famous parliament of 1376, honourably distinguished as 'the Good Parliament,' met in April, and, probably under the direct guidance of the Black Prince and William of Wykeham, the members made a vigorous attack on the court. As their speaker they chose Peter de la Mare, steward of the earl of March, who had married the daughter of Lionel, duke of Clarence, and was friendly to a policy of reform; and then proceeded to attack Latimer, Neville, Lyons, and Alice Perrers. Their method of attack was almost as important as the attack itself, for the commons proceeded by impeaching the accused before the House of Lords. In this method of procedure, the House of Commons, as a body, appears as prosecutor. The Lords act as judges; hear the evidence brought by the managers for the commons, their speeches on it, and the answers of the accused, and finally pronounce by a majority the verdict and sentence. Latimer and Lyons were found guilty of having lent the king 20,000 marks and receiving £20,000 in return; Neville of buying up the king's debts; and Alice Perrers of breaking an ordinance which forbade women to practise in the courts of law.

Gaunt.

In June the Black Prince died, leaving behind him a name for military courage and chivalry, and perhaps a sounder reputation for the reforming zeal he had shown in his later years. As in the eyes of the John of reforming party John of Gaunt was capable of any crime, the commons proceeded to take trenchant measures to exclude him from power, and to secure the succession of the little Richard, the sole surviving child of the Black Prince. They had Richard brought before them as heir; induced the king to accept the addition to his council of ten additional members of the popular party; and they presented no less than one hundred and forty petitions, demanding the redress of grievances of all sorts and kinds dealing with the administration of justice, the claims of the pope and foreign clergy, into whose pockets no less than £20,000 of English money was said to go yearly, interference with the right of free parliamentary elections, and the non-enforcement of the statutes of labour.

Reaction.

So long as parliament was sitting, favourable answers were given to their requests; but when it was dissolved in July, after the longest session then recorded, John of Gaunt resumed his influence. Alice Perrers was recalled. Peter de la Mare was thrown into prison, and an elaborate list of charges of peculation, similar to those advanced against Hubert de Burgh and Becket, was brought against William of Wykeham. The new members of council were not allowed to sit, and not one of the petitions received the formal consent of the crown. Readily snatching at any weapon with which to attack the

clergy, John of Gaunt had endeavoured to pose as a sincere friend of Wyclif; and the Oxford doctor, perhaps too sanguine, perhaps too easily carried away by the blandishments of the court, had allowed himself to appear as a friend of the duke. Confident in the strength of his position and his power to pack a parliament, Lancaster summoned that body in January 1377, and was so successful that a majority of the members petitioned for the restoration of Latimer, Neville, and Alice Perrers, and voted a poll-tax of one groat per head.

Exasperated by the attack on Wykeham, convocation then determined to strike at the duke through Wyclif, who was summoned to appear before a committee of bishops at St. Paul's. He appeared Trial of under the protection of John of Gaunt and his friend Henry Wyclif. Percy, who, having been formerly a reformer, had been won over by the office of lord marshal. The natural result was an altercation between Lancaster and the committee. The chairman, Courtenay, bishop of London, was insulted; and so angry were the Londoners at the insult offered to their bishop that a riot followed, in which John of Gaunt and Percy with difficulty escaped with their lives; but no violence seems to have been offered to Wyclif, in spite of his association with the unpopular noblemen. As yet, however, Wyclif had not published the views which afterwards gained him the reputation of a heretic; but his short experience of political life seems to have decided him in favour of more effective and permanent ways of increasing his influence.

For the moment John of Gaunt seemed supreme, and nothing short of an armed insurrection seemed able to displace him, when Death of the death of the king in June 1377 opened a new page in Edward III. the contest.

The Minority-Peasant Revolt-The Lollards-Opposition Nobles displace the King's Ministers-Richard's personal rule-His revenge on the Nobles, and final fall.

ON Edward's death, his grandson Richard, the son of the Black Prince, was made king. He was only eleven years of age, and his accession is a Accession of strong proof both of the popularity of his father and of the Richard II. strong hold gained by the idea of hereditary right; for as yet, with the exception of Edward III., no minor had been allowed to reign in England who had an uncle of full age ready to take the throne.

Provision for younger

sons.

The experiment, however, was fraught with many dangers, one of which was the accumulation of immense territorial influence in the hands of the royal family. The problem of providing for their younger sons has always been one of difficulty for monarchs. Before the Norman Conquest, the temptation to find such provision in the revival of under-kingdoms frequently proved a menace to the integrity of the realm. It is a strong proof of the prudence of William the Conqueror, that he created none of his sons an English earl; and Henry 11., in dividing his wide dominions, had wisely kept England intact. The first to depart from this wholesome policy was Henry III. who created the earldom of Cornwall for his brother Richard,

made his eldest son, Edward, earl of Chester, and his second, Edmund, earl of Lancaster, Derby, and Leicester. Edward I. was responsible for the marriage of Edmund's son Thomas with the heiress of Lincoln and Salisbury; and Edward 11. gave the earldoms of Norfolk and Kent to his half-brothers.

On the accession of Edward III., therefore, he found the earldoms of Chester, Lancaster, Derby, Lincoln, Leicester, Cornwall, Kent, and Norfolk in the hands of the royal family, and when his sons The great grew up, he carried on and extended the system. His eldest Earldoms. son, the Black Prince, was created duke of Cornwall in 1337, and married his cousin Joan, the heiress of the earl of Kent. His second son Lionel, duke of Clarence, married the heiress of William de Burgh, earl of Ulster, and heiress of a third of the estates of the earls of Gloucester and Hereford. In 1368 Lionel died, leaving a daughter, Philippa, who united her great possessions to those of Roger Mortimer, earl of March, the great-grandson of the traitor, and himself one of the leaders of the reforming party in the Good Parliament. Edward's third son, John of Gaunt, earl of Richmond, married the heiress of Henry, duke of Lancaster, who brought her husband, besides Lancaster, the earldoms of Derby and Leicester; and their eldest son Henry married the heiress of half the lands of the Bohuns of Hereford; while her sister gave her hand to Edward's fifth son, Thomas of Woodstock. The accumulation of territory in the hands of the royal family was therefore enormous; and as the possession of certain territories appeared inevitably to force on the owner a certain uniform line of policy, it may be said, roughly speaking, that John of Gaunt was at the head of the ancient combination of north-country barons, that the line of Clarence was identified with the lords marcher of Wales, while the king as earl palatine of Chester and earl of Cornwall had special powers, which gave him a strong claim over the loyalty of the men of Cheshire, and a certain revenue from the valuable mines of Cornwall. The most important earldoms unconnected with the royal family were those of Northumberland, created at the close of the last reign for Lancaster's friend, Henry Percy; Warwick, held by the Beauchamps; Salisbury, by the family of Montacute or Montagu; Oxford, by the family of Vere, and Arundel. A knowledge of the distribution of these earldoms is essential for understanding the events of the fifteenth century.

Following the precedent set during the minorities of Henry IIL and Edward III., a council of government was appointed, re- The Royal presentative of both parties, including, for example, the earl Council. of Arundel as the friend of Lancaster, and also the earl of March. To

avoid jealousy the king's uncles were all excluded, and the guardianship of the king's person and the general superintendence of affairs were left to his mother, Joan of Kent, who enjoyed unbounded popularity. When parliament met, the same conciliatory policy was carried on. The commons were deferential to the duke of Lancaster, and he on his part made no complaint when Peter de la Mare was re-elected speaker. It was agreed that during the king's minority the chancellor, treasurer, and other great officers of state should be chosen by parliament, and also that two London merchants, William Walworth and John Philipot, under the name of treasurers, should superintend the expenditure of a liberal grant made for the war. This excellent beginning, however, proved too good

to last. John of Gaunt was too ambitious to be content with a secondary position, too incompetent to govern well when he got power into his hands, and his combination of arrogance and inefficiency soon made him as unpopular as ever.

Peasant

The greatest event of the early years of Richard II. was the peasant revolt of 1381. It was the result of a variety of causes, the most obvious of which, if not the most important, was the poll-tax of Revolt. 1381. Driven to their wits' end to provide money, and very imperfectly informed as to the taxable capacity of the country, the commons in 1379 had followed the precedent set in 1377, and levied a poll-tax. This tax was graduated. A duke paid £6, 13s. 4d., earls paid £4, and so on to the humblest villein, who contributed one groat; and the clergy paid on a similar scale. This tax was collected with great exactitude; and in those counties where the rate-books have been preserved, and especially where they have been printed, they afford a complete and accessible census of the population. The amount raised, however, fell short of what was needed, and in 1380 a second polltax was imposed. The graduation of this, however, was by no means so fair. The poorest were to pay one shilling; the richest only one pound. Such an arrangement, which brought home to every one's door the consequences of ill government and extravagance, produced widespread discontent; and in June 1381 the Kentishmen rose in arms, headed by Wat Tyler, who is said to have been driven to fury by an insult offered to his daughter, and rescued from Maidstone gaol a priest of revolutionary views named John Ball, the author of the distich

When Adam delved and Evè span,

Who was then the gentleman?'

who had been imprisoned by the archbishop of Canterbury.

Simultaneous with the Kentish rising, but excited by various causes,