RICHARD II. 



RICHARD IL 



H 



Lancaster's son, Henry of Bolingbroke, earl of Derby. John of Gaunt 

 also now returned from the Continent, and had influence enough to 

 force a seeming reconciliation between his royal nephew and Gloucester, 

 and to bring back that duke and his party to court. After this some 

 years passed without any changes or other events of importance. The 

 country was still professedly at war both with France and Scotland ; but 

 after the suspension of hostilities had been long kept up by a succession 

 of short amnesties, a truce for four years was concluded with both 

 countries in 1394. His queen, who was called "the good Queen 

 Anne," having died on Whitsunday of that year, Richard eoon after 

 solicited the hand of Isabella, the beautiful but still infant daughter 

 of Charles VI. ; after many delays, the treaty of marriage was finally 

 arranged in October 1396; and at the same time a further peace and 

 alliance was concluded between the two countries for the space of 

 twenty-eight years. 



This French marriage is believed to have materially contributed to 

 the domestic revolution that soon after followed. It was opposed 

 before it was contracted, and reprobated afterwards, by Gloucester and 

 the popular party ; and on the other hand Richard is supposed to 

 have counted upon the assistance of his father-in-law the French king, 

 to enable him to rid himself of and avenge himself on his uncle. In 

 the beginning of July 1397, first the Earl of Warwick, and two days 

 after the Earl of Arundel, the most intimate fiiends and confederates 

 of Gloucester were suddenly arrested by the orders of the king, 

 who carried his project into effect with profound dissimulation and 

 treachery ; and a few days after Gloucester himself was seized in his 

 castle of Flashy, in Essex, and immediately conducted a prisoner to 

 Calais. A parliament was then called, which met on the 17th of 

 September, and which, awed by the display of military force made by 

 the king, and led by the example of the dukes of Lancaster and York 

 and the Earl of Bolingbroke, all of whom Richard had previously 

 seduced or forced into a public approval of the arrests, ratified all that 

 had been done, and impeached the three peers, and also Arundel's 

 brother, the ArchHshop of Canterbury, of high treason. The arch- 

 bishop and Warwick were banished for life ; Arundel was beheaded 

 on Tower-hill ; and when an order was sent to the governor of Calais 

 Castle to bring up his prisoner Gloucester, the answer returned was 

 that he had died, and few doubted that he had been made away with 

 by the king's orders. It was immediately after this affair that Boling- 

 broke was raised to the dignity of Duke of Hereford ; Richard's half- 

 brother, Sir John Holland (the son of his mother by her second 

 husband), being at the same time made Duke of Exeter. The sub- 

 servient parliament, before it separated, devolved the whole power of 

 government and legislation upon a commission of twelve peers and six 

 commoners, all devoted to the king ; and having also obtained from 

 them the grant of a revenue for life, Richard might now be considered 

 as almost au absolute sovereign. 



This state of things however did not last long. Intoxicated by the 

 success of his schemes, Richard now set no bounds to his exactions 

 and extravagance ; and instead of being satisfied with the discomfiture 

 and destruction of so many of the persons whose opposition he had 

 had so much reason to fear, he seems to have been only thereby 

 incited to the devising of means for ridding himself of others whom 

 he still apprehended to be dangerous. Of those who had supported 

 him in the prosecution of the late Duke of Gloucester and his friends, 

 the two most powerful were the Duke of Hereford, and Mowbray, 

 earl of Nottingham, now duke of Norfolk. While Hereford was riding 

 from Windsor to London in December of this same year, he was 

 overtaken by Norfolk, who, according to the account given by Here- 

 ford, more than hinted to him that he had reason to suspect the king 

 was watching for an opportunity of destroying them both ; his words 

 were carried to Richard, probably by Bolingbroke himself; that 

 nobleman, at any rate, when called upon in parliament to state what 

 had passed, charged Mowbray with having given utterance to the 

 treasonable expressions ; and the result was, that after Mowbray had 

 denied the charge, and the two had in compliance with the award of 

 a court of chivalry, presented themselves on the 16th of September 

 1398, at Coventry, to decide the matter by wager of battle, Richard 

 suddenly interposed, forbade the combat to proceed, and pronounced 

 sentence of banishment for ten years on Hereford, and for life upon 

 Norfolk. The issue of the duel, whatever it might have been, would 

 probably have only delivered him from one of his enemies; this 

 method removed both. But one of them doubtless resolved while 

 professing for the moment to submit to the sentence, that he would 

 not be long in returning. Henry of Bolingbroke had been for some 

 time sedulously and successfully attracting to himself the popular 

 favour which his cousin Richard was fast losing or throwing away ; 

 and probably no other subject whom the king might have banished 

 from England could have carried the affections and hopes of so many 

 of his countrymen along with him. This he himself well knew. 

 Accordingly, when in the beginning of February 1399, about three 

 months after his departure, his father died, and the estates which had 

 now become his inheritance were seized by the crown, he did not 

 hesitate as to the course which he should take. Richard had set sail 

 from Milford Haven on the 31st of May, at the head of a fleet of two 

 hundred transports, to quell an outbreak of some of the native tribes 

 of the south of Ireland : Bolingbroke, now calling himself duke of 

 Lancaster, landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire, on the 4th of July. 



The returned exile brought with him only forty followers ; but by 

 the time he had reached St. Albana, on his unimpeded march to the 

 capital, his army had increased to sixty thousand men. The Duke 

 of York, in whose charge the government had been left, withdrew 

 towards Bristol, to which place the Earl of Wiltshire, Bucsy, Green, 

 and others of the king's friends and servants had previously fled. 

 Bolingbroke merely showed himself to the citiz< ns of London, and 

 having received their plaudits and addresses of congratulation, set 

 out for the west. York and he met in Berkeley Castle, where the 

 regent after a short conference yielded to all hi demands. They 

 marched together to Bristol, where, having taken possession of the 

 castle, Bolingbroke directed Wiltshire, Bussy, and Green, to be 

 executed, and then set out for Chester, and established himself in that 

 city. Meanwhile Richard, long detained by tempestuous weather, bad 

 at last landed at Milford Haven on the 5th of August. He brought 

 with him the greater part of the army he had carried over to Ireland 

 two months before ; but the men nearly all deserted the first night 

 they found themselves again upon English ground. Richard then, 

 disguised himself as a Franciscan friar, and, accompanied by the Duke 

 of Exeter and some others of his friends, fled to Conway, where it 

 was understood that the Earl of Salisbury was in command of a 

 numerous royalist force ; but upon his arrival he found that that too 

 had broken up some days before. On the 18th the Earl of Northumber- 

 land came to him from Bolingbroke, and induced him to accompany 

 him to Flint Castle, where, on tbe following day, Bolingbroke pre- 

 sented himself at the head of about 80,000 men. The unhappy king 

 proceeded to Chester in the train of his conqueror, and thence in a 

 few days he was carried to London, where he was forthwith lodged in 

 the Tower. Here, on the 29th of September, he consented to read a 

 renunciation of the crown before a deputation of prelates, barons, 

 knights, and lawyers, and to declare that, if he had the right of naming 

 his successor, the man he would fix upon should be hia cousin of 

 Lancaster. Such at least is the account inserted by Henry's order 

 in the rolls of parliament. On the next day the two houses of par- 

 liament met together in Westminster Hall, and voted his deposition, 

 immediately after which the Duke of Lancaster rose and claimed the 

 crown, and was unanimously recognised as king. [HENBT IV.] 



Richard did not long survive his dethronement. On the 23rd of 

 October the house of peers, in a new parliament, on being consulted, 

 by King Henry's order, as to what should be done with him, recom- 

 mended that he should be closely confined in some castle, the know- 

 ledge of which should be kept secret from the people; and in 

 conformity with their advice, he was a few days after privately con- 

 veyed away from London. All that is further known is, that in the 

 following February rumours were everywhere spread that he was 

 dead, and that in the beginning of March his body, or what was 

 declared to be such, was brought with funeral pomp from Pontefract 

 Castle to London, and there exhibited openly to the people. After- 

 wards it was reported, by some that he had starved himself to death, 

 by others that he had been starved by his keepers, according to a third 

 version of the story, that he had been violently made away with by 

 Sir Piers Exton, assisted by seven other assassins. For many years 

 also rumours continued to arise from time to time that he had made 

 his escape, and was still alive in Scotland ; and an attempt has recently 

 been made to establish the probability of this strange story ; but the 

 supposed new evidence brought forward in support of it has been 

 satisfactorily shown to be quite inconclusive. 



Of the alterations made in the statute law during the reign of 

 Richard II., the most important was the extension of the former Acts 

 against provisors, or persons obtaining papal presentations to bene- 

 fices before they were vacant, by a series of new Acts, and especially 

 by the 16 Ric. II., c. 5, commonly called the Statute of Prsemunire. 



In 1382 a statute was passed for apprehending and punishing the 

 followers of the religious reformer Wycliffe, who are described as 

 malevolent persons going about from country to country, and from 

 town to town, in peculiar habits, with pretence of great sanctity, and 

 without licence of the pope or the ordinary, preaching daily in the 

 churches, churchyards, markets, fairs, and other open places where 

 the people were assembled in greatest numbers, discourses full of 

 heresies and notorious errors, to the great injury of the faith, and 

 destruction of the laws and estate of holy church, &c. But this Act 

 was repealed the same year, on the representation of the Commons 

 that it had been passed without their assent. Just before its enact- 

 ment twenty-four opinions, attributed to Wycliffe, had been con- 

 demned as heretical and dangerous by a synod of churchmen; the 

 reformer appealed against the decree, but was ultimately induced to 

 submit, and he remained in quiet at his rectory of Lutterworth, till 

 his death, about two years after. His opinions however had already 

 made great progress among the people ; and the spirit which he had 

 awakened by his preaching and writings continued to live and spread 

 after his death, and no doubt materially contributed to prepare the 

 way for the overthrow of the old religion, which was effected a 

 hundred and fifty years later. 



In the preceding year (1381), after the suppression of Tyler's rebel- 

 lion, the offence of treason was extended to the act of beginning a 

 riot, rout, or rumour, by the 5 Ric. II., st. i. c. 7 ; but this severe 

 enactment was repealed in the reign of Edward VI. This is one of 

 the ancient statutes constituting the offence called ' Scandalum Magna- 



