bishops succeeded in calling in the crown to their aid, and
passed the statute De heretico comburendo, that Lollardy ceased
to flourish.
King Richard meanwhile had grown to man’s estate, and had resolved to take the reins of power into his own hands. He was wayward, high-spirited and self-confident. He wished to restore the royal powers which had slipped into the hands of the council and parliament during Richard’s personal rule. his minority, and had small doubts of his capacity to restore it. His chosen instruments were two men whom his enemies called his “favourites,” though it was absurd to apply the name either to an elderly statesman like Michael de la Pole, who was made chancellor in 1384, or to Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, a young noble of the oldest lineage, who was the king’s other confidant. Neither of them was an upstart, and both, the one from his experience and the other from his high station, were persons who might legitimately aspire to a place among the advisers of the king. But Richard was tactless; he openly flouted his two uncles, John of Gaunt and Thomas of Woodstock, and took no pains to conciliate either the baronage or the commons. His autocratic airs and his ostentatious preference for his confidants—of whom he made the one earl of Suffolk Impeachment of the king’s “favourites.” and the other marquess of Dublin—provoked both lords and commons. Pole was impeached on a groundless charge of corruption and condemned, but Richard at once pardoned him and restored him to favour. De Vere was banished to Ireland, but at his master’s desire omitted to leave the realm. The contemptuous disregard for the will of parliament which the king displayed brought on him a worse fate than he deserved. His youngest uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, was a designing and ambitious prince who saw his own advantage in embittering the strife between Richard and his parliament. John of Gaunt having departed to Spain, where he was stirring up civil strife in the name of his wife, the heiress of Peter the Cruel, Gloucester put himself at the head of the opposition. Playing the part of the demagogue, and exaggerating all his nephew’s petulant acts and sayings, he declared the constitution in danger, and took arms at the head of a party of peers, the earls of Warwick, Arundel and Nottingham, and Henry, earl of Derby, the son of John of The “lords appellant.” Gaunt, who called themselves the lords appellant, because they were ready to “appeal” Richard’s councillors of treason. Public opinion was against the king, and the small army which his confidant De Vere raised under the royal banner was easily scattered by Gloucester’s forces at the rout of Radcot Bridge (Dec. 20, 1387). Oxford and Suffolk succeeded in escaping to France, but the king and the rest of his adherents fell into the hands of the lords appellant. They threatened for a moment to depose him, but finally placed him under the control of a council and ministers Execution of the king’s friends. chosen by themselves, and to put him in a proper state of terror, executed Lord Beauchamp, the judge, Sir Robert Tressilian, and six or seven more of his chief friends. This was a piece of gratuitous cruelty, for the king, though wayward and unwise, had done nothing to justify such treatment.
To the surprise of the nation Richard took his humiliation
quietly. But he was merely biding his time; he had sworn
revenge in his heart, but he was ready to wait long for
it. For the next nine years he appeared an unexceptionable
sovereign, anxious only to conciliate the
Richard rules constitu-tionally.
Peace with France.
nation and parliament. He got rid of the ministers
imposed upon him by the lords appellant, but replaced them
by Bishop Wykeham and other old statesmen against whom
no objection could be raised. He disarmed Gloucester by making
a close alliance with his elder uncle John of Gaunt, who had been
absent in Spain during the troubles of 1387–1388, and was displeased
at the violent doings of his brother. His rule was mild
and moderate, and he succeeded at last in freeing
himself from the incubus of the French war—the
source of most of the evils of the time, for it was the
heavy taxation required to feed this struggle which embittered
all the domestic politics of the realm. After two long truces,
which filled the years 1390–1395, a definitive peace was at last
concluded, by which the English king kept Calais and the coast-strip
of Guienne, from Bordeaux to Bayonne, which had never
been lost to the enemy. To confirm the peace, he married
Isabella, the young daughter of Charles VI. (Nov. 1396); he
had lost his first wife, the excellent Anne of Bohemia, two years
before.
The king seemed firmly seated on his throne—so much so that
in 1395 he had found leisure for a long expedition to Ireland,
which none of his ancestors had visited since King
John. He compelled all the native princes to do him
homage, and exercised the royal authority in such a
Richard reduces Ireland to obedience.
His revenge on Gloucester and the lords appellant.
Banishment of Bolingbroke and Norfolk.
firm manner as had never before been known in the
island. But those who looked forward to quiet and prosperous
times both for Ireland and for England were destined to be undeceived.
In 1397 Richard carried out an extraordinary and
unexpected coup d’état, which he had evidently premeditated
for many years. Having lived down his unpopularity, and made
himself many powerful friends, he resolved to take his long-deferred
revenge on Gloucester and the other lords appellant.
He trumped up a vain story that his uncle was once more
conspiring against him, arrested him, and sent him
over to Calais, where he was secretly murdered in
prison. At the same time Gloucester’s two chief
confederates of 1387, the earls of Arundel and Warwick,
were tried and sentenced to death: the former was
actually executed, the latter imprisoned for life. The
other two lords appellant, Mowbray, duke of Norfolk,[1] and
Henry of Bolingbroke, the son of John of Gaunt, were dealt
with a year later. Richard pretended to hold them among his
best friends, but in 1398 induced Bolingbroke to accuse
Norfolk of treasonable language. Mowbray denied it,
and challenged his accuser to a judicial duel. When
they were actually facing each other in the lists at
Coventry, the king forbade them to fight, and announced
that he banished them both—Henry for six years,
Norfolk for life.
Having thus completed his vengeance on those who had slain his friends ten years before—their respective punishments were judiciously adapted to their several responsibilities in that matter—Richard began to behave in an arbitrary and unconstitutional fashion. He evidently thought Arbitrary rule of Richard. that no one would dare to lift a hand against him after the examples that he had just made. This might have been so, if he had continued to rule as cautiously as during the time when he was nursing his scheme of revenge. But now his brain seemed to be turned by success—indeed his wild language at times seemed to argue that he was not wholly sane. He declared that all pardons issued since 1387 were invalid, and imposed heavy fines on persons, and even on whole shires, that had given the lords appellant aid. He made huge forced loans, and employed recklessly the abuse of purveyance. He browbeat the judges on the bench, and kept many persons under arrest for indefinite periods without a trial. But the act which provoked the nation most was that he terrified the parliament which met at Shrewsbury in 1398 into voting away its powers to a small committee of ten persons, all creatures of his own. This body he used as his instrument of government, treating its assent as equivalent to that of a whole parliament in session. There seemed to be an end to the constitutional liberties of England.
Such violence, however, speedily brought its own punishment.
In 1399 Richard sailed over to Ireland to put down a revolt of
the native princes, who had defeated and slain the
earl of March, his cousin and their lord-lieutenant.
While he was absent Henry of Bolingbroke landed
Second expedition
to Ireland.
at Ravenspur with a small body of exiles and mercenaries.
He pretended that he had merely come to claim the
estates and title of his father John of Gaunt, who had died a
few months before. The adventurer was at once joined by the
- ↑ The Nottingham of 1387, who had been promoted to the higher title.
