1399-1400]

INTRODUCTORY.

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exercised without much opposition rights for which it had fought during the fourteenth century, namely, the voting of taxes, the

of his own lusty arms; but he who surrendered | period was to consolidate and organize the that right to either prayers or threatenings, and results of previous struggles. The Parliament flung back to his people any portion of the freedom that had belonged to them before, that belonged to them still, and that no act of theirs could alienate or destroy, for ever barred appropriation of subsidies, the investigation of himself and his descendants from the resumption of a conqueror's claims. The struggle between two such principles as tyranny and freedom, once set on foot, admits of no compromise. A generation of men who have insisted upon certain rights for themselves, cannot by subsequent indolence or indifference be said to have bargained away those rights from a succeeding generation; nor, when the theft of a people's liberties has been confessed by one restoration of them, can any prince into whose violent keeping they may again fall, claim exemption from the penalties of political crime. The chief and the receiver are classed together by English laws.

the public accounts, intervention in the executive, and the impeachment of great officers of the crown. The kings, though frequently seeking to elude the assertion of these rights, never ignored them completely or braved them openly. The political machine remained almost unaltered; but though it underwent no great revolutions, it received many important developments and applications. Practical ameliorations were sought after and attained; further consequences were deduced from established principles; and this epoch is more remarkable for various improvements in the springs of Parliamentary government than for the conquest of great rights or the formation of fundamental institutions.

The internal constitution of the Parliament, especially during the course of this period, made important progress; and from this time may be dated with some degree of accuracy its principal forms of procedure and its most essential

It is impossible to comprehend the entire scope of the character and influence of great events. Some occurrences, which procure order and liberty for the present, prepare the way for tyranny and confusion in the future; while others, on the contrary, establish absolute power at first, and subsequently give birth to full political freedom. This reflection arises. This reflection arises on privileges. Of these, one of the most essential, considering the prodigious difference between the immediate results and the remote consequences of the deposition of Richard II. It delivered England from an arbitrary, insolent, and disorderly government; but sixty years afterwards it gave rise to the wars of the Red and White Roses, and to all those cruel internal distractions which facilitated the establishment of the Tudor despotism; so that the decay of English liberties, from 1461 to 1640, had its primary source in the event which, in 1399, seemed likely to ensure their triumph.

In considering the general character of the state of government from 1399 to 1461, under the first three kings of the House of Lancaster, it must be admitted that this period was remarkable neither for the unchangeableness nor for the progress of political institutions. During this epoch, the Parliament gained none of those signal victories which distinguish the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II.; no really new right, no fundamental and previously unknown guarantee, was added to those already possessed. Neither did arbitrary power again assume the offensive and obtain the advantage. The crown and the Parliament engaged in no serious conflict threatening the existence of either party, or tending materially to change their degrees of political importance. In truth, the work of this

is liberty of speech. During the reign of Henry IV., the Speaker of the House of Commons demanded this of the king at the opening of every session. One of the first acts of the first Parliament held during this reign, was to obtain the revocation of the sentence passed during the previous reign upon Thomas Haxey, who was fined and degraded for proceedings in the House of Commons which were alleged to be a trenching upon the royal prerogative. Every circumstance proves that under Henry IV. the Commons asserted greater liberty of speech than they had done previously. This was indeed. made a subject of special praise to Sir John Tibetot, Speaker in the Parliament of 1406. The king soon manifested great distrust of the extension given to this right, which was probably exercised with all the rude characteristic of the manners of that time. In 1410, he told the Commons that he hoped they would no longer use unbecoming language, but act with moderation. In 1411, the Speaker, Sir Thomas Chaucer, having made the usual demand at the opening of the session, the king replied that he would allow the Commons to speak as others before had done, but that "he would have no novelties introduced, and would enjoy his prerogative." The Speaker requested three days to give a written answer to this

lords spiritual and temporal, under a solemn one of them and laid several of his assailants pledge of secrecy, as to what should be done with the deposed king. They recommended that

low, cannot be traced back to any authentic source. The contemporary English writers give different versions of the mode of death, but do not mention this story. For several years the country was agitated by flying rumours which asserted that he was not really dead, but that he had escaped to Scotland and was in hiding there. Caxton, in his Chronicle, printed in 1480, gives an account of how Richard was starved to death by his keeper. Afterwards Fabyan gave the Exton story, as one that was testified to by most writers; but he adduced no proof. Hall, Holinshed, and other annalists copied the tale, and the powerful genius of Shakespeare conferred immortality upon it. A monarch heroically defending himself against a host of assassins, with a battleaxe which he had wrested from one of them, afforded materials for a picturesque catastrophe, which the great dramatist skilfully used, and which painters have clearly depicted since his

day; but the fiction is improbable in itself, and it was unknown for nearly three generations after it is alleged to have occurred. It is inconsistent also with the fact that the body was shown openly in all the places between Pomfret and London where a night was passed, and that it was publicly exhibited in the metropolis as Froissart relates.

"It was not long after this that a true report was current in London of the death of Richard of Bordeaux. I could not learn the particulars of it, nor how it happened, the day I wrote these chronicles. Richard of Bordeaux, when

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their horses, that were waiting for them, and continued their journey with the body until they came to a village, where there is a royal mansion, called Langley, thirty miles from London. There King Richard was interred; God pardon his sins and have mercy on his soul!"

Any such wound on the head, as the alleged blow given by Exton with his axe must have occasioned, would have been detected, unless the temporary suspicion be revived which was originated for another purpose, that the corpse was not the body of King Richard, but that of a man who closely resembled him.

It is

dead, was placed on a litter covered with black, | in the highest degree improbable that when and a canopy of the same. Four black horses Henry V. had the body removed from Langley were harnessed to it, and two varlets in mourning and interred with suitable honours in Westconducted the litter, followed by four knights minster Abbey, he took no precautions to have dressed in mourning. Thus they paraded the it ascertained that this was really the body of streets at a foot pace until they came to his ill-fated predecessor and patron. Not many Cheapside, which is the greatest thoroughfare years since the tomb was accidentally opened, in the city, and there they halted for upwards and the body was seen, when no marks of a of two hours. More than twenty thousand per- blow or a wound were discernible upon the skull. sons, of both sexes, came to see the king, who lay in the litter, his head on a black cushion, and his face uncovered.

"When the funeral car of King Richard had remained in Cheapside two hours, it was conducted forward, in the same order as before, out of the town. The four knights then mounted

The two statements of contemporaries, between which a choice has to be made, are, the one, that the king died of grief and voluntary famine; the other, that he was starved to death by his keepers. Walsingham, an author of acknow. ledged credit, asserts the first; and Otterbourne, who was also living at the time, the Monk of

Evesham, and the continuator of the Chronicle | advantage." The sum of sixteen pounds, thirteen of Croyland, confirm the statement. Hardyng shillings and four pence was distributed by the the Chronicler, who also wrote from personal knowledge, is claimed by some as favouring the latter version, but his reference is only a passing one and much obscurity rests upon it.

The difficulty of pronouncing a decisive opinion is the greater when it is remembered that within four years of Richard's deposition, the point was a matter of dispute. In the letter of defiance sent by the Percys before the battle of Shrewsbury, Henry was roundly charged with having caused Richard to perish of hunger, cold, and thirst, after fifteen days and nights of sufferings unheard of among Christians. Two years later, Archbishop Scrope and the Yorkshire insurgents repeated the charge, on the ground of common report (ut vulgariter dicitur).

royal almoner among a number of priests to celebrate one thousand masses for the salvation of the soul of Richard. On June the 5th, a further sum of thirteen pounds, six shillings and eight pence was paid for the expense of removing the body from Pomfret to London.

The general impression that Richard was still alive, and the reports of this kind that were frequently renewed, caused much annoyance and trouble to Henry IV. during a great part of his reign. The avidity with which they were received, is a proof that the fickle tide of popular affection returned towards Richard after he had disappeared; or that, though his subjects. had resisted his unconstitutional measures, they were dissatisfied with the treatment he had Much controversy has been waged upon this experienced. Henry's anxiety to put down such subject, and various theories, of greater or less rumours and to chastise their authors, may have plausibility, have been propounded; but whether given them an importance that they otherwise Richard died at the time commonly supposed, might not have acquired. Still, it is plain that and if so, whether he died by violence, by they existed to a considerable extent, from his voluntary or by enforced starvation, or whether proclamations in 1402, and subsequently. They he really escaped and found an asylum in Scot- were industriously propagated by the Franciscan land, as the enthusiastic historian of that Friars, the only religious order that seem to country has laboured to prove, are among the have taken up the late king's cause. Many of points keenly debated by literary men, over them suffered death for this. False Richards which, however, a cloud of mystery rests. The also presented themselves after Maudelain. All manner and time of Richard's death must be who wished to stir up the people made use of associated with the difficulties attending other the argument of his existence, whether they historic circumstances, such as the deaths of believed it or not, well knowing that it was one Rufus, of Prince Arthur, and of Edward II. It of the readiest modes of excitement. The has been common to presume that Henry had Percys caused it to be twice proclaimed in 1403, a powerful motive to destroy Richard, in order in every market town in the country of Cheshire, to prevent his being a rallying point for various that Richard was alive, and might be seen at insurgents, but such presumptions are disfigure- the castle of Chester, by all such as should ments to historical writing, unless as is rarely repair thither. Again, in 1406, Northumberthe case, they amount to moral certainty; and in land, in his letter to the duke of Orleans, this instance, the recorded entries of expenses affects to consider it possible that Richard was incurred in the removal of Richard's body, do alive, though he had accused Henry three years not coincide in date with the earliest known before with his murder. He professes that he revolt by those who used his name as a war-cry. had levied war against Henry of Lancaster, the "February 17, 1400. To Thomas Tuttelury, ruler of England, to support the quarrel of his clerk, keeper of the king's wardrobe. In money sovereign lord King Richard, if he is alive, and paid to him for expenses incurred for the carriage to revenge his death, if he is dead. But the of the body of Richard, late king of England, most extraordinary proof of pertinacity in the from Pomfret to London sixty-six pounds, thirteen opinion of Richard's existence occurs in Sir shillings and four pence." On March the 20th, John Oldcastle. When he was making his three pounds, six shillings and eight pence was defence before the Parliament, December 14, paid to one William Loveday, sent by Henry's 1413, he protested that he never would command upon his secret affairs to Pomfret, acknowledge the authority of that court, so long and on the the same day a valet of Sir Thomas as his liege-lord, King Richard II., was alive Swynford received one pound, six shillings and | and in Scotland. Much stress, however, cannot eight pence, for the expenses of his journey be laid upon this; nor does it seem possible from Pomfret with information to the council now to unravel the web of mystery which "concerning certain matters for the king's envelops the subject. It may be pursued by