love of his people, his nobles would only help him for their own ends, and he was so crippled all his life for want of money that the pay of Calais garrison was left years in arrear, and the wages of his ambassadors abroad were only doled out to them when they threatened to throw up their thankless task. Henry had, moreover, to face the danger which every English king, for more than a hundred years after Richard's dethronement had to meet the bitter and relentless feud which rent the royal house, and destroyed nearly all the descendants of Edward III., only ceasing for a while during a cruel and unprofitable foreign war. 2. The first plot of the many which mark this reign was planned early in 1400 by the Earls of Kent, Huntingdon, and Salisbury, and Lord Despenser at Oxford. Under colour of holding a tournament, they were to gather at Windsor on Twelfth Night, seize and put to death the king and his sons, and put back King Richard. But Rutland, whose share in the plot was discovered by his father, rode in haste to tell Henry all, and so save himself. The king at once stole off to the Tower to gather troops. The earls, disappointed of their prey, went past Windsor to Sunning, where Isabel, Richard's young queen, was living. Here Kent, putting a good face on the matter, boasted that Henry, for all his soldiership and renown, had fled before them, and declaring that Richard had escaped from prison, and was waiting at Radcot Bridge with 100,000 men ready to win back his own, called upon true men to follow him. Huntingdon's plot and Richard's He then tore off the collars of gold Henry had given to some of those present, and made the yeomen cast under foot the silver crescent badge of Lancaster. With a small following, Kent and Salisbury rode on to Cirencester, but there being attacked by the townsfolk who favoured Henry, were obliged to give themselves up. Next day a priest of their train secretly set fire to certain thatched houses in the town, hoping that in the turmoil his masters the earls might get away. But the townsfolk were so angry at this breach of faith, that they haled death, 1400. the prisoners out of the Abbey, where they lay, and cut off their heads forthwith, before they went back to put out the fire. Huntingdon had gone to Essex to take ship, to seek help from Richard's French friends, but he was stopped by contrary winds, made prisoner by the levy of Essex, and taken to Plashy, the house of Joan of Arundel, Countess of Hereford, Henry's mother-in-law. Joan would have saved him, but the young Earl of Arundel met him. "You made me your foot-boy when you were a great man at Richard's court, but I will have my revenge now." And he bade the Essex yeomen slay him. Hunting don pleaded hard for his life. "I never hurt any one of you in my life!" and none of them would lift hand against him. Then Arundel bade a squire of his own kill him. "Here are 8000 men," said Huntingdon, "and art thou the only one cruel enough to kill me. Alas! if I had only gone to Rome when the Pope bade me be his marshal, I should not stand in peril to-day!" But Arundel's threats frightened the squire, and he butchered the prisoner on the very spot where Gloucester had been arrested by King Richard. The Bristol townsfolk beheaded Despenser (with whose house they had a standing feud), and sent his head by Rutland to London, though the king had ordered that he should be spared to speak with him. Others were tried, and put to death at London and Oxford. The poor plan of this rising, and the ill-feeling of the people of the south of England towards the young courtiers of Richard, had more to do with its failure than a love for Henry. The king thanked the Londoners for their readiness in arming for him, promised the men and women of Cirencester two butts of wine and ten fallow deer every year in return for their zeal, and threatened that he would uproot traitors like evil weeds from his garden, and plant in their stead good and wholesome herbs. A few days after this, it was made known that Richard was dead at Pomfret, whither he had His body been taken from the Tower 29th October 1399. was shown at Cheapside, with bared face, for two hours to the people. Whether he died of grief (as did the banished Norfolk at Venice when he heard the news of Richard's fall and Henry's success), or whether, like Edward II., he was secretly murdered, as most men believed, is not known for certain. Some even held that the body shown was that of one Maudlin the chaplain, who was very like Richard, and that Richard had really broken out of Pomfret, and, when the rising failed, fled to Scotland, mad with the disappointment. And it is true that a madman was long kept at the Scottish Court, and cared for as King Richard, though Henry maintained that he was only a runaway priest called Thomas Ward of Trumpington. Henry's fears of the French and the Lollards, 1401-6. 3. King Charles of France was shocked at the death of his friend and son-in-law, and feared Henry as a claimant to the French crown; he therefore asked for the little Isabel to be sent back to France with her dower. For some time Henry would not let her go, wishing to marry her to his son, the Prince of Wales; but Charles would hear of no match till she was back to France; so she was returned safely, though her dower was kept as part pay ment for the ransom of King John, which had never been received in full. Charles suffered from disease of the brain, which made him helpless for months together; and while he was ill, his brother Louis, Duke of Orleans, and his cousin John, Duke of Burgundy, quarrelled for power. Duke Louis had made a bond of friendship with Henry while they were together in Paris, but he now tore it up, and twice challenged his old friend to wager of battle, accusing him of Richard's murder. Henry refused to fight, but denied the charge by oath. Waleran, Earl of St. Pol, Richard's brother-in-law, also declared war against Henry, and hanged a figure, made to be like Rutland, upon a gibbet by Calais gate, to show his hate of the traitor. So, though there was no open war with France, he and other French nobles fitted up fleets of privateers and began to plunder English ships, and made raids on the English coast, year after year, causing much annoyance and damage. In order to strengthen himself against his foes in France, Henry took care to keep friendly with Portugal and Castile, of which lands his sisters were queens. Moreover, he gave one of his daughters, Blanche, in marriage to Louis, son of Rupert, king of the Romans, and the other, Philippa, with a great portion, to Eric XIII. of Denmark. He him T |