Richard, son of the Black Prince,
a boy eleven years of age, succeeded to the Crown
under the title of King Richard the Second. The
whole English nation were ready to admire him for
the sake of his brave father. As to the lords
and ladies about the Court, they declared him to be
the most beautiful, the wisest, and the best even
of princes whom the lords and ladies about
the Court, generally declare to be the most beautiful,
the wisest, and the best of mankind. To flatter
a poor boy in this base manner was not a very likely
way to develop whatever good was in him; and it brought
him to anything but a good or happy end.
The Duke of Lancaster, the young King’s
uncle commonly called John of Gaunt, from
having been born at Ghent, which the common people
so pronounced was supposed to have some
thoughts of the throne himself; but, as he was not
popular, and the memory of the Black Prince was, he
submitted to his nephew.
The war with France being still unsettled,
the Government of England wanted money to provide
for the expenses that might arise out of it; accordingly
a certain tax, called the Poll-tax, which had originated
in the last reign, was ordered to be levied on the
people. This was a tax on every person in the
kingdom, male and female, above the age of fourteen,
of three groats (or three four-penny pieces) a year;
clergymen were charged more, and only beggars were
exempt.
I have no need to repeat that the
common people of England had long been suffering under
great oppression. They were still the mere slaves
of the lords of the land on which they lived, and
were on most occasions harshly and unjustly treated.
But, they had begun by this time to think very seriously
of not bearing quite so much; and, probably, were emboldened
by that French insurrection I mentioned in the last
chapter.
The people of Essex rose against the
Poll-tax, and being severely handled by the government
officers, killed some of them. At this very time
one of the tax-collectors, going his rounds from house
to house, at Dartford in Kent came to the cottage
of one WAT, a tiler by trade, and claimed the tax
upon his daughter. Her mother, who was at home,
declared that she was under the age of fourteen; upon
that, the collector (as other collectors had already
done in different parts of England) behaved in a savage
way, and brutally insulted Wat Tyler’s daughter.
The daughter screamed, the mother screamed.
Wat the Tiler, who was at work not far off, ran to
the spot, and did what any honest father under such
provocation might have done struck the collector
dead at a blow.
Instantly the people of that town
uprose as one man. They made Wat Tyler their
leader; they joined with the people of Essex, who were
in arms under a priest called JACK STRAW; they took
out of prison another priest named JOHN BALL; and
gathering in numbers as they went along, advanced,
in a great confused army of poor men, to Blackheath.
It is said that they wanted to abolish all property,
and to declare all men equal. I do not think
this very likely; because they stopped the travellers
on the roads and made them swear to be true to King
Richard and the people. Nor were they at all
disposed to injure those who had done them no harm,
merely because they were of high station; for, the
King’s mother, who had to pass through their
camp at Blackheath, on her way to her young son, lying
for safety in the Tower of London, had merely to kiss
a few dirty-faced rough-bearded men who were noisily
fond of royalty, and so got away in perfect safety.
Next day the whole mass marched on to London Bridge.
There was a drawbridge in the middle,
which WILLIAM WALWORTH the Mayor caused to be raised
to prevent their coming into the city; but they soon
terrified the citizens into lowering it again, and
spread themselves, with great uproar, over the streets.
They broke open the prisons; they burned the papers
in Lambeth Palace; they destroyed the DUKE OF LANCASTER’S
Palace, the Savoy, in the Strand, said to be the most
beautiful and splendid in England; they set fire to
the books and documents in the Temple; and made a
great riot. Many of these outrages were committed
in drunkenness; since those citizens, who had well-filled
cellars, were only too glad to throw them open to save
the rest of their property; but even the drunken rioters
were very careful to steal nothing. They were
so angry with one man, who was seen to take a silver
cup at the Savoy Palace, and put it in his breast,
that they drowned him in the river, cup and all.
The young King had been taken out
to treat with them before they committed these excesses;
but, he and the people about him were so frightened
by the riotous shouts, that they got back to the Tower
in the best way they could. This made the insurgents
bolder; so they went on rioting away, striking off
the heads of those who did not, at a moment’s
notice, declare for King Richard and the people; and
killing as many of the unpopular persons whom they
supposed to be their enemies as they could by any
means lay hold of. In this manner they passed
one very violent day, and then proclamation was made
that the King would meet them at Mile-end, and grant
their requests.
The rioters went to Mile-end to the
number of sixty thousand, and the King met them there,
and to the King the rioters peaceably proposed four
conditions. First, that neither they, nor their
children, nor any coming after them, should be made
slaves any more. Secondly, that the rent of
land should be fixed at a certain price in money, instead
of being paid in service. Thirdly, that they
should have liberty to buy and sell in all markets
and public places, like other free men. Fourthly,
that they should be pardoned for past offences.
Heaven knows, there was nothing very unreasonable
in these proposals! The young King deceitfully
pretended to think so, and kept thirty clerks up, all
night, writing out a charter accordingly.
Now, Wat Tyler himself wanted more
than this. He wanted the entire abolition of
the forest laws. He was not at Mile-end with
the rest, but, while that meeting was being held,
broke into the Tower of London and slew the archbishop
and the treasurer, for whose heads the people had
cried out loudly the day before. He and his men
even thrust their swords into the bed of the Princess
of Wales while the Princess was in it, to make certain
that none of their enemies were concealed there.
So, Wat and his men still continued
armed, and rode about the city. Next morning,
the King with a small train of some sixty gentlemen among
whom was WALWORTH the Mayor rode into Smithfield,
and saw Wat and his people at a little distance.
Says Wat to his men, ’There is the King.
I will go speak with him, and tell him what we want.’
Straightway Wat rode up to him, and
began to talk. ‘King,’ says Wat,
‘dost thou see all my men there?’
‘Ah,’ says the King. ‘Why?’
‘Because,’ says Wat, ’they
are all at my command, and have sworn to do whatever
I bid them.’
Some declared afterwards that as Wat
said this, he laid his hand on the King’s bridle.
Others declared that he was seen to play with his
own dagger. I think, myself, that he just spoke
to the King like a rough, angry man as he was, and
did nothing more. At any rate he was expecting
no attack, and preparing for no resistance, when Walworth
the Mayor did the not very valiant deed of drawing
a short sword and stabbing him in the throat.
He dropped from his horse, and one of the King’s
people speedily finished him. So fell Wat Tyler.
Fawners and flatterers made a mighty triumph of it,
and set up a cry which will occasionally find an echo
to this day. But Wat was a hard-working man,
who had suffered much, and had been foully outraged;
and it is probable that he was a man of a much higher
nature and a much braver spirit than any of the parasites
who exulted then, or have exulted since, over his
defeat.
Seeing Wat down, his men immediately
bent their bows to avenge his fall. If the young
King had not had presence of mind at that dangerous
moment, both he and the Mayor to boot, might have
followed Tyler pretty fast. But the King riding
up to the crowd, cried out that Tyler was a traitor,
and that he would be their leader. They were
so taken by surprise, that they set up a great shouting,
and followed the boy until he was met at Islington
by a large body of soldiers.
The end of this rising was the then
usual end. As soon as the King found himself
safe, he unsaid all he had said, and undid all he had
done; some fifteen hundred of the rioters were tried
(mostly in Essex) with great rigour, and executed
with great cruelty. Many of them were hanged
on gibbets, and left there as a terror to the country
people; and, because their miserable friends took
some of the bodies down to bury, the King ordered
the rest to be chained up which was the
beginning of the barbarous custom of hanging in chains.
The King’s falsehood in this business makes
such a pitiful figure, that I think Wat Tyler appears
in history as beyond comparison the truer and more
respectable man of the two.
Richard was now sixteen years of age,
and married Anne of Bohemia, an excellent princess,
who was called ‘the good Queen Anne.’
She deserved a better husband; for the King had been
fawned and flattered into a treacherous, wasteful,
dissolute, bad young man.
There were two Popes at this time
(as if one were not enough!), and their quarrels involved
Europe in a great deal of trouble. Scotland was
still troublesome too; and at home there was much
jealousy and distrust, and plotting and counter-plotting,
because the King feared the ambition of his relations,
and particularly of his uncle, the Duke of Lancaster,
and the duke had his party against the King, and the
King had his party against the duke. Nor were
these home troubles lessened when the duke went to
Castile to urge his claim to the crown of that kingdom;
for then the Duke of Gloucester, another of Richard’s
uncles, opposed him, and influenced the Parliament
to demand the dismissal of the King’s favourite
ministers. The King said in reply, that he would
not for such men dismiss the meanest servant in his
kitchen. But, it had begun to signify little
what a King said when a Parliament was determined;
so Richard was at last obliged to give way, and to
agree to another Government of the kingdom, under
a commission of fourteen nobles, for a year.
His uncle of Gloucester was at the head of this commission,
and, in fact, appointed everybody composing it.
Having done all this, the King declared
as soon as he saw an opportunity that he had never
meant to do it, and that it was all illegal; and he
got the judges secretly to sign a declaration to that
effect. The secret oozed out directly, and was
carried to the Duke of Gloucester. The Duke
of Gloucester, at the head of forty thousand men, met
the King on his entering into London to enforce his
authority; the King was helpless against him; his
favourites and ministers were impeached and were mercilessly
executed. Among them were two men whom the people
regarded with very different feelings; one, Robert
Tresilian, Chief Justice, who was hated for having
made what was called ‘the bloody circuit’
to try the rioters; the other, Sir Simon Burley, an
honourable knight, who had been the dear friend of
the Black Prince, and the governor and guardian of
the King. For this gentleman’s life the
good Queen even begged of Gloucester on her knees;
but Gloucester (with or without reason) feared and
hated him, and replied, that if she valued her husband’s
crown, she had better beg no more. All this
was done under what was called by some the wonderful and
by others, with better reason, the merciless Parliament.
But Gloucester’s power was not
to last for ever. He held it for only a year
longer; in which year the famous battle of Otterbourne,
sung in the old ballad of Chevy Chase, was fought.
When the year was out, the King, turning suddenly
to Gloucester, in the midst of a great council said,
‘Uncle, how old am I?’ ‘Your highness,’
returned the Duke, ’is in your twenty-second
year.’ ‘Am I so much?’ said
the King; ’then I will manage my own affairs!
I am much obliged to you, my good lords, for your
past services, but I need them no more.’
He followed this up, by appointing a new Chancellor
and a new Treasurer, and announced to the people that
he had resumed the Government. He held it for
eight years without opposition. Through all
that time, he kept his determination to revenge himself
some day upon his uncle Gloucester, in his own breast.
At last the good Queen died, and then
the King, desiring to take a second wife, proposed
to his council that he should marry Isabella, of France,
the daughter of Charles the Sixth: who, the French
courtiers said (as the English courtiers had said
of Richard), was a marvel of beauty and wit, and quite
a phenomenon of seven years old. The
council were divided about this marriage, but it took
place. It secured peace between England and
France for a quarter of a century; but it was strongly
opposed to the prejudices of the English people.
The Duke of Gloucester, who was anxious to take the
occasion of making himself popular, declaimed against
it loudly, and this at length decided the King to execute
the vengeance he had been nursing so long.
He went with a gay company to the
Duke of Gloucester’s house, Pleshey Castle,
in Essex, where the Duke, suspecting nothing, came
out into the court-yard to receive his royal visitor.
While the King conversed in a friendly manner with
the Duchess, the Duke was quietly seized, hurried
away, shipped for Calais, and lodged in the castle
there. His friends, the Earls of Arundel and
Warwick, were taken in the same treacherous manner,
and confined to their castles. A few days after,
at Nottingham, they were impeached of high treason.
The Earl of Arundel was condemned and beheaded, and
the Earl of Warwick was banished. Then, a writ
was sent by a messenger to the Governor of Calais,
requiring him to send the Duke of Gloucester over
to be tried. In three days he returned an answer
that he could not do that, because the Duke of Gloucester
had died in prison. The Duke was declared a
traitor, his property was confiscated to the King,
a real or pretended confession he had made in prison
to one of the Justices of the Common Pleas was produced
against him, and there was an end of the matter.
How the unfortunate duke died, very few cared to
know. Whether he really died naturally; whether
he killed himself; whether, by the King’s order,
he was strangled, or smothered between two beds (as
a serving-man of the Governor’s named Hall, did
afterwards declare), cannot be discovered. There
is not much doubt that he was killed, somehow or other,
by his nephew’s orders. Among the most
active nobles in these proceedings were the King’s
cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, whom the King had made
Duke of Hereford to smooth down the old family quarrels,
and some others: who had in the family-plotting
times done just such acts themselves as they now condemned
in the duke. They seem to have been a corrupt
set of men; but such men were easily found about the
court in such days.
The people murmured at all this, and
were still very sore about the French marriage.
The nobles saw how little the King cared for law,
and how crafty he was, and began to be somewhat afraid
for themselves. The King’s life was a
life of continued feasting and excess; his retinue,
down to the meanest servants, were dressed in the most
costly manner, and caroused at his tables, it is related,
to the number of ten thousand persons every day.
He himself, surrounded by a body of ten thousand
archers, and enriched by a duty on wool which the Commons
had granted him for life, saw no danger of ever being
otherwise than powerful and absolute, and was as fierce
and haughty as a King could be.
He had two of his old enemies left,
in the persons of the Dukes of Hereford and Norfolk.
Sparing these no more than the others, he tampered
with the Duke of Hereford until he got him to declare
before the Council that the Duke of Norfolk had lately
held some treasonable talk with him, as he was riding
near Brentford; and that he had told him, among other
things, that he could not believe the King’s
oath which nobody could, I should think.
For this treachery he obtained a pardon, and the Duke
of Norfolk was summoned to appear and defend himself.
As he denied the charge and said his accuser was
a liar and a traitor, both noblemen, according to
the manner of those times, were held in custody, and
the truth was ordered to be decided by wager of battle
at Coventry. This wager of battle meant that
whosoever won the combat was to be considered in the
right; which nonsense meant in effect, that no strong
man could ever be wrong. A great holiday was
made; a great crowd assembled, with much parade and
show; and the two combatants were about to rush at
each other with their lances, when the King, sitting
in a pavilion to see fair, threw down the truncheon
he carried in his hand, and forbade the battle.
The Duke of Hereford was to be banished for ten years,
and the Duke of Norfolk was to be banished for life.
So said the King. The Duke of Hereford went
to France, and went no farther. The Duke of Norfolk
made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and afterwards
died at Venice of a broken heart.
Faster and fiercer, after this, the
King went on in his career. The Duke of Lancaster,
who was the father of the Duke of Hereford, died soon
after the departure of his son; and, the King, although
he had solemnly granted to that son leave to inherit
his father’s property, if it should come to
him during his banishment, immediately seized it all,
like a robber. The judges were so afraid of
him, that they disgraced themselves by declaring this
theft to be just and lawful. His avarice knew
no bounds. He outlawed seventeen counties at
once, on a frivolous pretence, merely to raise money
by way of fines for misconduct. In short, he
did as many dishonest things as he could; and cared
so little for the discontent of his subjects though
even the spaniel favourites began to whisper to him
that there was such a thing as discontent afloat that
he took that time, of all others, for leaving England
and making an expedition against the Irish.
He was scarcely gone, leaving the
DUKE OF YORK Regent in his absence, when his cousin,
Henry of Hereford, came over from France to claim the
rights of which he had been so monstrously deprived.
He was immediately joined by the two great Earls
of Northumberland and Westmoreland; and his uncle,
the Regent, finding the King’s cause unpopular,
and the disinclination of the army to act against
Henry, very strong, withdrew with the Royal forces
towards Bristol. Henry, at the head of an army,
came from Yorkshire (where he had landed) to London
and followed him. They joined their forces how
they brought that about, is not distinctly understood and
proceeded to Bristol Castle, whither three noblemen
had taken the young Queen. The castle surrendering,
they presently put those three noblemen to death.
The Regent then remained there, and Henry went on
to Chester.
All this time, the boisterous weather
had prevented the King from receiving intelligence
of what had occurred. At length it was conveyed
to him in Ireland, and he sent over the EARL OF SALISBURY,
who, landing at Conway, rallied the Welshmen, and
waited for the King a whole fortnight; at the end
of that time the Welshmen, who were perhaps not very
warm for him in the beginning, quite cooled down and
went home. When the King did land on the coast
at last, he came with a pretty good power, but his
men cared nothing for him, and quickly deserted.
Supposing the Welshmen to be still at Conway, he
disguised himself as a priest, and made for that place
in company with his two brothers and some few of their
adherents. But, there were no Welshmen left only
Salisbury and a hundred soldiers. In this distress,
the King’s two brothers, Exeter and Surrey,
offered to go to Henry to learn what his intentions
were. Surrey, who was true to Richard, was put
into prison. Exeter, who was false, took the
royal badge, which was a hart, off his shield, and
assumed the rose, the badge of Henry. After
this, it was pretty plain to the King what Henry’s
intentions were, without sending any more messengers
to ask.
The fallen King, thus deserted hemmed
in on all sides, and pressed with hunger rode
here and rode there, and went to this castle, and went
to that castle, endeavouring to obtain some provisions,
but could find none. He rode wretchedly back
to Conway, and there surrendered himself to the Earl
of Northumberland, who came from Henry, in reality
to take him prisoner, but in appearance to offer terms;
and whose men were hidden not far off. By this
earl he was conducted to the castle of Flint, where
his cousin Henry met him, and dropped on his knee
as if he were still respectful to his sovereign.
‘Fair cousin of Lancaster,’
said the King, ‘you are very welcome’ (very
welcome, no doubt; but he would have been more so,
in chains or without a head).
‘My lord,’ replied Henry,
’I am come a little before my time; but, with
your good pleasure, I will show you the reason.
Your people complain with some bitterness, that you
have ruled them rigorously for two-and-twenty years.
Now, if it please God, I will help you to govern them
better in future.’
‘Fair cousin,’ replied
the abject King, ’since it pleaseth you, it
pleaseth me mightily.’
After this, the trumpets sounded,
and the King was stuck on a wretched horse, and carried
prisoner to Chester, where he was made to issue a
proclamation, calling a Parliament. From Chester
he was taken on towards London. At Lichfield
he tried to escape by getting out of a window and
letting himself down into a garden; it was all in vain,
however, and he was carried on and shut up in the
Tower, where no one pitied him, and where the whole
people, whose patience he had quite tired out, reproached
him without mercy. Before he got there, it is
related, that his very dog left him and departed from
his side to lick the hand of Henry.
The day before the Parliament met,
a deputation went to this wrecked King, and told him
that he had promised the Earl of Northumberland at
Conway Castle to resign the crown. He said he
was quite ready to do it, and signed a paper in which
he renounced his authority and absolved his people
from their allegiance to him. He had so little
spirit left that he gave his royal ring to his triumphant
cousin Henry with his own hand, and said, that if
he could have had leave to appoint a successor, that
same Henry was the man of all others whom he would
have named. Next day, the Parliament assembled
in Westminster Hall, where Henry sat at the side of
the throne, which was empty and covered with a cloth
of gold. The paper just signed by the King was
read to the multitude amid shouts of joy, which were
echoed through all the streets; when some of the noise
had died away, the King was formally deposed.
Then Henry arose, and, making the sign of the cross
on his forehead and breast, challenged the realm of
England as his right; the archbishops of Canterbury
and York seated him on the throne.
The multitude shouted again, and the
shouts re-echoed throughout all the streets.
No one remembered, now, that Richard the Second had
ever been the most beautiful, the wisest, and the
best of princes; and he now made living (to my thinking)
a far more sorry spectacle in the Tower of London,
than Wat Tyler had made, lying dead, among the hoofs
of the royal horses in Smithfield.
The Poll-tax died with Wat.
The Smiths to the King and Royal Family, could make
no chains in which the King could hang the people’s
recollection of him; so the Poll-tax was never collected.