Richard II Part 9

In this manner and with these ceremonies Richard was invested with a splendidly-embroidered coat and cloak, a stole, a sword, a pair of spurs, a pair of bracelets, and, finally, with a garment over all called the pallium. All these things, of course, had been made expressly for the occasion, and were adapted to the size and shape of a boy like Richard. The archbishop was a.s.sisted in putting these things on by certain n.o.bles of the court, who had been designated for this purpose, and who considered themselves highly honored by the part that was a.s.signed them in the ceremony.

When the dressing had been completed, the archbishop took the crown, and after having invoked a blessing upon it by his prayers and benedictions, all in the Latin tongue, he placed it upon Richard's head, repeating, at the same time, a Latin form, the meaning of which was that he received the crown from G.o.d Almighty, and that to G.o.d alone he was responsible for the exercise of his royal power.

Then came a certain grand officer of the court with a red globe, an emblem of royalty which has long been used in England. This globe the archbishop blessed, and then the officer put it into Richard's hands.

In the same manner the sceptre was brought, and, after being blessed by means of the same ceremonies and prayers, was also put into Richard's hands.

Richard was now completely invested with the badges and insignia of his office. The archbishop then, raising his hands, p.r.o.nounced upon him his apostolic benediction, and the ceremony, so far, was ended.

The bishops and n.o.bles then came up to congratulate and salute Richard on having thus received his crown, after which they conducted him to his seat again.

Richard now began to be very tired and to wish to go home, but there was a great deal more yet to come before he could be set at liberty.

There was an anthem to be sung by the choir, and more prayers to be said, after which there came what was called the offertory. This was a ceremony in which a person was led to the altar, to lay down upon it whatever offering he chose to make for the service of the Church. The king rose from his seat and was led forward to the altar, having, of course, been previously told what he was to do. He had in his hand a sum of money which had been provided for the occasion. He laid down this money first upon the altar, and then his sword. It was the custom in these coronations for the king thus to offer his sword, in token of the subordination of his royal power to the law and will of G.o.d, and then the sword was afterward to be redeemed with money by the sword-bearer, the officer whose duty it was, on leaving the church, to bear the sword in procession before the king.

Accordingly, after Richard had returned from the altar, the earl whose office it was to bear the sword went to the altar and redeemed it with a sum of money, and carried it back to the place where Richard was sitting.

Then came the service of the ma.s.s, which occupied a long time, so that Richard became very tired indeed before it was ended. After the ma.s.s came the communion, which it was necessary for Richard to partake. The communion was, of course, accompanied with more prayers and more chantings, until the poor boy thought that the ceremonies would never be ended. When at last, however, all was over, and the procession was ready to form again to leave the church, Richard was so worn out and exhausted with the fatigue that he had endured that he could not ride home; so they brought a sort of litter and placed him upon it, and four of the knights bore him home on their shoulders. His uncle the Duke of Lancaster and the Earl Percy went before him, and a long train of bishops, n.o.bles, and grand officers of state followed behind. In this way he was brought back to the palace. As soon as the party reached the palace, they carried Richard directly up to a chamber, took off all his grand paraphernalia, and put him to bed.

He rested a little while, and then they brought him something to eat.

His troubles were, however, not yet over, for there was to be a great banquet that afternoon and evening in the hall of the palace, and it was necessary that he should be there. Accordingly, after a short time, he was arrayed again in his royal robes and insignia, and conducted down to the hall. Here he had a ceremony to perform of creating certain persons earls. Of course it was his counselors that decided who the persons were that were to be thus raised to the peerage, and they told him also exactly what he was to do and say in the programme of the ceremony. He sat upon his throne, surrounded by his n.o.bles and officers of state, and did what they told him to do.

When this ceremony had been performed, the whole company sat down to the tables which had been prepared for a banquet.

They continued their feasting and carousing to a late hour, and then amused themselves with various boisterous games common in those days.

In the court-yard of the palace a pillar was set up, with pipes at the sides of it, from which there were flowing continually streams of wine of different kinds, and every body who pleased was permitted to come and drink. A part of the amus.e.m.e.nt consisted in the pushings and strugglings of the people to get to the faucets, and the spilling of the wine all over their faces and clothes. The top of the pillar was adorned with a large gilt image of an eagle.

The next day there were more processions and more celebrations, but Richard himself was, fortunately for him, excused from taking any part in them. In the mean time, the people who managed the government in Richard's name heard the news that the French had learned, in some way, the tidings of King Edward's death, and had landed in the southern part of England, and were burning and destroying all before them. So they made all haste to raise an army to go and repel the invaders.

It was finally concluded, also, to appoint Richard's two uncles, namely, John, Duke of Lancaster, and Edmund, Earl of Cambridge, as his guardians until he should become of age. Some persons thought it was not safe to trust Richard to the Duke of Lancaster at all, but others thought it would be better to conciliate him by treating him with respect, than to make him an open enemy by pa.s.sing over him entirely.

Richard was considered, at this time, a very amiable and good boy, and it was generally believed by the people of England that, with a right and proper training, he would grow up to be a virtuous and honest man, and they antic.i.p.ated for him a long and happy reign. And yet, in a little more than ten years after he became of age, he was disgraced and dethroned on account of his vices and crimes.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHIVALRY.

A.D. 1378-1380

Edmund, Earl of Cambridge.--Thomas of Woodstock.--Richard's young cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke.--A boy king in France.--Richard and Henry Bolingbroke.--French incursions into the Isle of Wight.--Curious story of the Scotch borderers.--Their strange ideas of the grace of G.o.d.--Nature of the royal government.--The House of Commons.--Luxury and extravagance of the n.o.bility.--Wars.--Modes of warfare.--Mining.--Besieging engines.--The Duke of Lancaster's sow.--Gunpowder.--Story of the Welsh knight, Evan.--Siege of Mortain.--Situation of the castle.--Evan's hostility to the English.--Hatred of the English against Evan.--John Lamb.--John Lamb arrives at Mortain.--His reception by Evan.--State of the siege.--Curious manners and customs.--John Lamb accomplishes his purpose.--Death of Evan.--Interview between John Lamb and the governor of the castle.--The knights loved fighting for its own sake.--Their love of glory.--Story of De Langurant.--His men.--He challenges the governor of the castle to single combat.--Encounter of the knights.--Use of lances.--Manner in which such combats were fought.--Result of the combat between De Langurant and Bernard.--De Langurant refuses to surrender.--His fate.--Intolerable tyranny of the n.o.bles in those days.--Oppression of the tax-gatherers.--Richard's helplessness.

Besides his uncle John, Duke of Lancaster, Richard had two other uncles, who each acted an important part in public affairs at the commencement of his reign. They were,

1. His uncle Edmund, who was the Earl of Cambridge, and afterward Duke of York. Of course he is sometimes called, in the histories of those times, by one of these names, and sometimes by the other.

2. His uncle Thomas. Thomas was born in the palace of Woodstock, and so was often called Thomas of Woodstock. He was the Earl of Buckingham, and afterward the Duke of Gloucester.

Besides these uncles, Richard had a cousin just about his own age, who afterward, as we shall see, played a very important part indeed in Richard's history. This cousin was named Henry Bolingbroke. He was the son of Richard's uncle John, the Duke of Lancaster. He and Richard were now both about eleven years of age; or rather, Richard was eleven, and his cousin Henry was about ten.

Of course, Richard was altogether too young to exercise any real control in respect to the government of the country. Every thing was, consequently, left to the Parliament and the n.o.bles. His uncles endeavored to a.s.sume the general direction of affairs, but there was nevertheless a strong party against them. There were no means of deciding these disputes except by the votes in Parliament, and these votes went one way and the other, as one party or the other, for the time being, gained the ascendency. Every one watched very closely the conduct of Richard's uncle John. He was the next oldest son of Edward the Third, after Edward, the Prince of Wales, Richard's father. Of course, if Richard were to die, he would become king; and if he himself were to die before Richard did, and then Richard were to die before he grew up and had children of his own, then his son, Richard's cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, would be ent.i.tled to claim the kingdom.

Thus, while Richard remained unmarried and without heirs, this Henry Bolingbroke was in the direct line of succession, and, of course, next to Richard himself, he was, perhaps, the most important personage in the kingdom. There was, it is true, another child, the grandchild of an older uncle of Richard's, named Lionel; but he was very young at this time, and he died not long afterward, leaving Henry Bolingbroke the only heir.

It is curious enough that, a year or two after this, the French king died, and was succeeded by his son, a boy of about twelve years of age. This boy was Charles the Sixth. He was crowned in France with ceremonies still more splendid and imposing in some respects than those which had been observed in London on the occasion of Richard's coronation. Thus the hopes and fears of all the millions of people inhabiting France and England respectively, in regard to the succession of the crown and the government of the country, were concentrated in three boys not yet in their teens.

Of course, Richard and his cousin Henry Bolingbroke were rivals from the beginning. Richard and his friends were jealous and suspicious of Henry and of his father, and were always imagining that they were wishing that Richard might die, in order that they might come into his place. Thus there was no cordial friendship in the family, nor could there be any. Of the other n.o.bles and barons, some took sides in one way and some in the other. The boys themselves, both Richard and Henry, were too young to know much about these things; but the leading barons and courtiers formed themselves into parties, ranging themselves some on one side and some on the other, so as to keep up a continual feeling of jealousy and ill-will.

In the mean time, the French began to retaliate for the invasions of their country which the English had made, by planning invasions of England in return. One expedition landed on the Isle of Wight, and after burning and destroying the villages and small towns, they laid some of the large towns under a heavy contribution; that is, they made them pay a large sum of money under a threat that, if the money was not paid, they would burn down their town too. So the citizens collected the money and paid it, and the French expedition set sail and went away before the government had time to send troops from London to intercept them.

The French, too, besides invading England themselves on the south, incited the Scotch to make incursions into the northern provinces, for Scotland was then entirely independent of England. A curious story is related ill.u.s.trating the religious ignorance which prevailed among the common people of Scotland in those days. It seems that some remarkable epidemic prevailed in 1379 in the northern part of England, which was extremely fatal. Great numbers of people died. The Scotch sent messengers across the border to ascertain what the cause of the sickness was. The English people told them that they did not know what the cause was. It was a judgment from G.o.d, the nature and operation of which was hidden from them. They added, however, this pious sentiment, that they submitted themselves patiently to the dispensation, for they knew "that every calamity that could befall men in this world came from the grace of G.o.d, to the end that, being punished for their sins, they might be led to repent and reform their wicked lives."

The messengers went home, and reported to the Scottish borderers that the English people said that the plague came from the grace of G.o.d, not being able, it would seem, to remember the rest of the message. So the priests arranged a form of prayer, addressed to certain saints, which was to be said by the people every morning. This prayer implored the saints to deliver the people from the grace of G.o.d, and the dreadful plagues which were sent by it upon men. The form was this:[G]

[Footnote G: The form was in Latin. We give here the English of it.]

The head of the family would first say, "Blessed be," and the others would respond, "The Lord."

Then the head of the family would say,

"G.o.d and Saint Mango, Saint Romane and Saint Andro, Shield us this day from G.o.d's grace, and the foul death that Englishmen die of."

And all the others would say "Amen."

Thus they considered the grace of G.o.d as an evil which they were to pray to be delivered from.

Indeed, the common people at this time, not only in Scotland, but throughout England, were in a state of great ignorance and degradation. The barons, and knights, and soldiers generally looked down with great contempt upon all who were engaged in any industrial pursuits. In the country, the great ma.s.s of those who were employed in tilling the ground were serfs or slaves, bought and sold with the land, and at the disposal, in almost all respects, of their haughty masters. The inhabitants of the towns, who lived by the manufacturing arts or by commerce, were more independent, but the n.o.bles, and knights, and all who considered themselves gentlemen looked down with something like contempt upon these too, as, in fact, their successors, the present aristocracy of England, do at the present day, regarding them as persons in a very mean condition, and engaged in low and ign.o.ble pursuits. Still, the industrial cla.s.ses had increased greatly in wealth and numbers, and they began to have and to express some opinion in respect to public affairs. They had considerable influence in the House of Commons; and the government was, in a great measure, dependent upon the House of Commons, and was becoming more and more so every year. It is true, the king, or rather the great lords who managed the government in his name, could make war where they pleased, and appoint whom they pleased to carry it on.

Still, they could not a.s.sess any tax except by the consent of the Commons, and thus, in carrying on any great operations, they were becoming every year more and more dependent on the public sentiment of the country.

The country began to be very much dissatisfied with the management of public affairs within two or three years after the commencement of Richard's reign. Large sums of money were raised, and put into the hands of Richard's uncles, who spent it in organizing great expeditions by land and sea to fight the French; but almost all of these expeditions were unsuccessful. The people thought that they were mismanaged, and that the money was squandered. Some of the n.o.bles expended immense sums upon themselves. In the case of one expedition that put to sea from the southern coast of England, the n.o.bleman who commanded it had twenty-five vessels loaded with his own personal property and baggage, and that of his servants and attendants. This man had fifty-two new suits of apparel, made of cloth of gold, immensely expensive. The fleet was wrecked, and all this property was lost in the sea.

A great many of the expeditions that were fitted out in England were for the purpose of carrying on wars in Brittany and Aquitaine, in France, for the benefit exclusively of the n.o.bles and knights who claimed possessions in those countries; the ma.s.s of the people of England, at whose expense the operations were carried on, having no interest whatever in the result. The worst of it was, that in these wars no real progress was made. Towns were taken and castles were stormed, first by one party and then by the other. The engraving represents the storming of one of these towns, and, being copied from an ancient picture, it shows truthfully the kind of armor and the mode of fighting employed in those days.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STORMING OF A TOWN.]

Almost the only way of forcing a pa.s.sage into a castle or fortified town was by climbing over the walls by means of ladders, and overpowering the garrison upon the top of them by main force, as represented in the engraving. Sometimes, it is true, the besiegers of a castle undermined the walls, so as to make them fall in and thus open a breach. At the present day, mines dug in this way are blown up by gunpowder. But people were little acquainted with the use of gunpowder then, and so they were obliged to sh.o.r.e up the walls while they were digging them by means of posts and beams, and these, after the miners had withdrawn, were pulled out by ropes, and thus the walls were made to fall down.

Great engines were sometimes used, too, to batter down the walls of castles and towns. There was one kind of engine, used by the Duke of Lancaster in one of his campaigns in France in the early part of Richard's reign, which was called a _sow_. The sow was made in many parts, at a distance from the place besieged, wherever a suitable supply of beams and timber could be obtained, and then was brought on carts to the spot. When it was framed together and put in operation, it would hurl immense stones, which, striking the walls, made breaches in them, or, going over them, came down into the interior of the place, crushing through the roofs of the houses, and killing sometimes mult.i.tudes of men. The sow was made, too, so as to afford shelter and protection to a great number of persons, who could ride upon it while it was drawn or pushed up near the walls, and thus reach a point where they could begin to undermine the walls, or plant their ladders for scaling them. The Duke of Lancaster caused one sow to be made which would carry, in this way, one hundred men.

Gunpowder, however, began to be used about this time, though in a very imperfect and inefficient manner. At one siege, namely, that of St.

Malo, a town on the northwestern coast of France, it is said that the Duke of Lancaster had four hundred cannon. They were all, however, of very little avail in taking the town.

The wars waged between the English and the French in these chivalrous times were much more personal in their character than wars are at the present day. In that period of the world, every great duke, or baron, or knight was in some sense an independent personage, having his own separate interests to look out for, and his own individual rights and honor to maintain, to a degree far greater than now. The consequence of this was, that the narratives of wars of those times contain accounts of a great many personal incidents and adventures which make the history of them much more entertaining than the histories of modern campaigns. I will give one or two examples of these personal incidents.

At one time, while the Duke of Lancaster was besieging St. Malo with his four hundred cannon, there was a famous Welsh knight, named Evan, known in history as Evan of Wales, who was besieging a castle belonging to the English. The name of the castle was Mortain. It was on the River Garonne, in the country of Aquitaine. The castle was so strong that Evan had no hope of taking it by force, and so he invested it closely on all sides, and sat down quietly waiting for the garrison to be starved into a surrender.

The castle was near the river. Evan built three block-houses on the three sides of it. One of these block-houses was on the edge of a rock before the castle, on the river side. The second was opposite a postern gate, and was intended particularly to watch the gate, in order to prevent any one from coming out or going in. The third block-house was below the castle, between the lower part of it and the water. To guard the fourth side of the castle, Evan had taken possession of a church which stood at some little distance from it, and had converted the church into a fort. Thus the castle was completely invested, being watched and guarded on every side. The garrison, however, would not surrender, hoping that they might receive succor before their provisions were entirely exhausted. They remained in this condition for a year and a half, and were at length reduced to great distress and suffering. Still, the governor of the castle would not surrender.

It may seem strange that Evan, a knight from Wales, should be fighting against the English, since Wales had some years before been annexed to the realm of England. The reason was, that Evan's family had been driven out of Wales by the cruelties and oppressions of the English.

His father, who had formerly been Prince of Wales, had been beheaded, and Evan, in his infancy, had been saved by his attendants, who fled with him to France. There he had been received into the family of the French king, John, and, after he had grown up, he had fought under John many years. The older he grew, the more his heart was filled with resentment against the English, and now he was engaged, heart and hand, in the attempt to drive them out of France. Of course, the English considered him a traitor, and they hated him much more than they did any of the French commanders, of whom nothing else was to be expected than that they should be enemies to the English, and fight them always and every where. Evan they considered as in some sense one of their own countrymen who had turned against them.