Chapter XII: Part 12

The Duke of Lancaster did not survive the banishment of his son more than three months; and the exile expected to succeed by his attorneys to the ample estates of his father. But Richard now discovered that his banishment, like an outlawry, had rendered him incapable of inheriting property. At a great council, including the committee of parliament, it was held that the patents granted, both to him and his antagonist, were illegal, and therefore void; and all the members present were sworn to support that determination. Henry Bowet, who had procured the patent for the duke of Hereford, was even condemned, for that imaginary offence, to suffer the punishment of treason; though, on account of his character, his life was spared on condition that he should abjure the kingdom forever.

This iniquitous proceeding seems to have exhausted the patience of the nation. Henry--on the death of his father he had assumed the title of duke of Lancaster--had long been the idol of the people; and the voluntary assemblage of thousands to attend him on his last departure from London might have warned Richard of the approaching danger. The feeling of their own wrongs had awakened among them a spirit of resistance; the new injury offered to their favorite pointed him out to them as their leader. Consultations were held; plans were formed; the dispositions of the great lords were sounded; and the whole nation appeared in a ferment. Yet it was in this moment, so pregnant with danger, that the infatuated monarch determined to leave his kingdom. His cousin and heir, the Earl of March, had been surprised and slain by a party of Irish; and, in his eagerness to revenge the loss of a relation, he despised the advice of his friends, and wilfully shut his eyes to the designs of his enemies.

Having appointed his uncle, the Duke of York, regent during his absence, the King assisted at a solemn mass at Windsor, chanted a collect himself, and made his offering. At the door of the Church he took wine and spices with his young Queen; and, lifting her up in his arms, repeatedly kissed her, saying, "Adieu, madam, adieu till we meet again." From Windsor, accompanied by several noblemen, he proceeded to Bristol, where the report of plots and conspiracies reached him, and was received with contempt. At Milford Haven he joined his army, and, embarking in a fleet of two hundred sail, arrived in a few days in the port of Waterford. His cousin the Duke of Albemarle had been ordered to follow with a hundred more; and three weeks were consumed in waiting for that nobleman, whose delay was afterward attributed to a secret understanding with the King's enemies.

At length Richard led his forces from Kilkenny against the Irish. Several of the inferior chiefs hastened barefoot and with halters round their necks to implore his mercy; but M'Murchad spurned the idea of submission, and boasted that he would extirpate the invaders. He dared not indeed meet them in open combat; but it was his policy to flee before them, and draw them into woods and morasses, where they could neither fight with advantage nor procure subsistence. The want of provisions and the clamor of the soldiers compelled the King to give up the pursuit, and to direct his march toward Dublin; and M'Murchad, when he could no longer impede their progress, solicited and obtained a parley with the Earl of Gloucester, the commander of the rear-guard. The chieftain was an athletic man; he came to the conference mounted on a gray charger, which had cost him four hundred head of cattle, and brandished with ease and dexterity a heavy spear in his hand. He seemed willing to become the nominal vassal of the King of England, but refused to submit to any conditions. Richard set a price on his head, proceeded to Dublin, and at the expiration of a fortnight was joined by the Duke of Albemarle with men and provisions. This seasonable supply enabled him to recommence the pursuit of M'Murchad; but while he was thus occupied with objects of inferior interest in Ireland, a revolution had occurred in England, which eventually deprived him both of his crown and his life.

When the King sailed to Ireland, Henry of Bolingbroke, the new Duke of Lancaster, resided in Paris, where he was hospitably entertained, but at the same time narrowly watched, by the French monarch. About Christmas he offered his hand to Marie, one of the daughters of the Duke of Berry. The jealousy of Richard was alarmed; the Earl of Salisbury hastened to Paris to remonstrate against the marriage of a daughter of France with an English "traitor," and, suiting his conduct to his words, the envoy, having accomplished his object, returned without deigning to speak to the exile. While Henry was brooding over these injuries, the late Primate, or nominal Bishop of St. Andrews, secretly left his house at Cologne, and in the disguise of a friar procured an interview with the Duke at the Hotel de Vinchester. The result of their meeting was a determination to return to England during the King's absence. To elude the suspicions of the French ministers, Henry procured permission to visit the Duke of Bretagne; and, on his arrival at Nantes, hired three small vessels, with which he sailed from Vannes to seek his fortune in England. His whole retinue consisted only of the Archbishop, the son of the late Earl of Arundel, fifteen lances, and a few servants. After hovering for some days on the eastern coast, he landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire, and was immediately joined by the two powerful earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland; before whom, in the White Friars at Doncaster, he declared upon oath that his only object was to recover the honors and estates which had belonged to his father, and bound himself not to advance any claim to the crown.

The Duke of York, to whom the King had intrusted the government during his absence, was accurately informed of his motions, and had summoned the retainers of the crown to join the royal standard at St. Albans. There is, however, reason to believe that he was not hearty in the cause which it was his duty to support. He must have viewed with pity the unmerited misfortunes of one nephew, and have condemned the violent and thoughtless career of the other; and from the fate of his brother Gloucester, and the cruel and unjust treatment of the only son of his brother, John of Gaunt, he could not draw any very flattering conclusion with respect to the stability of his own family. Whether it was from suspicion of his fidelity, or from the disinclination of the chief barons to draw the sword against one who demanded nothing more than his right, the favorites of Richard became alarmed for their own safety.

The Earl of Wiltshire, with Bussy and Greene, members of the committee of parliament, had been appointed to wait on the young Queen at Wallingford; but they suddenly abandoned their charge, and fled with precipitation to Bristol. York himself followed with the army in the same direction. It might be that, to relieve himself from responsibility, he wished to be in readiness to deliver up the command on the expected arrival of Richard from Ireland; but at the same time he left open the road from Yorkshire to the metropolis, and allowed the adventurer to pursue his object without impediment. Henry was already on his march. The snowball increased as it rolled along, and the small number of forty followers, with whom he had landed, swelled by the time that he had reached St. Albans to sixty thousand men. He was preceded by his messengers and letters, stating not only his own wrongs, but also the grievances of the people, and affirming that the revenue of the kingdom had been let out to farm to the rapacity of Scrope, Bussy, and Greene. In all those lordships which had been the inheritance of his family he was received with enthusiasm; in London by a procession of the clergy and people, with addresses of congratulation, and presents, and offers of service.

His stay in the capital was short. Having flattered the citizens, and confirmed them in their attachment to his person, he turned to the west, and entered Evesham, on the same day on which York reached Berkeley. After an interchange of messages they met in the church of the castle; and, before they separated, the doom of Richard was sealed. That the regent consented to the actual deposition of his nephew does not necessarily follow; he might only have sought his reformation by putting it out of his power to govern amiss; but he betrayed the trust which had been reposed to him, united his force with that of Henry, and commanded Sir Peter Courtenay, who held the castle of Bristol for the King, to open its gates. That officer, protesting that he acknowledged no authority in the Duke of Lancaster, obeyed the mandate of the regent. The next morning the three fugitives, the Earl of Wiltshire, Bussy, and Greene, were executed by order of the constable and marshal of the host. The Duke of York remained at Bristol; Henry with his own forces proceeded to Chester to secure that city, and awe the men of Cheshire, the most devoted adherents of the King.

We may now return to Richard in Ireland. It must appear strange, but Henry had been in England a fortnight before the King, in consequence, it was said, of the tempestuous weather, had heard of his landing. The intelligence appears to have provoked indignation as much as alarm. "Ha!" he exclaimed, "fair uncle of Lancaster, God reward your soul! Had I believed you, this man would not have injured me. Thrice have I pardoned him; this is his fourth offence." But he referred the matter to his council, and was advised to cross over to England immediately with the ships which had brought the reënforcement under the Duke of Albemarle. That nobleman, however, insidiously, as it was afterward pretended, diverted him from this intention. The Earl of Salisbury received orders to sail immediately with his own retainers, a body of one hundred men, and to summon to the royal standard the natives of Wales. Richard promised to follow in the fleet from Waterford in the course of six days. The Earl obeyed; the men of Wales and Cheshire answered the call; and a gallant host collected at Conway.

But Richard appeared not according to his promise; distressing reports were circulated among the troops; and the royalists, having waited for him almost a fortnight, disbanded in spite of the fears and entreaties of their commander. At last, on the eighteenth day, the King arrived in Milford Haven with the dukes of Albemarle, Exeter, and Surrey, the Earl of Worcester, the bishops of London, Lincoln, and Carlisle, and several thousands of the troops who had accompanied him to Ireland. With such a force, had it been faithful, he might have made a stand against his antagonist; but on the second morning, when he arose, he observed from his window that the greater part had disappeared. A council was immediately summoned, and a proposal made that the King should flee by sea to Bordeaux; but the Duke of Exeter objected that to quit the kingdom in such circumstances was to abdicate the throne. Let them proceed to the army at Conway. There they might bid defiance to the enemy; or at all events, as the sea would still be open, might thence set sail to Guienne. His opinion prevailed; and at nightfall the King, in the disguise of a Franciscan friar, his two brothers of Exeter and Surrey, the Earl of Gloucester, the Bishop of Carlisle, Sir Stephen Scrope, and Sir William Feriby, with eight others, stole away from the army, and directed their route toward Conway. Their flight was soon known. The royal treasure, which Richard left behind him, was plundered; Albemarle, Worcester, and most of the leaders hastened to pay their court to Henry; the rest attempted in small bodies to make their way to their own counties, but were in most instances plundered and ill-treated by the Welsh.

The royal party with some difficulty, but without any accident, reached Conway, where, to their utter disappointment, instead of a numerous force, they found only the Earl of Salisbury with a hundred men. In this emergency the King's brothers undertook to visit Henry at Chester, and to sound his intentions; and during their absence Richard, with the Earl of Salisbury, examined the castles of Beaumaris and Carnarvon; but finding them without garrisons or provisions, the disconsolate wanderers returned to their former quarters.

When the two dukes were admitted into the presence of Henry, they bent the knee and acquainted him with their message from the King. He took little notice of Surrey, whom he afterward confined in the castle, but, leading Exeter aside, spoke with him in private, and gave him, instead of the hart, the King's livery, his own badge of the rose. But no entreaties could induce him to allow them to return. Exeter was observed to drop a tear when the Duke of Albemarle said to him tauntingly: "Fair cousin, be not angry. If it please God, things shall go well."

The immediate object of Henry was to secure the royal person. He was gratified to learn from the envoys the place of Richard's retreat, and detained them at Chester, that the King, instead of making his escape, might await their return. His first care was to take possession of the treasure which the King had deposited in the strong castle of Holt; his next, to despatch the Earl of Northumberland at the head of four hundred men-at-arms and a thousand archers to Conway, with instructions not to display his force, lest the King should put to sea, but by artful speeches and promises to draw him out of the fortress and then make him prisoner. The Earl took possession in his journey of the castles of Flint and Rhuddlan, and a few miles beyond the latter, placing his men in concealment under a rock, rode forward with only five attendants to Conway.

He was readily admitted, and, to the King's anxious inquiries about his brothers, replied that he had left them well at Chester, and had brought a letter from the Duke of Exeter. In it that nobleman said, or rather was made to say, that full credit might be given to the offers of the bearer. These offers were, that Richard should promise to govern and judge his people by law; that the dukes of Exeter and Surrey, the Earl of Salisbury, the Bishop of Carlisle, and Maudelin, the King's chaplain, should submit to a trial in parliament, on the charge of having advised the assassination of Gloucester; that Henry should be made grand justiciary of the kingdom, as his ancestors had been for a hundred years; and that, on the concession of these terms, the Duke should come to Flint, ask the King's pardon on his knees, and accompany or follow him to London. Richard consulted his friends apart. He expressed his approbation of the articles, but bade them secretly be assured that no consideration should induce him to abandon them on their trial, and that he would grasp the first opportunity of being revenged on his and their enemies--"for there were some among them whom he would flay alive; whom he would never spare for all the gold in the land." Northumberland was then sworn to the observance of the conditions. He took his oath on the host; and, "like Judas," says the writer, "perjured himself on the body of our Lord."

As Northumberland departed to make arrangements for the interview at Flint, the King said to him: "I rely, my lord, on your faith. Remember your oath, and the God who heard it." Soon afterward he followed with his friends and their servants, to the number of twenty-two. They came to a steep declivity, to the left of which was the sea, and on the right a lofty rock overhanging the road. The King dismounted, and was descending on foot, when he suddenly exclaimed: "I am betrayed. God of Paradise, assist me! Do you not see banners and pennons in the valley?" Northumberland with eleven others met them at the moment and affected to be ignorant of the circumstance. "Earl of Northumberland," said the King, "if I thought you capable of betraying me, it is not too late to return." "You cannot return," the Earl replied, seizing the King's bridle; "I have promised to conduct you to the Duke of Lancaster." By this time he was joined by a hundred lances, and two hundred archers on horseback; and Richard, seeing it impossible to escape, exclaimed: "May the God, on whom you laid your hand, reward you and your accomplices at the last day!" and then, turning to his friends, added: "We are betrayed; but remember that our Lord was also sold and delivered into the hands of his enemies."

They dined at Rhuddlan, and reached Flint in the evening. The King, as soon as he was left with his friends, abandoned himself to the reflections which his melancholy situation inspired. He frequently upbraided himself with his past indulgence to his present opponent: "Fool that I was!" he exclaimed: "thrice did I save the life of this Henry of Lancaster. Once my dear uncle his father, on whom the Lord have mercy! would have put him to death for his treason and villany. God of Paradise! I rode all night to save him; and his father delivered him to me, to do with him as I pleased. How true is the saying that we have no greater enemy than the man whom we have preserved from the gallows! Another time he drew his sword on me, in the chamber of the Queen, on whom God have mercy! He was also the accomplice of the Duke of Gloucester and the Earl of Arundel; he consented to my murder, to that of his father, and of all my council. By St. John, I forgave him all; nor would I believe his father, who more than once pronounced him deserving of death."

The unfortunate King rose after a sleepless night, heard mass, and ascended the tower to watch the arrival of his opponent. At length he saw the army, amounting to eighty thousand men, winding along the beach till it reached the castle and surrounded it from sea to sea. He shuddered and wept, and cursed the Earl of Northumberland, but was called down by the arrival of Archbishop Arundel, the Duke of Albemarle, and the Earl of Worcester. They knelt to Richard, who, drawing the prelate apart, held a long conversation with him. After their departure he again mounted the tower, and, surveying the host of his enemies, exclaimed: "Good Lord God! I commend myself into thy holy keeping, and cry thee mercy, that thou wouldst pardon all my sins. If they put me to death I will take it patiently, as thou didst for us all." Northumberland had ordered dinner, and the Earl of Salisbury, the Bishop and the two knights, Sir Stephen Scrope and Sir William Feriby, sat with the King at the same table by his order; for since they were all companions in misfortune, he would allow no distinction among them. While he was eating, unknown persons entered the hall, insulting him with sarcasms and threats. As soon as he rose, he was summoned into the court to receive the Duke of Lancaster. Henry came forward in complete armor, with the exception of his helmet. As soon as he saw the King he bent his knee, and, advancing a few paces, he repeated his obeisance with his cap in his hand.

"Fair cousin of Lancaster," said Richard, uncovering himself, "you are right welcome." "My lord," answered the Duke, "I am come before my time. But I will show you the reason. Your people complain that for the space of twenty or two-and-twenty years you have ruled them rigorously; but, if it please God, I will help you to govern better." The King replied, "Fair cousin, since it pleaseth you, it pleaseth us well." Henry then addressed himself successively to the Bishop and to the knights, but refused to notice the Earl. The King's horses were immediately ordered; and two lean and miserable animals were brought out, on which Richard and Salisbury mounted, and amid the flourish of trumpets and shouts of triumph followed the Duke into Chester.

At Chester writs were issued in the King's name for the meeting of parliament and the preservation of the peace. Henry dismissed the greater part of his army, and prepared to conduct his prisoner to the capital. At Lichfield Richard seized a favorable moment to let himself down from his window, but was retaken in the garden, and from that moment was constantly guarded by ten or twelve armed men. In the neighborhood of London they separated. Henry, accompanied by the mayor and principal citizens, proceeded to St. Paul's, prayed before the high altar, and wept a few minutes over the tomb of his father. The King was sent to Westminster, and thence on the following day to the Tower, and, as he went along, was greeted with curses and the appellation of "the bastard," a word of ominous import, and prophetic of his approaching degradation.

When the Duke first landed in England, he had sworn on the Gospels that his only object was to vindicate his right to the honors and possessions of the house of Lancaster. If this was the truth, his ambition had grown with his good-fortune. He now aspired to exchange the coronet of a duke for the crown of a king. Can we believe that he would meet with opposition from his associates, the Percy family? Yet so we are assured. They, however, by their perfidy, had given themselves a master. Their retainers had been already dismissed; and the friends of Richard abhorred them as the worst of traitors. They had therefore no resource but to submit, and to second the design of Lancaster. After several consultations it was resolved to combine a solemn renunciation of the royal authority on the part of Richard with an act of deposition on the part of the two houses of parliament, in the hope that those whose scruples should not be satisfied with the one, might acquiesce in the other. To obtain the first, the royal captive was assailed with promises and threats. Generally he abandoned himself to lamentation and despair; occasionally he exerted that spirit which he had formerly displayed. "Why am I thus guarded?" he asked one day. "Am I your king or your prisoner?" "You are my king, sir," replied the Duke with coolness; "but the council of your realm has thought proper to place a guard about you."

Painting by Sir John Gilbert.]

On the day before the meeting of parliament a deputation of prelates, barons, knights, and lawyers waited on the captive in the Tower, and reminded him that in the castle of Conway, while he was perfectly his own master, he had promised to resign the crown on account of his own incompetency to govern. On his reply that he was ready to perform his promise, a paper was given him to read, in which he was made to absolve all his subjects from their fealty and allegiance, to renounce of his own accord all kingly authority, to acknowledge himself incapable of reigning, and worthy for his past demerits to be deposed, and to swear by the holy Gospels that he would never act, nor, as far as in him lay, suffer any other person to act, in opposition to this resignation. He then added, as from himself, that if it were in his power to name his successor, he would choose his cousin of Lancaster, who was present, and to whom he gave his ring, which he took from his own finger.

Such is the account of this transaction inserted by the order of Henry in the rolls of parliament; an account the accuracy of which is liable to strong suspicion. It is difficult to believe that Richard had so much command over his feelings as to behave with that cheerfulness which is repeatedly noticed in the record; and the assertion that he had promised to resign the crown when he saw Northumberland in the castle of Conway, is not only contradictory to the statement of the two eye-witnesses, but also in itself highly improbable. From the fate of Edward II, with which he had so often been threatened, he must have known that it was better to flee to his transmarine dominions, which were still open to him, than to resign his crown and remain a prisoner in the custody of his successor.

The next day the two houses met amid a great concourse of people in Westminster hall. The Duke occupied his usual seat near the throne, which was empty and covered with cloth of gold. The resignation of the King was read; each member, standing in his place, signified his acceptance of it aloud; and the people with repeated shouts expressed their approbation. Henry now proceeded to the second part of his plan, the act of deposition. For this purpose the coronation oath was first read; thirty-three articles of impeachment followed, in which it was contended that Richard had violated that oath; and thence it was concluded that he had by his misconduct forfeited his title to the throne. Of the articles, those which bear the hardest on the King are: the part which he was supposed to have had in the death of the Duke of Gloucester, his revocation of the pardons formerly granted to that Prince and his adherents, and his despotic conduct since the dissolution of parliament. Of the remainder, some are frivolous; many might, with equal reason, have been objected to each of his predecessors; and the others rest on the unsupported assertion of men whose interest it was to paint him in the blackest colors.

No opposition had been anticipated, nor is any mentioned on the rolls; but we are told that the Bishop of Carlisle, to the astonishment of the Lancastrians, rose and demanded for Richard what ought not to be refused to the meanest criminal, the right of being confronted with his accusers; and for parliament what it might justly claim, the opportunity of learning from the King's own mouth whether the resignation of the crown, which had been attributed to him, were his own spontaneous act. If Merks actually made such a speech, he must have stood alone; no one was found to second it; the house voted the deposition of Richard; and eight commissioners, ascending a tribunal erected before the throne, pronounced him degraded from the state and authority of king, on the ground that he notoriously deserved such punishment, and had acknowledged it under his hand and seal on the preceding day. Sir William Thirnyng, chief justice, was appointed to notify the sentence to the captive, who meekly replied that he looked not after the royal authority, but hoped his cousin would be good lord to him.

The rightful possessor was now removed from the throne. But, supposing it to be vacant, what pretensions could Henry of Lancaster advance to it? By the law of succession it belonged to the descendants of Lionel, the third son of Edward III; and their claim, it is said, had been formally recognized in parliament. All waited in anxious suspense till the Duke, rising from his seat, and forming with great solemnity the sign of the cross on his forehead and breast, pronounced the following words: "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster, challenge this realm of England, and the crown, with all the members and appurtenances, as that I am descended by right line of blood, coming from the good lord King Henry III, and through that right that God, of his grace, hath sent me with help of my kin and of my friends to recover it; the which realm was in point to be undone for default of governance and undoing of good laws."

In these extraordinary terms did Lancaster advance his pretensions, artfully intermixing an undefined claim of inheritance[73] with those of conquest and expediency, and rather hinting at each than insisting on either. But, however difficult it might be to understand the ground, the object of his challenge was perfectly intelligible. Both houses admitted it unanimously; and, as a confirmation, Henry produced the ring and seal which Richard had previously delivered to him. The Archbishop of Canterbury now took him by the hand, and led him to the throne. He knelt for a few minutes in prayer on the steps, arose, and was seated in it by the two archbishops. As soon as the acclamations had subsided, the Primate, stepping forward, made a short harangue, in which he undertook to prove that a monarch in the vigor of manhood was a blessing, a young and inexperienced prince was a curse to a people. At the conclusion the King rose. "Sirs," said he, "I thank God, and you, spiritual and temporal, and all estates of the land; and do you to wit, it is not my will that no man think that by way of conquest I would disinherit any man of his heritage, franchises, or other rights that him ought to have, nor put him out of that that he has and has had by the good laws and customs of the realm; except those persons that have been against the good purpose and the common profit of the realm."

With the authority of Richard had expired that of the parliament and of the royal officers. Henry immediately summoned the same parliament to meet again in six days, appointed new officers of the crown, and as soon as he had received their oaths retired in state to the royal apartments. Thus ended this eventful day, with the deposition of Richard of Bordeaux, and the succession of his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke.

DISCOVERY OF THE CANARY ISLANDS AND THE AFRICAN COAST

BEGINNING OF NEGRO SLAVE TRADE

A.D. 1402

SIR ARTHUR HELPS

The Canary Islands--the "Elysian Fields" and "Fortunate
Islands" of antiquity--have perhaps figured in fabulous lore
more extensively than any others, and have been discovered,
invaded, and conquered more frequently than any country in
the world. There has scarcely been a nation of any maritime
enterprise that has not had to do with them, and in one
manner or another made its appearance in them.

During the period following the death of ancient empires,
the Canary Islands lay hidden in the general darkness which
fell upon the world. With the modern revival came new and
greater mariners, and the islands were once more discovered.
It is well to note the connection between these modern
rediscoveries and the origin of negro slavery.

In Europe the old pagan slavery existed in many nations, and
in the early Christian centuries underwent many
modifications through the advance of the new religion and
civilization. The modern form of slavery began with the
first importation of negroes into Europe, as shown in the
following account, from which it appears that the history of
modern slavery begins with the history of African discovery.

Petrarch is referred to by Viera to prove that the Genoese sent out an expedition to the Canary Islands. Las Casas mentions that an English or French vessel bound from France or England to Spain was driven by contrary winds to these Islands, and on its return spread abroad in France an account of the voyage. The information thus obtained--or perhaps in other ways of which there is no record--stimulated Don Luis de la Cerda, Count of Clermont, great-grandson of Don Alonzo the Wise of Castile, to seek for the investiture of the crown of the Canaries, which was given to him with much pomp by Clement VI, at Avignon, in 1344, Petrarch being present. This sceptre proved a barren one. The affairs of France, with which state the new King of the Canaries was connected, drew off his attention; and he died without having visited his dominions. The next authentic information that we have of the Canary Islands is that, in the times of Don Juan I of Castile, and of Don Enrique, his son, these islands were much visited by the Spaniards. In 1399, we are told, certain Andalusians, Biscayans, Guipuzcoans, with the consent of Don Enrique, fitted out an expedition of five vessels, and making a descent on the island of Lanzarote, one of the Canaries, took captive the King and Queen, and one hundred and seventy of the islanders.

Hitherto there had been nothing but discoveries, rediscoveries, and invasions of these islands; but at last a colonist appears upon the scene. This was Juan de Béthencourt, a great Norman baron, lord of St. Martin le Gaillard in the County of Eu, of Béthencourt, of Granville, of Sancerre, and other places in Normandy, and chamberlain to Charles VI of France. Those who are at all familiar with the history of that period, and with the mean and cowardly barbarity which characterized the long-continued contests between the rival factions of Orleans and Burgundy, may well imagine that any Frenchman would then be very glad to find a career in some other country. Whatever was the motive of Juan de Béthencourt, he carried out his purpose in the most resolute manner. Leaving his young wife, and selling part of his estate, he embarked at Rochelle in 1402, with men and means for the purpose of conquering, and establishing himself in, the Canary Islands. It is not requisite to give a minute description of this expedition. Suffice it to say that Béthencourt met with fully the usual difficulties, distresses, treacheries, and disasters that attach themselves to this race of enterprising men. After his arrival at the Canaries, finding his means insufficient, he repaired to the court of Castile, did acts of homage to the King, Enrique III, and afterward renewed them to his son Juan II, thereby much strengthening the claim which the Spanish monarchs already made to the dominion of these islands. Béthencourt, returning to the islands with renewed resources, made himself master of the greater part of them, reduced several of the natives to slavery, introduced the Christian faith, built churches, and established vassalage.

On the occasion of quitting his colony in A.D. 1405, he called all his vassals together, and represented to them that he had named for his lieutenant and governor Maciot de Béthencourt, his relation; that he himself was going to Spain and to Rome to seek for a bishop for them; and he concluded his oration with these words: "My loved vassals, great or small, plebeians or nobles, if you have anything to ask me or to inform me of, if you find in my conduct anything to complain of, do not fear to speak; I desire to do favor and justice to all the world." The assembly he was addressing contained none of the slaves he had made. We are told, however, and that by eye-witnesses, that the poor natives themselves bitterly regretted his departure, and, wading through the water, followed his vessel as far as they could. After his visit to Spain and to Rome, he returned to his paternal domains in Normandy, where, while meditating another voyage to his colony, he died in 1425.

Maciot de Béthencourt ruled for some time successfully; but afterward, falling into disputes with the Bishop, and his affairs generally not prospering, he sold his rights to Prince Henry of Portugal--also, as it strangely appears, to another person--and afterward settled in Madeira. The claims to the government of the Canaries were, for many years, in a most entangled state; and the right to the sovereignty over these islands was a constant ground of dispute between the crowns of Spain and Portugal.

Thus ended the enterprise of Juan de Béthencourt, which, though it cannot be said to have led to any very large or lasting results, yet, as it was the first modern attempt of the kind, deserves to be chronicled before commencing with Prince Henry of Portugal's long-continued and connected efforts in the same direction. The events also which preceded and accompanied Béthencourt's enterprise need to be recorded, in order to show the part which many nations, especially the Spaniards, had in the first discoveries on the coast of Africa.

We now turn to the history of the discoveries made, or rather caused to be made, by Prince Henry of Portugal. This Prince was born in 1394. He was the third son of John I of Portugal and Philippa, the daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. That good Plantagenet blood on the mother's side was, doubtless, not without avail to a man whose life was to be spent in continuous and insatiate efforts to work out a great idea. Prince Henry was with his father at the memorable capture of Ceuta, the ancient Septem, in 1415. This town, which lies opposite to Gibraltar, was of great magnificence, and one of the principal marts in that age for the productions of the East. It was here that the Portuguese nation first planted a firm foot in Africa; and the date of this town's capture may, perhaps, be taken as that from which Prince Henry began to meditate further and far greater conquests. His aims, however, were directed to a point long beyond the range of the mere conquering soldier. He was especially learned, for that age of the world, being skilled in mathematical and geographical knowledge. And it may be noticed here that the greatest geographical discoveries have been made by men conversant with the book knowledge of their own time. A work, for instance, often seen in the hands of Columbus, which his son mentions as having had much influence with him, was the learned treatise of Cardinal Petro de Aliaco (Pierre d'Ailly), the _Imago Mundi_.

But to return to Prince Henry of Portugal. We learn that he had conversed much with those who had made voyages in different parts of the world, and particularly with Moors from Fez and Morocco, so that he came to hear of the Azeneghis, a people bordering on the country of the negroes of Jalof. Such was the scanty information of a positive kind which the Prince had to guide his endeavors. Then there were the suggestions and the inducements which to a willing mind were to be found in the shrewd conjectures of learned men, the fables of chivalry, and, perhaps, in the confused records of forgotten knowledge once possessed by Arabic geographers. The story of Prister John, which had spread over Europe since the crusades, was well known to the Portuguese Prince. A mysterious voyage of a certain wandering saint, called St. Brendan, was not without its influence upon an enthusiastic mind. Moreover, there were many sound motives urging the Prince to maritime discovery; among which, a desire to fathom the power of the Moors, a wish to find a new outlet for traffic, and a longing to spread the blessings of the faith may be enumerated. The especial reason which impelled Prince Henry to take the burden of discovery on himself was that neither mariner nor merchant would be likely to adopt an enterprise in which there was no clear hope of profit. It belonged, therefore, to great men and princes, and among such he knew of no one but himself who was inclined to it.

The map of the world being before us, let us reduce it to the proportions it filled in Prince Henry's time: let us look at our infant world. First, take away those two continents, for so we may almost call them, each much larger than a Europe, to the far west. Then cancel that square, massive-looking piece to the extreme southeast; happily there are no penal settlements there yet. Then turn to Africa: instead of that form of inverted cone which it presents, and which we now know there are physical reasons for its presenting, make a cimetar shape of it, by running a slightly curved line from Juba on the eastern side to Cape Nam on the western. Declare all below that line unknown. Hitherto, we have only been doing the work of destruction; but now scatter emblems of hippogriffs and anthropophagi on the outskirts of what is left in the map, obeying a maxim, not confined to the ancient geographers only--where you know nothing, place terrors. Looking at the map thus completed, we can hardly help thinking to ourselves, with a smile, what a small space, comparatively speaking, the known history of the world has been transacted in, up to the last four hundred years. The idea of the universality of the Roman dominions shrinks a little; and we begin to fancy that Ovid might have escaped his tyrant. The ascertained confines of the world were now, however, to be more than doubled in the course of one century; and to Prince Henry of Portugal, as to the first promoter of these vast discoveries, our attention must be directed.

This Prince, having once the well-grounded idea in his mind that Africa did not end where it was commonly supposed, namely, at Cape Nam (Not), but that there was a world beyond that forbidding negative, seems never to have rested until he had made known that quarter of the globe to his own. He fixed his abode upon the promontory of Sagres, at the southern part of Portugal, whence, for many a year, he could watch for the rising specks of white sail bringing back his captains to tell him of new countries and new men. We may wonder that he never went himself; but he may have thought that he served the cause better by remaining at home and forming a centre whence the electric energy of enterprise was communicated to many discoverers, and then again collected from them. Moreover, he was much engaged in the public affairs of his country. In the course of his life he was three times in Africa, carrying on war against the Moors; and at home, besides the care and trouble which the state of the Portuguese court and government must have given him, he was occupied in promoting science and encouraging education.

In 1415, as before noticed, he was at Ceuta. In 1418 he was settled on the promontory of Sagres. One night in that year he is thought to have had a dream of promise, for on the ensuing morning he suddenly ordered two vessels to be got ready forthwith, and to be placed under the command of two gentlemen of his household, Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz, whom he ordered to proceed down the Barbary coast on a voyage of discovery.

A contemporary chronicler, Azurara, whose work has recently been discovered and published, tells the story more simply, and merely states that these captains were young men, who, after the ending of the Ceuta campaign, were as eager for employment as the Prince for discovery; and that they were ordered on a voyage having for its object the general molestation of the Moors, as well as that of making discoveries beyond Cape Nam. The Portuguese mariners had a proverb about this cape--"He who would pass Cape Not, either will return or not"; intimating that, if he did not turn before passing the cape, he would never return at all. On the present occasion it was not destined to be passed; for these captains, Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz, were driven out of their course by storms, and accidentally discovered a little island, where they took refuge, and from that circumstance called the island Porto Santo. "They found there a race of people living in no settled polity, but not altogether barbarous or savage, and possessing a kindly and most fertile soil."

I give this description of the first land discovered by Prince Henry's captains, thinking it would well apply to many other lands about to be found out by his captains and by other discoverers. Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz returned. Their master was delighted with the news they brought him, more on account of its promise than its substance. In the same year he sent them out again, together with a third captain, named Bartholomew Perestrelo, assigning a ship to each captain. His object was not only to discover more lands, but also to improve those which had been discovered. He sent, therefore, various seeds and animals to Porto Santo. This seems to have been a man worthy to direct discovery. Unfortunately, however, among the animals some rabbits were introduced into the new island; and they conquered it, not for the Prince, but for themselves. Hereafter, we shall find that they gave his people much trouble, and caused no little reproach to him.

We come now to the year 1419. Perestrelo, for some unknown cause, returned to Portugal at that time. After his departure, Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz, seeing from Porto Santo something that seemed like a cloud, but yet different--the origin of so much discovery, noting the difference in the likeness--built two boats, and, making for this cloud, soon found themselves alongside a beautiful island, abounding in many things, but most of all in trees, on which account they gave it the name of "Madeira" (Wood). The two discoverers entered the island at different parts. The Prince, their master, afterward rewarded them with the captaincies of those parts. To Perestrelo he gave the island of Porto Santo to colonize it. Perestrelo, however, did not make much of his captaincy, but after a strenuous contest with the rabbits, having killed an army of them, died himself. This captain has a place in history as being the father-in-law of Columbus, who, indeed, lived at Porto Santo for some time, and here, on new-found land, meditated far bolder discoveries.

Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz began the cultivation of their island of Madeira, but met with an untoward event at first. In clearing the wood, they kindled a fire among it, which burned for seven years, we are told; and in the end, that which had given its name to the island, and which, in the words of the historian, overshadowed the whole land, became the most deficient commodity. The captains founded churches in the island; and the King of Portugal, Don Duarte, gave the temporalities to Prince Henry, and all the spiritualities to the Knights of Christ.

While these things were occurring at Madeira and at Porto Santo, Prince Henry had been prosecuting his general scheme of discovery, sending out two or three vessels each year, with orders to go down the coast from Cape Nam, and make what discoveries they could; but these did not amount to much, for the captains never advanced beyond Cape Bojador, which is situated seventy leagues to the south of Cape Nam. This Cape Bojador was formidable in itself, being terminated by a ridge of rocks with fierce currents running round them, but was much more formidable from the fancies which the mariners had formed of the sea and land beyond it. "It is clear," they were wont to say, "that beyond this cape there is no people whatever; the land is as bare as Libya--no water, no trees, no grass in it; the sea so shallow that at a league from the land it is only a fathom deep; the currents so fierce that the ship which passes that cape will never return;" and thus their theories were brought in to justify their fears. This outstretcher--for such is the meaning of the word _bojador_--was, therefore, as a bar drawn across that advance in maritime discovery which had for so long a time been the first object of Prince Henry's life.

The Prince had now been working at his discoveries for twelve years, with little approbation from the generality of persons; the discovery of these islands, Porto Santo and Madeira, serving to whet his appetite for further enterprise, but not winning the common voice in favor of prosecuting discoveries on the coast of Africa. The people at home, improving upon the reports of the sailors, said that "the land which the Prince sought after was merely some sandy place like the deserts of Libya; that princes had possessed the empires of the world, and yet had not undertaken such designs as his, nor shown such anxiety to find new kingdoms; that the men who arrived in those foreign parts--if they did arrive--turned from white into black men; that the King Don John, the Prince's father, had endowed foreigners with land in his kingdom, to break it up and cultivate it--a thing very different from taking the people out of Portugal, which had need of them, to bring them among savages to be eaten, and to place them upon lands of which the mother country had no need; that the Author of the world had provided these islands solely for the habitation of wild beasts, of which an additional proof was that those rabbits the discoverers themselves had introduced were now dispossessing them of the island."

There is much here of the usual captiousness to be found in the criticism of bystanders upon action, mixed with a great deal of false assertion and premature knowledge of the ways of Providence. Still, it were to be wished that most criticism upon action was as wise; for that part of the common talk which spoke of keeping their own population to bring out their own resources had a wisdom in it which the men of future centuries were yet to discover throughout the peninsula. Prince Henry, as may be seen by his perseverance up to this time, was not a man to have his purposes diverted by such criticism, much of which must have been, in his eyes, worthless and inconsequent in the extreme. Nevertheless, he had his own misgivings. His captains came back one after another with no good tidings of discovery, but with petty plunder gained, as they returned from incursions on the Moorish coast.

The Prince concealed from them his chagrin at the fruitless nature of their attempts, but probably did not feel it less on that account. He began to think: Was it for him to hope to discover that land which had been hidden from so many princes? Still, he felt within himself the incitement of "a virtuous obstinacy," which would not let him rest. Would it not, he thought, be ingratitude to God, who thus moved his mind to these attempts, if he were to desist from his work, or be negligent in it? He resolved, therefore, to send out again Gil Eannes, one of his household, who had been sent the year before, but had returned, like the rest, having discovered nothing. He had been driven to the Canary Islands, and had seized upon some of the natives there, whom he brought back. With this transaction the Prince had shown himself dissatisfied; and Gil Eannes, now intrusted again with command, resolved to meet all dangers rather than to disappoint the wishes of his master. Before his departure, the Prince called him aside and said: "You cannot meet with such peril that the hope of your reward shall not be much greater; and in truth, I wonder what imagination this is that you have all taken up--in a matter, too, of so little certainty; for if these things which are reported had any authority, however little, I would not blame you so much. But you quote to me the opinions of four mariners, who, as they were driven out of their way to Frandes or to some other ports to which they commonly navigated, had not, and could not have used, the needle and the chart; but do you go, however, and make your voyage without regard to their opinion,--and, by the grace of God, you will not bring out of it anything but honor and profit."

We may well imagine that these stirring words of the Prince must have confirmed Gil Eannes in his resolve to efface the stain of his former misadventure. And he succeeded in doing so; for he passed the dreaded Cape Bojador--a great event in the history of African discovery, and one that in that day was considered equal to a labor of Hercules. Gil Eannes returned to a grateful and most delighted master. He informed the Prince that he had landed, and that the soil appeared to him unworked and fruitful; and, like a prudent man, he could not tell of foreign plants, but had brought some of them home with him in a barrel of the new-found earth--plants much like those which bear in Portugal the roses of Santa Maria. The Prince rejoiced to see them, and gave thanks to God, "as if they had been the fruit and sign of the promised land; and besought Our Lady, whose name the plants bore, that she would guide and set forth the doings in this discovery to the praise and glory of God and to the increase of his holy faith."