Chapter IV: The Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) (2)

This period of murmuring and misery culminated in the Great Revolt of 1381, a phenomenon whose origins must be sought in the most complicated causes, but whose outbreak was due in the main to a general feeling that the realm was being misgoverned, and that some one must be made responsible for its maladministration. It was actually provoked by the unwise and unjust poll-tax of one shilling a head on all adult persons, voted by the parliament of Northampton in November 1380. The last poll-tax had been carefully graduated on a sliding scale so as to press lightly on the poorest classes; in this one a shilling for each person had to be exacted from every township, though it was provided that "the strong should help the weak" to a certain extent. But in hundreds of villages there were no "strong" residents, and the poorest cottager had to pay his three groats. The peasantry defended themselves by the simple device of understating the numbers of their families; the returns made it appear that the adult population of England had gone down from 1,355,000 to 896,000 since the poll-tax of 1379. Thereupon the government sent out commissioners to revise the returns and exact the missing shillings. Their appearance led to a series of widespread and preconcerted riots, which soon spread over all England from the Wash to the Channel, and in a few days developed into a formidable rebellion. The poll-tax was no more than the spark which fired the mine; it merely provided a good general grievance on which all malcontents could unite. In the districts which took arms two main causes of insurrection may be differentiated; the first and the most widespread was the discontent of the rural population with the landowners and the Statute of Labourers. Their aim was to abolish all villein-service, and to wring from their lords the commutation of all manorial customs and obligations for a small rent--fourpence an acre was generally the sum suggested. But there was a simultaneous outbreak in many urban districts. In Winchester, London, St Albans, Canterbury, Bury, Beverley, Scarborough and many other places the rioting was as violent as in the countryside. Here the object of the insurgents was in most cases to break down the local oligarchy, who engrossed all municipal office and oppressed the meaner citizens; but in less numerous instances their end was to win charters from lords (almost always ecclesiastical lords) who had hitherto refused to grant them. But it must not be forgotten that there was also a tinge of purely political discontent about the rising; the insurgents everywhere proclaimed their intention to destroy "traitors," of whom the most generally condemned were the chancellor, Archbishop Sudbury, and the treasurer, Sir Robert Hailes, the two persons most responsible for the levy of the poll-tax. Often the rebels added the name of John of Gaunt to the list, looking upon him as the person ultimately responsible for the mismanagement of the war and the misgovernment of the realm. It must be added that though the leaders of the revolt were for the most part local demagogues, the creatures of the moment, there were among them a few fanatics like the "mad priest of Kent," John Ball, who had long preached socialist doctrines from the old text:

"When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?"

and clamoured for the abolition of all differences of rank, status and property. Though many clerics were found among the rebels, it does not seem that any of them were Wycliffites, or that the reformer's teaching had played any part in exciting the peasantry at this time. No contemporary authority ascribes the rising to the Lollards.

Wat Tyler.

The riots had begun, almost simultaneously in Kent and Essex: from thence they spread through East Anglia and the home counties. In the west and north there were only isolated and sporadic outbreaks, confined to a few turbulent towns. In the countryside the insurrection was accompanied by wholesale burnings of manor-rolls, the hunting down of unpopular bailiffs and landlords, and a special crusade against the commissioners of the poll-tax and the justices who had been enforcing the Statute of Labourers. There was more arson and blackmailing than murder, though some prominent persons perished, such as the judge, Sir John Cavendish, and the prior of Bury. In many regions the rising was purely disorderly and destitute of organization. This was not, however, the case in Kent and London. The mob which had gathered at Maidstone and Canterbury marched on the capital many thousands strong, headed by a local demagogue named Wat Tyler, whom they had chosen as their captain; his most prominent lieutenant was the preacher John Ball. They announced their intention of executing all "traitors," seizing the person of the king, and setting up a new government for the realm. The royal council and ministers showed grievous incapacity and cowardice--they made no attempt to raise an army, and opened negotiations with the rebels. While these were in progress the malcontent party in London, headed by three aldermen, opened the gates of the city to Tyler and his horde. They poured in, and, joined by the London mob, sacked John of Gaunt's palace of the Savoy, the Temple, and many other buildings, while the ministers took refuge with the young king in the Tower. It was well known that not only the capital and the neighbouring counties but all eastern England was ablaze, and the council in despair sent out the young king to parley with Tyler at Mile End. The rebels at first demanded no more than that Richard should declare villeinage abolished, and that all feudal dues and services should be commuted for a rent of fourpence an acre. This was readily conceded, and charters were drawn up to that effect and sealed by the king. But, while the meeting was still going on, Tyler went off to the Tower with a part of his horde, entered the fortress unopposed, and murdered the unhappy chancellor, Archbishop Sudbury, the treasurer, and several victims more. This was only the beginning of massacre. Instead of dispersing with their charters, as did many of the peasants, Tyler and his confederates ran riot through London, burning houses and slaying lawyers, officials, foreign merchants and other unpopular persons. This had the effect of frightening the propertied classes in the city, who had hitherto observed a timid neutrality, and turned public opinion against the insurgents. Next day the rebel leaders again invited the king to a conference, in the open space of Smithfield, and laid before him a programme very different from that propounded at Mile End. Tyler demanded that all differences of rank and status should cease, that all church lands should be confiscated and divided up among the laity, that the game laws should be abolished, and that "no lord should any longer hold lordship except civilly." Apparently he was set on provoking a refusal, and thus getting an excuse for seizing the person of the king. But matters went otherwise than he had expected; when he waxed unmannerly, and unsheathed his dagger to strike one of the royal retinue who had dared to answer him back, the mayor of London, William Walworth, drew his cutlass and cut him down. The mob strung their bows, and were about to shoot down the king and his suite. But Richard--who showed astounding nerve and presence of mind for a lad of fourteen--cantered up to them shouting that he would be their chief and captain and would give them their rights. The conference was continued, but, while it was in progress, the mayor brought up the whole civic militia of London, who had taken arms when they saw that the triumph of the rebels meant anarchy, and rescued the king out of the hands of the mob. Seeing such a formidable body of armed men opposed to them, the insurgents dispersed--without their reckless and ready-witted captain they were helpless (June 15, 1381).

Suppression of the rising.

This was the turning-point of the rebellion; within a few days the council had collected a considerable army, which marched through Essex scattering such rebel bands as still held together. Kent was pacified at the same time; and Henry Despenser, the warlike bishop of Norwich, made a separate campaign against the East Anglian insurgents, defeating them at the skirmish of North Walsham, and hanging the local leader Geoffrey Lister, who had declared himself "king of the commons" (June 25, 1381). After this there was nothing remaining save to punish the leaders of the revolt; a good many scores of them were hanged, though the vengeance exacted does not seem to have been greater than was justified by the numerous murders and burnings of which they had been guilty; the fanatic Ball was, of course, among the first to suffer. On the 30th of August the rough methods of martial law were suspended, and on the 14th of December the king issued an amnesty to all save certain leaders who had hitherto escaped capture. A parliament had been called in November; it voted that all the charters given by the king at Mile End were null and void, no manumissions or grants of privileges could have been valid without the consent of the estates of the realm, "and for their own parts they would never consent to such, of their own free will nor otherwise, even to save themselves from sudden death."

Decline of the manorial system.

The rebellion, therefore, had failed either to abolish villeinage in the countryside or to end municipal oligarchy in the towns, and many lords took the opportunity of the time of reaction in order to revindicate old claims over their bondsmen. Nevertheless serfdom continued to decline all through the latter years of the 14th century, and was growing obsolete in the 15th. This, however, was the result not of the great revolt of 1381, but of economic causes working out their inevitable progress. The manorial system was already doomed, and the rent-paying tenant farmers, who had begun to appear after the Black Death, gradually superseded the villeins as the normal type of peasantry during the two generations that followed the outbreak that is generally known as "Wat Tyler's rebellion."

Wycliffe and the Lollards.

King Richard, though he had shown such courage and ready resources at Smithfield, was still only a lad of fourteen. For three years more he was under the control of tutors and governors appointed by his council. Their rule was incompetent, but the chief danger to the realm had passed away when both Charles V. of France and his great captain Du Guesclin died in 1380. The new king at Paris was a young boy, whose councils were swayed by a knot of quarrelsome and selfish uncles; the vigour of the attack on England began to slacken. Nevertheless there was no change in the fortune of war, which continued to be disastrous, if on a smaller scale than before. The chief domestic event of the time was the attack of the clerical party on Wycliffe and his followers. The reformer had begun to develop dogmatic views, in addition to his old theories about the relations of Church and State. When he proceeded to deny the doctrine of transubstantiation, to assert the all-sufficiency of the Scriptures as a rule of life, to denounce saint-worship, pilgrimages, and indulgences, and to declare the pope to be Antichrist, he frightened his old supporter John of Gaunt and the politicians of the anti-clerical clique. They ceased to support him, and his followers became a sect rather than a political party. He and his disciples were expelled from Oxford, and ere long the bishops began to arrest and try them for heresy. Wycliffe himself, strange to say, was not molested. He survived to publish his translation of the Bible and to die in peace in December 1383. But his followers were being hunted, and imprisoned or forced to recant, all through the later years of Richard II. Yet they continued to multiply, and exercised at times considerable influence; though they had few supporters among the baronage, yet among the lesser gentry and still more among the burgher class and in the universities they were strong. It was not till the next reign, when the bishops succeeded in calling in the crown to their aid, and passed the statute _De heretico comburendo_, that Lollardy ceased to flourish.

Richard's personal rule.

Impeachment of the king's "favourites."

The "lords appellant."

Execution of the king's friends.

King Richard meanwhile had grown to man's estate, and had resolved to take the reins of power into his own hands. He was wayward, high-spirited and self-confident. He wished to restore the royal powers which had slipped into the hands of the council and parliament during his minority, and had small doubts of his capacity to restore it. His chosen instruments were two men whom his enemies called his "favourites," though it was absurd to apply the name either to an elderly statesman like Michael de la Pole, who was made chancellor in 1384, or to Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, a young noble of the oldest lineage, who was the king's other confidant. Neither of them was an upstart, and both, the one from his experience and the other from his high station, were persons who might legitimately aspire to a place among the advisers of the king. But Richard was tactless; he openly flouted his two uncles, John of Gaunt and Thomas of Woodstock, and took no pains to conciliate either the baronage or the commons. His autocratic airs and his ostentatious preference for his confidants--of whom he made the one earl of Suffolk and the other marquess of Dublin--provoked both lords and commons. Pole was impeached on a groundless charge of corruption and condemned, but Richard at once pardoned him and restored him to favour. De Vere was banished to Ireland, but at his master's desire omitted to leave the realm. The contemptuous disregard for the will of parliament which the king displayed brought on him a worse fate than he deserved. His youngest uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, was a designing and ambitious prince who saw his own advantage in embittering the strife between Richard and his parliament. John of Gaunt having departed to Spain, where he was stirring up civil strife in the name of his wife, the heiress of Peter the Cruel, Gloucester put himself at the head of the opposition. Playing the part of the demagogue, and exaggerating all his nephew's petulant acts and sayings, he declared the constitution in danger, and took arms at the head of a party of peers, the earls of Warwick, Arundel and Nottingham, and Henry, earl of Derby, the son of John of Gaunt, who called themselves the lords appellant, because they were ready to "appeal" Richard's councillors of treason. Public opinion was against the king, and the small army which his confidant De Vere raised under the royal banner was easily scattered by Gloucester's forces at the rout of Radcot Bridge (Dec. 20, 1387). Oxford and Suffolk succeeded in escaping to France, but the king and the rest of his adherents fell into the hands of the lords appellant. They threatened for a moment to depose him, but finally placed him under the control of a council and ministers chosen by themselves, and to put him in a proper state of terror, executed Lord Beauchamp, the judge, Sir Robert Tressilian, and six or seven more of his chief friends. This was a piece of gratuitous cruelty, for the king, though wayward and unwise, had done nothing to justify such treatment.

Richard rules constitutionally.

Peace with France.

To the surprise of the nation Richard took his humiliation quietly. But he was merely biding his time; he had sworn revenge in his heart, but he was ready to wait long for it. For the next nine years he appeared an unexceptionable sovereign, anxious only to conciliate the nation and parliament. He got rid of the ministers imposed upon him by the lords appellant, but replaced them by Bishop Wykeham and other old statesmen against whom no objection could be raised. He disarmed Gloucester by making a close alliance with his elder uncle John of Gaunt, who had been absent in Spain during the troubles of 1387-1388, and was displeased at the violent doings of his brother. His rule was mild and moderate, and he succeeded at last in freeing himself from the incubus of the French war--the source of most of the evils of the time, for it was the heavy taxation required to feed this struggle which embittered all the domestic politics of the realm. After two long truces, which filled the years 1390-1395, a definitive peace was at last concluded, by which the English king kept Calais and the coast-strip of Guienne, from Bordeaux to Bayonne, which had never been lost to the enemy. To confirm the peace, he married Isabella, the young daughter of Charles VI. (Nov. 1396); he had lost his first wife, the excellent Anne of Bohemia, two years before.

Richard reduces Ireland to obedience.

His revenge on Gloucester and the lords appellant.

Banishment of Bolingbroke and Norfolk.

The king seemed firmly seated on his throne--so much so that in 1395 he had found leisure for a long expedition to Ireland, which none of his ancestors had visited since King John. He compelled all the native princes to do him homage, and exercised the royal authority in such a firm manner as had never before been known in the island. But those who looked forward to quiet and prosperous times both for Ireland and for England were destined to be undeceived. In 1397 Richard carried out an extraordinary and unexpected _coup d'etat_, which he had evidently premeditated for many years. Having lived down his unpopularity, and made himself many powerful friends, he resolved to take his long-deferred revenge on Gloucester and the other lords appellant. He trumped up a vain story that his uncle was once more conspiring against him, arrested him, and sent him over to Calais, where he was secretly murdered in prison. At the same time Gloucester's two chief confederates of 1387, the earls of Arundel and Warwick, were tried and sentenced to death: the former was actually executed, the latter imprisoned for life. The other two lords appellant, Mowbray, duke of Norfolk,[2] and Henry of Bolingbroke, the son of John of Gaunt, were dealt with a year later. Richard pretended to hold them among his best friends, but in 1398 induced Bolingbroke to accuse Norfolk of treasonable language. Mowbray denied it, and challenged his accuser to a judicial duel. When they were actually facing each other in the lists at Coventry, the king forbade them to fight, and announced that he banished them both--Henry for six years, Norfolk for life.

Arbitrary rule of Richard.

Having thus completed his vengeance on those who had slain his friends ten years before--their respective punishments were judiciously adapted to their several responsibilities in that matter--Richard began to behave in an arbitrary and unconstitutional fashion. He evidently thought that no one would dare to lift a hand against him after the examples that he had just made. This might have been so, if he had continued to rule as cautiously as during the time when he was nursing his scheme of revenge. But now his brain seemed to be turned by success--indeed his wild language at times seemed to argue that he was not wholly sane. He declared that all pardons issued since 1387 were invalid, and imposed heavy fines on persons, and even on whole shires, that had given the lords appellant aid. He made huge forced loans, and employed recklessly the abuse of purveyance. He browbeat the judges on the bench, and kept many persons under arrest for indefinite periods without a trial. But the act which provoked the nation most was that he terrified the parliament which met at Shrewsbury in 1398 into voting away its powers to a small committee of ten persons, all creatures of his own. This body he used as his instrument of government, treating its assent as equivalent to that of a whole parliament in session. There seemed to be an end to the constitutional liberties of England.

Second expedition to Ireland.

Henry of Bolingbroke lands in England_.

Flight of Richard.

Surrender and abdication of Richard.

Such violence, however, speedily brought its own punishment. In 1399 Richard sailed over to Ireland to put down a revolt of the native princes, who had defeated and slain the earl of March, his cousin and their lord-lieutenant. While he was absent Henry of Bolingbroke landed at Ravenspur with a small body of exiles and mercenaries. He pretended that he had merely come to claim the estates and title of his father John of Gaunt, who had died a few months before. The adventurer was at once joined by the earl of Northumberland and all the lords of the north; the army which was called out against him refused to fight, and joined his banner, and in a few days he was master of all England (July 1399). King Richard, hurrying back from Ireland, landed at Milford Haven just in time to learn that the levies raised in his name had dispersed or joined the enemy. He still had with him a considerable force, and might have tried the fortune of war with some prospect of success. But his conduct seemed dictated by absolute infatuation; he might have fought, or he might have fled to his father-in-law in France, if he judged his troops untrustworthy. Instead of taking either course, he deserted his army by night, and fled into the Welsh mountains, apparently with the intention of collecting fresh adherents from North Wales and Cheshire, the only regions where he was popular. But Bolingbroke had already seized Chester, and was marching against him at the head of such a large army that the countryside refused to stir. After skulking for three weeks in the hills, Richard surrendered to his cousin at Flint, on the 19th of August 1399, having previously stipulated that if he consented to abdicate his life should be spared, his adherents pardoned, and an honourable livelihood assured to him. This surrender put the crown to his career of folly. He should have known that Henry would never feel safe while he survived, and that no oaths could be trusted in such circumstances. At all costs he should have endeavoured to escape abroad, a course that was still in his power.

Accession of Henry IV.

Richard carried out his part of the bargain; he executed a deed of abdication in which he owned himself "insufficient and useless." It was read to a parliament summoned in his name on the 30th of September, and the throne was declared vacant. There was small doubt as to the personality of his successor; possession is nine points of the law, and Henry of Bolingbroke for the moment had the whole nation at his back. His hereditary title indeed was imperfect; though he was the eldest descendant of Edward III. in the male line after Richard, yet there was a whole family which stood between him and the crown. From Lionel of Clarence, the second son of Edward III. (John of Gaunt was only the third) descended the house of March, and the late king had proclaimed that Edmund of March would be his heir if he should die childless. Fortunately for Bolingbroke the young earl was only six years of age; not a voice was raised in his favour in parliament. When Henry stood forward and claimed the vacant throne by right of conquest and also by right of descent, no one gainsaid him. Lords and commons voted that they would have him for their king, and he was duly crowned on the 13th of October 1399. No faith was kept with the unhappy Richard; he was placed in close and secret confinement, and denied the ordinary comforts of life. Moreover the adherents for whose safety he had stipulated were at once impeached of treason.

Position of the new king.

Henry of Lancaster came to the throne, for all intents and purposes as an elective king; he had to depend for the future on his ability to conciliate and satisfy the baronage and the commons by his governance. For by his usurpation he had sanctioned the theory that kings can be deposed for incapacity and maladministration. If he himself should become unpopular, all the arguments that he had employed against Richard might be turned against himself. The prospect was not reassuring; his revenue was small, and parliament would certainly murmur if he tried to increase it. The late king was not without partisans and admirers. There was a considerable chance that the French king might declare war--nominally to avenge his son-in-law, really to win Calais and Bordeaux. Of the partisans who had placed Henry on the throne many were greedy, and some were wholly unreasonable. But he trusted to his tact and his energy, and cheerfully undertook the task of ruling as a constitutional king--the friend of the parliament that had placed him on the throne.

Rebellion of the earls.

Murder of Richard.

The problem proved more weary and exhausting than he had suspected. From the very first his reign was a time of war, foreign and domestic, of murmuring, and of humiliating shifts and devices. Henry commenced his career by granting the adherents of Richard II. their lives, after they had been first declared guilty of treason and had been deprived of the titles, lands and endowments given them by the late king. Their reply to this very modified show of mercy was to engage in a desperate conspiracy against him. If they had waited till his popularity had waned, they might have had some chance of success, but in anger and resentment they struck too soon. The earls of Kent and Huntingdon, close kinsmen of Richard on his mother's side, the earl of Salisbury--a noted Lollard--and the lords Despenser and Lumley took arms at midwinter (Jan. 4, 1400) and attempted to seize the king at Windsor. They captured the castle, but Henry escaped, raised the levies of London against them, and beat them into the west. Kent and Salisbury were slain at Cirencester, the others captured and executed with many of their followers. Their rebellion sealed the fate of the master in whose cause they had risen. Henry and his counsellors were determined that there should be no further use made of the name of the "lawful king," and Richard was deliberately murdered by privation--insufficient clothing, food and warmth--in his dungeon at Pontefract Castle (Feb. 17, 1400). It is impossible not to pity his fate. He had been wayward, unwise and occasionally revengeful; but his provocation had been great, and if few tyrants have used more violent and offensive language, few have committed such a small list of actual crimes. It was a curious commentary on Henry's policy, that Richard, even when dead, did not cease to give him trouble. Rumour got abroad, owing to the secrecy of his end, that he was not really dead, and an impostor long lived at the Scottish court who claimed to be the missing king, and was recognized as Richard by many malcontents who wished to be deceived.

Welsh rising under Owen Glendower.

The rising of the earls was only the first and the least dangerous of the trials of Henry IV. Only a few months after their death a rebellion of a far more formidable sort broke out in Wales--where Richard II. had been popular, and the house of March, his natural heirs, held large estates. The leader was a gentleman named Owen Glendower, who had the blood of the ancient kings of Gwynedd in his veins. Originally he had taken to the hills as a mere outlaw, in consequence of a quarrel with one of the marcher barons; but after many small successes he began to be recognized as a national leader by his countrymen, and proclaimed himself prince of Wales. The king marched against him in person in 1400 and 1401, but Glendower showed himself a master of guerrilla warfare; he refused battle, and defied pursuit in his mountains, till the stores of the English army were exhausted and Henry was forced to retire. His prestige as a general was shaken, and his treasury exhausted by these fruitless irregular campaigns.

Discontent of the commons.

Statute De heretico comburendo.

Meanwhile worse troubles were to come. The commons were beginning to murmur at the king's administration; they had obtained neither the peace nor the diminished taxation which they had been promised. Moreover, among some classes at least, he had won desperate hatred by his policy in matters of religion. One of his chief supporters in 1399 had been Archbishop Arundel, an old enemy of Richard II. and brother to the earl who had been beheaded in 1397. Arundel was determined to extirpate the Lollards, and used his influence on the king to induce him to frame and pass through parliament the detestable statute _De heretico comburendo_, which recognized death by burning at the stake as the penalty of heresy, and bound the civil authorities to arrest, hand over to the church courts, and receive back for execution, all contumacious Lollards. Henry himself does not seem to have been particularly enthusiastic for persecution, but in order to keep the church party on his side he was forced to sanction it. The burnings began with that of William Sawtre, a London vicar, on the 2nd of March 1401; they continued intermittently throughout the reign. The victims were nearly all clergy or citizens; the king shrank from touching the Lollards of higher rank, and even employed in his service some who were notoriously tainted with heresy.

War with Scotland.

Battle of Homildon Hill.

Conspiracy of Northumberland with Glendower.

External troubles continued to multiply during Henry's earlier years. The Scots had declared war, and there was every sign that the French would soon follow suit, for the king's failure to crush Glendower had destroyed his reputation for capacity. The rebel achieved his greatest success in June 1402, when he surprised and routed the whole levy of the marcher lords at Bryn G'las, between Pilleth and Knighton, capturing (among many other prisoners) Sir Edmund Mortimer, the uncle and guardian of the young earl of March, whom all malcontents regarded as the rightful monarch of England. A few months after the king's fortune seemed to take a turn for the better, when the Scots were defeated at Homildon Hill by the earl of Northumberland and his son Henry Percy, the celebrated "Hotspur." But this victory was to be the prelude to new dangers: half the nobility of Scotland had been captured in the battle, and Northumberland intended to fill his coffers with their ransoms; but the king looked upon them as state prisoners and announced his intention of taking them out of the earl's hands. Northumberland was a greedy and unscrupulous Border chief, who regarded himself as entitled to exact whatever he chose from his master, because he had been the first to join him at his landing in 1399, and had lent him a consistent support ever since. He had been amply rewarded by grants of land and money, but was not yet satisfied. In indignation at the first refusal that he had met, the earl conspired with Glendower to raise rebellion in the name of the rightful heirs of King Richard, the house of March. The third party in the plot was Sir Edmund Mortimer, Glendower's captive, who was easily persuaded to join a movement for the aggrandizement of his own family. He married Owen's daughter, and became his trusted lieutenant. Northumberland also enlisted the services of his chief Scottish prisoner, the earl of Douglas, who promised him aid from beyond Tweed.

Insurrection in the north and west.

Defeat of the rebels at Shrewsbury.

In July 1403 came the crisis of King Henry's reign; while Glendower burst into South Wales, and overran the whole countryside as far as Cardiff and Carmarthen, the Percies raised their banner in the North. The old earl set himself to subdue Yorkshire; his son Hotspur and the earl of Douglas marched south and opened communication with the Welsh. All Cheshire, a district always faithful to the name of Richard II., rose in their favour, and they were joined by Hotspur's uncle, the earl of Worcester. They then advanced towards Shrewsbury, where they hoped that Glendower might meet them. But long ere the Welsh could appear, King Henry was on the spot; he brought the rebels to action at Hately Field, just outside the gates of Shrewsbury, and inflicted on them a complete defeat, in which his young son Henry of Monmouth first won his reputation as a fighting man. Hotspur was slain, Worcester taken and beheaded, Douglas desperately wounded (July 23, 1403). On receiving this disastrous news the earl of Northumberland sued for pardon; the king was unwise enough to grant it, merely punishing him by fining him and taking all his castles out of his hands.

War with France renewed.

Parliament assumes control of the finances.

By winning the battle of Shrewsbury Henry IV. had saved his crown, but his troubles were yet far from an end. The long-expected breach with France had at last come to pass; the duke of Orleans, without any declaration of war, had entered Guienne, while a French fleet attacked the south-west of England, and burnt Plymouth. Even more menacing to the king's prosperity was the news that another squadron had appeared off the coast of Wales, and landed stores and succours for Glendower, who had now conquered the whole principality save a few isolated fortresses. The drain of money to meet this combination of foreign war and domestic rebellion was more than the king's exchequer could meet. He was driven into unconstitutional ways of raising money, which recalled all the misdoings of his predecessor. Hence came a series of rancorous quarrels with his parliaments, which grew more disloyal and clamorous at every new session. The cry was raised that the taxes were heavy not because of the French or Welsh wars, but because Henry lavished his money on favourites and unworthy dependents. He was forced to bow before the storm, though the charge had small foundation: the greater part of his household was dismissed, and the war-taxes were paid not to his treasurer but to a financial committee appointed by parliament.

Rising of 1405 in the North.

It was not till 1405 that the worst of Henry's troubles came to an end. This year saw the last of the convulsions that threatened to overturn him,--a rising in the North headed by the old earl of Northumberland, by Richard Scrope, archbishop of York, and by Thomas Mowbray the earl marshal. It might have proved even more dangerous than the rebellion of 1403, if Henry's unscrupulous general Ralph, earl of Westmorland, had not lured Scrope and Mowbray to a conference, and then arrested them under circumstances of the vilest treachery. He handed them over to the king, who beheaded them both outside the gate of York, without any proper trial before their peers. Northumberland thereupon fled to Scotland without further fighting. He remained in exile till January 1408, when he made a final attempt to raise rebellion in the North, and was defeated and slain at the battle of Bramham Moor.

Suppression of the Welsh rising.

Long before this last-named fight Henry's fortunes had begun to mend. Glendower was at last checked by the untiring energy of the king's eldest son, Henry of Monmouth, who had been given charge of the Welsh war. Even when French aid was sent him, the rebel chief proved unable to maintain his grip on South Wales. He was beaten out of it in 1406, and Aberystwyth Castle, where his garrison made a desperate defence for two years, became the southern limit of his dominions. In the end of 1408 Prince Henry captured this place, and six weeks later Harlech, the greatest stronghold of the rebels, where Sir Edmund Mortimer, Owen's son-in-law and most trusted captain, held out till he died of starvation. From this time onwards the Welsh rebellion gradually died down, till Owen relapsed into the position from which he had started, that of a guerrilla chief maintaining a predatory warfare in the mountains. From 1409 onward he ceased to be a public danger to the realm, yet so great was his cunning and activity that he was never caught, and died still maintaining a hopeless rebellion so late as 1416.

End of the French and Scottish wars.

The French war died down about the same time that the Welsh rebellion became insignificant. Louis of Orleans, the head of the French war party, was murdered by his cousin John, duke of Burgundy, in November 1407, and after his death the French turned from the struggle with England to indulge in furious civil wars. Calais, Bordeaux and Bayonne still remained safe under the English banner. The Scottish war had ended even earlier. Prince James, the heir of Robert III., had been captured at sea in 1406. The duke of Albany, who became regent when Robert died, had no wish to see his nephew return, and concluded a corrupt agreement with the king of England, by which he undertook to keep Scotland out of the strife, if Henry would prevent the rightful heir from returning to claim his own.[3] Hence Albany and his son ruled at Edinburgh for seventeen years, while James was detained in an honourable captivity at Windsor.

Illness of the king. Faction in the court.

From 1408 till his death in 1413 Henry was freed from all the dangers which had beset his earlier years. But he got small enjoyment from the crown which no longer tottered on his brow. Soon after his execution of Archbishop Scrope he had been smitten with a painful disorder, which his enemies declared to be the punishment inflicted on him by heaven for the prelate's death. It grew gradually worse, and developed into what his contemporaries called leprosy--a loathsome skin disease accompanied by bouts of fever, which sometimes kept him bedridden for months at a time. From 1409 onwards he became a mere invalid, only able to assert himself in rare intervals of convalescence. The domestic politics of the realm during his last five years were nothing more than a struggle between two court factions who desired to use his name. The one was headed by his son Henry, prince of Wales, and his half-brothers John, Henry and Thomas Beaufort, the base-born but legitimized children of John of Gaunt. The other was under the direction of Archbishop Arundel, the king's earliest ally, who had already twice served him as chancellor, and had the whole church party at his back. Arundel was backed by Thomas duke of Clarence, the king's second son, who was an enemy of the Beauforts, and not on the best terms with his own elder brother, the prince of Wales. The fluctuating influence of each party with the king was marked by the passing of the chancellorship from Arundel to Henry Beaufort and back again during the five years of Henry's illness. The rivalry between them was purely personal; both were prepared to go on with the "Lancastrian experiment," the attempt to govern the realm in a constitutional fashion by an alliance between the king and the parliament; both were eager persecutors of the Lollards; both were eager to make profit for England by interfering in the civil wars of the Orleanists and Burgundians which were now devastating France.

Prince Hal.

The prince of Wales, it is clear, gave much umbrage to his father by his eagerness to direct the policy of the crown ere yet it had fallen to him by inheritance. The king suspected, and with good reason, that his son wished him to abdicate, and resented the idea. It seems that a plot with such an object was actually on foot, and that the younger Henry gave it up in a moment of better feeling, when he realized the evil impression that the unfilial act would make upon the nation. At this time the prince gave small promise of developing into the model monarch that he afterwards became. There was no doubt of his military ability, which had been fully demonstrated in the long Welsh wars, but he is reputed to have shown himself arrogant, contentious and over-given to loose-living. There were many, Archbishop Arundel among them, who looked forward with apprehension to his accession to the throne.

English expedition to France.

The two parties in the council of Henry IV. were agreed that it would be profitable to intervene in the wars of France, but they differed as to the side which offered the most advantages. Hence came action which seemed inconsistent, if not immoral; in 1411, under the prince's influence, an English contingent joined the Burgundians and helped them to raise the siege of Paris. In 1412, by Arundel's advice, a second army under the duke of Clarence crossed the Channel to co-operate with the Orleanists. But the French factions, wise for once, made peace at the time of Clarence's expedition, and paid him 210,000 gold crowns to leave the country! The only result of the two expeditions was to give the English soldiery a poor opinion of French military capacity, and a notion that money was easily to be got from the distracted realm beyond the narrow seas.

Accession of Henry V.

His character.

On the 20th of March 1413, King Henry's long illness at last reached a fatal issue, and his eldest son ascended the throne. The new king had everything in his favour; his father had borne the odium of usurpation and fought down the forces of anarchy. The memory of Richard II. had been forgotten; the young earl of March had grown up into the most harmless and unenterprising of men, and the nation seemed satisfied with the new dynasty, whose first sovereign had shown himself, under much provocation, the most moderate and accommodating of constitutional monarchs.

Henry V. on his accession bade farewell to the faults of his youth. He seems to have felt a genuine regret for the unfilial conduct which had vexed his father's last years, and showed a careful determination to turn over a new leaf and give his enemies no scope for criticism. From the first he showed a sober and grave bearing; he reconciled himself to all his enemies, gave up his youthful follies, and became a model king according to the ideas of his day. There is no doubt that he had a strong sense of moral responsibility, and that he was sincerely pious. But his piety inspired him to redouble the persecution of the unfortunate Lollards, whom his father had harried only in an intermittent fashion; and his sense of moral responsibility did not prevent him from taking the utmost advantage of the civil wars of his unhappy neighbours of France.

Persecution of the Lollards.

Rising under Oldcastle.

The first notable event of Henry's reign was his assault upon the Lollards. His father had spared their lay chiefs, and contented himself with burning preachers or tradesmen. Henry arrested John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, their leading politician, and had him tried and condemned to the stake. But Oldcastle escaped from the Tower before the day fixed for his execution, and framed a wild plot for slaying or deposing his persecutor. He planned to gather the Lollards of London and the Home Counties under arms, and to seize the person of the king--a scheme as wild as the design of Guy Fawkes or the Fifth Monarchy Men in later generations, for the sectaries were not strong enough to coerce the whole nation. Henry received early notice of the plot, and nipped it in the bud, scattering Oldcastle's levies in St Giles' Fields (Jan. 10, 1414) and hanging most of his lieutenants. But their reckless leader escaped, and for three years led the life of an outlaw, till in 1417 he was finally captured, still in arms, and sent to the stake.

Henry V. and France.

This danger having passed, Henry set himself to take advantage of the troubles of France. He threatened to invade that realm unless the Orleans faction, who had for the moment possession of the person of the mad king Charles VI., should restore to him all that Edward III. had owned in 1360, with Anjou and Normandy in addition. The demand was absurd and exorbitant and was refused, though the French government offered him the hand of their king's daughter Catherine with a dowry of 800,000 crowns and the districts of Quercy and Perigord--sufficiently handsome terms. When he began to collect a fleet and an army, they added to the offer the Limousin and other regions; but Henry was determined to pick his quarrel, and declared war in an impudent and hypocritical manifesto, in which he declared that he was driven into strife against his will. The fact was that he had secured the promise of the neutrality or the co-operation of the Burgundian faction, and thought that he could crush the Orleanists with ease.

Henry invades France.

Battle of Agincourt.

Effect of the battle.

He sailed for France in August 1415, with an army compact and well-equipped, but not very numerous. On the eve of his departure he detected and quelled a plot as wild and futile as that of Oldcastle. The conspirators were his cousin, Richard, earl of Cambridge, Lord Scrope, and Sir Thomas Grey, a kinsman of the Percies. They had planned to raise a rebellion in the name of the earl of March, in whose cause Wales and the North were to have been called to arms. But March himself refused to stir, and betrayed them to the king, who promptly beheaded them, and set sail five days later. He landed near the mouth of the Seine, and commenced his campaign by besieging and capturing Harfleur, which the Orleanists made no attempt to succour. But such a large number of his troops perished in the trenches by a pestilential disorder, that he found himself too weak to march on Paris, and took his way to Calais across Picardy, hoping, as it seems, to lure the French to battle by exposing his small army to attack. The plan was hazardous, for the Orleanists turned out in great numbers and almost cut him off in the marshes of the Somme. When he had struggled across them, and was half-way to Calais, the enemy beset him in the fields of Agincourt (Oct. 25, 1415). Here Henry vindicated his military reputation by winning a victory even more surprising than those of Crecy, and Poitiers, for he was outnumbered in an even greater proportion than the two Edwards had been in 1346 and 1356, and had to take the offensive instead of being attacked in a strong position. The heavily armoured French noblesse, embogged in miry meadows, proved helpless before the lightly equipped English archery. The slaughter in their ranks was terrible, and the young duke of Orleans, the head of the predominant faction of the moment, was taken prisoner with many great nobles. However, so exhausted was the victorious army that Henry merely led it back to Calais, without attempting anything more in this year. The sole tangible asset of the campaign was the possession of Harfleur, the gate of Normandy, a second Calais in its advantages when future invasions were taken in hand. The moral effects were more important. The Orleanist party was shaken in its power; the rival Burgundian faction became more inclined to commit itself to the English cause, and the terror of the English arms weighed heavily upon both.

England and the council of Constance.

It was not till the next year but one that Henry renewed his invasion of France--the intervening space was spent in negotiations with Burgundy, and with the emperor Sigismund, whose aid the king secured in return for help in putting an end to the scandalous "great schism" which had been rending the Western Church for so many years. The English deputation lent their aid to Sigismund at the council of Constance, when Christendom was at last reunited under a single head, though all the reforms which were to have accompanied the reunion were postponed, and ultimately avoided altogether, by the restored papacy.

Henry's second invasion of France.

Conquest of Normandy.

Triumph of the Burgundians.

Henry takes Rouen.

Murder of John of Burgundy.

In July 1417 Henry began his second invasion of France, and landed at the mouth of the Seine with a powerful army of 17,000 men. He had resolved to adopt a plan of campaign very different from those which Edward III. or the Black Prince had been wont to pursue, having in view nothing more than the steady and gradual conquest of the province of Normandy. This he was able to accomplish without any interference from the government at Paris, for the constable Armagnac, who had succeeded the captive Orleans at the head of the anti-Burgundian party, had no troops to spare. He was engaged in a separate campaign with Henry's ally John the Fearless, and left Normandy to shift for itself. One after another all the towns of the duchy were reduced, save Rouen, the siege of which, as the hardest task, King Henry postponed till the rest of the countryside was in his hands. He sat down to besiege it in 1418, and was detained before its walls for many months, for the citizens made an admirable defence. Meanwhile a change had taken place in the domestic politics of France; the Burgundians seized Paris in May 1418; the constable Armagnac and many of his partisans were massacred, and John the Fearless got possession of the person of the mad Charles VI., and became the responsible ruler of France. He had then to choose between buying off his English allies by great concessions, or taking up the position of champion of French interests. He selected the latter role, broke with Henry, and tried to relieve Rouen. But all his efforts were foiled, and the Norman capital surrendered, completely starved out, on the 19th of January 1419. On this Burgundy resolved to open negotiations with Henry; he wished to free his hands for an attack on his domestic enemies, who had rallied beyond the Loire under the leadership of the dauphin Charles--from whom the party, previously known first as Orleanists and then as Armagnacs, gets for the future the name of the "Dauphinois." The English king, however, seeing the manifest advantage of his position, tried to drive too hard a bargain; he demanded the old boundaries of 1360, with his new conquest of Normandy, the hand of the princess Catherine, and a great sum of ready money. Burgundy dared not concede so much, under pain of alienating all his more patriotic supporters. He broke off the conference of Meulan, and tried to patch up a peace with the dauphin, in order to unite all Frenchmen against the foreign invader. This laudable intention was wrecked by the treachery of the young heir to the French throne; on the bridge of Montereau Charles deliberately murdered the suppliant duke, as he knelt to do homage, thinking thereby that he would make an end of the Burgundian party (Sept. 9, 1419).

The Burgundians acknowledge Henry as heir of France.

Treaty of Troyes.

This abominable deed gave northern France for twenty years to an English master. The young duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, and his supporters in Paris and the north, were so incensed with the dauphin's cruel treachery that they resolved that he should never inherit his father's crown. They proffered peace to King Henry, and offered to recognize his preposterous[4] claim to the French throne, on condition that he should marry the princess Catherine and guarantee the constitutional liberties of the realm. The insane Charles VI. should keep nominal possession of the royal title till his death, but meanwhile the Burgundians would do homage to Henry as "heir of France." These terms were welcomed by the English king, and ratified at the treaty of Troyes (May 21, 1420). Henry married the princess Catherine, received the oaths of Duke Philip and his partisans, and started forth to conquer the Dauphinois at the head of an army of which half was composed of Burgundian levies. Paris, Picardy, Champagne, and indeed the greater part of France north of the Loire, acknowledged him as their sovereign.

Death of Henry V.

Henry had only two years longer to live; they were spent in incessant and successful campaigning against the partisans of his brother-in-law, the dauphin Charles; by a long series of sieges the partisans of that worthless prince were evicted from all their northern strongholds. They fought long and bitterly, nor was this to be marvelled at, for Henry had a custom of executing as traitors all who withstood him, and those who had once defied him did well to fight to the last gasp, in order to avoid the block or the halter. In the longest and most desperate of these sieges, that of Meaux (Oct. 1421-March 1422), the king contracted a dysenteric ailment which he could never shake off. He survived for a few months, but died, worn out by his incessant campaigning, on the 31st of August 1422, leaving the crown of England and the heirship of France to his only child Henry of Windsor, an infant less than two years old.

Effects of his conquests.