treated his subjects at their pleasure. He threatened the Percies, the Earl of Northumberland and his son, Harry Hotspur, with exile, and sent them off discontented to their vast possessions in the North. Early in 1399 the Duke of Lancaster died. His son, the banished Hereford, was now Duke of Lancaster. Richard, however, seized the lands which ought to have descended to him from his father. Every man who had property to lose felt that Lancaster's cause was his own. Richard at this inopportune moment took occasion to sail to Ireland. He had been there once Meeting of Henry of Lancaster and Richard II. at Flint: from Harl. MS. 1319. before in 1394 in the vain hope of protecting the English colonists (see p. 265). His first expedition had been a miserable failure: his second expedition was cut short by bad news from England. 14. Henry of Lancaster in England. 1399.-Lancaster, with a small force, landed at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire, a harbour which has now disappeared in the sea. At first he gave out that he had come merely to demand his own inheritance. Then he alleged that he had come to redress the wrongs of the realm. Northumberland brought the Percies to his help. Armed men flocked to his support 1399 RICHARD'S ABDICATION 285 in crowds. The Duke of York, who had been left behind by Richard as regent, accepted this statement and joined him with all his forces. When Richard heard what had happened, he sent the Earl of Salisbury from Ireland to Wales to summon the Welshmen to his aid. The Welshmen rallied to Salisbury, but the king was long in following, and when Richard landed they had all dispersed. Richard found himself almost alone in Conway Castle, whilst Lancaster had a whole kingdom at his back. 15. The Deposition of Richard and the Enthronement of Henry IV. 1399. -By lying promises Lancaster induced Richard Henry of Lancaster claiming the throne: from Harl. MS. 1319. to place himself in his power at Flint. "My lord," said Lancaster to him, "I have now come before you have sent for me. The reason is that your people commonly say you have ruled them very rigorously for twenty or two and twenty years; but, if it please God, I will help you to govern better." The pretence of helping the king to govern was soon abandoned. Richard was carried to London and thrown into the Tower. He consented, probably not till after he had been threatened with the fate of Edward II., to sign his abdication. On the following morning the act of abdication was read in Parliament. The throne was empty. Then Lancaster stepped forward. "In the name," he said, "of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster, challenge this realm of England, and the crown with all its members and appurtenances, as I am descended by right line of the blood coming from the good lord King Henry the Third,' and through that right God of his grace hath sent me, with help of my kin and of my friends, to recover it, the which realm was in point to be undone for default of governance and undoing of the good laws." The assent of Parliament was given, and Lancaster took his seat in Richard's throne as King Henry IV. 16. Nature of the Claim of Henry IV.--The claim which Henry put forward would certainly not bear investigation. It laid stress on right of descent, and it has since been thought that Henry intended to refer to a popular belief that his ancestor Edmund, the second son of Henry III., was in reality the eldest son, but had been set aside in favour of his younger brother, Edward I., on account of a supposed physical deformity from which he was known as Edmund Crouchback. As a matter of fact the whole story was a fable, and the name Crouchback had been given to Edmund not because his back was crooked, but because he had worn a cross on his back as a crusader (see p. 197). That Henry 1 Genealogy of the claimants of the throne in 1399: 1399 A PARLIAMENTARY REVOLUTION 287 should have thought it necessary to allude to this story, if such was really his meaning, shows the hold which the idea of hereditary succession had taken on the minds of Englishmen. In no other way could he claim hereditary right as a descendant of Henry III. Richard had selected as his heir Roger Mortimer, the son of the daughter of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the next son of Edward III., after the Black Prince, who lived to be old enough to have children. Roger Mortimer, indeed, had recently been killed in Ireland, but he had left a boy, Edmund Mortimer, who, on hereditary principles, was heir to the kingdom, unless the doctrine announced by Edward III. that a claim to the crown descended through females was to be set aside. In fact the real importance of the change of kings lay not in what Henry said, but in what he avoided saying. It was a reversion to the old right of election, and to the precedent set in the deposition of Edward II. Henry tacitly announced that in critical times, when the wearer of the crown was hopelessly incompetent, the nation, represented by Parliament, might step in and change the order of succession. The question at issue was not merely a personal one between Richard and Henry. It was a question between hereditary succession leading to despotism on the one side, and to parliamentary choice, perhaps to anarchy, on the other. That there were dangers attending the latter solution of the constitutional problem would not be long in appearing. Books recommended for further study of Part III. GREEN, J. R. History of the English People. Vol. i. pp. 189-520. STUBBS, W. (Bishop of Oxford). Constitutional History of England. Vol. i. chap. xii. sections 151-155; vol. ii. chaps. ix. and x. The Early Plantagenets, 129–276. Vol. ii. p. 390. NORGATE, Miss K. England under the Angevin Kings. CUNNINGHAM, W. Growth of English Industry and Commerce in the Early and Middle Ages, pp. 172-365. WAKEMAN, H. O. and HASSALL, A. (Editors). Essays Introductory to the Study of English Constitutional History. ASHLEY, W. J. An Introduction to English Economic History and Theory. Vol. i. JUSSERAND, J. J. English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages. Translated by Lucy Toulmin Smith (Miss). BROWNE, M. JESSOPP, A., Dr. Chaucer's England. OMAN, C. W. C. ADAMS, G. B The Coming of the Friars, and other Historic Essays. Norman Conquest to the Death of John (1066-1216). Vol. ii. From the TOUT, T. F. The Political History of England. Vol. iii. From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377). OMAN, C. The Political History of England. Vol. iv. From the Accession of Richard II. to the Death of Richard III. (1377-1485). |