Chapter V: Part III: The English Constitution (3)

The part which the prince of Wales, who had ever been distinguished for his respectful demeanour towards Edward, bore in this unprecedented opposition, is strong evidence of the jealousy with which he regarded the duke of Lancaster; and it was led in the house of commons by Peter de la Mare, a servant of the earl of March, who, by his marriage with Philippa, heiress of Lionel duke of Clarence, stood next after the young prince Richard in lineal succession to the crown. The proceedings of this session were indeed highly popular. But no house of commons would have gone such lengths on the mere support of popular opinion, unless instigated and encouraged by higher authority. Without this their petitions might perhaps have obtained, for the sake of subsidy, an immediate consent; but those who took the lead in preparing them must have remained unsheltered after a dissolution, to abide the vengeance of the crown, with no assurance that another parliament would espouse their cause as its own. Such, indeed, was their fate in the present instance. Soon after the dissolution of parliament, the prince of Wales, who, long sinking by fatal decay, had rallied his expiring energies for this domestic combat, left his inheritance to a child ten years old, Richard of Bordeaux. Immediately after this event Lancaster recovered his influence; and the former favourites returned to court. Peter de la Mare was confined at Nottingham, where he remained two years. The citizens indeed attempted an insurrection, and threatened to burn the Savoy, Lancaster's residence, if de la Mare was not released; but the bishop of London succeeded in appeasing them.[137] A parliament met next year which overthrew the work of its predecessor, restored those who had been impeached, and repealed the ordinance against Alice Perrers.[138] So little security will popular assemblies ever afford against arbitrary power, when deprived of regular leaders and the consciousness of mutual fidelity.

The policy adopted by the prince of Wales and earl of March, in employing the house of commons as an engine of attack against an obnoxious ministry, was perfectly novel, and indicates a sensible change in the character of our constitution. In the reign of Edward II. parliament had little share in resisting the government; much more was effected by the barons through risings of their feudal tenantry. Fifty years of authority better respected, of law better enforced, had rendered these more perilous, and of a more violent appearance than formerly. A surer resource presented itself in the increased weight of the lower house in parliament. And this indirect aristocratical influence gave a surprising impulse to that assembly, and particularly tended to establish beyond question its control over public abuses. It is no less just to remark that it also tended to preserve the relation and harmony between each part and the other, and to prevent that jarring of emulation and jealousy which, though generally found in the division of power between a noble and a popular estate, has scarcely ever caused a dissension, except in cases of little moment, between our two houses of parliament.

[Sidenote: Richard II. Great increase of the power of the commons.]

The commons had sustained with equal firmness and discretion a defensive war against arbitrary power under Edward III.: they advanced with very different steps towards his successor. Upon the king's death, though Richard's coronation took place without delay, and no proper regency was constituted, yet a council of twelve, whom the great officers of state were to obey, supplied its place to every effectual intent. Among these the duke of Lancaster was not numbered; and he retired from court in some disgust. In the first parliament of the young king a large proportion of the knights who had sat in that which impeached the Lancastrian party were returned.[139] Peter de la Mare, now released from prison, was elected speaker; a dignity which, according to some, he had filled in the Good Parliament, as that of the fiftieth of Edward III. was popularly styled; though the rolls do not mention either him or any other as bearing that honourable name before Sir Thomas Hungerford in the parliament of the following year.[140] The prosecution against Alice Perrers was now revived; not, as far as appears, by direct impeachment of the commons; but articles were exhibited against her in the house of lords on the king's part, for breaking the ordinance made against her intermeddling at court: upon which she received judgment of banishment and forfeiture.[141] At the request of the lower house, the lords, in the king's name, appointed nine persons of different ranks--three bishops, two earls, two bannerets, and two bachelors--to be a permanent council about the king, so that no business of importance should be transacted without their unanimous consent. The king was even compelled to consent that, during his minority, the chancellor, treasurer, judges, and other chief officers, should be made in parliament; by which provision, combined with that of the parliamentary council, the whole executive government was transferred to the two houses. A petition that none might be employed in the king's service, nor belong to his council, who had been formerly accused upon good grounds, struck at lord Latimer, who had retained some degree of power in the new establishment. Another, suggesting that Gascony, Ireland, Artois, and the Scottish marches were in danger of being lost for want of good officers, though it was so generally worded as to leave the means of remedy to the king's pleasure, yet shows a growing energy and self-confidence in that assembly which not many years before had thought the question of peace or war too high for their deliberation. Their subsidy was sufficiently liberal; but they took care to pray the king that fit persons might be assigned for its receipt and disbursement, lest it should any way be diverted from the purposes of the war. Accordingly Walworth and Philpot, two eminent citizens of London, were appointed to this office, and sworn in parliament to its execution.[142]

But whether through the wastefulness of government, or rather because Edward's legacy, the French war, like a ruinous and interminable lawsuit, exhausted all public contributions, there was an equally craving demand for subsidy at the next meeting of parliament. The commons now made a more serious stand. The speaker, Sir James Pickering, after the protestation against giving offence which has since become more matter of form than, perhaps, it was then considered, reminded the lords of the council of a promise made to the last parliament, that, if they would help the king for once with a large subsidy, so as to enable him to undertake an expedition against the enemy, he trusted not to call on them again, but to support the war from his own revenues; in faith of which promise there had been granted the largest sum that any king of England had ever been suffered to levy within so short a time, to the utmost loss and inconvenience of the commons, part of which ought still to remain in the treasury, and render it unnecessary to burthen anew the exhausted people. To this Scrope, lord steward of the household, protesting that he knew not of any such promise, made answer by order of the king, that, "saving the honour and reverence of our lord the king, and the lords there present, the commons did not speak truth in asserting that part of the last subsidy should be still in the treasury; it being notorious that every penny had gone into the hands of Walworth and Philpot, appointed and sworn treasurers in the last parliament, to receive and expend it upon the purposes of the war, for which they had in effect disbursed the whole." Not satisfied with this general justification, the commons pressed for an account of the expenditure. Scrope was again commissioned to answer, that, "though it had never been seen that of a subsidy or other grant made to the king in parliament or out of parliament by the commons any account had afterwards been rendered to the commons, or to any other except the king and his officers, yet the king, to gratify them, of his own accord, without doing it by way of right, would have Walworth along with certain persons of the council exhibit to them in writing a clear account of the receipt and expenditure, upon condition that this should never be used as a precedent, nor inferred to be done otherwise than by the king's spontaneous command." The commons were again urged to provide for the public defence, being their own concern as much as that of the king. But they merely shifted their ground and had recourse to other pretences. They requested that five or six peers might come to them, in order to discuss this question of subsidy. The lords entirely rejected this proposal, and affirmed that such a proceeding had never been known except in the three last parliaments; but allowed that it had been the course to elect a committee of eight or ten from each house, to confer easily and without noise together. The commons acceded to this, and a committee of conference was appointed, though no result of their discussion appears upon the roll.

Upon examining the accounts submitted to them, these sturdy commoners raised a new objection. It appeared that large sums had been expended upon garrisons in France and Ireland and other places beyond the kingdom, of which they protested themselves not liable to bear the charge. It was answered that Gascony and the king's other dominions beyond sea were the outworks of England, nor could the people ever be secure from war at their thresholds, unless these were maintained. They lastly insisted that the king ought to be rich through the wealth that had devolved on him from his grandfather. But this was affirmed, in reply, to be merely sufficient for the payment of Edward's creditors. Thus driven from all their arguments, the commons finally consented to a moderate additional imposition upon the export of wool and leather, which were already subject to considerable duties, apologizing on account of their poverty for the slenderness of their grant.[143]

The necessities of government, however, let their cause be what it might, were by no means feigned; and a new parliament was assembled about seven months after the last, wherein the king, without waiting for a petition, informed the commons that the treasurers were ready to exhibit their accounts before them. This was a signal victory after the reluctant and ungracious concession made to the last parliament. Nine persons of different ranks were appointed at the request of the commons to investigate the state of the revenue and the disposition which had been made of the late king's personal estate. They ended by granting a poll-tax, which they pretended to think adequate to the supply required.[144] But in those times no one possessed any statistical knowledge, and every calculation which required it was subject to enormous error, of which we have already seen an eminent example.[145] In the next parliament (3 Ric. II.) it was set forth that only 22,000_l._ had been collected by the poll-tax, while the pay of the king's troops hired for the expedition to Britany, the pretext of the grant, had amounted for but half a year to 50,000_l._ The king, in short, was more straitened than ever. His distresses gave no small advantage to the commons. Their speaker was instructed to declare that, as it appeared to them, if the affairs of their liege lord had been properly conducted at home and abroad, he could not have wanted aid of his commons, who now are poorer than before. They pray that, as the king was so much advanced in age and discretion, his perpetual council (appointed in his first parliament) might be discharged of their labours, and that, instead of them, the five chief officers of state, to wit, the chancellor, treasurer, keeper of the privy seal, chamberlain, and steward of the household, might be named in parliament, and declared to the commons, as the king's sole counsellors, not removable before the next parliament. They required also a general commission to be made out, similar to that in the last session, giving powers to a certain number of peers and other distinguished persons to inquire into the state of the household, as well as into all receipts and expenses since the king's accession. The former petition seems to have been passed over;[146] but a commission as requested was made out to three prelates, three earls, three bannerets, three knights, and three citizens.[147] After guarding thus, as they conceived, against malversation, but in effect rather protecting their posterity than themselves, the commons prolonged the last imposition on wool and leather for another year.

It would be but repetition to make extracts from the rolls of the two next years; we have still the same tale--demand of subsidy on one side, remonstrance and endeavours at reformation on the other. After the tremendous insurrection of the villeins in 1382 a parliament was convened to advise about repealing the charters of general manumission, extorted from the king by the pressure of circumstances. In this measure all concurred; but the commons were not afraid to say that the late risings had been provoked by the burthens which a prodigal court had called for in the preceding session. Their language is unusually bold. "It seemed to them, after full deliberation," they said, "that, unless the administration of the kingdom were speedily reformed, the kingdom itself would be utterly lost and ruined for ever, and therein their lord the king, with all the peers and commons, which God forbid. For true it is that there are such defects in the said administration, as well about the king's person and his household as in his courts of justice; and by grievous oppressions in the country through maintainers of suits, who are, as it were, kings in the country, that right and law are come to nothing, and the poor commons are from time to time so pillaged and ruined; partly by the king's purveyors of the household, and others who pay nothing for what they take, partly by the subsidies and tallages raised upon them, and besides by the oppressive behaviour of the servants of the king and other lords, and especially of the aforesaid maintainers of suits, that they are reduced to greater poverty and discomfort than ever they were before. And moreover, though great sums have been continually granted by and levied upon them, for the defence of the kingdom, yet they are not the better defended against their enemies, but every year are plundered and wasted by sea and land, without any relief. Which calamities the said poor commons, who lately used to live in honour and prosperity, can no longer endure. And to speak the real truth, these injuries lately done to the poorer commons, more than they ever suffered before, caused them to rise and to commit the mischief done in their late riot; and there is still cause to fear greater evils, if sufficient remedy be not timely provided against the outrages and oppressions aforesaid. Wherefore may it please our lord the king, and the noble peers of the realm now assembled in this parliament, to provide such remedy and amendment as to the said administration, that the state and dignity of the king in the first place, and of the lords, may be preserved, as the commons have always desired, and the commons may be put in peace; removing, as soon as they can be detected, evil ministers and counsellors, and putting in their stead the best and most sufficient, and taking away all the bad practices which have led to the last rising, or else none can imagine that this kingdom can longer subsist without greater misfortunes than it ever endured. And for God's sake let it not be forgotten that there be put about the king, and of his council, the best lords and knights that can be found in the kingdom.

"And be it known (the entry proceeds) that, after the king our lord with the peers of the realm and his council had taken advice upon these requests made to him for his good and his kingdom's as it really appeared to him, willed and granted that certain bishops, lords, and others should be appointed to survey and examine in privy council both the government of the king's person and of his household, and to suggest proper remedies wherever necessary, and report them to the king. And it was said by the peers in parliament, that, as it seemed to them, if reform of government were to take place throughout the kingdom, it should begin by the chief member, which is the king himself, and so from person to person, as well churchmen as others, and place to place, from higher to lower, without sparing any degree."[148] A considerable number of commissioners were accordingly appointed, whether by the king alone, or in parliament, does not appear; the latter, however, is more probable. They seem to have made some progress in the work of reformation, for we find that the officers of the household were sworn to observe their regulations. But in all likelihood these were soon neglected.

It is not wonderful that, with such feelings of resentment towards the crown, the commons were backward in granting subsidies. Perhaps the king would not have obtained one at all if he had not withheld his charter of pardon for all offences committed during the insurrection. This was absolutely necessary to restore quiet among the people; and though the members of the commons had certainly not been insurgents, yet inevitable irregularities had occurred in quelling the tumults, which would have put them too much in the power of those unworthy men who filled the benches of justice under Richard. The king declared that it was unusual to grant a pardon without a subsidy; the commons still answered that they would consider about that matter; and the king instantly rejoined that he would consider about his pardon (s'aviseroit de sa dite grace) till they had done what they ought. They renewed, at length the usual tax on wool and leather.[149]

This extraordinary assumption of power by the commons was not merely owing to the king's poverty. It was encouraged by the natural feebleness of a disunited government. The high rank and ambitious spirit of Lancaster gave him no little influence, though contending with many enemies at court as well as the ill-will of the people. Thomas of Woodstock, the king's youngest uncle, more able and turbulent than Lancaster, became, as he grew older, an eager competitor for power, which he sought through the channel of popularity. The earls of March, Arundel, and Warwick bore a considerable part, and were the favourites of parliament. Even Lancaster, after a few years, seems to have fallen into popular courses, and recovered some share of public esteem. He was at the head of the reforming commission in the fifth of Richard II., though he had been studiously excluded from those preceding. We cannot hope to disentangle the intrigues of this remote age, as to which our records are of no service, and the chroniclers are very slightly informed. So far as we may conjecture, Lancaster, finding his station insecure at court, began to solicit the favour of the commons, whose hatred of the administration abated their former hostility towards him.[150]

[Sidenote: Character of Richard.]

The character of Richard II. was now developing itself, and the hopes excited by his remarkable presence of mind in confronting the rioters on Blackheath were rapidly destroyed. Not that he was wanting in capacity, as has been sometimes imagined. For if we measure intellectual power by the greatest exertion it ever displays, rather than by its average results, Richard II. was a man of considerable talents. He possessed, along with much dissimulation, a decisive promptitude in seizing the critical moment for action. Of this quality, besides his celebrated behaviour towards the insurgents, he gave striking evidence in several circumstances which we shall have shortly to notice. But his ordinary conduct belied the abilities which on these rare occasions shone forth, and rendered them ineffectual for his security. Extreme pride and violence, with an inordinate partiality for the most worthless favourites, were his predominant characteristics. In the latter quality, and in the events of his reign, he forms a pretty exact parallel to Edward II. Scrope, lord chancellor, who had been appointed in parliament, and was understood to be irremovable without its concurrence, lost the great seal for refusing to set it to some prodigal grants. Upon a slight quarrel with archbishop Courtney the king ordered his temporalities to be seized, the execution of which, Michael de la Pole, his new chancellor, and a favourite of his own, could hardly prevent. This was accompanied with indecent and outrageous expressions of anger, unworthy of his station and of those whom he insulted.[151]

[Sidenote: He acquires more power on his majority.]

Though no king could be less respectable than Richard, yet the constitution invested a sovereign with such ample prerogative, that it was far less easy to resist his personal exercise of power than the unsettled councils of a minority. In the parliament 6 R. II., sess. 2, the commons pray certain lords, whom they name, to be assigned as their advisers. This had been permitted in the two last sessions without exception.[152] But the king, in granting their request, reserved his right of naming any others.[153] Though the commons did not relax in their importunities for the redress of general grievances, they did not venture to intermeddle as before with the conduct of administration. They did not even object to the grant of the marquisate of Dublin, with almost a princely dominion over Ireland; which enormous donation was confirmed by act of parliament to Vere, a favourite of the king.[154] A petition that the officers of state should annually visit and inquire into his household was answered that the king would do what he pleased.[155] Yet this was little in comparison of their former proceedings.

[Sidenote: Proceedings of parliament in the tenth of Richard.]

There is nothing, however, more deceitful to a monarch, unsupported by an armed force, and destitute of wary advisers, than this submission of his people. A single effort was enough to overturn his government. Parliament met in the tenth year of his reign, steadily determined to reform the administration, and especially to punish its chief leader, Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk and lord chancellor. According to the remarkable narration of a contemporary historian,[156] too circumstantial to be rejected, but rendered somewhat doubtful by the silence of all other writers and of the parliamentary roll, the king was loitering at his palace at Eltham when he received a message from the two houses, requesting the dismissal of Suffolk, since they had matter to allege against him that they could not move while he kept the office of chancellor. Richard, with his usual intemperance, answered that he would not for their request remove the meanest scullion from his kitchen. They returned a positive refusal to proceed on any public business until the king should appear personally in parliament and displace the chancellor. The king required forty knights to be deputed from the rest to inform him clearly of their wishes. But the commons declined a proposal in which they feared, or affected to fear, some treachery. At length the duke of Gloucester and Arundel bishop of Ely were commissioned to speak the sense of parliament; and they delivered it, if we may still believe what we read, in very extraordinary language, asserting that there was an ancient statute, according to which, if the king absented himself from parliament without just cause during forty days, which he had now exceeded, every man might return without permission to his own country; and, moreover, there was another statute, and (as they might more truly say) a precedent of no remote date, that if a king, by bad counsel, or his own folly and obstinacy, alienated himself from his people, and would not govern according to the laws of the land and the advice of the peers, but madly and wantonly followed his own single will, it should be lawful for them, with the common assent of the people, to expel him from his throne, and elevate to it some near kinsman of the royal blood. By this discourse the king was induced to meet his parliament, where Suffolk was removed from his office, and the impeachment against him commenced.[157]

[Sidenote: Impeachment of Suffolk.]

The charges against this minister, without being wholly frivolous, were not so weighty as the clamour of the commons might have led us to expect. Besides forfeiting all his grants from the crown, he was committed to prison, there to remain till he should have paid such fine as the king might impose; a sentence that would have been outrageously severe in many cases, though little more than nugatory in the present.[158]

[Sidenote: Commission of reform.]

This was the second precedent of that grand constitutional resource, parliamentary impeachment: and more remarkable from the eminence of the person attacked than that of lord Latimer in the fiftieth year of Edward III.[159] The commons were content to waive the prosecution of any other ministers; but they rather chose a scheme of reforming the administration, which should avert both the necessity of punishment and the malversations that provoked it. They petitioned the king to ordain in parliament certain chief officers of his household and other lords of his council, with power to reform those abuses, by which his crown was so much blemished that the laws were not kept and his revenues were dilapidated, confirming by a statute a commission for a year, and forbidding, under heavy penalties, any one from opposing, in private or openly, what they should advise.[160] With this the king complied, and a commission founded upon the prayer of parliament was established by statute. It comprehended fourteen persons of the highest eminence for rank and general estimation; princes of the blood and ancient servants of the crown, by whom its prerogatives were not likely to be unnecessarily impaired. In fact the principle of this commission, without looking back at the precedents in the reign of John, Henry III., and Edward II., which yet were not without their weight as constitutional analogies, was merely that which the commons had repeatedly maintained during the minority of the present king, and which had produced the former commissions of reform in the third and fifth years of his reign. These were upon the whole nearly the same in their operation. It must be owned there was a more extensive sway virtually given to the lords now appointed, by the penalties imposed on any who should endeavour to obstruct what they might advise; the design as well as tendency of which was no doubt to throw the whole administration into their hands during the period of this commission.

Those who have written our history with more or less of a Tory bias exclaim against this parliamentary commission as an unwarrantable violation of the king's sovereignty, and even impartial men are struck at first sight by a measure that seems to overset the natural balance of our constitution. But it would be unfair to blame either those concerned in this commission, some of whose names at least have been handed down with unquestioned respect, or those high-spirited representatives of the people whose patriot firmness has been hitherto commanding all our sympathy and gratitude, unless we could distinctly pronounce by what gentler means they could restrain the excesses of government. Thirteen parliaments had already met since the accession of Richard; in all the same remonstrances had been repeated, and the same promises renewed. Subsidies, more frequent than in any former reign, had been granted for the supposed exigencies of the war; but this was no longer illuminated by those dazzling victories which give to fortune the mien of wisdom; the coasts of England were perpetually ravaged, and her trade destroyed; while the administration incurred the suspicion of diverting to private uses that treasure which they so feebly and unsuccessfully applied to the public service. No voice of his people, until it spoke in thunder, would stop an intoxicated boy in the wasteful career of dissipation. He loved festivals and pageants, the prevailing folly of his time, with unusual frivolity; and his ordinary living is represented as beyond comparison more showy and sumptuous than even that of his magnificent and chivalrous predecessor. Acts of parliament were no adequate barriers to his misgovernment. "Of what avail are statutes," says Walsingham, "since the king with his privy council is wont to abolish what parliament has just enacted?"[161] The constant prayer of the commons in every session, that former statutes might be kept in force, is no slight presumption that they were not secure of being regarded. It may be true that Edward III.'s government had been full as arbitrary, though not so unwise, as his grandson's; but this is the strongest argument that nothing less than an extraordinary remedy could preserve the still unstable liberties of England.

The best plea that could be made for Richard was his inexperience, and the misguided suggestions of favourites. This, however, made it more necessary to remove those false advisers, and to supply that inexperience. Unquestionably the choice of ministers is reposed in the sovereign; a trust, like every other attribute of legitimate power, for the public good; not, what no legitimate power can ever be, the instrument of selfishness or caprice. There is something more sacred than the prerogative, or even than the constitution; the public weal, for which all powers are granted, and to which they must all be referred. For this public weal it is confessed to be sometimes necessary to shake the possessor of the throne out of his seat; could it never be permitted to suspend, though but indirectly and for a time, the positive exercise of misapplied prerogatives? He has learned in a very different school from myself, who denies to parliament at the present day a preventive as well as vindictive control over the administration of affairs; a right of resisting, by those means which lie within its sphere, the appointment of unfit ministers. These means are now indirect; they need not to be the less effectual, and they are certainly more salutary on that account. But we must not make our notions of the constitution in its perfect symmetry of manhood the measure of its infantine proportions, nor expect from a parliament just struggling into life, and "pawing to get free its hinder parts," the regularity of definite and habitual power.

It is assumed rather too lightly by some of those historians to whom I have alluded that these commissioners, though but appointed for a twelvemonth, designed to retain longer, or would not in fact have surrendered, their authority. There is certainly a danger in these delegations of pre-eminent trust; but I think it more formidable in a republican form than under such a government as our own. The spirit of the people, the letter of the law, were both so decidedly monarchical, that no glaring attempt of the commissioners to keep the helm continually in their hands, though it had been in the king's name, would have had a fair probability of success. And an oligarchy of fourteen persons, different in rank and profession, even if we should impute criminal designs to all of them, was ill calculated for permanent union. Indeed the facility with which Richard re-assumed his full powers two years afterwards, when misconduct had rendered his circumstances far more unfavourable, gives the corroboration of experience to this reasoning. By yielding to the will of his parliament and to a temporary suspension of prerogative, this unfortunate prince might probably have reigned long and peacefully; the contrary course of acting led eventually to his deposition and miserable death.

[Sidenote: Answers of the judges to Richard's questions.]

Before the dissolution of parliament Richard made a verbal protestation that nothing done therein should be in prejudice of his rights; a reservation not unusual when any remarkable concession was made, but which could not decently be interpreted, whatever he might mean, as a dissent from the statute, just passed. Some months had intervened when the king, who had already released Suffolk from prison and restored him to his favour, procured from the judges, whom he had summoned to Nottingham, a most convenient set of answers to questions concerning the late proceedings in parliament. Tresilian and Belknap, chief justices of the King's Bench and Common Pleas, with several other judges, gave it under their seals that the late statute and commission were derogatory to the prerogative; that all who procured it to be passed, or persuaded or compelled the king to consent to it, were guilty of treason; that the king's business must be proceeded upon before any other in parliament; that he may put an end to the session at his pleasure; that his ministers cannot be impeached without his consent; that any members of parliament contravening the three last articles incur the penalties of treason, and especially he who moved for the sentence of deposition against Edward II. to be read; and that the judgment against the earl of Suffolk might be revoked as altogether erroneous.

[Sidenote: Subsequent revolution.]

These answers, perhaps extorted by menaces, as all the judges, except Tresilian, protested before the next parliament, were for the most part servile and unconstitutional. The indignation which they excited, and the measures successfully taken to withstand the king's designs, belong to general history; but I shall pass slightly over that season of turbulence, which afforded no legitimate precedent, to our constitutional annals. Of the five lords appellants, as they were called, Gloucester, Derby, Nottingham, Warwick, and Arundel, the three former, at least, have little claim to our esteem; but in every age it is the sophism of malignant and peevish men to traduce the cause of freedom itself, on account of the interested motives by which its ostensible advocates have frequently been actuated. The parliament, who had the country thoroughly with them, acted no doubt honestly, but with an inattention to the rules of law, culpable indeed, yet from which the most civilized of their successors, in the heat of passion and triumph, have scarcely been exempt. Whether all with whom they dealt severely, some of them apparently of good previous reputation, merited such punishment, is more than, upon uncertain evidence, a modern writer can profess to decide.[162]

Notwithstanding the death or exile of all Richard's favourites, and the oath taken not only by parliament, but by every class of the people, to stand by the lords appellants, we find him, after about a year, suddenly annihilating their pretensions, and snatching the reins again without obstruction. The secret cause of this event is among the many obscurities that attend the history of his reign. It was conducted with a spirit and activity which broke out two or three times in the course of his imprudent life; but we may conjecture that he had the advantage of disunion among his enemies. For some years after this the king's administration was prudent. The great seal, which he took away from archbishop Arundel, he gave to Wykeham bishop of Winchester, another member of the reforming commission, but a man of great moderation and political experience. Some time after he restored the seal to Arundel, and reinstated the duke of Gloucester in the council. The duke of Lancaster, who had been absent during the transactions of the tenth and eleventh years of the king, in prosecution of his Castilian war, formed a link between the parties, and seems to have maintained some share of public favour.

[Sidenote: Greater harmony between the king and parliament.]

There was now a more apparent harmony between the court and the parliament. It seems to have been tacitly agreed that they should not interfere with the king's household expenses; and they gratified him in a point where his honour had been most wounded, declaring his prerogative to be as high and unimpaired as that of his predecessors, and repealing the pretended statute by virtue of which Edward II. was said to have been deposed.[163]. They were provident enough, however, to grant conditional subsidies, to be levied only in case of a royal expedition against the enemy; and several were accordingly remitted by proclamation, this condition not being fulfilled. Richard never ventured to recall his favourites, though he testified his unabated affection for Vere by a pompous funeral. Few complaints, unequivocally affecting the ministry, were presented by the commons. In one parliament the chancellor, treasurer, and counsel resigned their offices, submitting themselves to its judgment in case any matter of accusation should be alleged against them. The commons, after a day's deliberation, probably to make their approbation appear more solemn, declared in full parliament that nothing amiss had been found in the conduct of these ministers, and that they held them to have faithfully discharged their duties. The king reinstated them accordingly, with a protestation that this should not be made a precedent, and that it was his right to change his servants at pleasure.[164]

[Sidenote: Disunion among some leading peers.]

But this summer season was not to last for ever. Richard had but dissembled with those concerned in the transactions of 1388, none of whom he could ever forgive. These lords in lapse of time were divided among each other. The earls of Derby and Nottingham were brought into the king's interest. The earl of Arundel came to an open breach with the duke of Lancaster, whose pardon he was compelled to ask for an unfounded accusation in parliament.[165] Gloucester's ungoverned ambition, elated by popularity, could not brook the ascendency of his brother Lancaster, who was much less odious to the king. He had constantly urged and defended the concession of Guienne to this prince to be held for life, reserving only his liege homage to Richard as king of France;[166] a grant as unpopular among the natives of that country as it was derogatory to the crown; but Lancaster was not much indebted to his brother for assistance which was only given in order to diminish his influence in England. The truce with France, and the king's French marriage, which Lancaster supported, were passionately opposed by Gloucester. And the latter had given keener provocation by speaking contemptuously of that misalliance with Katherine Swineford which contaminated the blood of Plantagenet. To the parliament summoned in the 20th of Richard, one object of which was to legitimate the duke of Lancaster's antenuptial children by this lady, neither Gloucester nor Arundel would repair. There passed in this assembly something remarkable, as it exhibits not only the arbitrary temper of the king, a point by no means doubtful, but the inefficiency of the commons to resist it without support from political confederacies of the nobility. The circumstances are thus related in the record.

[Sidenote: Richard's prosecution of Haxey.]

During the session the king sent for the lords into parliament one afternoon, and told them how he had heard of certain articles of complaint made by the commons in conference with them a few days before, some of which appeared to the king against his royalty, estate, and liberty, and commanded the chancellor to inform him fully as to this. The chancellor accordingly related the whole matter, which consisted of four alleged grievances; namely, that sheriffs and escheators, notwithstanding a statute, are continued in their offices beyond a year;[167] that the Scottish marches were not well kept; that the statute against wearing great men's liveries was disregarded; and, lastly, that the excessive charges of the king's household ought to be diminished, arising from the multitude of bishops and of ladies who are there maintained at his cost.

Upon this information the king declared to the lords that through God's gift he is by lineal right of inheritance king of England, and will have the royalty and freedom of his crown, from which some of these articles derogate. The first petition, that sheriffs should never remain in office beyond a year, he rejected; but, passing lightly over the rest, took most offence that the commons, who are his lieges, should take on themselves to make any ordinance respecting his royal person or household, or those whom he might please to have about him. He enjoined therefore the lords to declare plainly to the commons his pleasure in this matter; and especially directed the duke of Lancaster to make the speaker give up the name of the person who presented a bill for this last article in the lower house.

The commons were in no state to resist this unexpected promptitude of action in the king. They surrendered the obnoxious bill, with its proposer, one Thomas Haxey, and with great humility made excuse that they never designed to give offence to his majesty, nor to interfere with his household or attendants, knowing well that such things do not belong to them, but to the king alone; but merely to draw his attention, that he might act therein as should please him best. The king forgave these pitiful suppliants; but Haxey was adjudged in parliament to suffer death as a traitor. As, however, he was a clerk,[168] the archbishop of Canterbury, at the head of the prelates, obtained of the king that his life might be spared, and that they might have the custody of his person; protesting that this was not claimed by way of right, but merely of the king's grace.[169]

[Sidenote: Arbitrary measures of the king.]

This was an open defiance of parliament, and a declaration of arbitrary power. For it would be impossible to contend that, after the repeated instances of control over public expenditure by the commons since the 50th of Edward III., this principle was novel and unauthorized by the constitution, or that the right of free speech demanded by them in every parliament was not a real and indisputable privilege. The king, however, was completely successful, and, having proved the feebleness of the commons, fell next upon those he more dreaded. By a skilful piece of treachery he seized the duke of Gloucester, and spread consternation among all his party. A parliament was summoned, in which the only struggle was to outdo the king's wishes, and thus to efface their former transgressions.[170] Gloucester, who had been murdered at Calais, was attainted after his death; Arundel was beheaded, his brother the archbishop of Canterbury deposed and banished, Warwick and Cobham sent beyond sea. The commission of the tenth, the proceedings in parliament of the eleventh year of the king, were annulled. The answers of the judges to the questions put at Nottingham, which had been punished with death and exile, were pronounced by parliament to be just and legal. It was declared high treason to procure the repeal of any judgment against persons therein impeached. Their issue male were disabled from ever sitting in parliament or holding place in council. These violent ordinances, as if the precedent they were then overturning had not shielded itself with the same sanction, were sworn to by parliament upon the cross of Canterbury, and confirmed by a national oath, with the penalty of excommunication denounced against its infringers. Of those recorded to have bound themselves by this adjuration to Richard, far the greater part had touched the same relics for Gloucester and Arundel ten years before, and two years afterwards swore allegiance to Henry of Lancaster.[171]

In the fervour of prosecution this parliament could hardly go beyond that whose acts they were annulling; and each is alike unworthy to be remembered in the way of precedent. But the leaders of the former, though vindictive and turbulent, had a concern for the public interest; and, after punishing their enemies, left the government upon its right foundation. In this all regard for liberty was extinct; and the commons set the dangerous precedent of granting the king a subsidy upon wool during his life. Their remarkable act of severity was accompanied by another, less unexampled, but, as it proved, of more ruinous tendency. The petitions of the commons not having been answered during the session, which they were always anxious to conclude, a commission was granted for twelve peers and six commoners to sit after the dissolution, and "examine, answer, and fully determine, as well all the said petitions, and the matters therein comprised, as all other matters and things moved in the king's presence, and all things incident thereto not yet determined, as shall seem best to them."[172] The "other matters" mentioned above were, I suppose, private petitions to the king's council in parliament, which had been frequently despatched after a dissolution. For in the statute which establishes this commission, 21 R. II. c. 16, no powers are committed but those of examining petitions: which, if it does not confirm the charge afterwards alleged against Richard, of falsifying the parliament roll, must at least be considered as limiting and explaining the terms of the latter. Such a trust had been committed to some lords of the council eight years before, in very peaceful times; and it was even requested that the same might be done in future parliaments.[173] But it is obvious what a latitude this gave to a prevailing faction. These eighteen commissioners, or some of them (for there were who disliked the turn of affairs), usurped the full rights of the legislature, which undoubtedly were only delegated in respect of business already commenced.[174] They imposed a perpetual oath on prelates and lords for all time to come, to be taken before obtaining livery of their lands, that they would maintain the statutes and ordinances made by this parliament, or "afterwards by the lords and knights having power committed to them by the same." They declared it high treason to disobey their ordinances. They annulled the patents of the dukes of Hereford and Norfolk, and adjudged Henry Bowet, the former's chaplain, who had advised him to petition for his inheritance, to the penalties of treason.[175] And thus, having obtained a revenue for life, and the power of parliament being notoriously usurped by a knot of his creatures, the king was little likely to meet his people again, and became as truly absolute as his ambition could require.

[Sidenote: Quarrel of the dukes of Hereford and Norfolk.]

[Sidenote: Necessity for deposing Richard II.]

It had been necessary for this purpose to subjugate the ancient nobility. For the English constitution gave them such paramount rights that it was impossible either to make them surrender their country's freedom, or to destroy it without their consent. But several of the chief men had fallen or were involved with the party of Gloucester. Two who, having once belonged to it, had lately plunged into the depths of infamy to ruin their former friends; were still perfectly obnoxious to the king, who never forgave their original sin. These two, Henry of Bolingbroke, earl of Derby, and Mowbray, earl of Nottingham, now dukes of Hereford and Norfolk, the most powerful of the remaining nobility, were, by a singular conjuncture, thrown, as it were, at the king's feet. Of the political mysteries which this reign affords, none is more inexplicable than the quarrel of these peers. In the parliament at Shrewsbury, in 1398, Hereford was called upon by the king to relate what had passed between the duke of Norfolk and himself in slander of his majesty. He detailed a pretty long and not improbable conversation, in which Norfolk had asserted the king's intention of destroying them both for their old offence in impeaching his ministers. Norfolk had only to deny the charge and throw his gauntlet at the accuser. It was referred to the eighteen commissioners who sat after the dissolution, and a trial by combat was awarded. But when this, after many delays, was about to take place at Coventry, Richard interfered and settled the dispute by condemning Hereford to banishment for ten years and Norfolk for life. This strange determination, which treated both as guilty where only one could be so, seems to admit no other solution than the king's desire to rid himself of two peers whom he feared and hated at a blow. But it is difficult to understand by what means he drew the crafty Bolingbroke into his snare.[176] However this might have been, he now threw away all appearance of moderate government. The indignities he had suffered in the eleventh year of his reign were still at his heart, a desire to revenge which seems to have been the mainspring of his conduct. Though a general pardon of those proceedings had been granted, not only at the time, but in his own last parliament, he made use of them as a pretence to extort money from seventeen counties, to whom he imputed a share in the rebellion. He compelled men to confess under their seals that they had been guilty of treason, and to give blank obligations, which his officers filled up with large sums.[177] Upon the death of the duke of Lancaster, who had passively complied throughout all these transactions, Richard refused livery of his inheritance to Hereford, whose exile implied no crime, and who had letters patent enabling him to make his attorney for that purpose during its continuance. In short, his government for nearly two years was altogether tyrannical; and, upon the same principles that cost James II. his throne, it was unquestionably far more necessary, unless our fathers would have abandoned all thought of liberty, to expel Richard II. Far be it from us to extenuate the treachery of the Percies towards this unhappy prince, or the cruel circumstances of his death, or in any way to extol either his successor or the chief men of that time, most of whom were ambitious and faithless; but after such long experience of the king's arbitrary, dissembling, and revengeful temper, I see no other safe course, in the actual state of the constitution, than what the nation concurred in pursuing.

The reign of Richard II. is, in a constitutional light, the most interesting part of our earlier history; and it has been the most imperfectly written. Some have misrepresented the truth through prejudice, and others through carelessness. It is only to be understood, and, indeed, there are great difficulties in the way of understanding it at all, by a perusal of the rolls of parliament, with some assistance from the contemporary historians, Walsingham, Knyghton, the anonymous biographer published by Hearne, and Froissart. These, I must remark, except occasionally the last, are extremely hostile to Richard; and although we are far from being bound to acquiesce in their opinions, it is at least unwarrantable in modern writers to sprinkle their margins with references to such authority in support of positions decidedly opposite.[178]

[Sidenote: Circumstances attending Henry IV.'s accession.]