A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century Part 6

Besides his absolute rule was not free from arbitrary acts of many kinds; among the great n.o.bles each trembled for his own safety; the clergy, never on good terms with Richard, were impatient at being deprived of their Primate, who was to them 'the tower in the protecting bulwark of the Church.' In the capital too men were against a rule which seemed to put an end to popular influence; it needed only the return of an exile, the young Henry of Lancaster (whom the King would not allow to take possession of his inheritance by deputy, and who in conformity with the feeling of the time broke his ban to do himself right); all men then deserted the King; the n.o.bles could now think of carrying out the threat which they had once hurled against him.

Richard was compelled to call a Parliament, and at the moment it met to p.r.o.nounce his own abdication. The Parliament was not contented with accepting this; it wished to put an end to all doubt for the future, and to establish its own right for ever.

A long list of articles was drawn up, from which it was concluded that the King had broken his coronation oath and forfeited his crown; the a.s.sembled Estates, when severally and conjointly consulted, held them sufficient to justify them in proceeding to the King's deposition.

They named Proctors, two for the clergy, two for the high n.o.bility--one for the earls and dukes, the other for the barons and bannerets, two for the knights and commons--one for the Northern, the other for the Southern counties. They sat as a court of justice before the vacant throne, with the Chief Justice in their midst: then the first spiritual commissioner, the Bishop of S. Asaph, rose, and in the place and name and under the authority of the Estates of the realm announced the sentence of deposition against the late King, and forbade all men to receive any further commands from him. Some opposition was raised; it is said that the Bishop of Carlisle very expressly denied the right of subjects to sit in judgment on their hereditary sovereign;[61] but how could this have had any effect against the Parliament's claim which had been formulated so long?

As the crown was now regarded as vacant, Henry of Lancaster arose,--in the name of G.o.d, as he said, whilst he made the sign of the cross on his forehead and breast,--to claim it for himself, in virtue of his birth and the right which accrued to him through G.o.d and the help of his friends. It was not properly speaking an election that now took place: the spiritual and lay lords, as well as the other members of the Parliament, were asked what their opinion of his claim was: the answer of all was that the Duke should be their King. When, conducted by the two archbishops, he ascended the vacant throne, he was greeted with the joyous acclaim of those a.s.sembled. The Archbishop of Canterbury made a speech full of unction, the drift of which was, that henceforth it would not be a child, such as the late sovereign had been, self-willed and void of understanding, but a Man that would rule over them, in the full maturity of his understanding, and resolved to do not so much his own will as the will of G.o.d.[62]

Thus did the spiritual and lay n.o.bility, in and with the Parliament, make good their claim to dispose of the crown. They went to work against Richard II with less reserve than against Edward II. In the latter case the Queen had taken part in the movement; they had set the son in his father's stead. But this time they did not wait for the actual consummation of the King's marriage; they raised a prince to the throne who had openly opposed him in the field, and was not even the next in succession. For there were still the descendants of an elder brother left, who according to English usage had a prior right.

The Parliament held itself competent to settle on its own authority even the succession to the crown. It enacted that it should belong to the King's eldest son, and after him to his male issue, and on their failure to his brothers and their issue. The proposal formally to exclude succession in the female line did not pa.s.s; but for a long while to come the actual practice had that effect.

Besides the motives involved in the extension of the Power of the Estates in and for itself there was yet another reason for such a proceeding. And this arose out of the growth, and increasing urgency, of the religious divisions. The Lollards preached, and taught in schools, according to their views: in the year 1396 in a pet.i.tion to Parliament they traced all the moral evils and defects of the world to the fact that the clergy were endowed with worldly goods, and showed the advantage which would arise from the application of these to the service of the state and the prosecution of war.[63] They seem to have flattered themselves that by this they would win over the lay lords, but they were completely mistaken. For these remarked on the contrary that their own property had no better legal foundation than that of the clergy,[64] and only attached themselves to the rights of the Church all the more zealously.

That which would have been impossible under Richard II's vacillating government, the first Lancaster now undertook: in full agreement with the Estates he a few days after his accession announced to Convocation that he purposed to destroy heretics and heresies to the best of his power.[65] In the next Parliament a statute was drawn up in which relapsed heretics were condemned to the flames. And still more remarkable than this mode of punishment, which was that of the Church-law, is the regulation of the procedure in this statute. In former times the sentence had been p.r.o.nounced by the archbishop and the collective clergy of the province, and the King's consent had to be asked before it was executed. The decision was now committed to the bishop and his commissary, and the sheriff was instructed to inflict the punishment without further appeal, and to commit the guilty to the fire on the high grounds in the country, that terror might strike all the bystanders. It is clear how much the power of the bishops was thus extended. Soon after, on the proposal of the lay lords, at whose head the Prince of Wales is named, a further statute pa.s.sed, in which to spread the rumour that King Richard was yet alive, and to teach that the prelates ought to be deprived of their worldly goods, are treated as offences of equal magnitude and threatened with a similar punishment; the object being alike in both,--to raise a tumult. And in fact, when Henry V himself had ascended the throne, an outbreak did occur, in which these causes co-operated. The Lollards were strengthened in their resistance to the government of the house of Lancaster by the rumour that their rightful King was yet alive. Henry V was obliged to crush them in open battle, and then force them to remain quiet by a new statute, which enacted the confiscation of their goods as well.[66] His alliance and friendship with the Emperor Sigismund was based on the fact, that he regarded the Hussites as only the successors of the Lollards.

This orthodox tendency was now moreover combined with a strict Parliamentary government. Under the Lancasters there is no complaint as to illegal taxes; they allowed the moneys voted by the Parliament to be paid over to treasurers named by itself and accountable to it; that which earlier Kings had always rejected as an affront, the claim of Parliament to exercise a sort of supervision over the King's household, the Lancasters admitted; the royal officers were bound by oath to observe the statutes and the common law; the prerogative, hitherto exercised by the Kings, of softening the severity of the statutes by proclamations contravening their purpose was expressly abolished.

The Lancasters owed their rise to their alliance with the clergy and the Parliament: a fact which determined the character and manner of their government. The most manifold results might be expected, even beyond the borders of England, from their having by this very alliance won for themselves a great European position.

Nowhere was greater interest taken in Richard's fate than at the French court. Louis Duke of Orleans, whose voice was generally decisive there, once challenged the first Lancaster to a duel, and when he refused it pressed him hard with war. That Owen Glendower could once more maintain himself as Prince in Wales was entirely due to his French auxiliaries. That we find Henry IV more secure of his throne in his later years than in his earlier is a phenomenon the explanation of which we seek in vain in English affairs alone: it results from the fact that his powerful foe, Louis of Orleans, was murdered in the year 1407 at the instigation of John Duke of Burgundy, and that then the quarrel of the two parties, which divided France, burst out with increased violence, and remained long undecided. From the French there was no longer anything to fear: they emulously sought the alliance of the highest power in England; there even arose circ.u.mstances under which the Lancasters could think of renewing the claims of Edward III, from whom they too were descended.

At the time that Henry V ascended the English throne, the Orleanists had again gained the preponderance in France: they unfurled the Oriflamme against the Duke of Burgundy, who was now in fact hard pressed. Henry negociated with them both. But while the Orleanists made difficulties about granting him the independent possession of the old English provinces, Burgundy declared himself ready to acknowledge him as King.[67] The common interests moreover of home politics allied him with this house.

Henry could reckon on the sympathies of a part of the population of France, when he led the power of England across the sea. A successful battle in which he destroyed the flower of the French n.o.bility gave him an undoubted superiority. The vengeance which the Orleanists wreaked even under these circ.u.mstances on the Duke of Burgundy, who was now murdered in his turn, brought the Burgundian party over completely to his side, together with the greater part of the nation.

Things went so far that Charles VI of France decided to marry his daughter to the victorious Lancaster and to acknowledge him, as his heir after his death, as his representative during his life.

It was a very extraordinary position which Henry V now occupied. The two great kingdoms, each of which by itself has earlier or later claimed to sway the world, were (without being fused into one) to remain united for ever under him and his successors. Philip the Good of Burgundy was bound to him by ties of blood and by hostility to a common foe: as heir of France Henry sat in the Parliament by which the murderers of the last duke, who were also the chief opponents of the new state of things, were prosecuted. Another promising connexion was opened to him by the marriage of the youngest of his brothers with Jaqueline of Holland and Hainault, who possessed still more extensive hereditary claims. Henry recommended the eldest to Queen Johanna of Naples to be adopted as her son and heir. The King of Castile and the heir of Portugal were descended from his father's sisters. The pedigrees of Southern and Western Europe alike met in the house of Lancaster, the head of which thus seemed to be the common head of all.

In England Henry did not neglect to guard the rights of the National Church; but at the same time no one exerted himself more energetically to close the schism: the solemn condemnation of Wiclif's doctrines by the General Council of Constance served to vouch for his att.i.tude in religious matters: the English Church obtained in it a place among the great National Churches.

Henry V found himself in the advantageous position of a potentate raised to power by a usurpation for which he was not however personally responsible. He could spare and reinstate Richard II's memory, as much as in him lay, though he owed the crown to his overthrow. That he furthered and advanced also in France the munic.i.p.al and parliamentary interests, which were his mainstay in England, procured him the obedience which was there paid him, and a European influence. In his moral character Henry ranks above most of the Plantagenets. He had no favourites and let no unjust acts be imputed to him. He was stern towards the great and careful for the common people; at his first word men could tell what they had to expect from him. The French were frightened at the keenness of his expression, but they reverenced his high spirit, his bravery and truthfulness. 'He transacts all his affairs himself; he considers them well before he undertakes them; he never does anything fruitlessly. He is free from excesses, and truthful: he never makes himself too familiar. On his face are visible dignity and supreme power.'[68] He possessed in full measure the bold impulses of his ancestors, their attention to the general affairs of Western Christendom. In the war with the Lollards he was once wounded; that he recovered from his wound was designated as the work of divine Providence, which had destined him to be the conqueror of the Holy Land. He informed himself about its state as it was then const.i.tuted under the Mameluke rule: a Chronicle of Jerusalem and a History of G.o.dfrey of Bouillon were two of the books he loved most to read. And without doubt such an undertaking would have been the true means, if any such means were possible, of uniting more closely, by common undertakings successes and interests, the realms already bound together under one sceptre. The Ottomans had not yet extended themselves in the East with their full force: something might yet have been effected there; for the King of France and England, who was yet young in years, a great future seemed to be at hand.

Sometimes it seems as though fortune were specially making a mock of man's frailty. In this fulness of power and of expectations, Henry V was attacked by a disease which men did not yet know how to cure and to which he succ.u.mbed. His heir was a boy, nine months old.

Of the two surviving brothers of the deceased King, the younger ruled England under the already established predominance of the Estates of the Realm, while the elder governed France with an increased partic.i.p.ation on the part of the Estates: their efforts could only be directed towards preserving these kingdoms for their nephew Henry VI.

We might almost wonder that this succeeded so well for a time: in the long run it was impossible. The feeling of French nationality, which had already met the victor himself with secret warnings, found its most wonderful expression in the Maid who revived in the French their old attachment to their native King and his divine right; the English, when she fell into their hands, with ungenerous hate inflicted on her the punishment of the Lollards: but the Valois King had already gained a firm footing. It was Charles VII who understood how to appease the enmity of Burgundy, and in unison with the great men of his kingdom to give his power a peculiar organisation corresponding to its character, so that he was able to oppose to the English troops better armed than their own, and make the restoration of a firm peace even desirable for them. But this reacted on England in two ways. The government, which was inclined for peace, fell into as bitter a quarrel as any that had hitherto taken place with the national bodies politic, which either did not recognise this necessity, or attributed the disasters incurred to bad management. The man most trusted by the King fell a victim to the public hate. But, besides this, there arose--awakened by these events and in a certain a.n.a.logy with what happened in France--the recollection of the rights which had been set aside by the accession of the house of Lancaster. Their representative, Richard Duke of York, had hitherto kept quiet; for he was fully convinced that a right cannot perish merely because it lies dormant. Cautiously and step by step, while letting others run the first risk, he at last came forward openly with his claim to the crown. Great was the astonishment of Henry VI, who as far as his memory reached had been regarded as King, to find his right to the highest dignity doubted and denied. But such was now the case.

The nation was split into two parties, one of which held fast to the monarchy established by the Parliament, while the other wished to recur to the principle of legitimate succession then violated. Not that political conviction was the leading motive for their quarrel. First of all we find that the opponents of the government--though themselves of Parliamentary views--rallied round the banners of the hitherto forgotten right of birth. Every man fought, less for the prince whose device he bore, the red or the white rose, than for his own share in the enjoyment of political power. On both sides there arose chiefs of almost independent power, who clad their partisans in their own colours, at whose call those partisans were ready any moment to take arms: they appointed the sheriffs in the counties and were lords of the land. But when blood had once been shed, no reconciliation of the parties was possible. Ha, cried the victor to the man who begged for mercy, thy father slew mine, thou must die by my hand. In vain did men turn to the judges: for the statutes contradicted each other, and they could no longer decide where the right lay. From the Parliaments no solution of these questions could be expected; each served the victorious party, whose summons it obeyed, and condemned its opponent.

As the resources on each side were tolerably equal, even the battles were not decisive: the result depended less upon real superiority than on accidental desertions or accessions, and most largely on foreign help. After the English had failed, during the antagonism of Valois and Burgundy, in establishing their supremacy on the Continent, the quarrel--quieted for a moment--which broke out again between Louis XI and Charles the Bold in the most violent manner, reacted on them with all the more vehemence. King Louis would not endure that a good understanding should exist between Edward IV and Duke Charles, to whom Edward had married his sister: he drew the man who had hitherto done the most for the Yorkist interests, the Earl of Warwick, over to his own side; and scarcely had the latter appeared in England when Edward IV was forced to fly and Henry VI was reinstated. Louis had prepared church-thanksgivings to G.o.d for having given the English a king of the blood of France and a friend to that country. But meanwhile Edward was helped by Charles the Bold, to whom he had fled, though not openly in arms, yet with ships which he hired for him, with considerable sums of money, and even with troops which he allowed to join him.[69] To these, his Flemish and Easterling troops, it was chiefly attributed that Edward gained the upper hand in the field and recovered his throne. But what a state of things was this! The glorious crown of the Plantagenets, who a little while before strove for the supremacy of the world, was now--stained with blood and powerless as it was--tossed to and fro between the rival parties.

NOTES:

[56] 'I take it as a holesome counsell, that the Pope leeve his worldly lordship to worldly lords as Christ gafe him and move all his clerks to do so.' Wickleffs Bileve, in Collier i. Rec. 47.

[57] 'Quod nullus est dominus civilis, nullus est episcopus, nullus est praelatus, dum est in mortali peccato--quod domini temporales possunt auferre bona temporalia ab ecclesia habitualiter delinquente vel quod populares possunt ad eorum arbitrium dominos delinquentes corrigere.'

[58] Walsingham: 'Antistes belliger velut aper frendens dentibus.'

[59] 'Si rex ex maligno consilio--se alienaverit a populo suo nec voluent per jura regni et statuta et laudabiles ordinationes c.u.m salubri consilio dominorum et procorum regni gubernare et regulari--extunc licitum est eis c.u.m communi a.s.sensu et consensu populi regem ipsum de regali solio abrogare et propinquiorem aliquem de stirpe regia loco ejus sublimare.' In Knyghton ii. 2683.

[60] 'Comme chose fait traitoirous.e.m.e.nt et encontre sa regalie, sa coronne et sa dignitee--le roy de la.s.sent de touts les srs et coes ad ordeine et establi que null tiel commission ne autre sembleable jammes ne soit purchacez pursue ne faite en temps advenir.'

Statutes of the Realm II. 98.

[61] Hayward, Life of King Henry IV, gives a detailed copy of this speech, which however can possess no more claim to authenticity than the words that Shakespeare puts into the Bishop's mouth.

[62] Le record et proces de la renonciation du roi Richard avec la deposition. Twysden, ii. 2743.

[63] Conclusiones Lollardorum porrectae pleno parliamento. Wilkins iii. 222. From the doc.u.ment in 229 we see that these doctrines had penetrated into Oxford.

[64] The temporal possessions with which the prelates are as rightly endowed as it has been or might be best advised by the laws and customs of our kingdom; and of which they are as surely possessed as the lords temporal are of their inheritances.

[65] Convocatio 6 die Oct. 1389 ... modus procedendi contra haereticos. Wilkins iii. 238, 254.

[66] He imputes to them, 'l'entent de adnuller la foie chretienne auxi a destruer le roi mesme et tous maners estates dicell royaume et auxi toute politie et les leies de la terre.'

[67] Treaty of 23rd May 1414. Certainly Duke John in September 1414 concluded the treaty of Arras which is based on the a.s.sumption of his having no understanding with England; but he never ratified it.

[68] 'De diligence portoit le gonphanon de ses besoignes.'

Chastellain, Chronique du duc Philippe, ch. 98.

[69] Chastellain, Chronique des derniers ducs de Bourgogne, ch 191.

'Le duc cognossoit bien, que ceste mutacion en Angleterre etoit pratiquee pour le desfaire et non pour autre fin.'

BOOK II.

ATTEMPTS TO CONSOLIDATE THE KINGDOM INDEPENDENTLY IN ITS TEMPORAL AND SPIRITUAL RELATIONS.

We may regard it as the chief result of the Norman-Plantagenet rule, that England became completely a member of the Romano-German family of nations which formed the Western world. In however many ways the invading n.o.bility had mingled with the native houses, it yet held fast to its ancient language; even now it is part of the ambition of the great families to trace their pedigree from the Conquerors. Attempts had been made, sometimes of a more political, sometimes of a more doctrinal nature, to break loose from the hierarchy, which prevailed throughout these nations; but they had only increased its strength; the native clergy saw that its safety lay in the strictest adherence to the maxims of the Universal Church. Similarly the character of the Estates in England was akin to that of those in North France and especially in the Netherlands; on this rests the sympathy which the enterprises of Edward III and Henry V met with; for it was indeed the feeling of these centuries, that the members of any one of the three Estates felt themselves quite as closely bound to the members of the same Estate in other lands as to their own countrymen of the other Estates. There was but one Church, one Science, one Art in Europe: one and the same mental horizon enclosed the different peoples: a romance and a poetry varying in form yet of closely kindred nature was the common possession of all. The common life of Europe flowed also in the veins of England: an indestructible foundation for culture and progressive civilisation was laid. But we saw to what point matters had come notwithstanding, as regards the durability of its internal system and its power. The Plantagenets had extended the rule of England over Scotland and Ireland: in the latter it still subsisted, but only within the narrow limits of the Border Pale; in the former it was altogether overthrown. The best result that had been effected in home politics, the attempt to unite the Powers of the country in Parliament had, after a short and brilliant success, led to the deepest disorder by disregarding the rights of birth. The degraded crown above all had thus become the prize of battle for Pretenders allied with France or Burgundy. But it could not possibly remain thus.

The time was come to give the English realm an independent position and internal order corresponding at once to its insular situation and to the degree of culture it had attained.

The first who attempted this with some success was Edward IV, of the house of York, who in the war of the Roses had remained master of the field.

But everywhere there began once more an era of autocratic princes.

CHAPTER I.

RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SUPREME POWER.

Edward IV was a most brilliant figure, the handsomest man of his time, at least among the sovereigns, so that the impression he thus made was actually a power in politics; we find him incessantly entangled in love affairs: he was fond of music and enjoyment of all kinds, the pleasures of the table, the uproar of riotous company: his debauched habits are thought to have shortened his life, and many a disaster sprung from his carelessness; but he had also Sardanapalus' nature in him: with quickly awakening activity he always rose again out of his disasters; in his battles he appeared the last, but he fought perhaps the best; and he won them all. In the history of European Monarchy he is not unworthy to be ranked by the side of Ferdinand the Catholic, Charles the Bold, Louis XI, and some others who regained prestige for their dignity by the energy of their personal character.

In itself we must rate it as important that he made good the birthright of the house of York, independent as it was of the maxims of Parliament, or rather contradictory to them, and maintained the throne. He deemed himself the direct successor of Richard II; the three kings who had since worn the crown by virtue of Parliamentary enactments were regarded by him as usurpers. We have Fortescue's contemporary treatise in praise of the laws of England, which (written for a prince who never came to the throne) contains the idea of Parliamentary right which the house of Lancaster upheld: but Edward IV did not so apprehend it. He allowed the lawfulness of his accession to be recognised by Parliament, because this was of use to him: but otherwise he paid little regard to its established rights. We find under him for five years no meeting of Parliament; then a Parliament that had met was prorogued some four or five times without completing any business, till it at last agreed to raise the customs duties, included under the names of Tonnage and Poundage; a revenue which being voted to the Kings for life (and this came gradually to be regarded as a mere formality) gave their government a strong financial basis. Other Parliaments repaid their summons with considerable grants, with large and full subsidies: yet Edward IV was not content even with these. Under him began the practice, by which the wealthy were drawn into contributions for his service in proportion to their property, of which the King knew how to obtain accurate information; these contributions were called Benevolences because they were paid under the form of personal freewill offerings, though none dared to refuse them:[70] we may compare the imposts which in the Italian republics the dominant parties were wont to inflict on their opponents. Though holding Church views in other points, and at any rate a persecutor of the Lollards, he did not however allow the clergy to enter on their temporalities without heavy payments: he created monopolies in the case of some especially profitable articles of trade. In short, he neglected no means to render the administration of the supreme power independent of the money-grants of Parliament. He made room for the royal prerogative as understood by the old kings, as well as for the right of birth.