RICHARD II. -III. 



705 



when the young monarch assured them he would 

 grant their requests, and take measures to liberate 

 the villeins from bondage and to commute their per- 

 sonal services into fixed money rents. The men of 

 Kent, after destroying the Savoy (the Duke of Lan- 

 caster's palace), burning Temple Bar, opening the 

 prisons, and breaking into the Tower and slaying the 

 Archbishop of Canterbury, met the king at Smith- 

 field (15th). During the negotiations, William 

 Walworth, the mayor of London, struck down Wat 

 Tyler (q.v. ), the leader of the insurgents. The 

 king immediately rode amongst them, exclaiming 

 he would l>e their leader, and granted them the 

 concessions they asked. The risings in the other 

 counties speedily collapsed when the people learned 

 what the king had done ; but during the autumn 

 severe punishment overtook them. Seven thousand 

 in all are said to have perished in the lighting and 

 on the scaffold. The causes of this wide-spread and 

 simultaneous uprising on the part of the mass of the 

 rural population may be summarised as follows: 

 there had been long continuance of heavy taxation; 

 the villeins resented the reimposition since the Black 

 Death of personal services, and were anxious to 

 become tenants of their little farms at a fixed rental ; 

 the free tillers of the soil had formed themselves 

 into associations to defeat the Statute of Labourers 

 (1349), which fixed the maximum and minimum of 

 wages ; the Lollard or Wyclifite preachers were 

 denouncing the idleness and vices of the regular 

 clergy, and they and others (as John Ball) were 

 promulgating social doctrines calculated to make 

 the common people discontented with their lot and 

 hostile to the landholders ; the country clergy 

 complained of the tyranny of the church ; the mis- 

 management of the war, and the incapacity and 

 selfishness of the court party provoked much dis- 

 content ; there were many discharged soldiers in 

 the country ; and moral and religious feeling were 

 sunk to a low ebb. From the fact that the in- 

 surgents directed their enmity against himself and 

 the advisers of the king, John of Gaunt saw that 

 he could never hope to succeed in his ambitious 

 schemes in England ; and from this time he kept 

 very much in the background, until in 13S6 he 

 carried himself and his restless plottings to Spain 

 and Gascony. Richard in 1390 made him Duke of 

 Aqiiitnine for life. In 1385 Richard invaded Scot- 

 land, and took Edinburgh and burned it ; but, not 

 encountering the Scots, returned home. About the 

 same year another coalition of the baronial party, 

 headed by Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Glouces- 

 ter, l>egan to oppose the king and his chosen friends. 

 They impeached several of them before the Merci- 

 less" Parliament (1388), and secured convictions 

 and executions. But on 3d May 1389 Richard 

 suddenly declared himself of age, and proceeded 

 to govern on his own responsibility. For eight 

 years he ruled as a moderate constitutional 

 monarch, and the country enjoyed peace hos- 

 tilities with France were not renewed after 1388 

 and was fairly prosperous. But in 1394 Richard's 

 first wife, Anne of Bohemia, whom he had wedded 

 in 1382, died, and two years later he married Isa- 

 l*lla, daughter of Charles VI. of France, a girl of 

 eight. From that time he seems to have adopted 

 very largely French tastes, manners, and ideas. 

 At all events, in the parliament of 1397 he began 

 to assert the pretensions of an absolute monarch. 

 On 8th July he had Gloucester, Arundel, and War- 

 wick arrested on the charge of conspiring against 

 the crown. Arundel was beheaded ; Gloucester 

 was sent a prisoner to Calais, and died there in 

 )Uon, probably murdered, a fortnight after his 

 arrest ; and Warwick was banished to the Isle of 

 Man. Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canter- 

 bury, was also banished. In the following year 

 an obsequious parliament granted to the king 

 4N 



the subsidy on wool for life, and delegated all its 

 authority and power to a commission of eighteen 

 members, all supporters of the king. Richard 

 soon aroused the slumbering discontent of his 

 subjects by his unjust methods of raising money, 

 principally by means of forced loans, and by his 

 arbitrary and despotic rule. In the beginning of 

 1398 the Duke of Norfolk and the Duke of Here- 

 ford (Henry, son of John of Gaunt) were accused 

 to the king of having spoken treason against him. 

 Richard banished them Norfolk for life and Here- 

 ford for ten years. In January 1399 John of Gaunt 

 died, and Hereford succeeded him as Duke of Lan- 

 caster ; but the king refused to give up to the exile 

 the lands of his dead father. Richard in May went 

 over to Ireland, which he had previously visited at 

 the head of a military expedition in 1394-95. 

 Henry of Lancaster seized upon the opportunity 

 afforded by the king's absence, and landed on 4th 

 July (see HENRY IV.). Richard at once hurried 

 back, but had neither heart nor power to withstand 

 his cousin. He submitted to Lancaster at Flint 

 ( 19th August), was carried to London, and placed 

 in the Tower. On 29th September he resigned 

 the crown, and on the following day was likewise 

 deposed by the parliament, which chose Henry of 

 Lancaster as his successor. A month after his 

 resignation Richard was condemned to perpetual 

 imprisonment by parliament. His fate is wrapped 

 in obscurity, beyond the almost certain fact that 

 he met a violent death, for which it is not alto- 

 gether clear that Henry IV. was responsible. A 

 month after Henry's accession some noblemen of 

 Richard's party formed a conspiracy to restore 

 Richard to the throne, but their purpose was 

 discovered. No doubt this decided the fate of 

 Richard ; at all events, authentic history knows 

 nothing more about him from this time. Accord- 

 ing to different accounts, eitlrer he was murdered 

 in Pontefract Castle, or he starved himself to 

 death, or he escaped to Scotland and died there a 

 lunatic. By nature he seems to have been passion- 

 ate, impulsive, and excitable j but though capable 

 of bold and energetic action on occasion, his habitual 

 mood was one of indolence. He had a good insight 

 into men's characters ; but suffered himself to be 

 influenced by those about him, and generally 

 lacked the will and the steadfast resoluteness to 

 act up to his own better judgment. 



See The Houses of Lancaster and York, by J. Gairdner 

 (1874), in 'Epochs of Modern History;' Stubbs' Con- 

 stitutional ffistorii (vols. ii. and iii.); and read Shake- 

 speare's historical drama Richard II. 



Richard III., king of England, was the son 

 of Richard, Duke of York, a descendant of Edmund, 

 Duke of York, fiftli son of Edward III., and was 

 born, the eleventh out of twelve children, in 

 Fotheringhay Castle on 2d October 1452. After 

 the defeat and death of his father in 1460 he was 

 sent, along with his brother George, to Utrecht for 

 safety, but returned to England after his eldest 

 brother Edward won the crown ( 1461 ). Two years 

 later he was created Duke of Gloucester, his 

 brother George being made Duke of Clarence. In 

 the final struggle between the York and Lancaster 

 factions he took an active share : he led the van 

 at the battle of Baniet, rendered valuable aid in 

 winning the fight of Tewkesbury, and is believed, 

 on fairly good evidence, to have had a hand in the 

 murder of Prince Edward, son of Henry VI., who 

 was slain after that battle. All through the reign 

 of Edward IV. he gave valuable and faithful support 

 to his brother, and was rewarded by him with every 

 confidence, and with numerous high offices. He 

 was believed to have l>een concerned in the murder 

 of Henry VI. in the Tower on 21st May 1471 ; but 

 the evidence, although strongly pointing in that 

 direction, is not conclusive. In the following year 



