CHAPTER XIX--ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE SECOND
Richard, son of the Black Prince, a boy eleven years of age, succeeded tothe Crown under the title of King Richard the Second. The whole Englishnation were ready to admire him for the sake of his brave father. As tothe lords and ladies about the Court, they declared him to be the mostbeautiful, the wisest, and the best--even of princes--whom the lords andladies about the Court, generally declare to be the most beautiful, thewisest, and the best of mankind. To flatter a poor boy in this basemanner was not a very likely way to develop whatever good was in him; andit brought him to anything but a good or happy end.
The Duke of Lancaster, the young King's uncle--commonly called John ofGaunt, from having been born at Ghent, which the common people sopronounced--was supposed to have some thoughts of the throne himself;but, as he was not popular, and the memory of the Black Prince was, hesubmitted to his nephew.
The war with France being still unsettled, the Government of Englandwanted money to provide for the expenses that might arise out of it;accordingly a certain tax, called the Poll-tax, which had originated inthe last reign, was ordered to be levied on the people. This was a taxon every person in the kingdom, male and female, above the age offourteen, of three groats (or three four-penny pieces) a year; clergymenwere charged more, and only beggars were exempt.
I have no need to repeat that the common people of England had long beensuffering under great oppression. They were still the mere slaves of thelords of the land on which they lived, and were on most occasions harshlyand unjustly treated. But, they had begun by this time to think veryseriously of not bearing quite so much; and, probably, were emboldened bythat French insurrection I mentioned in the last chapter.
The people of Essex rose against the Poll-tax, and being severely handledby the government officers, killed some of them. At this very time oneof the tax-collectors, going his rounds from house to house, at Dartfordin Kent came to the cottage of one WAT, a tiler by trade, and claimed thetax upon his daughter. Her mother, who was at home, declared that shewas under the age of fourteen; upon that, the collector (as othercollectors had already done in different parts of England) behaved in asavage way, and brutally insulted Wat Tyler's daughter. The daughterscreamed, the mother screamed. Wat the Tiler, who was at work not faroff, ran to the spot, and did what any honest father under suchprovocation might have done--struck the collector dead at a blow.
Instantly the people of that town uprose as one man. They made Wat Tylertheir leader; they joined with the people of Essex, who were in armsunder a priest called JACK STRAW; they took out of prison another priestnamed JOHN BALL; and gathering in numbers as they went along, advanced,in a great confused army of poor men, to Blackheath. It is said thatthey wanted to abolish all property, and to declare all men equal. I donot think this very likely; because they stopped the travellers on theroads and made them swear to be true to King Richard and the people. Norwere they at all disposed to injure those who had done them no harm,merely because they were of high station; for, the King's mother, who hadto pass through their camp at Blackheath, on her way to her young son,lying for safety in the Tower of London, had merely to kiss a few dirty-faced rough-bearded men who were noisily fond of royalty, and so got awayin perfect safety. Next day the whole mass marched on to London Bridge.
There was a drawbridge in the middle, which WILLIAM WALWORTH the Mayorcaused to be raised to prevent their coming into the city; but they soonterrified the citizens into lowering it again, and spread themselves,with great uproar, over the streets. They broke open the prisons; theyburned the papers in Lambeth Palace; they destroyed the DUKE OFLANCASTER'S Palace, the Savoy, in the Strand, said to be the mostbeautiful and splendid in England; they set fire to the books anddocuments in the Temple; and made a great riot. Many of these outrageswere committed in drunkenness; since those citizens, who had well-filledcellars, were only too glad to throw them open to save the rest of theirproperty; but even the drunken rioters were very careful to stealnothing. They were so angry with one man, who was seen to take a silvercup at the Savoy Palace, and put it in his breast, that they drowned himin the river, cup and all.
The young King had been taken out to treat with them before theycommitted these excesses; but, he and the people about him were sofrightened by the riotous shouts, that they got back to the Tower in thebest way they could. This made the insurgents bolder; so they went onrioting away, striking off the heads of those who did not, at a moment'snotice, declare for King Richard and the people; and killing as many ofthe unpopular persons whom they supposed to be their enemies as theycould by any means lay hold of. In this manner they passed one veryviolent day, and then proclamation was made that the King would meet themat Mile-end, and grant their requests.
The rioters went to Mile-end to the number of sixty thousand, and theKing met them there, and to the King the rioters peaceably proposed fourconditions. First, that neither they, nor their children, nor any comingafter them, should be made slaves any more. Secondly, that the rent ofland should be fixed at a certain price in money, instead of being paidin service. Thirdly, that they should have liberty to buy and sell inall markets and public places, like other free men. Fourthly, that theyshould be pardoned for past offences. Heaven knows, there was nothingvery unreasonable in these proposals! The young King deceitfullypretended to think so, and kept thirty clerks up, all night, writing outa charter accordingly.
Now, Wat Tyler himself wanted more than this. He wanted the entireabolition of the forest laws. He was not at Mile-end with the rest, but,while that meeting was being held, broke into the Tower of London andslew the archbishop and the treasurer, for whose heads the people hadcried out loudly the day before. He and his men even thrust their swordsinto the bed of the Princess of Wales while the Princess was in it, tomake certain that none of their enemies were concealed there.
So, Wat and his men still continued armed, and rode about the city. Nextmorning, the King with a small train of some sixty gentlemen--among whomwas WALWORTH the Mayor--rode into Smithfield, and saw Wat and his peopleat a little distance. Says Wat to his men, 'There is the King. I willgo speak with him, and tell him what we want.'
Straightway Wat rode up to him, and began to talk. 'King,' says Wat,'dost thou see all my men there?'
'Ah,' says the King. 'Why?'
'Because,' says Wat, 'they are all at my command, and have sworn to dowhatever I bid them.'
Some declared afterwards that as Wat said this, he laid his hand on theKing's bridle. Others declared that he was seen to play with his owndagger. I think, myself, that he just spoke to the King like a rough,angry man as he was, and did nothing more. At any rate he was expectingno attack, and preparing for no resistance, when Walworth the Mayor didthe not very valiant deed of drawing a short sword and stabbing him inthe throat. He dropped from his horse, and one of the King's peoplespeedily finished him. So fell Wat Tyler. Fawners and flatterers made amighty triumph of it, and set up a cry which will occasionally find anecho to this day. But Wat was a hard-working man, who had suffered much,and had been foully outraged; and it is probable that he was a man of amuch higher nature and a much braver spirit than any of the parasites whoexulted then, or have exulted since, over his defeat.
Seeing Wat down, his men immediately bent their bows to avenge his fall.If the young King had not had presence of mind at that dangerous moment,both he and the Mayor to boot, might have followed Tyler pretty fast. Butthe King riding up to the crowd, cried out that Tyler was a traitor, andthat he would be their leader. They were so taken by surprise, that theyset up a great shouting, and followed the boy until he was met atIslington by a large body of soldiers.
The end of this rising was the then usual end. As soon as the King foundhimself safe, he unsaid all he had said, and undid all he had done; somefifteen hundred of the rioters were tried (mostly in Essex) with greatrigour, and executed with great cruelty. Many of them were hanged ongibbets, and left there as a terror to the country people; and, becausetheir miserable friends took some of the bodies down to bury, the Kingordered the rest to be chained up--which was the beginning of thebarbarous custom of hanging in chains. The King's falsehood in thisbusiness makes such a pitiful figure, that I think Wat Tyler appears inhistory as beyond comparison the truer and more respectable man of thetwo.
Richard was now sixteen years of age, and married Anne of Bohemia, anexcellent princess, who was called 'the good Queen Anne.' She deserved abetter husband; for the King had been fawned and flattered into atreacherous, wasteful, dissolute, bad young man.
There were two Popes at this time (as if one were not enough!), and theirquarrels involved Europe in a great deal of trouble. Scotland was stilltroublesome too; and at home there was much jealousy and distrust, andplotting and counter-plotting, because the King feared the ambition ofhis relations, and particularly of his uncle, the Duke of Lancaster, andthe duke had his party against the King, and the King had his partyagainst the duke. Nor were these home troubles lessened when the dukewent to Castile to urge his claim to the crown of that kingdom; for thenthe Duke of Gloucester, another of Richard's uncles, opposed him, andinfluenced the Parliament to demand the dismissal of the King's favouriteministers. The King said in reply, that he would not for such mendismiss the meanest servant in his kitchen. But, it had begun to signifylittle what a King said when a Parliament was determined; so Richard wasat last obliged to give way, and to agree to another Government of thekingdom, under a commission of fourteen nobles, for a year. His uncle ofGloucester was at the head of this commission, and, in fact, appointedeverybody composing it.
Having done all this, the King declared as soon as he saw an opportunitythat he had never meant to do it, and that it was all illegal; and he gotthe judges secretly to sign a declaration to that effect. The secretoozed out directly, and was carried to the Duke of Gloucester. The Dukeof Gloucester, at the head of forty thousand men, met the King on hisentering into London to enforce his authority; the King was helplessagainst him; his favourites and ministers were impeached and weremercilessly executed. Among them were two men whom the people regardedwith very different feelings; one, Robert Tresilian, Chief Justice, whowas hated for having made what was called 'the bloody circuit' to try therioters; the other, Sir Simon Burley, an honourable knight, who had beenthe dear friend of the Black Prince, and the governor and guardian of theKing. For this gentleman's life the good Queen even begged of Gloucesteron her knees; but Gloucester (with or without reason) feared and hatedhim, and replied, that if she valued her husband's crown, she had betterbeg no more. All this was done under what was called by some thewonderful--and by others, with better reason, the merciless--Parliament.
But Gloucester's power was not to last for ever. He held it for only ayear longer; in which year the famous battle of Otterbourne, sung in theold ballad of Chevy Chase, was fought. When the year was out, the King,turning suddenly to Gloucester, in the midst of a great council said,'Uncle, how old am I?' 'Your highness,' returned the Duke, 'is in yourtwenty-second year.' 'Am I so much?' said the King; 'then I will managemy own affairs! I am much obliged to you, my good lords, for your pastservices, but I need them no more.' He followed this up, by appointing anew Chancellor and a new Treasurer, and announced to the people that hehad resumed the Government. He held it for eight years withoutopposition. Through all that time, he kept his determination to revengehimself some day upon his uncle Gloucester, in his own breast.
At last the good Queen died, and then the King, desiring to take a secondwife, proposed to his council that he should marry Isabella, of France,the daughter of Charles the Sixth: who, the French courtiers said (as theEnglish courtiers had said of Richard), was a marvel of beauty and wit,and quite a phenomenon--of seven years old. The council were dividedabout this marriage, but it took place. It secured peace between Englandand France for a quarter of a century; but it was strongly opposed to theprejudices of the English people. The Duke of Gloucester, who wasanxious to take the occasion of making himself popular, declaimed againstit loudly, and this at length decided the King to execute the vengeancehe had been nursing so long.
He went with a gay company to the Duke of Gloucester's house, PlesheyCastle, in Essex, where the Duke, suspecting nothing, came out into thecourt-yard to receive his royal visitor. While the King conversed in afriendly manner with the Duchess, the Duke was quietly seized, hurriedaway, shipped for Calais, and lodged in the castle there. His friends,the Earls of Arundel and Warwick, were taken in the same treacherousmanner, and confined to their castles. A few days after, at Nottingham,they were impeached of high treason. The Earl of Arundel was condemnedand beheaded, and the Earl of Warwick was banished. Then, a writ wassent by a messenger to the Governor of Calais, requiring him to send theDuke of Gloucester over to be tried. In three days he returned an answerthat he could not do that, because the Duke of Gloucester had died inprison. The Duke was declared a traitor, his property was confiscated tothe King, a real or pretended confession he had made in prison to one ofthe Justices of the Common Pleas was produced against him, and there wasan end of the matter. How the unfortunate duke died, very few cared toknow. Whether he really died naturally; whether he killed himself;whether, by the King's order, he was strangled, or smothered between twobeds (as a serving-man of the Governor's named Hall, did afterwardsdeclare), cannot be discovered. There is not much doubt that he waskilled, somehow or other, by his nephew's orders. Among the most activenobles in these proceedings were the King's cousin, Henry Bolingbroke,whom the King had made Duke of Hereford to smooth down the old familyquarrels, and some others: who had in the family-plotting times done justsuch acts themselves as they now condemned in the duke. They seem tohave been a corrupt set of men; but such men were easily found about thecourt in such days.
The people murmured at all this, and were still very sore about theFrench marriage. The nobles saw how little the King cared for law, andhow crafty he was, and began to be somewhat afraid for themselves. TheKing's life was a life of continued feasting and excess; his retinue,down to the meanest servants, were dressed in the most costly manner, andcaroused at his tables, it is related, to the number of ten thousandpersons every day. He himself, surrounded by a body of ten thousandarchers, and enriched by a duty on wool which the Commons had granted himfor life, saw no danger of ever being otherwise than powerful andabsolute, and was as fierce and haughty as a King could be.
He had two of his old enemies left, in the persons of the Dukes ofHereford and Norfolk. Sparing these no more than the others, he tamperedwith the Duke of Hereford until he got him to declare before the Councilthat the Duke of Norfolk had lately held some treasonable talk with him,as he was riding near Brentford; and that he had told him, among otherthings, that he could not believe the King's oath--which nobody could, Ishould think. For this treachery he obtained a pardon, and the Duke ofNorfolk was summoned to appear and defend himself. As he denied thecharge and said his accuser was a liar and a traitor, both noblemen,according to the manner of those times, were held in custody, and thetruth was ordered to be decided by wager of battle at Coventry. Thiswager of battle meant that whosoever won the combat was to be consideredin the right; which nonsense meant in effect, that no strong man couldever be wrong. A great holiday was made; a great crowd assembled, withmuch parade and show; and the two combatants were about to rush at eachother with their lances, when the King, sitting in a pavilion to seefair, threw down the truncheon he carried in his hand, and forbade thebattle. The Duke of Hereford was to be banished for ten years, and theDuke of Norfolk was to be banished for life. So said the King. The Dukeof Hereford went to France, and went no farther. The Duke of Norfolkmade a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and afterwards died at Venice of abroken heart.
Faster and fiercer, after this, the King went on in his career. The Dukeof Lancaster, who was the father of the Duke of Hereford, died soon afterthe departure of his son; and, the King, although he had solemnly grantedto that son leave to inherit his father's property, if it should come tohim during his banishment, immediately seized it all, like a robber. Thejudges were so afraid of him, that they disgraced themselves by declaringthis theft to be just and lawful. His avarice knew no bounds. Heoutlawed seventeen counties at once, on a frivolous pretence, merely toraise money by way of fines for misconduct. In short, he did as manydishonest things as he could; and cared so little for the discontent ofhis subjects--though even the spaniel favourites began to whisper to himthat there was such a thing as discontent afloat--that he took that time,of all others, for leaving England and making an expedition against theIrish.
He was scarcely gone, leaving the DUKE OF YORK Regent in his absence,when his cousin, Henry of Hereford, came over from France to claim therights of which he had been so monstrously deprived. He was immediatelyjoined by the two great Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland; and hisuncle, the Regent, finding the King's cause unpopular, and thedisinclination of the army to act against Henry, very strong, withdrewwith the Royal forces towards Bristol. Henry, at the head of an army,came from Yorkshire (where he had landed) to London and followed him.They joined their forces--how they brought that about, is not distinctlyunderstood--and proceeded to Bristol Castle, whither three noblemen hadtaken the young Queen. The castle surrendering, they presently put thosethree noblemen to death. The Regent then remained there, and Henry wenton to Chester.
All this time, the boisterous weather had prevented the King fromreceiving intelligence of what had occurred. At length it was conveyedto him in Ireland, and he sent over the EARL OF SALISBURY, who, landingat Conway, rallied the Welshmen, and waited for the King a wholefortnight; at the end of that time the Welshmen, who were perhaps notvery warm for him in the beginning, quite cooled down and went home. Whenthe King did land on the coast at last, he came with a pretty good power,but his men cared nothing for him, and quickly deserted. Supposing theWelshmen to be still at Conway, he disguised himself as a priest, andmade for that place in company with his two brothers and some few oftheir adherents. But, there were no Welshmen left--only Salisbury and ahundred soldiers. In this distress, the King's two brothers, Exeter andSurrey, offered to go to Henry to learn what his intentions were. Surrey,who was true to Richard, was put into prison. Exeter, who was false,took the royal badge, which was a hart, off his shield, and assumed therose, the badge of Henry. After this, it was pretty plain to the Kingwhat Henry's intentions were, without sending any more messengers to ask.
The fallen King, thus deserted--hemmed in on all sides, and pressed withhunger--rode here and rode there, and went to this castle, and went tothat castle, endeavouring to obtain some provisions, but could find none.He rode wretchedly back to Conway, and there surrendered himself to theEarl of Northumberland, who came from Henry, in reality to take himprisoner, but in appearance to offer terms; and whose men were hidden notfar off. By this earl he was conducted to the castle of Flint, where hiscousin Henry met him, and dropped on his knee as if he were stillrespectful to his sovereign.
'Fair cousin of Lancaster,' said the King, 'you are very welcome' (verywelcome, no doubt; but he would have been more so, in chains or without ahead).
'My lord,' replied Henry, 'I am come a little before my time; but, withyour good pleasure, I will show you the reason. Your people complainwith some bitterness, that you have ruled them rigorously for two-and-twenty years. Now, if it please God, I will help you to govern thembetter in future.'
'Fair cousin,' replied the abject King, 'since it pleaseth you, itpleaseth me mightily.'
After this, the trumpets sounded, and the King was stuck on a wretchedhorse, and carried prisoner to Chester, where he was made to issue aproclamation, calling a Parliament. From Chester he was taken on towardsLondon. At Lichfield he tried to escape by getting out of a window andletting himself down into a garden; it was all in vain, however, and hewas carried on and shut up in the Tower, where no one pitied him, andwhere the whole people, whose patience he had quite tired out, reproachedhim without mercy. Before he got there, it is related, that his very dogleft him and departed from his side to lick the hand of Henry.
The day before the Parliament met, a deputation went to this wreckedKing, and told him that he had promised the Earl of Northumberland atConway Castle to resign the crown. He said he was quite ready to do it,and signed a paper in which he renounced his authority and absolved hispeople from their allegiance to him. He had so little spirit left thathe gave his royal ring to his triumphant cousin Henry with his own hand,and said, that if he could have had leave to appoint a successor, thatsame Henry was the man of all others whom he would have named. Next day,the Parliament assembled in Westminster Hall, where Henry sat at the sideof the throne, which was empty and covered with a cloth of gold. Thepaper just signed by the King was read to the multitude amid shouts ofjoy, which were echoed through all the streets; when some of the noisehad died away, the King was formally deposed. Then Henry arose, and,making the sign of the cross on his forehead and breast, challenged therealm of England as his right; the archbishops of Canterbury and Yorkseated him on the throne.
The multitude shouted again, and the shouts re-echoed throughout all thestreets. No one remembered, now, that Richard the Second had ever beenthe most beautiful, the wisest, and the best of princes; and he now madeliving (to my thinking) a far more sorry spectacle in the Tower ofLondon, than Wat Tyler had made, lying dead, among the hoofs of the royalhorses in Smithfield.
The Poll-tax died with Wat. The Smiths to the King and Royal Family,could make no chains in which the King could hang the people'srecollection of him; so the Poll-tax was never collected.