A Student's History of England Volume I Part 17

That if gold ruste, what schulde yren doo?

For if a prest be foul, on whom we truste, No wondur is a lewid man to ruste.[23]

[Footnote 23: _i.e._, if a priest, who is like gold, allow himself to rust, or fall into sloth or sin, how can he expect the 'lewid man' or layman, who is as iron to him, to be free from these faults?]

The final character given to him is:--

A bettre preest I trowe ther nowher non is.

He waytud after no pompe ne reverence, Ne maked him a spiced conscience;[24]

But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, He taught, and ferst he folwed[25] it himselve.

[Footnote 24: A nice conscience; to see offence where there is none.]

[Footnote 25: Followed.]

The majority amongst Chaucer's clergy are, however, of a very different kind. There is the parish clerk, who, when he is waving the censer in church thinks more of the pretty women there than of his duty; the monk who loves hunting, and hates work and reading; the friar who is ready to grant absolution to any one who will give money to the friars; who has a word and a jest for every man, and presents of knives and pins for the women; who takes a farthing where he cannot get a penny, but turns aside from those who have not even a farthing to give; the pardoner, who has for sale sham relics--a piece of the sail of the ship which carried St. Peter on the sea of Galilee, and a gla.s.s of pigs' bones, which he was ready to sell as bones of saints, if he could thereby extract something even from the poorest widow. He would not, he said, work with his hands like the apostles. He wanted to have money, wool, cheese, and wheat at other people's expense.

Though Wycliffe had failed to reform the Church there was evidently much room for a reformer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Carrying corn--a cart going uphill: from the Luttrell Psalter.]

11. =Roads and Bridges.=--Such men as these latter did not go on pilgrimages through pure religious zeal. Villeins, indeed, were "bound to the soil," and lived and died on land which they tilled; but the cla.s.ses above them moved about freely, and took pleasure in a pilgrimage, as a modern Englishman takes pleasure in a railway excursion. It was considered to be a pious work to make or repair roads and bridges, and the existence of many bridges especially was owing to the clergy. The most famous bridge in England, London Bridge, had been begun in the place of an old wooden one in =1176=--in the reign of Henry II.--by a priest, Peter Colechurch, who obtained gifts for the purpose from notable people of all kinds. It was completed in =1209=, houses being built upon it in order that their rents might pay for keeping it in good condition. Local taxes were sometimes levied to maintain the roads and bridges, and in default of these, it was held to be the duty of the owners of land to keep the communications open.

[Ill.u.s.tration: State carriage of the fourteenth century: from the Luttrell Psalter.]

12. =Modes of Conveyance.=--In spite of these precautions, roads were often neglected, so that those who were not obliged to go on foot travelled almost entirely on horseback, women almost always riding astride like men. It was only at the end of the fourteenth century that a few ladies rode sideways. Kings and queens and exceedingly great people occasionally used lumbering but gorgeously ornamented carriages; but this was to enable them to appear in splendour, as this way of travelling must, at least in fine weather, have been far less agreeable than the ordinary ride. The only other wheeled vehicles in existence were the peasants' carts on two wheels, roughly made in the form of a square box either of boards or of a lighter framework. It was one of the grievances of the peasants that when the king moved from one manor to another his purveyors seized their carts to carry his property, and that though the purveyors were bound by frequently repeated statutes to pay for their hire, these statutes were often broken, and the carts sent back without payment for their use. The same purveyors often took corn and other agricultural produce, for which they paid little or nothing.

13. =Hospitality and Inns.=--When the king arrived in the evening at a town his numerous attendants were billeted upon the townsmen, without asking leave. Monasteries were always ready to offer hospitality to himself or to any great person, and even to provide rougher fare for the poorest stranger in a special guest-house provided for the purpose. In castles, the owner was usually glad to see a stranger of his own rank. The halls were still furnished with movable tables, as in the days before the Conquest (see p. 76), and at night mattresses were placed for persons of inferior rank on the floor, which was strewn with rushes; whilst a stranger of high rank had usually a bed in the solar (see p. 245) with the lord of the castle. Travellers of the middle cla.s.s were not thought good enough to be welcomed in monasteries and castles, and were not poor enough to be received out of charity; and for them inns were provided. These inns provided beds, of which there were several in each room, and the guests then bought their provisions and fuel from the host, instead of being charged for their meals as is now the custom. From a manual of French conversation, written at the end of the fourteenth century for the use of Englishmen, it appears that cleanliness was not always to be found in these inns. "William," one traveller is supposed to say to another, "undress and wash your legs, and rub them well for the love of the fleas, that they may not leap on your legs; for there is a peck of them lying in the dust under the rushes.... Hi! the fleas bite me so, and do me great harm, for I have scratched my shoulders till the blood flows."

14. =Alehouses.=--By the roadside were alehouses for temporary refreshment, known by a bunch of twigs at the end of a pole, from which arose the saying that "Good wine needs no bush." The ale of the day was made without hops, which were still unknown in England, and ale would therefore only keep good for about five days.

15. =Wanderers.=--Besides the better cla.s.s of travellers the roads were frequented by wanderers of all kinds, quack doctors, minstrels, jugglers, beggars, and such like. Life in the country was dull, and even great lords took pleasure in amus.e.m.e.nts which are now only to be heard of at country fairs. Any one who could play or sing was always welcome, and the verses sung were often exceedingly coa.r.s.e. A tumbler who could stand on his head or balance a heavy article at the end of a stick balanced on his chin, or the leader of a performing bear, was seldom turned away from the door, whilst the pedlar went from place to place, supplying the wants which are now satisfied in the shop of the village or the neighbouring town.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bear-baiting: from the Luttrell Psalter.]

16. =Robbers and Criminals.=--The roads, indeed, were not always safe.

Outlaws who had escaped from the punishment due to their crimes took refuge in the broad tracts of forest land which occupied much of the soil which has since been cultivated, shot the king's deer, and robbed merchants and wealthy travellers, leaving the poor untouched, like the legendary Robin Hood of an earlier date. Such robbers were highly esteemed by the poor, as the law from which they suffered was cruelly harsh, hanging being the penalty for thefts amounting to a shilling.

Villeins who fled from service could be reclaimed by their masters, unless they could succeed in pa.s.sing a year in a town, and consequently were often found amongst vagabonds who had to live as best they might, often enough by committing fresh crimes. Prisons, in which even persons guilty of no more than harmless vagabondage were confined, reeked with disease, and those who were, as wanderers or drunkards, put in the stocks, had, if an unpleasant, at least a less dangerous experience than the prisoner. One means of escape, indeed, was available to some, at least, of these unfortunates. They could take refuge in the sanctuaries to be found in churches, from which no officer of the law could take them, and, though the Church preserved some guilty ones from just punishment, she also saved many who were either innocent or who were exposed to punishments far too severe for their slight offences.

[Ill.u.s.tration: West end of the nave of Winchester Cathedral: begun by Bishop Edington (who built the great window) between 1360 and 1366: carried on by Bishop William of Wykeham from 1394 to 1416, and finally completed after his death.]

17. =Justices of the Peace.=--Even harshness is less dangerous than anarchy, and from time to time measures were taken to provide against anarchy. Before the Conquest order had been kept by making either the kindred or the township liable to produce offenders, and this system was maintained by the Norman kings. In the time of Richard I. all men were required to swear to keep the peace, to avoid crime, and to join in the hue and cry in pursuit of criminals. In the time of Henry III.

persons called guardians of the peace were occasionally appointed to see that order was kept, and at the accession of Edward III. these officials were established for a time by Act of Parliament as conservators of the peace. In =1360=, the year of the Treaty of Bretigni, they were permanently continued, and the name of Justices of the Peace was given to them. They were to keep the peace in each county, and their number was to be made up of a lord, three or four gentlemen, and a lawyer, who was in those days always a cleric.[26]

They were to seize and imprison, and even to try persons accused of crime. The king named these justices, but he had to name all of them except the lawyer from amongst the local landowners. In every way, in the fourteenth century, the chief local landowners were becoming prominent. The kings attempted to govern with their help, both in Parliament and in the counties.

[Footnote 26: Many clerics took one of the minor orders so as to secure the immunities of the clergy, without any intention of being ordained a deacon or a priest.]

CHAPTER XVIII.

RICHARD II. AND THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION.

1382--1399.

LEADING DATES

Reign of Richard II., 1377--1399

The impeachment of Suffolk 1386 The Merciless Parliament 1388 Richard begins his const.i.tutional government 1389 Richard's coup-d'etat 1397 Deposition of Richard 1399

1. =Progress of the War with France. 1382--1386.=--In =1382= Richard at the early age of fifteen was married to Anne of Bohemia. Though he was a young husband he was at all events old enough to be accused of disasters which he could not avoid. Not only was the war with France not prospering, but English influence was declining in Flanders. In =1382= Philip van Arteveldt, who like his father Jacob (see p. 235) headed the resistance of Ghent against the Count of Flanders, was defeated and slain at Roosebeke by Charles VI., the young king of France. In =1383= an English expedition led by Henry Spencer, Bishop of Norwich, under the pretext of a crusade against the French as the followers of the Pope of Avignon, ended in complete failure, and Flanders, the great purchaser of English wool, fell under the control of France. In =1385= Richard, indeed, invaded Scotland, ravaged the country and burnt Edinburgh, though without producing any permanent result. In =1386= a French fleet and army was gathered at Sluys, and an invasion of England was threatened.

2. =Richard's growing Unpopularity. 1385--1386.=--When the king returned from Scotland in =1385= he made a large creation of peers. He raised his two younger uncles to the Dukedoms of York and Gloucester; his Chancellor, Michael de la Pole, to the earldom of Suffolk, and his favourite, Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, to the marquisate of Dublin, making him not long afterwards Duke of Ireland. Suffolk was an able and apparently an honest administrator, who upheld the king's prerogative against the encroachments of Parliament. Oxford was a gay and heedless companion of Richard's pleasures, who encouraged him in unnecessary expense, and thereby provoked to resistance those who might have put up with an extension of the royal authority. That resistance, however, was to a great extent due to causes not of Richard's own making. Though the French in =1386= abandoned their attempt at invasion, the preparations to resist them had been costly, and Englishmen were in an unreasonable mood. Things, they said, had not gone so in the days of Edward III. A cry for reform and retrenchment, for more victories and less expense, was loudly raised.

3. =The Impeachment of Suffolk and the Commission of Regency.

1386.=--The discontented found a leader in Gloucester, the youngest of the king's uncles. Wealthy, turbulent, and ambitious, he put himself at the head of all who had a grievance against the king. Lancaster had just sailed for Spain to prosecute a claim in right of his second wife to the throne of Castile, and as York was without ambition, Gloucester had it all his own way. Under his guidance a Parliament demanded the dismissal of Richard's ministers, and, on his refusal, impeached Suffolk. Suffolk, though probably innocent of the charges brought against him, was condemned and driven from power, and Commissioners of regency were appointed for a year to regulate the realm and the king's household, as the Lords Ordainers had done in the days of Edward II.

(see p. 226).

4. =The Lords Appellant and the Merciless Parliament. 1387--1388.=--In one way the Commissioners of regency satisfied the desire of Englishmen. In =1387= they sent the Earl of Arundel to sea, and Arundel won a splendid victory over a combined fleet of French, Flemings, and Spaniards. Richard, on the other hand, fearing that they would prolong their power when their year of office was ended, consulted upon the legality of the commission with the judges in the presence of Suffolk and others of his princ.i.p.al supporters, amongst whom was the Duke of Ireland. With one voice the judges declared that Parliament might not put the king in tutelage. Richard then made preparations to prevent by force the renewal of the commission, and to punish as traitors those who had originated it. His intention got abroad, and five lords, the Duke of Gloucester, the Earls of Arundel, Nottingham, Warwick, and Derby, the latter being the son of the absent Lancaster, appeared at the head of an overwhelming force against him.

The five lords appellant, as they were called, appealed, or accused of treason five of Richard's councillors before a Parliament which met at Westminster in =1388=, by flinging down their gloves as a token that they were ready to prove the truth of their charge in single combat.

The Duke of Ireland, attempting resistance, was defeated by Derby at Radcot Bridge, and finally escaped to Ireland. The Parliament, called by its admirers the Wonderful, and by its opponents the Merciless Parliament, was entirely subservient to the lords appellant, who, instead of meeting their antagonists in single combat, accused them before the House of Lords. The Duke of Ireland, Suffolk, Chief Justice Tresilian, and Brember, who had been Mayor of London, were condemned to be hanged. The two first-named had escaped to the Continent, but the others were put to death. The fifth councillor, the Archbishop of York, escaped with virtual deprivation by the Pope. Four other knights, amongst them Sir Simon Burley, a veteran soldier and trusted companion of the Black Prince, were also put to death. Richard was allowed nominally to retain the crown, but in reality he was subjected to a council in which Gloucester and his adherents were supreme.

5. =Richard's Restoration to Power. 1389.=--Richard's entire submission turned the scale in his favour. England had been dissatisfied with him, but it had never loved the rule of the great feudal lords. Gloucester's council was no more popular than had been the Committees named in the Provisions of Oxford in the reign of Henry III., or the Lords Ordainers in the reign of Edward II., and it fell more easily than any government, before or afterwards. Suddenly, on May 3, =1389=, Richard asked his uncle in full council how old he was.

"Your highness," replied Gloucester, "is in your twenty-second year."

"Then," said Richard, "I must be old enough to manage my own affairs, as every heir is at liberty to do when he is twenty-one." No attempt having been made to confute this argument, Richard dismissed the council, and ruled once more in person.

6. =Richard's Const.i.tutional Government. 1389--1396.=--This sudden blow was followed by seven years of const.i.tutional government. It seemed as if Richard had solved the problem of the relations between Crown and Parliament, which had perplexed so many generations of Englishmen. In =1389= he appointed ministers at his own pleasure, but when Parliament met in =1390= he commanded them to lay down their offices in order that no one should be deterred from bringing charges against them; and it was only upon finding that no one had any complaint to bring against them that he restored them to their posts.

Nor did he show any signs of irritation against those by whom he had been outraged. Not only did he forbear to recall Suffolk and his other exiled favourites, but after a little time he admitted Gloucester and his supporters to sit in council alongside of his own adherents.

7. =Livery and Maintenance. 1390.=--During the fourteenth century the importance of the House of Commons had been steadily growing, and the king on the one hand and the great n.o.bles on the other had been sorely tempted to influence the elections unduly. The means of doing so had come with a change in civil relationships, the natural result of that change in military relationships which had given a new character to the wars of Edward III. (see p. 236). Just as the king now fought with paid soldiers of every rank instead of fighting with va.s.sals bound by feudal tenure, so the great n.o.bles surrounded themselves with retainers instead of va.s.sals. The va.s.sal had been on terms of social equality with his lord, and was bound to follow him on fixed terms.

The retainer was an inferior, who was taken into service and professed himself ready to fight for his lord at all times and in all causes. In return his lord kept open house for his retainers, supplied them with coats, known as liveries, marked with his badge, and undertook to maintain them against all men, either by open force or by supporting them in their quarrels in the law courts; and this maintenance, as it was called, was seldom limited to the mere payment of expenses. The lord, by the help of his retainers, could bully witnesses and jurors, and wrest justice to the profit of the wrongdoer. As yet, indeed, the practice had not attained the proportions which it afterwards a.s.sumed, but it was sufficiently developed to draw down upon it in =1390= a statute prohibiting maintenance and the granting of liveries. Such a statute was not merely issued in defence of private persons against intimidation; it also helped to protect the Crown against the violence of the great lords. The growth of the power of the House of Commons was a good thing as long as the House of Commons represented the wishes of the community. It would be a bad thing if it merely represented knots of armed retainers who either voted in their own names according to the orders of their lords, or who frightened away those who came to vote for candidates whom their lords opposed.

8. =Richard's Domestic Policy. 1390--1391.=--It was therefore well for the community that there should be a strong and wise king capable of making head against the ambition of the lords. For some years Richard showed himself wise. Not only did he seek, by opening the council to his opponents, to win over the lords to take part in the peaceable government of the country instead of disturbing it, but he forwarded legislation which carried out the general wishes of the country. The Statute of Provisors (see p. 258) was re-enacted and strengthened in =1390=, the Statute of Mortmain (see p. 212) in =1391=, and the Statute of Praemunire (see p. 258) in =1393=.

9. =Richard's Foreign Policy. 1389--1396.=--Richard's foreign policy was based upon a French alliance. In =1389= he made a truce with France for three years. Negotiations for a permanent peace were frustrated because the French would make no peace unless Calais were surrendered to them, and English feeling was against the surrender of the claims sanctioned by the Treaty of Bretigni. The truce was, however, prolonged from time to time, and in =1396=, when Richard, who was by that time a widower, married Isabella, the daughter of Charles VI., a child of eight, it was prolonged for twenty-eight years. Wise as this policy was, it was distasteful to Englishmen, and their dissatisfaction rose when they learnt that Richard had surrendered Brest and Cherbourg to the French. It was true that these places had been pledged to him for money, and that he had only given them up as he was bound to do when the money was paid, but his subjects drew no fine distinctions, and fancied that he was equally ready to surrender Calais and Bordeaux.

10. =Richard's Coup d'etat. 1397.=--Richard knew that Gloucester was ready to avail himself of any widespread dissatisfaction, and that he had recently been allying himself with Lancaster against him. To please Lancaster, who had married his mistress, Catherine Swynford, as his third wife, Richard had legitimatised the Beauforts, his children by her, for all purposes except the succession of the crown, thus giving personal offence to Gloucester. Lancaster's son Derby, and Nottingham, another of the lords appellant (see p. 279), were now favourable to the king, and when rumours reached Richard that Gloucester was plotting against him, he resolved to antic.i.p.ate the blow. He arrested the three of the lords appellant whom he still distrusted, Gloucester, Warwick, and Arundel, and charged them before Parliament, not with recent malpractices, of which he had probably no sufficient proof, but with the slaughter of his ministers in the days of the Merciless Parliament. Warwick was banished to the Isle of Man, Arundel was executed, and Gloucester imprisoned at Calais, where he was secretly murdered, as was generally believed by the order of the king. Archbishop Arundel, brother of the Earl of Arundel, was also banished. In such contradiction was this sudden outburst of violence to the prudence of Richard's recent conduct, that it has sometimes been supposed that, he had been dissimulating all the time. It is more probable that, without being actually insane, his mind had to some extent given way. He was always excitable, and in his better days his alertness of mind carried him forward to swift decisions, as when he met the mob at Smithfield, and when he vindicated his authority from the restraint of his uncle. Signs had not been wanting that his native energy was no longer balanced by the restraints of prudence. In =1394= he had actually struck Arundel in Westminster Abbey. In =1397= there was much to goad him to hasty and ill-considered action. The year before complaints had been raised against the extravagance of his household. The peace which he had given to his country was made the subject of bitter reproach against him, and he seems to have believed that Gloucester was plotting to bring him back into the servitude to which he had been subjected by the Commissioners of regency.

11. =The Parliament of Shrewsbury. 1398.=--Whether Richard was mad or not, he at all events acted like a madman. In =1398= he summoned a packed Parliament to Shrewsbury, which declared all the acts of the Merciless Parliament to be null and void, and announced that no restraint could legally be put on the king. It then delegated all parliamentary power to a committee of twelve lords and six commoners chosen from the king's friends. Richard was thus made an absolute ruler unbound by the necessity of gathering a Parliament again. He had freed himself not merely from turbulent lords but also from all const.i.tutional restraints.

12. =The Banishment of Hereford and Norfolk. 1398.=--Richard had shown favour to the two lords appellant who had taken his side. Derby became Duke of Hereford, and Nottingham Duke of Norfolk. Before long Hereford came to the king with a strange tale. Norfolk, he said, had complained to him that the king still distrusted them, and had suggested that they should guard themselves against him. Norfolk denied the truth of the story, and Richard ordered the two to prove their truthfulness by a single combat at Coventry. When the pair met in the lists in full armour Richard stopped the fight, and to preserve peace, as he said, banished Norfolk for life and Hereford for ten years, a term which was soon reduced to six. There was something of the unwise cunning of a madman in the proceeding.

13. =Richard's Despotism. 1398--1399.=--Richard, freed from all control, was now, in every sense of the word, despotic. He extorted money without a semblance of right, and even compelled men to put their seals to blank promises to pay, which he could fill up with any sum he pleased. He too, like the lords, gathered round him a vast horde of retainers, who wore his badge and ill-treated his subjects at their pleasure. He threatened the Percies, the Earl of Northumberland and his son, Harry Hotspur, with exile, and sent them off discontented to their vast possessions in the North. Early in =1399= the Duke of Lancaster died. His son, the banished Hereford, was now Duke of Lancaster. Richard, however, seized the lands which ought to have descended to him from his father. Every man who had property to lose felt that Lancaster's cause was his own. Richard at this inopportune moment took occasion to sail to Ireland. He had been there once before in =1394= in the vain hope of protecting the English colonists (see p. 265). His first expedition had been a miserable failure: his second expedition was cut short by bad news from England.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Meeting of Henry of Lancaster and Richard II. at Flint: from Harl. MS. 1319.]

14. =Henry of Lancaster in England. 1399.=--Lancaster, with a small force, landed at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire, a harbour which has now disappeared in the sea. At first he gave out that he had come merely to demand his own inheritance. Then he alleged that he had come to redress the wrongs of the realm. Northumberland brought the Percies to his help. Armed men flocked to his support in crowds. The Duke of York, who had been left behind by Richard as regent, accepted this statement and joined him with all his forces. When Richard heard what had happened, he sent the Earl of Salisbury from Ireland to Wales to summon the Welshmen to his aid. The Welshmen rallied to Salisbury, but the king was long in following, and when Richard landed they had all dispersed. Richard found himself almost alone in Conway Castle, whilst Lancaster had a whole kingdom at his back.