A School History of England/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES; RICHARD II TO RICHARD III, 1377–1485
The fifteenth century, a miserable time.As we go on in English history each period seems to have a character of its own. The twelfth century, in spite of Stephen's reign, is hopeful; the thirteenth is glorious, rich and fairly peaceful. In the fourteenth begins a decline, of which it is difficult to explain all the causes; both men and classes have begun to snarl at each other. In the fifteenth, the period now before us, they are going to bite each other; the century seems to be a failure all round.
The old society breaking up.The nation at large was by no means rotten; but men's sense of right and wrong had been corrupted by the French and Scottish wars. Too much fighting is as bad for men as too little. Also they were losing their faith in the Church, which had ceased to be the protector of the poor and thought mainly of keeping its enormous riches safe. Men were soon to lose their faith in the Crown as well, and even in the Law. In a rude state of society, when the barons were again becoming too rich and too powerful, and the Crown becoming too poor and too weak, the excellent system of government by Parliament, and even the excellent law courts, were of very little use; the barons used both for their own ends, and they kept armed men to enforce their views.
The quarrelsome earls and barons.In those days armies were only raised for particular campaigns, and, when peace came, were disbanded and the soldiers, who had perhaps been fighting for ten years in France, were not likely to be peaceful when they came home. So they used to attach themselves to some great lord or baron, who would employ them in his private quarrels. The numbers of the barons were now very small, but each was proportionately more powerful; and a great man might perhaps hold four or five earldoms. The younger sons of the kings held many of these, and were often the worst rowdies at the fashionable game of ‘beggar-my-neighbour’ and ‘king of the castle’. In my schoolboy days, when we were asked what we knew of any particular baron in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, we usually thought it safe to answer, ‘He was the King’s uncle and was put to death.’ Most of the King’s uncles and cousins were put to death, and more of them deserved to be.
As regards the mere ‘politics’ and wars of the hundred and eight years from the accession of Richard Il to the death of Richard III, there is little that you need remember.
Richard II, 1377–99; his character.Richard II had many good qualities, but he was rash and hot-headed, while he was a boy his uncles and some four or five other great barons were always trying to rule in his name; when they found this difficult, they conspired against him and killed his best friends. When he came of age they despised him because he kept the peace with France, whereas they and their plundering followers had enjoyed the war. Richard, however, was no coward, and when he was not yet fifteen he had a fine opportunity of showing his pluck. In 1381 the question of the wages of farm labourers, which had been so much upset by the Black Death in 1348, led to a fearful outbreak called the ‘Peasant Revolt’ (1381) all ,_p.99.jpg)
Tyler was killed, and the revolt was put down, not without a good deal of hanging. When that was over men’s eyes began to open to the fact that new conditions of life had begun. ‘Villeinage’ was dead; the only labourers left were free labourers, who naturally would bargain for the highest wages they could get. Also, much land had ceased to be ploughed and had gone back into pasture for sheep. For wool increased in value every year, and sheep need few hands to guard them.
Richard’s violence in 1397.But for the rest of his reign the King was either chafing against his uncles and their friends, or else planning schemes of vengeance against them. In 1397, after long waiting, he struck swiftly at the leaders of the barons, killing his uncle Thomas and banishing his cousin Henry of Lancaster (son of John of Gaunt, Edward Ill’s third son). Then he got Parliament to pass certain Acts which gave him almost absolute power, and all sober men, who reverenced both the Crown and the ‘Constitution ’ (which, roughly speaking, means government through Parliament), stood aghast at this.
Henry, Duke of Lancaster, becomes King, 1399, as Henry IV, 1399–1413.In 1399 Henry of Lancaster returned, accused Richard of misgovernment, deposed him and perhaps had him murdered. He then took the crown, and for fourteen years tried to rule England as King Henry IV, but without much success. The very barons who had aided him to usurp the throne said he did not reward them enough; they rose against him, and a sort of civil war began in 1403 and smouldered on for three or four years. Henry was not a bad fellow personally; he was devoted to the Church, and the Church supported him; so did the House of Commons, which got much power in his reign. But to keep order, the first task of a King, was too hard a task for him. He died in 1413. Henry V, 1413–22.His son Henry V, equally devoted to the Church, was a much stronger and cleverer man; there was no civil war in his short reign. But this was mainly because he put all his energies into renewing the war with France.
His attack on France, 1415.This really was wicked; whatever right Edward II might have had to the French crown, Henry V could have none, for he was not the best living heir of Edward II. The Earl of March was the best living heir of Edward III, for he was descended from Edward's second son, King Henry V only from his third; but March had been quietly shoved aside when Henry IV seized the English crown. However, France was in a worse condition than England; her king, Charles VI, was mad, and her great nobles were tearing each other and their beautiful country to pieces. Henry V saw his opportunity and used it without mercy or remorse. He probably thought that such a war would at least draw away all the baronial rowdies and their followers from England, and it did. Henry set about the business of making war in the most practical manner. His fleet and guns.We owe him one great blessing; he was the first king since the Conquest who began to build a Royal fleet, as distinguished from the fleet of the Cinque Ports (which he also kept going); he was the first to use guns ,_p.101.jpg)
ENGLISH ARCHERY WINS AT AGINCOURT
Treaty of Troyes, 1420 Death of Henry V, 1422. Henry VI, 1422–61. The Duke of Bedford continues the French War.
on a large scale, both on his ships and with his land army. Guns and gunpowder had been known before the middle of the fourteenth century, but so far had been little used. Their use explains Henry's success in his sieges in France, for with big guns you can batter down stone walls pretty quickly, whereas Edward III had spent eight months over the taking of Calais, which he only won by starving it out.
The French towns defended themselves gallantly, but, before his death, Henry had managed to conquer all Normandy, and had even reached the River Loire. Battle of Agincourt, 1415.But his great feat was the glorious battle of Agincourt, won against enormous odds in 1415. Treaty of Troyes, 1420.Finally in 1420 he got hold of the poor mad Charles VI, entered Paris with him and compelled him to conclude the Treaty of Troyes, by which he, Henry, should succeed to the French crown and marry the French princess Katharine. Death of Henry V, 1422.Then, in the flower of his age, and leaving to an infant of nine months old the succession to both crowns, he died in 1422.
Henry VI, 1422–61. The Duke of Bedford continues the French war.There was one good ‘king's uncle’, John, Duke of Bedford, who did his best to keep these two crowns on his nephew's head; but there were other uncles and cousins who were not so good. Little Henry VI grew up into a gentle, pious, tender-hearted man, who hated war, hated wicked courtiers, loved only learning and learned men, founded the greatest school in the world (Eton), and shut his eyes to the fact that England was getting utterly out of hand. Bedford just managed to hold down Northern France (which had always hated the Treaty of 1420) until his own death in 1435; after that all Frenchmen rallied to their natural King, Charles VII. The noble French ‘Maid of God’, Joan Joan of Arc.of Arc, came to lead her people and inspired them with the belief that God would fight for them if they would fight bravely for their country. She was just a peasant-girl of no education, but of beautiful life and well able to stand hardship; she believed that the Saints appeared to her and urged her to deliver France. The French soldiers came to believe it too, and she led them to battle dressed in full armour and riding astride of a white horse. She allowed no bad language to be used in the army: ‘If you must swear, Marshal,’ she said to one of the proudest French nobles, ‘you may swear by your stick, but by nothing else.’ The English caught her and burned her as a witch, but she lives in the hearts of all good Frenchmen (and Englishmen) as a saint and a heroine until this day. The English driven out of France, 1430–53.Step by step the English were driven back till all Normandy, all Aquitaine were lost, and in 1453 nothing remained to us but Calais.
Anger of the English; weakness of Henry VI’s government.King Henry VI was not sorry; by this time he knew how wicked his fathers attack upon France had been. But the fighting instinct of Englishmen was desperately sore; defeat after such victories seemed unbearable. And, while the barons’ quarrels round the King’s totterng throne became shriller and shriller, there were but too many men in England ready to fight somebody, they did not much care whom so long as there was plunder at the end. Henry's wife, Margaret of Anjou, a fiery, cruel woman, ignored her gentle husband and governed in his name. She had already made herself the partisan of one of the two baronial factions, and had struck down the King’s uncle the Duke of Gloucester. Her favourite minister, the Duke of Suffolk, was actually caught and beheaded by common sailors on board a King's ship as he was flying to France. What should we say if a lot of British sailors now caught and beheaded Mr. Asquith on board the Dreadnought? Insurrection of Jack Cade, 1450.In the same year 1450 there was a fearful insurrection in Kent, led by a scamp called Jack Cade, who marched into London and beheaded several more of the King’s ministers. Law and order were utterly at an end.
The Duke of York; the House of York and the House of Lancaster.The Duke of York, who was now the best living heir of Edward III, at length took up the cudgels against the House of Lancaster. There was civil war for some six years (1455-61), and battle after battle. The horror of it all had driven the good King, on two occasions, out of his mind. It was called the war of the House of York against the House of Lancaster, of the ‘White Rose’ against the ‘Red Rose’; really, it was the war of some dozen savage barons on one side against another dozen on the other. Each of them had a little army of archers and spearmen; each had perhaps the grudges of a century to pay off upon some rival. The war hardly affected the towns at all, and stopped trade very little; and even the country districts, except in the actual presence of the armies, seem to have suffered little. The growth of wool, at any rate, and with it the increase of riches, went on as fast as ever. ‘The King ought to put a sheep instead of a ship on his coins,’ was a common saying of the day. Of course the coasts were utterly undefended, and pirates of all sorts had a happy time in the Channel.
Wars of the Roses, 1455–61.If any line of division can be discovered in the country we may say roughly that the North and West were Lancastrian, the South and East (then the richest counties) Yorkist. At last Henry VI was deposed, Queen Margaret took flight, and Edward, Duke of York, became King as Edward IV. Edward IV becomes King, 1461.He was a thoroughly bad man, being cruel, vindictive and, except in warfare, lazy. But Margaret had been vindictive too, and, as regards cruelty, there was little to choose between the parties; after every battle the leaders of the vanquished side were put to death almost as a matter of course.
The Earl of Warwick, called the Kingmaker.But, just as Henry IV had quarrelled with the barons who had crowned him, so did Edward IV quarrel with his ‘Kingmaker’ and best friend, the Earl of Warwick. Restoration of Henry VI, 1470–1.Warwick thereupon deposed Edward and took poor Henry VI, who had been an ill-used prisoner in the Tower of London, and put him back on the throne again. Edward IV again, 1471–83.It was only a six months’ restoration (1470-1), for Edward returned, slew Warwick in battle, slew Henry’s only son after the battle, slew all the Lancastrian leaders he could catch, and finally had King Henry murdered in the Tower. After this he ‘reigned more fiercely than before’; he struck down his own brother George, Duke of Clarence; he employed spies, tortured his prisoners, and hardly called Parliament at all; he took what taxes he pleased from the rich. But he kept order very little better than Henry VI had done. Once he thought he would play the part of a ‘fine old English king’, so he led a great army across to France in 1475, but there allowed himself to be bribed by the cunning Louis XI to go home again without firing a shot. At his death in 1483 his brother, the hunchback Richard, seized the crown, and murdered Edwards two sons Edward V 1483; Richard III, 1483–5.(Edward V and Richard, Duke of York) in the Tower. Richard III was a fierce, vigorous villain, and had, in two years and a half, succeeded in murdering a good many nobles, both of the Lancastrian and Yorkist parties.
The Earl of Richmond comes to England.Finally, all the sober English leaders who still kept their heads began to send secret messages to a famous exiled gentleman, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who was descended through his mother from the House of Lancaster, begging him to come over from France and upset the tyrant. He was to marry, Edward IV's daughter Elizabeth, and thus to unite the Red and White Roses. Henry landed in South Wales with a very small army, which increased as he marched eastwards. Battle of Bosworth, 1485.He met King Richard, defeated and slew him at Bosworth in Leicestershire, 1485. Then he advanced to London and was received with joy and relief as King Henry VII.
The seeds of the Reformation.Apart from the politics and wars of this dreary period there are one or two things to be noticed of much greater interest for us. Every age is only preparation for the next, and the seeds of many of the great ‘awakenings’ of the sixteenth century were sowed in the fifteenth.
First, of the religious awakening. We had long been accustomed to growl at the riches of the Church, but, till the end of Edward III’s reign, no one had questioned its spiritual powers. No one had doubted that priests could really pardon sin. Hatred of Rome and of the rich churchmen.Men hated the Pope, but no one had yet doubted that he was the ‘Head of the Church’ any more than they had doubted that every priest performed a miracle every time he consecrated the Holy Sacrament. Few had even questioned that by payment of money to Rome you could buy salvation. But the popes, when they got back to Rome, after the ‘Great Schism’ was ended in 1415, were little more than Italian bishops, mainly occupied with wars against their neighbours. No doubt their bark was still terrible, but what about their bite? Had they, people wondered, any teeth left to bite with?
John Wyclif.At the end of Edward III’s reign the great English scholar, John Wyclif, began to ask questions about all these things, and to argue that the favourite doctrines of the Roman Church were all comparatively new, that they were not part of Christ's teaching, and could not be found in the Bible at all. He published an English translation of the Bible; hitherto men had only a Latin version of it, and the Church did not encourage laymen to read it. He also founded an order of ‘poor priests’, who were to go about preaching simple Christianity.
The Lollard ‘heresy’.The English bishops were absolutely terrified; and the monks, abbots and friars more terrified still. These had long known what greedy eyes laymen cast on their vast wealth. Wyclif, said the great churchmen, was a ‘heretic’, and ought to be burned alive (he died in his bed all safe in 1384). Heretics burned.In the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V the clergy persuaded Parliament to make laws saying that heretics should be burned alive, and many of Wyclifs followers, during the next hundred and twenty years, were actually so burned. The Church nicknamed them ‘Lollards ’, or babblers.
The ‘State’, as represented by the King and Parliament, somewhat unwillingly supported the churchmen in this matter; yet on the whole the State considered that these Lollards were raising dreadful questions, and it would be better to crush them and not allow them the safety-valve of talking. The Church sat on the safety-valve as long as it could; but the steam of free thought was bubbling underneath, and, once it had gathered head enough, would blow those that sat on the safety-valve sky-high into little tiny pieces. When Lollardy bursts forth again in the reign of Henry VIII it will be called by the better name of ‘Protestantism’.
Changes coming all over Europe.Other changes, too, were not far away. For nearly a thousand years past the nations of Europe had been considered as one great family, of which the Pope and, since 800, some hazy German king who called himself ‘Roman Emperor’ were supposed to be the two heads; other kings were, or ought to be, vassals of these two. The Kings of England and France had never really admitted these large claims, and that was why England and France were ahead of other nations. But all these ideas were out of date; the spirit of the Crusades was dead, the commercial rivalry of great nations had begun. Gunpowder.Gunpowder was changing the face of war and was making the strongest and heaviest armour quite useless. Printing.The printing of books with movable type was discovered about 1459, and, at Westminster, William Caxton was printing English and Latin books in the reign of Edward IV. Discovery.In the same reign certain Bristol merchants were sailing far into the Atlantic, to discover half-mythical islands, of which dim stories, long forgotten, were now being revived and retold; they did not find any such islands till the reign of Henry VII had begun. Spaniards led by Columbus were the first to set foot in America in 1492; Portuguese were the first to round the Cape of Good Hope five years later. But the idea of new worlds to be discovered was in the air. Greek learning.Finally, the Turks had taken Constantinople in 1453, and its exiles, who still spoke a sort of Greek and possessed many manuscripts of the ancient Greek philosophers, came to Italy and began to spread the knowledge of Greek to Western Europe.
Men begin to wake up.Four things, then, were to change the face of the world—gunpowder, printing, geographical discovery, and Greek. They would lead men first to wonder, then to reflect, and lastly to question—to question whether all the tales which the Church had been telling the world for a thousand years were true or false. Could Becket’s bones really restore a dead man to life? Could a priest turn bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ? Was the world really flat, and did the sun and moon go round it, as the Church said they did? Might there possibly be other worlds? You can understand, then, that the end of the fifteenth century left men rubbing their eyes, half awake and uneasy, but thinking—thinking hard.
The Dawn Wind.
At two o'clock in the morning, if you open your window and listen,
You will hear the feet of the Wind that is going to call the sun.
And the trees in the shadow rustle and the trees in the moonlight glisten,
And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is done.
Dozing and chewing the cud; or a bird in the ivy wakes,
Chirrups one note and is still, and the restless Wind strays on,
Fidgeting far down the road, till, softly, the darkness breaks.
Gentle but waking the world, as he shouts: ‘The Sun! The Sun!’
And the light floods over the fields and the birds begin to sing,
And the Wind dies down in the grass. It is Day and his work is done.
Out of some long, bad dream that makes her mutter and moan,
Suddenly, all men arise to the noise of fetters breaking,
And every one smiles at his neighbour and tells him his soul is his own!