A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



Peasants' Revolt it apparently took no part, though the rising extended into 

 Yorkshire and Cheshire."' 



Three years later the county, after a lapse of sixty years, experienced a 

 Scottish raid. John of Gaunt's invasion of Scotland in April, 1384, 

 provoked a counter-inroad, which is said to have been pressed as far as 

 Lancashire, though details are wanting."" For four years from the end of 

 I 385, the duke, relinquishing the entire defence of the northern march to the 

 earl of Northumberland, was absent in Spain. His departure was the signal 

 for a bitter struggle between Richard and the Lords Appellant, headed by his 

 youngest uncle, Thomas, duke of Gloucester. In 1387 the king appealed to 

 arms, sending his favourite, Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, into the north 

 with orders to Thomas Molyneux of Cuerdale, constable of Chester, the 

 sheriff of Chester, Ralph Vernon, Ralph de RadclifFe, and all the other 

 magnates of the two counties, to raise their forces and put them under Oxford's 

 command. Molyneux in his zeal is said to have cast partisans of the 

 Appellants into prison, with instructions that their only food should be black 

 bread and water on alternate days until he returned. North Wales con- 

 tributed its quota, and Oxford moved on London with some four or five 

 thousand men. He was met and routed with ease on December 20 by the 

 Appellants, at Radcot Bridge in Oxfordshire, on the Upper Thames. A mere 

 handful were slain, but they included Molyneux ; some 800 men, however, 

 were drowned. The victors, it is said, stripped to the skin those who fell 

 into their hands, and sent them thus ignominiously back to their own 

 country."* Its share in this episode can only have aggravated the disorders 

 which, as we have seen, had for some years been prevalent in Lancashire. 



After eighteen months of humiliated submission to the Appellants, 

 Richard, in May, 1389, resumed the reins of government, and recalled his 

 uncle John from Spain to be his chief adviser. Lancaster's influence over the 

 king was resented by Richard's old opponents, who took advantage of the 

 unpopularity of his efforts to bring about peace with France to foment a 

 northern rising against him in 1393. It was mainly a Cheshire movement, 

 but there were disturbances in Yorkshire, and Lancashire was to some extent 

 affected."' In 1394 Sir Thomas Talbot, perhaps of Bashall in the Hoddcr 

 Valley, near Clitheroe, was declared a traitor for having conspired with others 

 in Lancashire and Cheshire, where he had lands, to kill Lancaster and his 

 brother Gloucester."' But it was only in Cheshire that he raised armed 

 bands, and the fact that Lancaster, when he came north to suppress the move- 

 ment, led the forces of his duchy into Cheshire, suggests that it had no strono- 

 hold in Lancashire. 



John of Gaunt died on 3 February, 1399, and the king, contrary to the 

 promise given when his son Henry, duke of Hereford, was banished a few 



*^ A. Reville, Soukfemnl des Tiavailleurs J^'Anskurrc en 1 38 1, cvi ; Trevelyan, Enghnd in th' An tf 

 Wycliffe, 244, from Chester Indictment R. 8, m. 57. In the writ printed in Foed. (Rec. Com) iv 127 

 'Lancashire' is clearly an error. In the autumn of this year the county was threatened with a dea'rth of 

 ^°"> '„?''■ ^"- '38'-^ P- 6«. - Close, 8 Ric. II, m. 3 ^. ; Walsingham, Hist. Angl. ii, , ,2. 



Alalveme m Pcyhromcon (Rolls Ser.), ix, 1 1 1 sqq. ; Knighton, Chron. (Rolls Ser.), ii 2C0-4 

 Am. Ru.ll (Rolls Ser.), 159-62, 166 ; Malverne, op. cit. ix, 239-40, 265, 281 ; Armitage-Smith 

 John of Gaunt, 351. > & > 



^ Rot. P.r/.^n, 316. In the Parliament of Jan. 1397, Lancaster demanded justice on Talbot, who had 

 escaped from the Tower ; .bid. 338 ; Ca/. Pat. 1391-6, p. 560. Gloucester had been chief justice of Chester 

 since 1388 (Ormerod, 1, 63), and there was a rumour that the county was to lose its ancient privilege^ He 

 >v.ii also associated with Lancaster in the negotiations with France. ' 



210 



