Electronic Edition
Created by
Michael A. Linton
BOOK III.
THE PERIOD FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY THE THIRD, TO THE END OF THE REIGN OF RICHARD THE SECOND. A.D. 1216—1399.
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
HENRY THE THIRD, SURNAMED OF WINCHESTER.
HENRY, the eldest son of John, was a child under ten years of age at the time of his father's death, but his brother-in-law, the Earl of Pembroke, brought him to Gloucester and got him crowned by Gualo, who had always acted as a friend of the family. The coronation, which took place on the 28th of October, 1216, was very indifferently got up, for the crown had not come from the Wash, where it had been lying in soak ever since John's unfortunate expedition across the water from Wisbeach. Gualo therefore took a ring from his finger, and put it on the young king's head, as a substitute for the missing diadem. The coronation party consisted of three earls, three bishops, and four barons, with a sprinkling of abbots and priors, comprising altogether a retinue of about thirty individuals.
The clergy of Westminster and Canterbury complained bitterly of the ceremony having been "scamped," by which their rights had been invaded, or, in other words, by which they had been done out of their perquisites. The first coronation was therefore treated as a mere rehearsal, and a more regular performance afterwards took place, with new machinery, dresses, decorations, and all the usual properties.
On the 11th of the following November, Pembroke was appointed rector Regis et Regni—ruler of the long and kingdom—so that Henry the Third was sovereign dejure with a de facto viceroy over him. This arrangement was made at a great council held at Bristol, where Magna Charta was revised with a view to the publication of a new and improved edition.
Louis, on hearing of John's death, puffed himself up with a certainty of success, but he only realised the old fable of the French frog and the British bull; for, becoming inflated with pride, he was not long in bursting like an empty bubble.
As Christmas, 1216, was close at hand, a trace was arranged, to enable each party to enjoy the holidays. Louis took advantage of the vacation to go to Paris to consult his father Philip, who, like a modern French king of the same name, was remarkable for his tact in doing the best for his own family. On his return to England, Louis encountered some hostility from the hardy mariners of the Cinque Ports—the Deal and Dover boatmen of that day—but reaching Sandwich, he got over the flats with the usual facility. He however spitefully burned the town to the ground, merely because it was one of the Cinque Ports, which had turned crusty at his approach, though it was hardly fair of him to mull the only port that did not prove too strong for him. Hostilities were continued on both sides with varying success, until the Count de la Perche, a French general, flushed with a recent triumph at Mount Sorel, in Leicester, determined to attack the Castle of Lincoln. He would probably have succeeded, but for the resistance of a woman, the widow of the late keeper of the castle, who, with the obstinacy of her sex, refused to surrender. The Count de la Perche, ashamed of being beaten by one of the gentler sex, continued the attack, and refusing to quit the town, found himself involved in a series of street rows of the most alarming character.
Pembroke having collected a large force, sent part of it into the castle by the back garden-gate, and the other part into the town, so that poor de la Perche found it impossible to move either one way or the other. The English literally gave it him right and left, till he died; and after falling upon the almost defenceless French, they gave the name of "the fair of Lincoln," to a battle about as unfair as any recorded in the pages of history.
This event, which came off on the 20th of May, 1217, was followed in June by a conference which, like Panton Square, led to nothing Louis made one more attempt upon Dover, but he had no means to carry on the war, and he was obliged to raise the siege, as he could not raise the money. He hastened to London, which he had no sooner entered than the English shut the gates and locked him in; while the Pope sent a tremendous bull down upon him, to add to his annoyances. Louis began to feel that he had had quite enough of it, and being anxious for a little peace, he proposed one to Pembroke. The terms were soon agreed upon, but Louis was detained in town some little time for want of the money to pay his debts and his journey home again. The citizens of London forming themselves into a loan society, advanced a few pounds to the French prince, who deserves some credit for not having taken French leave of his creditors. By the terms of the treaty he surrendered all his claims upon the English crown, which seems to have been rather a superfluous sacrifice, as he had been trying it on for some time, and found that the cap never fitted.
As Louis went out of London at the East end, to embark for France, Henry, who had been at Kingston, came in at Hyde Park Corner. Pembroke, the regent, made him exceedingly popular by advising him to confirm Magna Charta, and to add a clause or two for the purpose of freshening it up, so that the new edition might repay perusal. Unfortunately for the prospects of the kingdom, Pembroke died, in May, 1219, and was buried in the Temple Church, where his tomb is still to be seen by anyone who can obtain a bencher's order. The regent's authority was now divided between Hubert de Burgh and Peter—or, as Rapin christens him—William Des Roches, the Bishop of Winchester. These two individuals, though jealous of each other, agreed in the propriety of another coronation, probably on account of the patronage it gave to those who happened to be in power; and as the couple in question had just taken office, they were anxious to realise some of the profits at the earliest opportunity. In the quarrels between these two worthies, Des Roches was getting rather the upper hand, when Hubert de Burgh, in 1223, got the Pope to declare that the king, who was only sixteen years of age, had attained his majority. Thus, like the dog in the manger, Hubert determined that no one else should enjoy a position which he himself was unable to profit by. This was an "artful dodge" of the cunning Hubert, to get the game into his own hands, for Henry on being pronounced "of age," having received a surrender of various castles and fortified places from the barons, gave back those which he had no occasion for to the wily minister. The barons, finding themselves bamboozled, became exceedingly angry with the king and Hubert, but the latter went on, alternately hanging and excommunicating, until he had settled the obstreperous and quelled the turbulent.
The year 1225 must ever be remarkable for the refusal of Parliament—a name that was then coming into use—to grant supplies without asking any questions. This had formerly been the usual practice, but when Hubert coolly proposed a grant of a fifteenth of all the movable property in the kingdom for the use of the king, the Parliament said it was all very well, but if the money was given there ought to be something to show for it. Henry accordingly gave another ratification of Magna Charta, which was a good deal like the old superfluous process of putting butter upon bacon, for he had already twice ratified that important document. In those days, however, there was no objection to giving the lily an extra coat of paint, or treating the refined gold to an additional layer of gilding.
In the year 1228, Henry had collected an army at Portsmouth to sail for France, but Hubert de Burgh, who seems to have held the place of First Lord of the Admiralty as well as his other offices, had not provided a sufficient number of vessels. When the troops were about to embark it was found impossible to stow them away even with the closest packing. Henry flew into a violent passion with Hubert, accusing him of pocketing the money he ought to have laid out in ships, and the king had drawn his sword, intending to run the minister through, when the Earl of Chester ran between them, exclaiming "Hold!" with intense
The Earl of Chester interposing between Henry III. and Hubert de Burgh.
significance. This fine dramatic situation told exceedingly well; for Hubert de Burgh got off, though the king did not, and the expedition was postponed until the year following. He passed over into Normandy, A.D. 1229, but he preferred feasting to fighting, and the only advance he made was by continually running away, which kept him constantly ahead of the enemy. He, however, threw all the blame of the failure on Hubert, whose shoulders must have been tolerably broad to have borne all that his master chose to cast on to them.
The king returned to England very much out of pocket and completely out of spirits. He applied to his old paymaster, the Parliament, but his conduct had excited so much disgust, that instead of money, or as it was then called, blunt, he got a blunt refusal. His Majesty, whose tone had hitherto been that of command, now assumed the humble air of the mendicant, and he adopted the degrading clap-trap of his being "a real case of distress," in order to obtain a subsidy. He declared his inability to pay his way, but as his way was never to pay at all, this argument availed him very little. He was, however, getting rapidly shorter and shorter every day, when fearing that he would perhaps compromise the dignity of the crown by pawning it, or sell the regalia for the purpose of regaling himself, the Parliament, agreed to let him have a trifle for current expenses. This consisted of three marks for every fief held immediately of the Crown, [Rapin's Histoire d'Angleterre, tom. ii. page 386 of the second edition.] which was little enough to give him an excuse for not paying his debts, and yet sufficient to allow him to rush into fresh extravagancies. In the year 1232, Henry, having of course spent every shilling of this small supply, renewed his application to Parliament, alleging that he was desirous of discharging the liabilities incurred in his expedition to France, but the barons firmly, and not very respectfully, refused any further pecuniary assistance. They urged in effect, that they had already been doubly robbed of their services and their cash, for they had never been paid for the one, and had been almost drained of the other. The nobles, who had derived nearly all they possessed from plunder, could not see the justice of the principle, that as they had clone to others they deserved to be done, and they peremptorily refused to comply with the attempted exactions of the sovereign.
Having failed in his attack on the pockets of his Parliament, Henry looked with an envious eye on the comfortably lined coffers of his minister. Hubert de Burgh, though he enjoyed the reputation of a trusty servant, had taken care to feather his nest, nor did the feathers lie very heavily on his conscience, for in those days the greatest weight that could be placed upon the mind was always portable. The tonnage of Hubert's conscience appears to have been considerable, for though he carried a good cargo of peculation he seems never to have evinced any disposition to sink under his burden. Henry became jealous of the good fortune of his minister, and resolved, for the purpose of getting his savings, to effect his ruin. Presuming Hubert to have been a dishonest man, and granting that there is policy in the recommendation to "set a thief to catch a thief," the king could not have done better than to send for Des Roches, the Bishop of Winchester, to assist in cleaning out the favourite. Poor de Burgh was in the first instance charged with magic and enchantment; which may be considered equivalent to an impeachment of the minister of the present day for phantasmagoria and thimble-rig.
In these enlightened times we cannot conceive the Premier being sent to the Tower on a suspicion of jack-a-lantern and blind hookey, though it was for offences of this class that Hubert was at first arraigned on the prosecution of his sovereign. These frivolous charges having fallen to the ground, the king called upon him for an account of all the money that had passed through his hands; when the minister having kept no books and being wholly without vouchers, cut a very pretty figure. As he had been in the habit of cutting figures all through his career, this result was not to be wondered at. He, however, rummaged among his papers and found an old patent, given him by John, absolving him from the necessity of rendering any account, but his enemies replied, that this was only a receipt in full up to the time of Henry's accession Hubert finding he could not get out of the scrape, determined, if possible, to get out of the country; but he proceeded no further on the road than Merton, where he turned in to the Priory. The king at first determined to have him out, dead or alive, and a mob of upwards of twenty thousand people, says Rapin, [Tome ii. page 391.] were about to start with the Mayor of London to take the ex-minister into custody How such a crowd was got together in those days out of the mere superfluous idlers of the city, is not known, and we are equally in the dark how it happened that this mob continued doing nothing, while the king listened to remonstrances from various quarters against the violence of his measures.
London mobs must have been rather more tractable in the thirteenth than in the nineteenth century, for the twenty thousand people dispersed when it was understood, after considerable negotiation, that their services would not be required. Indeed, according to a more recent historian, [Macfarlane's Cabinet History of England, vol. iii. page 229.] they had actually started when a Icing's messenger was despatched to call them back again.
Hubert, who had found the priory at Merton exceedingly slow, started off to St. Edmond's Bury to see his wife, who resided there. He had got as far as Brentwood, and had gone to bed, when he was roused by a loud knocking at the door, which caused him to put his head out of the window, and inquire, who or what was wanted. "Is there a person of the name of Hubert de Burgh stopping here?" exclaimed the captain of the troop; but the wily minister, for the sake of gaining time, pretended to misunderstand the question. "Hubert de What?" he exclaimed, as he slipped on a portion of his dress; but the soldier repeated the name with a tremendous emphasis on the syllable Burgh, which caused a shudder in the frame of Hubert. He, however, had the presence of mind to direct them to the second door round the comer. Having got them away from the front of the cottage by this manoeuvre, he ran down stairs into the street, and made his way to the chapel. Here he was seized by his pursuers, who placed him on a horse, and tied his feet together under the animal's stomach. Hubert must have had legs of a most extraordinary length, or the horse must have been a very genteel figure to have permitted this arrangement, which we find recorded in all the histories.
It is possible that the brute upon which De Burgh was secured may have been a donkey, in which case the legs of the ex-favourite might have been long enough to admit of their being tied in a double knot —and perhaps even in a bow—under the animal's stomach. In this uncomfortable position he was trotted off to the Tower; but the clergy being incensed at the violation of sanctuary, Hubert was re-mounted in the same style, and trotted back again. He was placed in the church as before, but all communication with it was cut off, a trench dug round it, and Hubert was left without any food but that which is always so plentiful under similar circumstances—namely, food for reflection.
After "chewing the bitter cud" until there was nothing left to masticate, he intimated from the steeple his desire to surrender. He had remained forty days shut up without food, fire, or any other clothing but the wrapper in which he had made his escape from his lodgings at Brentwood. The once burly De Burgh had, of course, become dreadfully thin, and the thread of existence seemed to be inclosed in a mere thread-paper. In this state he was taken to the Tower; but he was soon released to take his trial before his peers, who would have condemned him to death, but the king, looking on the minister as a golden goose, merely seized the accumulated eggs, and sent him to prison at the Castle of Devizes, until some other means were devised of getting hold of the remainder of his property.
Hubert had scarcely been in prison a year, when he took advantage of a dark night to drop himself over one of the battlements. He however found that one good drop deserved another, for he had fallen into a ditch containing a good drop of water, in which he remained absorbed for several seconds. Having crawled out, he commenced wringing his hands and his clothes, but feeling there was no time to be lost, he made his way to a country church, whither he was traced by the drippings from his garments, which had left a mark something like that of a water-cart, along the path he had taken. Though captured by one party, he was set at liberty by another, with whom the king had become very unpopular, and Hubert was carried off to Wales, where a sect of discontents who, had they lived in these days, would have been called the Welsh Whigs, had long been gathering. Hubert in about a year and a half, obtained a return of part of his estates, and was even restored to his honours; but the king still kept him as a sort of nest-egg to plunder as occasion required. Hubert finally compromised the claims of the sovereign by surrendering four castles, in which Hollinshed is disposed to believe that Jack Straw's and the Elephant could not have been included.
The Bishop of Winchester, or as he is termed in history, the Poictevin bishop, succeeded to power on the downfall of Hubert, and Des Roches soon filled the Court with foreign adventurers. Two of a trade never agree; and the nobility who had originally been foreign adventurers themselves, objected to the importation of any more scamps from abroad, on the principle, perhaps, that England had got plenty of that sort already. The Poictevin bishop was particularly hostile to the son of the late regent, the young earl of Pembroke, who inherited some of his father's virtues, and what was far more interesting to old Des Roches, the whole of his father's property. Young P. was in Ireland, where he had large estates, which the Poictevin bishop desired the governors of that country to confiscate. He promised them a slice, and the governors being—as Rapin has it—avides d'un si bon morceau—(ravenous for such a tit-bit) determined on getting hold of it. Treachery was accordingly resorted to, and Pembroke was basely stabbed in the back while sitting unsuspectingly at his own Pembroke table. This was more than the barons could bear; and they told Henry very plainly, through Edmund, the new archbishop of Canterbury, that if Des Roches was not dismissed, the sovereign himself would be sent forthwith about his business. The Poictevin was ordered off to Winchester, with directions to limit his views to his own see; and the patriotic Canterbury, who had of course only been anxious for the good of his country, obtained the power from which his predecessor had been cleverly ousted.
The Bishop of Winchester was soon afterwards called to Rome by the Pope, who pretended to require his advice, but really had an eye to his money. Des Roches imagined that he was invited for protection, but he was in fact wanted for pillage. The Poictevin was glad to escape from English surveillance, and was quite content to eat his mutton under the pope's eye, though he was hardly prepared for the process of picking to which he was subjected. The predecessor of Urban [According to some authorities Celestine was pope at this period, and Urban did not reach the papal dignity till some time afterwards.] was, however, all urbanity, and thus made some amends to Des Roches, who, like the majority of mankind, found victimisation a comparatively painless operation when performed by the gentle or light-fingered hands of an accomplished swindler.
In the year 1236, Henry married Eleanor of Provence, with immense pomp and another coronation—a ceremony the frequent repetition of which in former times was a proof of the uncertainty of regal power, for the crown could not be very firm that so often required re-soldering. The king's marriage formed, perhaps, a reasonable excuse for placing an extra hod of cement between the monarch's poll and the hollow diadem. The marriage festivities were followed by the summoning of a Parliament at Merton, where Henry passed a series of statutes that became famous under the name of the Statutes of Merton; and where he also pocketed, in the shape of subsidies, a considerable sum of money.
Eleanor, the new queen, brought with her to England a quantity of needy and seedy foreigners, most of whom were immediately promoted. One of her uncles, "named Boniface," says Mathew Paris, "from his extraordinary quantity of cheek," was raised to the see of Canterbury. She invited over from Provence a quantity of demoiselles a marier, whom she got off by palming them upon rich young nobles, of whom her husband held the wardship. The court was turned into a kind of matrimonial bazaar, where the wealthy scions of English aristocracy were hooked by the portionless but sometimes pretty spinsters of Provence. Nor was this all, for Isabella, the queen mother, sent over her four boys, Guy, William, Geoffrey, and Aymer, her sons, by the Count de la Marche, to be provided for. England was in fact regarded as an enormous common, upon which any foreign goose or jackass might be turned out to grass, provided he was patronised by a member of the reigning family. Henry, who was the victim of his poor relations, soon found himself short of cash, and he was obliged to get money in driblets, from the Parliament, who never allowed him much at a time, and always exacted conditions which were invariably broken as soon as the cash was granted.
Marriage of his most Gracious Majesty Henry III. and Eleanor of Provence.
Henry had been married about a year, when he had the coolness to ask the nation for the expenses of his wedding. The Barons declared that they had never been consulted about the match, and that the king up to the last hour of his remaining a single man had acted with great duplicity. Finding it useless to command, he resorted to the old plan of humbug, and fell back upon his old friend Magna Charta, which he confirmed once more, for about the fifth or sixth time, and of course got the money he required. This great Bill of Rights was to him a sort of stereotyped bill of exchange, upon which he could always raise a sum of money by going through the formality of 8 fresh acceptance.
The history of this reign for the next few years would furnish fitter materials for the accountant than the historian, and Henry's career would be better told in a balance-sheet than in the form of narrative. Had his schedule been regularly filed it would have disclosed a series of insolvencies, from which he was only relieved by taking the benefit of some act of generosity and credulity on the part of his Parliament. At one moment he was so fearfully hard up that he was advised to sell all his plate and jewels. [Mathew Paris. Mat. West. Chron. Dunel.] "Who will buy them?" he exclaimed;—"though," he added, glancing at his four awkward half brothers, "if any one would give me anything for that set of spoons, I should be glad to take the offer." He was told that the citizens of London would purchase plate to any amount, at which he burst into violent invectives against "the clowns," as he termed them, probably on account of the presumed capacity of their breeches pockets. He made every effort to annoy the citizens, and showed his appreciation of their superfluous cash by helping himself to ten thousand pounds of it by open violence.
In the year 1253, Henry was once more in a fix, and again the Parliament had the folly to promise him a supply if he would go through another confirmation of Magna Charta. On the 3rd of May he attended a general meeting of the nobility at Westminster Hall, where he found the ecclesiastical dignitaries holding each a burning taper in his hand, intending probably that the melting wax should make a deep impression on the sovereign. Some are of opinion that this process was illustrative of the necessity sometimes said to exist for holding a candle to a certain individual. Henry took the usual quantity of oaths, and the priests dashed to the ground their tapers, which went out in smoke, and were so far typical of the king's promises. On receiving the money he went to Guienne, from which he soon came back—as a popular vocalist used to say by way of cue to his song—"without sixpence m his pocket, just like—Love among the roses."
The Pope now brought in a heavy bill of £100,000 for money lent, of which Henry declared he had never enjoyed the benefit. The Pope merely observed, that he was clearing his books and must have the matter settled. The king turned upon the clergy, upon whom he drew bills, one of which was addressed to the Bishop of Worcester, who declared they might take his mitre in execution for the amount, and the Bishop of Gloucester said they might serve his the same; but if they did he would wear a helmet. Richard, the king's brother, who was very wealthy, hearing that the German empire was in the market for sale, made a bold bid for it. There was another competitor for the lot in the person of Alphonso, king of Castile, but Richard put down £700,000 and was declared the purchaser. This liberality was of course at the expense of poor England, which was so completely drained of cash that when Henry met his Parliament on the 2nd of May, 1258, he found the barons in fall armour, rattling their swords, as much as to say, that these must furnish a substitute for the precious metals.
Henry was alarmed at the menacing aspect of the assembly, but one of his foreign half-brothers began vapouring, in a mixed patois of bad French, to the bent down, but not yet broken, English. The king himself resorted to his old trick of promising, and pledged his word once more with his usual success, though it was already pawned over and over again for a hundred times its value. The barons, however, were still ready to take it in: though they had got by them already an enormous stock of similar articles, all unredeemed, and daily losing their interest. The leader of the country party was at this time Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, a Frenchman, who had married Eleanor, the king's sister. He had quarrelled and made it up with Henry once or twice, and the following conversation is recorded to have taken place, in 1252, between the earl and his sovereign:—
"You are a traitor," said the king.
"You are a liar!" replied the courtier.
After this brief and decisive dialogue Leicester went to France, but his royal brother-in-law soon invited him back again.
On the 11th of June, 1258, there met, at Oxford, an assembly to which the royalists gave the name of the Mad Parliament. There was a good deal of method in the madness of the members, for they appointed twenty-four barons and bishops as a committee of government. There was some insanity in the proposition to hold three sessions in a year, but it is doubtful whether Dr. Winslow, or any other eminent physician would have found, in the statutes passed at the time, sufficient to form the foundation of a statute of lunacy. Henry seems to have been most in want of Dr. Winslow's care, for his majesty was exceedingly mad at the decisive measures of the barons, and would have been glad of an asylum where he would have been safe from their influence.
The Oxford parliament, which was certainly an odd compound of good and bad, or light and dark—the regular Oxford mixture—passed some measures of a very miscellaneous character. The annual election of a new sheriff, and the sending to Parliament of four knights, chosen by the freeholders in each county, were judicious steps; but in some other respects the barons abused their power, and got a good deal of abuse themselves in consequence. The queen's relations and the king's half-brothers were literally scared out of the kingdom but only to make way for the advancement of the friends and relatives of the Mad Parliament.
Soon after it met, Richard, who had emptied his pockets in Germany, wanted to come to England to replenish them. He was met at St. Omer by a messenger, stating that there would be no admittance unless he complied with the new regulations made by the barons. To this he reluctantly consented, and he joined his brother the king, with the full intention of organising an opposition, which he found already commenced by the Earl of Gloucester, who had grown jealous of Leicester's influence. Even at that early period the struggles between the "Ins and the Outs," which form the chief business of political life, had already commenced, and there was the same sort of shuffling from side to side, and principle to principle, which the observer of statesmanship at the present day cannot fail to recognise.
There was among all parties a vast protestation of regard for Magna Charta, which served the same purpose then as has since been answered by the British Constitution and the British lion. Henry, seeing with delight the divisions of the barons, got a bull from the pope to serve as a piece of Indian-rubber for his conscience, by rubbing out all the oaths he had taken at Oxford.
On the 2nd of February, 1261, he announced his intention of governing without the aid of the Committee, and immediately went to the Tower, of which he took possession. He then dropped in at the Mint, where he emptied every till, and even waited, according to some, while a shilling, which was in the course of manufacture, got cool in the crucible. The Mint authorities were of course exceedingly obsequious, and may probably have offered to send home a batch of newpennies that were not quite done, if his majesty desired it. "No thank you," would have been Henry's reply, "I'll take what you've got;" and so he did, for off he marched with the whole of it.
The arbitrary conduct of the barons had somewhat disgusted the people, many of whom had discovered that one tyrant was not quite so bad as four-and-twenty. London declared for Henry, and Leicester ran away; but the vacillating cockneys soon declared for Leicester, which brought him back again. The king, who had been at such pains to secure the Tower, had the mortification to find it secured him, for he was safely locked up in it. Prince Edward, his son, flew to Windsor Castle, and the queen, his mother, was going down to the stairs at London Bridge to take a boat to follow him. She had shouted "Hi!" to the Jack-in-the-water, and was stepping into a wherry, when she was recognised by the mob, who called after her as a witch, and pelted her with mud and missiles. The Lord Mayor, who happened to be passing, gallantly offered her his arm, walked with her to St. Paul's, and left her in the care of the door-keeper. This anecdote is circumstantially given by all the chroniclers, among whom we need only mention Wykes West, and Trivet—the correctness of the last being so remarkable that "right as a Trivet" is to this day a proverb. After a prodigious quantity of quarrelling between Henry and Son on one part, and Leicester and Co. on the other, the matters in dispute were referred to the arbitration of the French king, Louis the Ninth, who made an award in favour of Henry, which the barons of course refused to abide by. A civil war broke out with great fury, in which the Jews were victimised by both parties, though opposed to neither. They were slaughtered by the barons for being attached to the king, and were also slaughtered by the king's party for being attached to the barons. If they were attached to either it certainly was one of the most unfortunate attachments we ever heard of, and the strength of the attachment must have been great which could have survived such horrible treatment.
On the 14th of May, 1264, the king's party and that of Leicester met in battle. His majesty was at Lewes, in a hollow, where he thought himself deep enough to have got into a position of safety. The earl was upon the Downs, which Wykes calls a "downy move," for the spot was raised, and commanded a view of the movements of the sovereign. Leicester commenced the attack, which soon became general. Prince Edward charged the London militia, who could have charged pretty well in return had they been behind their counters; but they had no idea of selling their lives at any price. They accordingly fled in all directions, and the prince paid them off all he owed them for the manner in which they had served his mother. Leicester concentrated his force upon the king, to whom he gave personally a sound thrashing. Having cudgelled the monarch to his heart's content, he took him into custody. Prince Edward was also seized, but the latter escaped on the Thursday in Whitsun week, 1265, and raised a powerful force, with which he marched to Evesham against his father's enemies.
Leicester had formed a camp near Kenilworth, and having got the king still in his possession, he encased the poor old man in armour, put him on a horse, and turned him into the field on the morning of the battle. The veteran was soon dismounted, and was on the point of being killed, when he roared out "Hollo! stop! I am Henry of Winchester!" His son recognising his voice, seized him and literally bundled him into a place of safety. "What do you do here?" muttered Edward, somewhat annoyed, but the aged Henry could not explain a circumstance which might have played old Harry with the cause of the royalists. Leicester's horse fell under him, but the earl bounding to his feet, continued to fight, until finding the matter getting serious, he paused to inquire whether the royalists gave quarter. "There is no quarter for traitors," was the only reply he received, followed by a poke in the shape of a home-thrust from the sword of one of the enemy Deprived of their leader, Leicester's followers had nothing to follow, and the royalists obtained a victory. The king was now restored to power, but there were still a few rebels in the forest of Hampshire, one of whom, named Adam Gourdon, came to a personal contest with Prince Edward, who got him down, placed his foot on his chest, and generously restored him to liberty. Gourdon was introduced to the queen the same night as a sort of prize rebel, and became a faithful adherent to the royal family.
Henry was now left at home all by himself, his son Edward having gone to Palestine. The old man often wrote to request the Prince to return, for his majesty found himself unequal to the bother of ruling a people still disposed to be occasionally turbulent. A sedition had broken out at Norwich, which Henry had gone to quell, and he was on his way back to London, when he was laid up at St. Edmond's Bury by indisposition. Being considered a slight illness, it was at first slighted, but the royal patient became worse, and he died on the 16th of November, 1272, at the respectable age of sixty-eight, according to one historian, [Macfarlane.] sixty-four according to a second, [Hume.] and sixty-six according to a third. [Rapin.] The last seems to be the nearest to the truth, for Henry had been a king about fifty-six years, and he was about ten when he came to the throne He was buried at Westminster Abbey, where for nothing on Sundays and for twopence on week days, posterity may see his tomb.
The character of Henry III. was an odd compound, a species of physiological grog, a mixture of generous spirit and weak water, the latter predominating over the former in a very considerable degree. He was exceedingly fond of money, of which he extracted such enormous quantities from his subjects, that if the heart and the pocket were synonymous, as they have sometimes been called, Henry would have had the fullest possession of the hearts of his people. His manner must have been rather persuasive; for if the Parliament refused a subsidy at first, they were always talked over by his majesty, and made to relax their purse-strings before the sitting closed. Some gratitude may perhaps be due to him on account of his patronage of literature, for he started the practice of keeping a poet, in an age when poets found considerable difficulty in keeping themselves. The bard alluded to was one Master Henry, who received on one occasion a hundred shillings, [Madox, page 268.] and was subsequently "ordered ten pounds;" but, considering the unpunctuality of the king in money matters, it is doubtful whether the order for ten pounds was ever honoured. The persecution of the Jews was among the most remarkable features of the career of the king, who used to demand enormous sums of them, and threatened to hang them if they refused compliance. In this he only followed the example of his father, John, who, it is said, demanded ten thousand marks of an unfortunate Jew, one of whose teeth was pulled out every day, until he paid the money. It is stated by Matthew Paris [Page 160.] that seven were extracted before the cash was forthcoming. This was undoubtedly the fact, but it is not generally known, that, with the cunning of his race, the Jew contrived to get some advantage out of the treatment to which he was subjected. It is said that he exclaimed, after the last operation had been performed, "They don't know it, but them teeth was all decayed. There's not ashound von among the lot, so I've done 'em nicely;" and with this piece of consolation, he paid the money.
To Henry's reign has also been attributed the origin of the custom of sending deputies to Parliament to represent the commons, a practice that we find from looking over the list of the lower house, is liable to be in some cases greatly abused. We may in conclusion, say of Henry III. that, "take him for all in all," as the poet says, "we shall never"—that is to say, we hope we shall never—"look upon his like again."
EDWARD THE FIRST, SURNAMED LONGSHANKS
EDWARD was the first king who came to the throne like a gentleman, without any of that indecent clutching of the crown and sacking of the treasury which had been practised by almost every one of his predecessors. Perhaps his absence from England was the chief cause of this forbearance; but it is at all events refreshing to meet with a sovereign whose accession was not marked by a burglary upon the premises where the public treasure happened to be deposited.
On the 20th of November, 1272, four days after his father's death, Edward was proclaimed king by the barons at the New Temple. It was probably under the shade of the old fig-tree in Fig-Tree Court, that they read his titles of King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Aquitaine. Edward had been engaged in the crusades, as one of those fighting missionaries who conveyed "sermons in stones" through the medium of slings, and knocked unbelief literally upon the head with the Christian battle-axe. One day he nearly lost his life, by the hands of an assassin, disguised as a postman from the Emir of Jaffa, who, feigning a wish to be converted, had opened a correspondence with Edward.
The English prince was lying in his robe-de-chambre on a couch, when the usual salaam—the emir's postman's knock—was made at the door of his apartment. The messenger had brought a letter, of which Edward had scarcely broken the wax, when his doom was nearly sealed by a blow from a dagger, hidden in the postman's sleeve. The prince parried the attack with his arms, which were his only weapons, until, wresting the dirk from his assailant's hands, he used it to put a period to the existence of the would-be murderer, by a process of punctuation which no grammarian has attempted to describe.
Edward's wound was not deep, but his enemies had been deep enough to introduce some venom into it. When he heard the fact he gave himself up to despair, for he considered that his existence was irretrievably poisoned. A romantic story is told of Queen Eleanor having sucked the poison from her husband's arm, but it is quite certain that such succour was never afforded him, and the anecdote is therefore not worth the straw that the operation would have required. The prince owed his recovery to the prompt attendance of an English surgeon, who happened to be settled at Acre, and to some drugs supplied by the Grand Master of the Templars, who opened his heart and his chest—of medicine—for the relief of the suffering Edward. There is no doubt:that Eleanor had sufficient affection for her husband, to have prompted her to draw the poison into her mouth had it ever entered her head; but the fact appears to be that the remedy was never thought of until a century after the infliction of the wound, which was a little too late to be of service to the patient, though nothing is ever too late to be made use of by the chroniclers. The notion was too good to be rejected by these very credulous gentlemen, who are easily induced to convert might have been, into has been, when the latter course is better adapted for exciting an agreeable interest.
Edward's Arm in the hands of his medical Advisors.
Feeling tolerably secure of the throne, he was in no hurry to take possession, but enjoyed an agreeable tour before returning to England He paid a visit to the new pope, his old friend Theobald, though there was some difficulty in getting into Theobald's road, for his Holiness had left Rome for Civita Vecchia. Edward spent some time in Italy, for among the many irons he had in the fire were two or three Italian irons, which he desired to look after before arriving in his own country He next visited Paris, and instead of coming straight home with the diligence that might have been expected, he turned back to Guienne, where he was invited by the Count of Chalons to a tournament.
"'Twas in the merry month of May," in the year twelve hundred and seventy-four, "When bees from flower to flower did hum," exactly as they do in the present day, that the parties met lance to lance, each attended by a host of champions. Edward brought one thousand with him, but the Count of Chalons came with two thousand, an incident, which at once raised a suspicion that the chivalrous knight intended foul play towards his royal antagonist. A tournament in sport soon became a battle in earnest, and the count rushed upon Edward, grasping him by the neck to embrace the opportunity of unhorsing him. Nothing, however, could make him resign his seat, and the Count of Chalons was soon licking the dust, or rather, the saw-dust spread over the arena in which the tournament was given. Edward was so angry at the trick which had been played, that he hit his antagonist several times while down, and kept hammering at the armour of the count like a smith at an anvil The Count of Chalons roared out lustily for mercy, but Edward refusing to grant it, continued to "give it him" in another sense for several minutes. At length the count offered to surrender his sword,
Edward and the Count of Chalons.
which was ignominiously rejected by the English king, who called up a common foot soldier to take away the dishonoured weapon.
It was not till the year 1274, that Edward thought of returning to England, and he sent over to order his coronation dinner on a scale that would have done honour to a mayoral banquet. The bill of fare included so many heads of cattle, that the shortest way to get through the cooking would have been to light a fire under Leadenhall Market, and roast the whole of the contents by a single operation. If such a feast had really taken place, it was enough to put the times out of joint for a twelvemonth afterwards. On the 2nd of August, 1274, Edward arrived at Dover, and on the 19th of the same month he was crowned at Westminster Abbey, with his wife, Eleanor. This was the wonderful woman who was erroneously alleged to have sucked the poison from her husband's arm, a feat that has had no parallel in modern times, if we except the individual who undertook to swallow liquid lead and arsenic before a generous British public, and who, by surviving the operation, gave great offence to a portion of the enlightened audience. Edward, on coming to England, found plenty of loyalty, but very little cash; and though he had no objection to reign in the hearts of his people, he felt the necessity of making himself also master of their pockets. A crown without money would have been a mere tin kettle, tied to the head, instead of the tail, of the unlucky dog who might be compelled to wear it. The king turned his attention to the unfortunate Jews, who seemed to be tolerated in England as human bees, employed in collecting the sweets of wealth only for the purpose of having it taken away from them. Edward literally emptied them out of the kingdom, for the purpose of plundering their hives more effectually. He allowed some of them their travelling expenses out of England, but even this was more than they required in many cases, for the inhabitants of the ports saved the Jews the cost of their journey by most inhumanly drowning them.
Edward, however unjust himself, disliked injustice in others; and indeed, with the common jealousy of dealers on a very large scale, he seemed to desire a monopoly of all the robbery and oppression practised within his own dominions. In the year 1289, the judicial bench was disgraced by a set of extortioners whose existence we can scarcely comprehend in the present age, when a corrupt judge would be as difficult to find as the philosopher's stone, or as that desirable but impossible boon to the briefless barrister, perpetual motion. The Chief Justice of the King's Bench had actually encouraged his own servants to commit murder, for the sake of the fees that would accrue upon the trial, and, of course, the acquittal of the culprits. The Chief Baron of the Exchequer had kept all the money paid into court upon every action that had been tried, and was even discovered going disgraceful snacks with the usher in illegal charges upon suitors. As to the puisnes, they had been detected in selling their judgments in banco at so much a folio, and even hiring pickpockets to rob the leading counsel as they went out of court with their fees in their pockets. The Chancellor had spent the money of nearly all his wards, and would never fix a day for a decree until he was positively forced, when he would pronounce a decision unintelligible to all parties. These disgraceful proceedings were made a pretext by the king for taking eighty thousand marks from the judges, his majesty observing, that if he took from them all the marks they possessed, he could not remove the stains from their characters. This shallow sophism, though it might have satisfied the king himself, was not consolatory to the judges, nor was it calculated to reimburse the people for the losses sustained by judicial delinquency It is said that the first clock placed opposite the gate of Westminster Hall was purchased with a fine of 800 marks upon the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and the popular saying "that's your time of day" is supposed to have arisen from a sarcasm that used to be addressed by the crowd outside to the judicial delinquent.
As a measure of further extortion, Edward became suddenly very particular as to the titles by which the nobles held their estates, and sent round commissioners to demand the production of the deeds by which the barons acquired their property. Earl de Warenne was called upon, among the rest, and desired that the commissioners might be politely shown in to him. "So, gentlemen," he mildly observed, "you wish to see the title by which I hold my property." "Exactly so," was the reply, which was followed by a common-place expression of sorrow at being obliged to trouble him. "It is no trouble in the least," rejoined Earl de Warenne, drawing a tremendous sword, which he brandished before the eyes of the commissioners, and begged their close
Earl de Warenne producing his title to the Commissioners.
inspection of the title by which his ancestors had acquired his possessions. "You see, gentlemen," he continued, "there is no flaw to be detected, and if after looking at my title you want a specimen of my deeds, I can very speedily give you the satisfaction you require." The historian need scarcely add that the commissioners backed out, with an observation, "that a mere abstract of the title—a drawing of the sword out of its scabbard—was all that could possibly be required."
Edward having other fish to fry, had hitherto neglected Wales, but that land of mountains was a scene of frequent risings, which he now determined to "put down" with promptitude and vigour. Llewellyn, the Prince of North Wales, was summoned to London to do homage as a tributary to the English crown, but his ambition having been fired by some prophecies of the famous Merlin, the fiery Welshman sent word that he would not come so far to see Edward, which was equivalent to a declaration that he would see him further. The English king having resolved to punish so much insolence, about Easter 1277, crossed the Dee—not the sea, as some historians have alleged—with a large army and blocked poor Llewellyn up in his own principality. His brother David having been made an English baron, and married to the daughter of an English earl, was at first devoted to the English, but his native breezes fanned the still dormant flame of patriotism, and he joined his brother in resisting the foreign enemy. Edward occupied Anglesey, but in crossing over to the main land he found himself in the most dreadful straits at the Menai. He lost several hundred men, and was obliged to fly for protection to one of his castles, but a king in those days could make every Englishman's house his castle, by unceremoniously walking into it. Llewellyn was somewhat emboldened by partial success, and foolishly advanced to the valley of the Wye, without anyone knowing wherefore. Roger, the savage Earl of Mortimer, was immediately down upon him, and sacrificed him before he had time even to put on his armour, in which he was only half encased when he was cruelly set upon by the enemy. He had buckled on his greaves, and was in the act of putting on his breast-plate over his head when he was decapitated with the usual disregard which was at that time continually shown to the heads of families. His brother David kept cutting about the country with his sword in his hand for at least six months, until he was basely betrayed into the hands of the English. He was condemned to die the death of traitors, which included a series of barbarities too revolting to mention. This sentence, which formed a precedent in the punishment of high treason for many ages, is one of the most disgraceful facts of our history. It casts a stigma upon every parliament and every generation of the people in whose time this fearful penalty either was or might have been inflicted.
The leek of Wales was now entwined with the rose of England, and Edward endeavoured to propitiate his newly acquired subjects by becoming a resident in the conquered country. His wife Eleanor gave birth to a son in the castle of Caernarvon, and he availed himself of the circumstance to introduce the infant as a native production, giving him the title of Prince of Wales, which has ever since been held by the eldest son of the English sovereign. After remaining about a year in Wales, Edward was enabled by the tranquillity of the kingdom to take a continental tour, in the course of which he was often appealed to as a mutual friend by sovereigns between whom there was any difference. He acted as arbitrator in the celebrated cause of Anjou against Aragon; but while settling the affairs of others, his own were getting rather embarrassed, and he was compelled in the year 1289 to return to England.
Upon reaching home he found that Scotland was in that state of weakness which offered an eligible opportunity to a royal plunderer. The King, Alexander III., had died, leaving a little grandchild of the name of Margaret, as his successor. This young lady was the daughter of Eric, King of Norway, who wrote over to Edward requesting he would do what he could for her in case of her title being disputed. The English sovereign, with a cunning worthy of a certain French old gentle-
King Edward introducing his Son as Prince of Wales, to his newly acquired Subjects.
man whom we need not name, recommended a marriage with his son as the best mode of protecting the royal damsel. The preliminaries were all arranged, and Eric had agreed to forward the little Margaret, who was only eight years of age, by the first boat from Norway to Britain. The child had been shipped, and regularly invoiced, when she fell ill, and being put ashore at one of the Orkney Islands, she unfortunately died.
On the death of the queen being made known, claimants to the Scottish crown started up in all directions, and it was necessary to find the heir by hunting among the descendants of David of Huntingdon. John Baliol was the grandson of David's eldest daughter, and John's grandmother therefore gave Baliol a right to the crown, which was disputed by Bruce and Hastings, the sons of the youngest daughters of Huntingdon senior, whose only son, Huntingdon junior, died without issue. An opening was thus left to the female branches, and the introduction of those charming elements of discord—the ladies—into the question of succession, created, of course, all the confusion that arose.
Edward, having advanced to Norham, a small town on the English side of the Tweed, which, as every one knows, forms a land of Tweedish wrapper for Scotland, appointed a conference, which took place on the 10th of May, 1291, at which he distinctly stated that he intended regulating the succession to the Scotch throne. At this meeting Edward himself proposed the first resolution, which pledged the assembly to a recognition of the right of the English king not only to do what he liked with his own, but to do what he liked with Scotland also, which did not belong to him. One gentleman, in the body of the assembly, who remains anonymous to this day, ventured to suggest by way of amendment, that no answer could be made while the throne was vacant, and an adjournment until the next morning was agreed upon. No business was, however, done on the morrow, but a further postponement till the 2nd of June was eventually carried. When that day arrived the attendance was numerous and highly respectable, for on the platform we might have observed no less than eight competitors for the crown. Robert Bruce, who was there in excellent health and spirits, publicly declared his readiness to refer his claims to Edward's arbitration, and all the other claimants did the same. On the next day, Baliol made his appearance and followed the example of the others, and it was agreed that one hundred and four commissioners should be appointed to inquire and report to Edward previous to his giving his final award. There is little doubt that this enormous number of commissioners could only have been intended to mystify the case, and to leave Edward at liberty to settle it his own way; a suspicion that is still further justified by his having reserved the right to add, without any limit or restriction, to the number of commissioners, and thus make "confusion worse confounded" should occasion require.
The wily Edward, pretending that it was necessary to the performance of his duty as arbitrator, got the kingdom, the castles, and other property surrendered into his hands on the 11th of June; though the Earl of Angus refused to give up Dundee and Forfar without an indemnity, which he stoutly stuck up for, and eventually obtained. None of the clergy joined in this disgraceful concession but the Bishop of Sodor, who ought to have been the very first to effervesce. The Icing himself went to the principal towns in Scotland with the rolls of homage, which were allowed to lie for signature, and he sent attornies, empowered to take affidavits, into the various villages.
At length, on the 3rd of August, the commissioners met for the despatch of business, and of course, came to no decision. In the year following they tackled the subject again, but it was found that the more they talked about it, the more they differed. Edward, by way of complicating the affair still further, summoned a Parliament to meet at Berwick on the 15th of October, 1292, at which Bruce and Baliol were fully heard, when the assembly laid down a general proposition that the lineal descendant of the eldest sister, however remote in degree, was preferable to the nearer in degree, if descended from a younger sister. This decision left every thing undecided, and accordingly Edward gave judgment that Baliol should be King of Scotland, with the simple proviso that Edward should be King of Baliol. The whole affair having been "a sell" got up between the English sovereign and the Scottish claimant, there was no demur on the part of the latter, who swore fealty, as he would have sworn that black was white, had such been the purport of the oath that his master required.
Edward took every opportunity of bullying Baliol, and even ordered him to come all the way to Westminster to defend an action brought against him for money due from Alexander III., his great grandfather. He was also served with process in the paltry suit of self ats Macduff; and other writs, to which he was forced to appear in person, were continually served upon him. For the smallest pecuniary claim the Scotch king was compelled to come to England to plead, until his patience at last gave way, and he turned refractory.
Edward was now at war with Philip of France, whom Baliol agreed to serve by harassing their mutual enemy. The Scotch king, who was at heart a humbug and a coward to the core, became exceedingly insolent, from the belief that Edward was somewhat down, and that the proper time had arrived for hitting him. The English sovereign, who had been harassed at first by the Scotch cur, soon brought him howling for mercy, which was accorded on condition of his resigning the kingly office, a proposition which Baliol basely submitted to. Edward made a triumphal progress through Scotland, and taking a fancy to an old stone, upon which the kings had sat to be crowned at Scone, caused the very uncomfortable coronation chair to be removed to Westminster. [Hemingford.] The people of Scotland had always considered this block to be the corner stone of their liberties, and its removal seemed to take away the only foundation that their hopes of regaining their independence were built upon. As long as it was in their country, they believed it would bring them good fortune; but they dreaded the reverse if the stone should be removed even so far as a stone's throw from the borders of Scotland. Edward having appointed the Earl de Warenne governor of the vanquished kingdom, and given away all the appointments that were vacant to creatures of his own, returned in triumph to England.
In the year 1297 William Wallace, commonly known as the hero of Scotland, made his first appearance on the stage of history as a supernumerary, carrying a banner, for we find him engaged in unfurling the standard of liberty. He was at first merely the captain of a small band of outlaws—a sort of first robber—in the great drama in which he was soon to sustain a principal character. Pie was the second son of Sir William Wallace, of Ellerslie, and had all the qualities of a melodramatic hero, as far at least as we are enabled to judge by a description of him written a hundred years after his death with that minuteness which the old chroniclers were so fond of adopting when they knew that no-one had the power of contradicting them. The celebrated Bower, who continued the Scotichronicon of Fordun, tells us that Wallace was "broad shouldered, big-boned, and proportionately corpulent," so that his shoulders were broad enough to bear the burden he undertook; and his being corpulent gave him this advantage over his enemies, that if they had fifty thousand lives, he had undoubtedly "stomach for them all."
Mr. Tytler, who will perhaps excuse us for venturing on Tytler's ground, informs us in his History of Scotland that "Wallace had an iron frame," so that we have the picture of the man at once before us For a quarrel with an English officer he had been banished from his home, and by living in fastnesses he acquired some of those loosenesses which are inseparable from a roving character. His followers comprised a few men of desperate fortunes and bad reputation, who had turned patriots, as gentlemen in difficulties generally do; for it is a remarkable fact, that the men who endeavour to discharge a debt to their country are those who never think of discharging the debts which they owe to their creditors. Success, however, covers a multitude of sins, and Wallace with his little baud of outlaws, having achieved one or two small triumphs, soon found out the fact that the world which sneers at the very noblest cause in its early struggles, will always be ready to join it in the moment of victory. Wallace having been fortunate in his efforts, soon had the co-operation of Sir William Douglas and all his:vassals; just as Mr. Cobden and the Anti-Corn-Law League, after having been denounced as turbulent demagogues, and threatened with prosecution, were assisted on the eve of the fulfilment of their object by the leaders of the opposition and the principal members of the Government
Portrait of William Wallace, from an old wood block.
Edward, who had been in Flanders during the commencement of the Scotch rebellion, now returned to England, and by way of propitiating his subjects, he summoned a Parliament, at which Magna Charta was again voluntarily confirmed. It is true he made a cunning effort to: insert at the end of it the words "saving always the rights of our crown," [Rapin, vol. iii. page 72, second edition, quarto, 1727.] which would have been almost equivalent to striking out all the other clauses of the document. The Parliament hotly opposed the crafty suggestion, which was accordingly withdrawn, and supplies for carrying on the war against the Scotch insurgents were readily granted In the summer of 1298, Edward came in person to Scotland at the head of a large army. Wallace, instead of waiting for a battle, retired slowly before the forces of the English king, clearing off all the provisions on the way, and thus aiming a blow at the stomach of the enemy. The invaders advanced, but there was nothing to eat; or as Mr. Tytler well expresses it, "they found an inhospitable desert" where—he might have added—they had occasion for a hospitable dinner, Wallace was now at Falkirk, from which he meditated an attack upon the king, but Edward, having been apprized of his intention, reflected that it was a game at which two could play, and he thought it: as well to secure the first innings. The English king accordingly, finding the ball at his foot, took it up immediately, and at once bowled out, the Scottish hero. The battle of Falkirk was fought on the 22nd of July, 1298, and the Scotch loss is variously stated at ten, fifteen, and sixty thousand men. In ordinary matters it is sometimes safe to believe half that we hear, but it would be more judicious to limit one's trust to ten per cent, in the records of history.
The Scotch war had of course been a very expensive business, and Edward had been sponging upon his subjects to an alarming extent during its continuance. In 1294 he had taken from the clergy half their incomes and nearly all their eatables. His purveyors first emptied their granaries, then robbed their farm-yards, and ultimately pillaged their pantries; so that the king having already ransacked their pockets, the "reverend fathers," as he insultingly termed them, were in a very pretty predicament. Their larders were laid waste, their safes were no longer safe, they could not preserve their jam, their corn was instantly sacked, and even their joints of meat, from the leg to the loin, were walked off or pur-loined by the order of the sovereign. The pope, who had been applied to for protection when they were being deprived of their cattle, sent over a bull, which proved of very little use, for he soon despatched a second, by which the first was recalled in all its most important provisions.
The trading classes were not so easily robbed, for when the king began to deal with them in his own peculiar fashion, he found them rather awkward customers. Some wool had been prepared for shipping by the London merchants, when the king's agents came wool-gathering to the wharfs, and carried it off with a high hand for the use of the sovereign. It is true they promised to pay, and ordered the owners to put it down to the bill; but the traders determined that they could not do business in that manner. They were joined by some of the nobles, and among others by Hereford, the constable, and Norfolk, the marshal of England, who had a joint audience of his majesty, who threatened to hang them if they did not do his bidding. "I will neither do so, nor hang, sir king," was Norfolk's reply, in which Hereford acquiesced; so that it was evident Edward could neither trample on the marshal, nor any longer overrun the constable. Thirty bannerets and fifteen hundred gentleman whom the lung had dubbed knights joined the two nobles in their refusal to dub up, [Heming.] and Edward was left almost alone. In this dilemma he appealed to the people by the old trick of an effective speech, interlarded with those clap-traps which he knew so well how to employ. He caused a platform to be erected at the door of Westminster Hall, and appeared upon it, supported by his son Edward, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Earl of Warwick. Like the schoolmaster who never administered a flogging without saying it hurt him a great deal more than the boy, the king told the people that it was more grievous to him to exact taxes from his dear people than it could be to them to bear the burden. "I am going," he exclaimed, "to expose myself to all the dangers of war for your sakes," and here he pulled out his pocket-handkerchief, behind which he winked at the Archbishop of Canterbury, who thrust his tongue into his cheek to show the prelate's relish for his master's hypocrisy. "If I return alive," continued the royal humbug, "I will make you amends for the past; but if I fall, here is my dear son (step this way, Ned), place him on the throne (hold your head up, stupid), and his gratitude (bow, you blockhead) will be the reward of your fidelity." Here he fairly swamped his face in tears, while the archbishop turned on a couple of fountains, which came gushing through his eyes, and the meeting was literally dissolved by the practice of this piece of crying injustice towards the people. Not only had he melted the hearts of the traders by this manoeuvre, but he drew streams of coin for the liquidation of his debts from their pockets. With the cash thus collected he started to join Guy, Earl of Flanders, against Philip le Bel, a very pretty sort of fellow, between whom and Edward there was a contest for the possession of the daughter of the Guy, the fair Philippa. The English king had, as early as 1294, contracted a marriage for the Prince of Wales with this young lady, who was only nine when the match was agreed upon. The happiness of the Flemish infant of course went for nothing in the game of craft and ambition which was being played by the intriguing French king, who had no other object but the extension of his personal influence. Though he may have been the first, he was certainly not the last Philip on the throne of France to force the inclinations of royal children on the subject of marriage for his own purposes.
Edward IV. had expended a large amount of English money in purchasing the support of foreign mercenaries, who had no sooner spent their wages than they discontinued their services. The English king, finding he was likely to get the worst of it, concluded a truce in the spring of 1298, and left the unfortunate Guy to fight his own battles.
Before Edward's return home, the London citizens refused to pay the taxes, on the ground of their not having been imposed by the consent of Parliament. Many a tax gatherer lost his time and his temper in going from door to door, and was told, tauntingly, to collect himself,
Tax Collecting in the reign of Edward the First.
when he sought to collect money for the royal treasury. The king, who was at Ghent, tried the never-failing experiment of another confirmation of Magna Charta, with the addition of what he called—in a private letter to his son—"a little one in," namely, a confirmation of the Statute de Tallagio non concedendo, which was an act declaring that no talliage or aid should be levied without the consent of the Parliament. This was the first occasion upon which the nation was formally invested with the sole right of raising the supplies, but the investment, after all, was not particularly eligible, as the sole right of raising the supplies carries with it the sole duty of finding the money Not content with his confirmation of the charter, Edward, in May, 1298, was called upon to ratify, at York, the confirmation itself, and thus spread with additional butter the constitutional bacon. This he for some time evaded by a series of paltry excuses, in which "head-ache," "previous engagement," and "out of town," were pleaded from time to time, until the barons, by following him up, got him into a cul de sac from which there was no escaping. He consented at last to ratify, but, in the most dishonourable manner, he contrived while signing to smuggle in a clause at the end, which, by saving the right of the Crown, rendered the whole document a wretched nullity. This was a trick he was much addicted to, for he had tried the paltry subterfuge on a previous occasion. The barons, when they saw the addition, merely shook their heads, murmured something about "a do," and returned to their homes; but Edward thought he should find no difficulty in coming over the citizens. He accordingly called a meeting in St. Paul's Churchyard, when the confirmation was read over, amid cheers, and cries of "hear" at the end of every clause, until the last, when the shouts of "Shame!" "No, no!" "It's a dead swindle!" and "Don't you wish you may get it?" became truly terrible. Edward retained his usual self-possession during the meeting, but expressed, in side speeches to his attendants, his fears that the citizens were not such fools as he had taken them for. Making a virtue of necessity—though, by the way, virtues made out of that material very seldom appear to fit, but sit very awkwardly on the wearer—he withdrew the offensive clause at a Parliament that was held soon after Easter.
Edward and Philip, finding it convenient to make up their differences, threw overboard their respective allies, the French king giving up the Scots, and the English sovereign completely sacrificing the poor old Guy of Flanders. This earl has got the name of the Unfortunate, but he better deserves the title of the soft Guy, the silly Guy, or the Guy that, if there happened to be a difficulty within his reach, was sure to blunder into it. He had twice been fool enough to accept an invitation from Philip, and had twice been detained as a prisoner. We therefore have little sympathy with him when we hear of his being deserted by Edward; for "the man who" will continually run his head into a noose, must expect to find the stringency of the string at some time or another.
Peace was made between the French and English kings by means hi two marriages; but it seems rash to calculate upon matrimony as a source of quietude. Edward, who was a widower, married Philip's sister, Margaret, and the Prince of Wales was affianced to little Isabella, aged only six years, the daughter of the French sovereign. A treaty! was concluded between the two countries on the 20th of May, 1303, by; which Edward took Guienne, and gave up Flanders. The unhappy Guy was sent thither to negociate a peace with his own subjects, but; like everything else he undertook, the poor old man made a sad mess of it. Returning to Philip with the news of his failure, he was committed to prison, which really, considering all things, seems to have been the best place for him. He was, at all events, out of harm's way and prevented from doing mischief to himself and others by his provoking stupidity. He remained in custody till he died, but it was said; of him by a contemporary that he was never known to "look alive" during the whole of his existence.
Edward, having settled his dispute with France, had time to turn his attention to Scotland, which had always been his "great difficulty," as Ireland became the "great difficulty" to England at a later period. The English king advanced against the Scotch in a sort of hop-scotch, style, first making for the North, then returning to the South, or going: to the East, in a zig-zag direction. The Scots soon surrendered, and were allowed to go scot-free, with a very few exceptions. Stirling Castle proved itself possessed of sterling qualities. It held out against the besiegers with determined obstinacy, and Edward himself came to assist by throwing stones, which caused the remark to be made that the king had been brought to a very pretty pitch through the audacity of the Scotch rebels. When the provisions were exhausted, the garrison made: an unprovisional surrender, and the governor gave out that he gave in, with all his companions. Wallace, having been betrayed into Edward's power, was cruelly murdered; but within six months of his death, Liberty, like a new-born infant, was in arms once more in Scotland. Robert Bruce, the grandson of old Bruce, was the new champion of his native land, and intrusted his scheme to Comyn. The latter proved treacherous, and Bruce, seeing what was Comyn, or rather, what Comyn was, killed him right off out of the way, in a convent at Dumfries. Young Bruce having mustered a party of about a dozen friends, took an excursion with them to Scone, where, in the course of a kind of pic-nic party, he was crowned on the 27th of March, 1306, with some solemnity. Edward was at Winchester when he heard the news, and, though very far from well, he determined on being carried to Scotland. Like John; who had been dragged about the country in a horse-box till within a few hours of his death, Edward was packed on a litter and conveyed with Care to Carlisle, whence he wished to be forwarded to Scotland. Making a desperate effort, he mounted his horse, and went six miles in four, days, a pace which could only have been performed by an equestrian prodigy; for the slowest animal, unless he were a determined jibber, could scarcely have accomplished a task so difficult. [It is possible that the horse hired by the king on this occasion may have been accustomed to draw a fly, the owner of which may have been in the habit of charging by the hour.] This anything but "rapid act of horsemanship" was the last act of Edward's reign, for having got to Burgh upon the Sands, he found the sand of his existence, had run out, on the 7th of July, 1307. He had lived sixty-eight years, and had reigned during half that time; so that for him the stream of life had been a sort of half-and-half—an equal mixture—crowned by a frothy, foamy diadem. His remains were, some short time afterwards, sent to Westminster, via Waltham, and were buried on the 8th of October, with those of his father Henry.
The character of Edward has been generally praised, but we are compelled to tender a bill of exceptions to the report of previous historians. He certainly added to his dominions, but if this is a merit, it may be claimed for any man who, by fraud or violence, increases his own property at the expense of his neighbours. The improvements effected in his reign were rather in spite of him than owing to his sense of justice or his liberality. He had the talent of talking people out of their money, but this quality he has only shared with many equally accomplished, but less exalted, swindlers. His attempt to smuggle a clause into Magna Charta, before the face of the citizens, was an act calculated to ruin him in the City, where putting one's hand to paper is a proceeding that must not be trifled with. His treatment of Wallace proves him to have been a cruel and vindictive enemy; his abandonment of the poor Earl of Flanders shows that he was an insincere and treacherous friend: he was constant to his hatreds, and fickle in his likings: his animosity had the strength of fire, but in him the milk of human kindness was greatly diluted with water. He made some good laws, such as the statute of mortmain, which was first passed in his reign, but so far from there being any truth in the proverb, necessitas non habet legem, it is certain that necessity produced nearly every good law that Edward gave to his people.
In person, he was a head taller than the ordinary size, with black hair that curled naturally, and eyes that matched the hair in colour. [Rapin, Vol. III., page 88.] His legs were too long in proportion to his body, which gained him the nickname of Longshanks, though it would have been more respectful to have called him Daddy Long-legs, in allusion to his being the father of his people.
He observed the outward decencies of life, but in this he evinced the strength of his hypocrisy rather than the extent of his morality. It may be worthy of remark, that the title of Baron, which had hitherto been common to all gentlemen who held lands of the Crown, was in this reign restricted to those whom the king called to Parliament. [The last of the Non-Parliamentary barons is the well-known Baron Nathan of Kennington. He still claims a seat among the Piers of Gravesend and Rosherville.] During the monarchy of Edward, Roger Bacon lived and died; but as we have already expressed our antipathy to putting butter upon Bacon, we refrain from any eulogy upon that illustrious character.
EDWARD THE SECOND, SURNAMED OF CAERNARVON
EDWARD II. was, in common phraseology, a very nice young man when he came to the throne, being twenty-three years of age, and tolerably good-looking, though he turned out eventually, according to one of the chroniclers of the times, "a very ugly customer." His first step on coming to the throne was to send for a scamp named Piers Gaveston, a Gascon youth who was full of gasconade, and had been sent out of England by the late king as an improper character. Young Edward who had been much attached to this early specimen of the gent., recalled Piers Gaveston, and made him a nobleman by creating him Duke of Cornwall, but never succeeded in making him a gentleman. This step was in direct violation of a solemn promise to Edward I., who had warned his son against Gaveston, as a bad young man and by no means a desirable acquaintance for an English sovereign. Directly Piers arrived, he and his young master began to play all sorts of tricks, and, by way of change, dismissed the Chancellor, the Treasurer, the Barons of the Exchequer, and all the Judges. The whole of the judicial staff of the kingdom being thrown out of employ, a panic was created in all the courts, and some of their lordships, being unable to meet the demands upon them, were compelled to go to prison. Many were stripped of all their property by the king, at the instigation of Gaveston, and the Chancellor not only lost the seals, but his watch, and a number of other articles of value. Edward and his friend were determined to pay off those who had been instrumental to the latter's disgrace, and among others, Langton, the Bishop of Lichfield, was put into solitary confinement, no one being allowed to speak to him, so that the unfortunate Lichfield found himself literally sent to Coventry Gaveston, who was a dashing young spark, nearly set England in a blaze by his return, for he was very far from popular. He could dance and sing, was passionately fond of bagatelle, and as to wine, when he took it into his head he could always drink his bottle.
Edward went over to Boulogne, in January, 1308, to get married to Isabella, the daughter of the King of France, and left Gaveston regent of the kingdom. His majesty soon got tired of a French watering-place, and returned to England for his coronation, which took place on the 24th of February, at Westminster. All the honours were showered upon Gaveston, and instead of giving the perquisites to the proper officers, the king handed them over, one by one, to the favourite "Put that in your pocket, Piers, my boy," exclaimed Edward, as he transferred to his disreputable friend each article that some officer of state was entitled to. The English nobility, as they saw everything passing into the hands of the Gascon, could only murmur to each other, "What a shame!" "That's mine, by rights!" and "Well, I never! did you ever?" But the Bishop of Winchester gave his majesty a dose, by mixing up a pretty strong oath and making him swallow every word of it. He undertook of course to confirm the Charter, which really becomes quite a bore to the historian, who cannot help feeling something of the satiety induced by toujours perdrix, and he draws the humiliating conclusion that his countrymen, having got hold of a good thing, never knew when they had had enough of it. Gaveston's conduct became so overbearing, that a regular British cry of "Turn him out!" resounded from one end of the kingdom to the other. Englishmen seldom do
Edward II. and his Favourite. Piers Gaveston.
things by halves, and having once raised a shout, they did not desist from it, but to the howl of "Turn him out," they added a demand for the sovereign to "Throw him over!" With this requisition Edward reluctantly complied, and Gaveston was expelled from England; but only to be made Governor of Ireland, until the king could get the permission of the Barons to allow the favourite to come back again. This, with their usual imbecility, they speedily agreed to, and Piers soon returned to the Court, which he filled with buffoons and parasites. Any mountebank who could make a fool of himself was sure of an engagement at the palace. The king's horse-collars were worn out with being grinned through, and the family circle of royalty was never without a clown to the ring, under the management of Piers Gaveston. The favourite himself became so arrogant that he would dress himself up in the royal jewels, [Il joignoit a cela une vanite ridicule, en effectant de porter sur sa personne les joyaux du Roi et de la couronne meme.—Rapin, Vol. III., p. 94.] wearing the crown instead of his own hat, and turning the sceptre into a walking-stick.
Edward, being in want of supplies, called a Parliament in 1309, but the Parliament would not come, which caused him to call again; and the more he kept on calling the more they kept on not coming, until the month of March, 1810, when they came in arms, for they were determined no longer to submit to Gaveston's insolence. He had offended their order by giving them all sorts of nicknames, which are less remarkable for their wit than their coarseness. He called the Earl of Lancaster an old hog, or, perhaps, a dreadful bore; to Warwick he gave the name of the Black Dog, in reply, perhaps, to an insinuation that he, Gaveston, was a puppy; and the Earl of Pembroke was alliteratively alluded to as "Joe the Jew," [Vide Rapin, Vol. III., p. 95, and also a Note in Lingard.] by the abusive but not very facetious favourite.
In August, 1311, Edward met the Barons at Westminster. Their lordships would seem to have all got out of bed on the wrong side on the morning of the assembly, for their surliness and ill-temper were utterly unparalleled. They prepared forty-one articles, to which they insisted on having the consent of his majesty. Of course, in the catalogue of claims our old friend Magna Charta was not forgotten. This glorious instrument of our early liberties, was once more touched up, and a new clause introduced, which imparted freshness to the document. It provided "that the king should hold a parliament once a year, or twice if need be," as if the Barons had been impressed with the idea that "the more the merrier," was a sound maxim of politics. The banishment of Gaveston was, however, the grand desideratum, and this was at length consented to by Edward, who on the 1st of November, 1311, took leave of the favourite. His majesty retired to York, but soon began to ask himself—"What's this dull town to me?" in the absence of Piers, who, in less than two months, was again sharing the dissipations of his sovereign. The royal party had gone for a change to Newcastle, when the cry of "somebody coming" disturbed the revels of the king and his courtiers. This unwelcome "somebody" was no less a personage than Edward's cousin, the Earl of Lancaster, who had arrived with a few barons for the purpose of, as they said, "giving it" to Gaveston. The king and the favourite escaped from Newcastle in a ship—probably a collier—but the sovereign was heartless enough to leave his wife behind him with the utmost indifference. It was sauve qui peut with the whole Court, and the queen was lost in the general scamper. The favourite, after running as hard as he could, threw himself, quite out of breath, into Scarborough Castle, which was strong in everything but eatables, for the supply of provisions was perfectly contemptible. Piers Gaveston, who had never been accustomed to short commons, went to the window of the castle, and calling
Parley between Piers Gaveston and the Earl of Pembroke.
out to the Earl of Pembroke, who was waiting outside, proposed to capitulate. "Can we come to any terms?" cried Piers; but the earl would at first hear of nothing short of an unconditional surrender. After some parleying, Pembroke exclaimed "I'll tell you what I'll do for you. If you choose to place yourself in my hands, I'll promise to take you to your own castle at Wallingford." "You're not joking?" cried Gaveston, as he looked through the rusty bars of the fortress. "Honour bright," was the substance of the earl's reply, and Piers put himself at once into the hands of Pembroke. It was arranged that the king should meet the favourite at Wallingford; but one morning on the road, he was ordered out of bed at an unusually early hour, when whom should he see upon going down stairs, but the grim Earl of Warwick! Gaveston began to feel that it was all up with him. Putting him on a mule, they conveyed him to Warwick Castle, where a hurried council was got up—the Duke of Lancaster in the chair—for his trial. He was of course condemned, when he threw himself for pardon at the feet of Lancaster, who kicked him aside, and all the rest gave him a lesson on the Lancastrian system, by a similar indignity. A proposition was made in the body of the hall, to spare his life, but somebody exclaimed that "Gaveston had been the cause of all their difficulties, and that, when a difficulty came in the way, the best plan was to break the neck of it." The stern justice of this remark was instantly acknowledged, and amid savage cries of "Bring him along," they dragged the favourite off to Blacklow Hill, where, by removing his head from his shoulders, they made what may be called short work of him Upon hearing the news, the king cried for grief, and then cried for vengeance. After reconciling himself to his loss, he reconciled himself to the Barons, and the double reconciliation was greatly assisted by the barons having given up to him (A.D. 1313,) the plate and jewels of the deceased favourite.
Edward, on looking round him, found that the "Scots whom Bruce had often led" were making considerable progress. The English king at once ordered an army to meet him at Berwick, and by a given day one hundred thousand men had assembled. Bruce had got scarcely forty thousand, so that the chances were more than two to one against him. He took them into a field near Bannockburn, and spread them out so as to make the very most of them. On Sunday, the 23rd of June, 1314, Edward and his army came in sight. After some desultory fighting, the monotony of the day's proceedings was relieved by a somewhat curious incident. Bruce, who seems to have been rather eccentric in his turn-out, was riding on a little bit of a pony, quite under the duty imposed upon it, in front of his troops. He wore upon his head a skull-cap, over that a steel helmet, and over that a crown of gold, while in his hand he carried an enormous battle-axe. He and his Shetland were frisking about, when an English knight, one Henry de Bohun, or Boone, came galloping down, armed at all points, upon a magnificent British dray-horse. Bruce, instead of getting out of the way, entered into the unequal combat, amid cries of "Go it, Bob!" from his own followers. He instantly fell upon and felled to the earth the English, knight, amid the acclamations of the surrounding soldiers. The battle was very vigorously fought on both sides, and victory seemed doubtful, when suddenly there appeared on a hill, at the back of the Scotch, an immense crowd, that looked like a new army. The group in reality consisted of nothing but a mob of suttlers and camp-followers, who had been kept back by Bruce to look like a tremendous reserve, and who might be called the heavy scarecrows of the Scotch army. The plan succeeded admirably, for although the English did not receive a single blow, they were completely panic-struck, which had the same effect as the severest beating. They fled in all directions, with the Scotch in hot pursuit; and it is said that Edward himself had to run for it as far as Dunbar, a distance of sixty miles, with the enemy after him.
According to the Scotch historians, the results of this victory were truly marvellous, for the number of prisoners alleged to have been taken is actually greater than the number of the combatants. The chariots and waggons, it is also said, would have extended for many leagues if drawn up into a line; but this is merely one of those lengths which are too frequently gone to by the old chroniclers. Though it is impossible that the Scotch could have lulled fifty thousand, and made double the number of prisoners out of a hundred thousand men,—unless they manufactured fifty thousand additional foes as readily as Vauxhall can put forth its fifty thousand additional lamps,—it is, nevertheless, certain that on this occasion England experienced the severest defeat it had encountered since the establishment of the monarchy. Such was the effect created by the battle of Bannockburn, that for some time after three Scotchmen were considered equivalent to a hundred Englishmen. There is every reason to believe that the Scotch were exceedingly vigorous in coming to the scratch at that early period.
Encouraged by the success of his brother Robert in Scotland, Edward Brace thought that the Crown of Ireland was a little matter that would just suit him, and he accordingly passed over to the green isle in the hope of finding it green enough to accept him as its sovereign. He was for a time successful in his project, and was actually crowned at Carrickfergus, on the 2nd of May, 1316. But after knocking about the country, and being knocked about in the country, for a year and a half, he got a decisive blow from the English, on the 5th of October, 1318, at Fagher, near Dundalk. Though he had landed in Ireland with only five hundred Scotchmen, he was left dead in the field with two thousand of Ms fellow-countrymen. He had been joined no doubt by several after his first arrival, but if he had not, it would have been all the same to the Chroniclers, who would not have scrupled to kill the same individuals four times over, to make a total sufficiently imposing for historical purposes. The historians would have been invaluable to a minister of finance, for they could always create an enormous surplus out of a vast deficiency.
The Scotch continued their successes until a truce was agreed upon for two years, and thus Edward had leisure to look after domestic affairs, which had been fearfully neglected. Since the death of Gaveston, the royal favourite, there had been just room for one in the not very capacious heart of the English sovereign. A certain Hugh Spencer had been introduced to the Court by the barons, as a sort of page, to act as a spy upon the king, and it is a curious fact, that the spencer, or jacket, has been the characteristic of the page from that time to the present Hugh Spencer had a shrewd father, who advised his son to care no more for the barons, who had got him his place, but to work it to his own advantage, and make the most of the perquisites.
Young Hugh, taking the parental hint, determined on booking him self for the inside place in Edward's heart, which has been already alluded to as vacant. Not only did he succeed in his design, but contrived to take up his old father, and carry him along as a sort of outside passenger. Riches and promotion were showered on the Spencers, who adopted a coat of arms, and made themselves Despencers, by prefixing the syllable de, which can impart a particle of aristocracy to the most plebeian of patronymics. The Despencers had obtained such influence over the king that he allowed them to do as they pleased; and as they took all the good things to themselves, the nobles—who were getting nothing—began to evince considerable anxiety for the public interest.
The Earl of Lancaster, a prince of the blood, felt his order insulted by the promotion of the two plebeians, and he one day energetically exclaimed, "that Spencers could not have anything in tail, though the king might try to fasten it on to them." Lancaster marched upon London, and pitched his tent in Holborn, among the hills that abound in that locality. He gave out half jocularly, that "he had come to baste a couple of Spencers, by trimming their jackets," but he was saved the trouble by a Parliament, which met armed at Westminster, and passed on the two Despencers a sentence of banishment.
They were accordingly exiled in August, but came back in October, presenting an instance of a quick return without the smallest profit. Lancaster retired to the north, and was met at Boroughbridge by Sir Simon Ward and Sir Andrew Harclay, a couple of stout English knights, who stopped up the passage. Lancaster endeavoured to swim across the river, but the tide had turned against him, and he was taken prisoner. The unfortunate earl having been tried, was condemned to an ignominious death, and the mob were allowed to pelt him with mud on his way to execution,—a privilege of which a generous public took the fullest advantage.
Edward had now to encounter opposition from a new quarter, or rather from two quarters, for his better half, Isabella, the sister of Charles le Bel, was now plotting against him. She left him under the pretence of going to settle some business for him in France, and then refused to return to him. Some ambassadors volunteered to bring her back, but the ambassadors never came back themselves, for they had been in league with the queen, and only wanted an opportunity of joining her.
Their conduct brings to mind the anecdote of a scene that once passed in the shop of a shoemaker. A stranger had tried on a pair of shoes, and another stranger had been trying on a pair of boots at the same moment. Suddenly the shoes decamped without payment, when the boots standing upon their professed swiftness, offered to go in pursuit of the unprincipled shoes; and as neither shoes nor boots were ever seen again by the tradesman, it is probable that the "false fleeting perjured Clarences" are still being pursued by the immortal Wellingtons. Thus the Earl of Kent, the king's own brother, the Earl of Richmond, his cousin, and others, who had undertaken to go after the queen to bring her back, remained with her, until she returned as an enemy to her» own husband. Edward was now compelled to run away in his turn from his angry wife; and, rather than encounter the fury of a domestic storm, he got into a ship with young Despencer, to brave the elements Old Despencer was taken and hanged, without the ceremony of a trial.
The Prince of Wales was appointed guardian of the kingdom on account of the absence of his father, who had been regularly advertised, but had declined to come forward lest he should hear of something to his disadvantage. Having been tossed about upon the waves for several days, he came ashore on the coast of Wales, and hid himself for some weeks, with young Despencer and another, in the mountains of Glamorganshire. His two companions were one day startled by a cry of "We've got you!" and were instantly seized, upon which. Edward exclaiming, "It's no use: you've got the two birds in the hand, and may as well have the one in the bush," rolled out of a hedge and gave himself up to his pursuers. Young Despencer was taken to Hereford, and hanged at once, upon a gallows fifty feet high; but why severity was carried to such a height is a question we have no means of answering. It has been brutally said by an annotator that the culprit had been accustomed to the high ropes during his life, and it was therefore determined that they should accompany him even to the gibbet.
The king was sent in custody to Kenilworth Castle, and Parliament met on the 7th of January, 1327, to consider what should be done with him. His deposition was a preliminary step; for it was the custom in those days to punish first, and try the culprit afterwards. It was determined to place his son upon the throne in his stead, and on the 20th of January, 1327, a deputation went to Kenilworth to receive his abdication, if he liked to give it, or to take it by force if he should prove refractory. The king, seeing Sir William Trussel, the Speaker, at the head of his enemies, observed calmly, but sadly, "Alas! the Trussel I depended upon for support has joined in dropping me." He renounced the regal dignity, and, on the 24th of January, Edward III. was proclaimed king, and crowned on the 29th at Westminster.
Edward II. resigning his Crown.
This proceeding is on many accounts remarkable, and of the utmost value, as settling a point of constitutional practice, which had never before been recognised. It established a precedent for dissolving under extraordinary circumstances the compact between the king and the people. It negatived the alleged "right divine of kings to govern wrong," and proved that it was not always necessary to take violent means for ridding a country of a tyrant. It showed that the crown might be removed from the head without taking off the head and all, which had been hitherto the recognised mode of effecting a transfer of the royal diadem.
The unhappy Edward was kept for a time at Kenilworth; but ultimately by command of Lord Mortimer, who had entire influence over the queen, the deposed king was removed to Berkeley Castle Here it is believed he was most cruelly murdered, though it was given out by his keepers that his death was perfectly natural. He died on the 21st of September, 1327, in the forty-third year of his age, and the nineteenth of his reign. No inquiry took place, and although no coroner's inquest was held, "Wilful Murder against some person or persons unknown" is the almost unanimous verdict of posterity.
The character of this king has been said to have been chiefly disfigured by feebleness of judgment, which prevented him from knowing what was good for him. He managed, nevertheless, to find out what was bad for his subjects, and he was never at a loss to secure the means of enjoyment for himself and his favourites, at the expense of his people.
In the reign of Edward II. the order of Knights Templars was abolished, a circumstance which arose from the King of France being short of cash, and casting a longing eye upon the rich possessions of the order. In France they were put to the torture to force them into confessions of crimes they had never committed; but in England the same effect was produced by imprisonment; for instruments of cruelty were never recognised by English laws, or encouraged as articles of British manufacture. The Archbishop of York finding nothing of the kind in the country, wished to send abroad for a pattern, [Hemingford.] but it must be spoken to the credit of our ancestors, that though, in a pecuniary sense, they were famous for applying the screw, the thumb-screw was never popular.
Rapin mentions among the great events of this reign, a tremendous earthquake, but it can have been no great shakes, for we do not find any details of its destructive effects in the old chronicles. It occurred on the 14th of November, 1320, to the unspeakable terror of all classes; but it did not swallow up half as much as is swallowed up annually on the 9th of November at the Mansion House in London.
EDWARD THE THIRD.
THE young king did not upon his father's death come to the throne, for he had taken his seat upon the imperial cushion eight months before the decease of his by no means lamented parent. Mortimer had caused a medal to be struck in celebration of the accession of Edward III., in which he was represented receiving the crown, with the motto, "Non rapit 'sed recipit,"! which we need scarcely translate into "he did not snatch it, but got it honestly."! A council of regency was appointed, to which Mortimer, with affected modesty, declined to belong, but he and the Queen did as they pleased with the affairs of government. Her majesty got an enormous grant to pay her debts, but knowing the extravagant and dishonest character of the woman, we have reason to believe that she pocketed the money and never satisfied the demands of her creditors'. She obtained, also, an allowance of twenty thousand a year, which was better than two-thirds of the revenues of the crown; so that a paltry six-and-eightpence in the pound was the utmost that young Edward could have had to live upon. The Earl of Lancaster was appointed guardian, and began doing the best for himself, after the approved fashion of the period. The attainders against the great Earl of Lancaster were of course reversed, and the confiscation of the estates of the Despencer, afforded some very pretty pickings to the party that was now dominant.
Though the king was too young to govern, his admirers persuaded him that he was quite old enough to fight, and he was recommended to try his hand against Bruce, who was getting old; so that, in the language of the ring, the British pet was not very ill matched against the Scottish veteran. The Caledonian Slasher, as Bruce might justly have been called, had broken the truce agreed upon with Edward II., and had sent an army into Yorkshire, which plundered as it went every town and village. The stalling of sheep and oxen was carried on to such an extent by the Scotch troops that their camp resembled Smith-field market, or a prize cattle show. Sixty thousand men gathered round the standard of Edward, but the foreign and native troops quarrelled with such fury among themselves that they had little energy left to be expended on the enemy. Fortunately for the English king the vastness of his army made up for its want of discipline. Bruce, directly he saw the foe, waited only to take their number, and retired with the utmost vapidity, amusing himself with the Scotch favourite Burns, by setting fire to all the villages.
The English, instead of following the enemy, waited a night upon the road for some provisions expected by the Parcels Delivery, which had been delayed by some accident. The Scotch were thus allowed to get ahead, and Edward sent a crier through his camp, offering a hundred a year, with the honour of knighthood, to any one who would apprise him of the place where he should find the opposing army. Thomas of Rokeby, so called from his habit of rokeing about, was successful in the search, and came galloping into the English camp with a loud cry of Eureka, and a demand of "money down," with knighthood on the spot, before he divulged his secret. "You're very particular, Sir," said Edward, flinging him a purse, containing his annuity for the first year, and dubbing him a knight by a blow on the head from the flat of the sword, administered with unusual vehemence. Thomas of Rokeby having pocketed the money, and secured the dignity, pointed to a hill three leagues off, observing, "There they are!" an observation which caused a general exclamation of "Well, it's very funny! To think that they should have been so near us all the while and we not aware of it!" The English having made for the spot, sent a challenge, inviting the Scotch to meet them in a fair, open field, but the proposition was declined, with thanks and compliments. The English, on the return of the herald, went to sleep, for the presence of the herald always had a soporiferous influence. Edward was exceedingly severe upon the occasion, and commented upon the herald's news, which the king declared was always most unsatisfactory. For three days and three nights, the English laid by the side of the river, having been thrown by the herald into a state of dreamy inactivity. At length, on the fourth day, they woke from their transient trance, when they found that the Scotch had once more changed their
Thomas of Rokeby receiving the honour of Knighthood.
position. Edward moved higher up, keeping opposite to the foe, and the two armies lay facing each other for eighteen days and nights, like two great cowardly boys, both afraid of "coming on," but each assuming a menacing attitude. There is every reason to believe that the herald had mesmerised the whole of the English troops, for they allowed the Scotch to go away in the dead of the night for want of proper vigilance The probability, however, is that both armies were illustrating the proverb, that "none are so blind as those who won't see," and that their aversion to "come on," was mutual.
A truce was concluded, and Edward, according to Froissart, returned "right pensive" to London; but his "right pensiveness" may have been accounted for by the fact that he was on the eve of marriage. His mother had, during her visit to the Continent, arranged to wed him to Philippa of Hainault, a lady who, to judge from her portrait on her tomb in Westminster Abbey, was one of those monsters commonly called a "fine woman." This fineness in the female form consists of excessive coarseness, which is better adapted to the laundry than the domestic circle. She however made Edward an excellent better half, or perhaps a better two-thirds is a more suitable term to indicate the relative proportions of the royal couple. She was brought to London by her uncle John, surnamed of Hainault, and it being Christmas-time, she was taken about to enjoy all the amusements of the festive season. Jousts and tournaments, balls and dinner-parties, were given in her honour during her stay in town; and on the 24th of January, 1328, the nuptial ceremony was performed with great solemnity.
Edward being now married, was desirous of avoiding that roving life which the constant pursuit of Bruce had rendered necessary. The English king thought it better to settle down into the domestic habits of a family man, which was impossible as long as he was compelled to be out all night, watching the foe, and bivouacking with his soldiers. Bruce, who had grown old and gouty, was also eager for peace, which was concluded on the condition of his little boy, David, aged five, being married to Edward's little sister Joanna, aged seven. The English king gave up all claim to the sovereignty of Scotland, causing even the insignia of Scotch royalty to be carefully packed and forwarded to Bruce, who, on opening the parcel, was delighted to find himself in possession of the crown and sceptre of his predecessors. He did not, however, get quite the best of the bargain, for he undertook to pay thirty thousand marks into Edward's Court as compensation, in the form of liquidated damages, for the mischief that the Scotch invaders had committed. Bruce had obtained a sort of letter of licence, allowing him to take three years for the payment of the sum agreed upon. A more formidable creditor, however, took him in execution, for he was called upon to pay the debt of Nature within the ensuing twelvemonth. Mortimer, who had advised the peace with Scotland, which was by no means popular, got himself created Earl of March, for it is the policy of crafty politicians to obtain rewards for their most objectionable measures.
It will be remembered that the Earl of Lancaster had been appointed guardian of the young king, but no scapegrace in a comedy ever made such an undutiful ward as the youthful Edward He remained with his mother and Mortimer, the latter of whom was particularly distasteful to Lancaster, who endeavoured to get up a party to oppose the favourite. This association was joined by the Earls of Kent and Norfolk, two of the king's uncles, as well as by some other gentlemen, who set forth in an advertisement the reason of their having combined. The statement of grievances was drawn up with the usual tact of red-hot patriots, who always put down a few impossibilities in the list of things to be achieved, for the impracticability of their objects prevents their trade from being suddenly brought to a dead stand-still. There were eight articles in the Lancastrian manifesto, which chiefly aimed at Mortimer and the queen, who soon persuaded Edward that the real object of the advertisers was to deprive him of his crown. "I thought you were the parties pointed at," said the young king to his mother and her paramour; but the latter merely observing, "My dear fellow, they mean you, as sure as my names Mortimer," soon taught Edward to believe that he was the object of the hostility of the rebellious nobles. Preparations were being made to chastise them, when Kent and Norfolk abandoned Lancaster, who justly complained of having been trifled with. The humiliated and humbugged Lancaster was glad to accept a pardon, and pay down a considerable sum towards the expenses which had been incurred in preparing for his own discomfiture. Mortimer did not forgive the parties who had contemplated his overthrow, but formed a determination to get hold of them when a good opportunity offered.
Kent, the king's uncle, who was rather a feeble-minded person, became the victim of "a mockery, a delusion, and a snare." He received a number of anonymous letters, informing him that his brother, the late king, was alive, in Corfe Castle. "Pooh, pooh," said Kent to himself, as he perused the first three or four epistles; "I'm not quite such a fool as to be taken in upon that point. I'm not going to believe my brother is alive, when I happen to have been present as chief mourner at his funeral." Every post, however, brought such a pile of correspondence upon the subject that he first began to believe that half of what he was told might possibly be true, and when credulity admits one half of a story, the other half soon forces an entrance. Kent's anonymous correspondents, not content with declaring the late king to be alive, gave the circumstantiality to their statement which is generally resorted to in the absence of truth, and indicated Corfe Castle as the place where the second Edward was "hanging out" at that very moment. The credulous Kent being in doubt as to the fate of his brother, wrote at once to ask him whether he was really dead or alive; saying to himself as he put the epistle into the post, "There; I've written to him now, and so we shall soon settle that question one way or the other."
The party being deceased, the letter came back to the dead-letter-office, and fell into the clutches of Mortimer. Everything was done to humour the delusion of poor Kent, who, having been told that his brother was confined in Corfe Castle, sent a confidential messenger to make inquiries in the neighbourhood. It is even said that a sort of optical illusion, a jack-o'-lantern, or phantasmagoria, or dissolving view, had been resorted to, for the purpose of showing a representation of Edward II. sitting in Corfe Castle at his luncheon, [Rapin, tom. iii., p. 152.] with a waiter or two in attendance, as a mark of respect to the unhappy sovereign.
The messenger returned with the news to Edmond, who determined to use his own eyes, by going to Corfe Castle and judging for himself. When he arrived and saw the governor, that wily official pretended to be much surprised at the secret having been divulged. He did not deny that Edmond was at the castle, but merely remarked that the captive could not be seen. "At all events you can give him this letter," said Edward, putting into the governor's hands a douceur and a communication directed to the deceased monarch, offering to aid him in his escape from captivity.
The governor took the billet to the queen, and Edmond was arrested on a charge of endeavouring to raise a deceased individual to the throne. Poor Kent was put upon his trial, and his own letter having been produced, with witnesses to prove his hand-writing, the case against him was complete. The whole proceeding was disposed of with the rapidity of an undefended cause; speedy execution was asked for and granted, but the headsman was nowhere to be found, though persons were sent to look for him all over Winchester. A delay of four hours was occasioned, and the generous British public began to expect that they should lose the spectacle they had assembled to witness, when a convicted felon came forward in the handsomest manner, at a moment's notice, to prevent disappointment, by undertaking the part of headsman. Thus, at the early age of twenty-eight, perished Prince Edmond, on the charge of having sought to put a sceptre in the hands of a spectre, and raise a phantom to the throne. He left two sons and two daughters, one of whom was a beauty whom we will not attempt to paint, for our inkstand is not a rouge-pot, and if it were we should be sorry to apply its contents to so fair a countenance. She married eventually the eldest son of Edward the Third, who became so celebrated as the Black Prince, and who was born at about the period (1330) to which our history has arrived. The king finding himself a father, determined to be no longer a child in the hands of a tyrannical mother, and he longed for some assistance from his subjects, to enable him to throw off the maternal yoke as soon as possible.
Edward at last opened his mind—a very small recess—to Lord Montacute. A parliament was being held at Nottingham, where Mortimer and the queen had lodgings in the Castle, while the Bishops and Barons took apartments in the town and suburbs, How to get hold of Mortimer was the great difficulty, for queen Isabella had the keys of the Castle brought up to her every evening, and placed at her bedside. [Heming, Knyght, Holinshed.] Her majesty had gone round as usual to see everything safe, and all the candles out; but of course, like other sagacious people, who examine minutely the fastenings of the doors, she never gave a thought to the cellars. Through one of these the governor, (who, like all the great officers of that period—the founders of our illustrious families—was a sneaking knave, ready to do anything for money,) admitted Montacute and his followers. They crawled along a dark passage, at the end of which they were met by Edward, who conducted them up a staircase into a room adjoining his mother's chamber. The queen had gone to bed, but Mortimer, the Bishop of Lincoln, and one or two others, were sitting—probably over their grog—in an apartment close at hand Their language had all the earnestness that might be expected for the time of night, and the manner in which they were occupied. They were, in fact, all talking at once, when Montacute and party rushed in, knocking down two knights [Knyght, Hening, Rymer.] who sat near the door, and seized Mortimer, in spite of the entreaties of Isabella, who ran screaming out of bed on hearing the noise and confusion.
The favourite was dragged off to the nearest station-house, and Edward issued a proclamation the next morning, announcing his intention to try his own hand at government forthwith. A parliament met at Westminster on the 26th of November, 1330, by which Mortimer was tried and condemned, though a short time before he enjoyed the command of a large majority. The favourite had, however, fallen into disgrace, and the old proverb, "Give a dog a bad name and hang him," was literally realised.
After the death of Mortimer, queen Isabella was shut up in a place called the Castle of Risings, on a pension of three thousand a year, according to one historian, four thousand according to others, while Rapin unceremoniously cuts her down to the paltry pittance of five hundred per annum. It is probable that the last-named sum is the nearest the mark, for all agree in saying that "she lived a miserable monument of blighted ambition," and it is obvious that a miserable monument would not require an outlay of three or four thousand a year to keep it in condition during an existence of rather better than a quarter of a century.
Though Edward had agreed to a truce with the Scotch, he did not scruple to take a favourable opportunity of breaking it. Though his sister was married to little Master David Bruce, the nominal king, Edward did not hesitate to turn that young gentleman off the throne, to make way for his creature, Edward Baliol. Young David was sent to France, while Baliol kept up a kind of semblance of royalty, but his rebellious subjects took every opportunity, when the backs of the English were turned, to fall upon and baste the bewildered Baliol. Edward was soon compelled to leave his vassal to get on as he could, for the entire throne of France appeared to be open to the ambition of the English sovereign. The French crown seemed to be "open to all parties and influenced by none," when Edward of England and Philip of Valois became candidates for the vacancy. The former claimed as grandson of Philip IV., the latter as grandson of Philip III., and each party endeavoured to complicate the matter as much as he could by producing a number of perplexing and unintelligible pedigrees. Philip claimed through his grandfather, who was thought to be a sure card for the French king to depend upon; but Edward tried to play something stronger, in the shape of what he affectionately called that "fine old trump, his mother." She, however, was objected to as a female, and the question was, to save further trouble, referred to the arbitration of the peers and judges of France, who decided in favour of Edward's opponent. The English king declared the French judges were no judges at all, and refused to be bound by the award; for it was the royal practice of those days to abide by an agreement only so long as might be convenient.
Edward having appointed the Earl of Brabant his agent, coolly demanded, through that individual, the French crown. The English seconded their sovereign in his preposterous request, and he took advantage of their acquiescence to squeeze out of them all he could in the shape of subsidies, tallages, and forced loans. He raised money by the most disgraceful means, and even pawned the crown with the Archbishop of Treves, who after trying the purity of the gold with the usual test, unpicking the velvet cap, to examine the setting of the jewels, and submitting it to as many indignities as a hat in the hands of an old clothes-man, consented to lend about one tenth of its value on the degraded diadem.
Edward pawning the Crown with the Archbishop of Treves.
The conversation between the parties, though it has not been, authentically handed down by the chroniclers, may be very easily imagined. It is probable that Edward, forgetting the dignity of the king in the meanness of the borrower, may have-familiarly asked the Archbishop to "make it a trifle more" than the sum at first offered. It may be presumed that the greedy ecclesiastic would have objected, that the crown had been very ill-used; that it got badly treated in the time of John, and that even Edward himself had had a good deal of hard wear out of it, which had rubbed off very much of its pristine brilliancy. But it was not to the comparatively honest expedient of pawning his own property that the king had recourse, for replenishing his exhausted treasury. When he had got all he could by pledging his own honours, and deposited the sceptre and single ball at the sign of the three, he began the old royal trick of plundering his people.
From the inhabitants of Cornwall Edward took nearly all their tin, and every part of England allowed itself to be fleeced for the purpose of affording one man the means of attempting to gratify his ambition at the expense of an entire people The money thus obtained was devoted to the payment of foreign mercenaries, so that he robbed his own subjects for the double purpose of corruption and usurpation. To enable him to oppress the French, he bribed the Germans with money obtained by plundering the English.
He sailed on the 15th of July, 1338, with an army rather more select than numerous, and landed at Antwerp, where he had secured himself a friendly reception by sending emissaries before him to marshal the peasantry into enthusiastic groups, and "get up" the spectacle without regard to outlay. The burghers were called to numerous rehearsals before the appointed day, and on the arrival of the English king they were tolerably perfect in the parts assigned to them.
Edward engaged a few foreign potentates—principally small Germans—to aid him in his audacious enterprise. Louis of Bavaria, Emperor of Germany, came to terms; the Dukes of Brabant and Gueldres did not refuse his money; the Archbishop of Cologne consented to add a few pounds to his salary; while the Marquis of Juliers, and the Counts of Plainault and Namur, jumped at a moderate stipend for their services. Every adventurer who was to be had cheap, found instant employment, and James von Artaveldt, a brewer of Ghent, the Barclay or Perkins of his time, made an arrangement for farming out a few of his stoutest draymen. Philip availed himself of a couple of kings in reduced circumstances—those of Navarre and Bohemia—besides securing a few dukes who were in want of a little cash for current expenses. A rope of sand could scarcely have been more fragile than Edward's band of hired followers. Like a Christmas-pudding made of plums and other rich ingredients without any flour to bind it, his sup porters though comprising a compound of dukes, marquises and counts, with even an archbishop and an emperor, was not likely to hold together as long as it was deficient in the flower of an army, a zealous soldiery. The Flemings and Brabanters having spent his money sneaked off with a promise to meet him next year, and 1338 was consequently lost in doing nothing. By the middle of September 1339, there was another muster of the mercenaries, with whom Edward started for Cambray, but happening to look back when he got to the frontiers of France, he saw the Counts of Namur and Hainault disgracefully backing out of the expedition. Having in vain hallooed to them, and finding that the more he kept on calling the more they persevered in not coming, he pushed on as far as St. Quentin, when the rest of his allies struck, and declared they would not go another step without an advance of wages. Edward, who had spent all his own money and a good deal of somebody else's,—for he was fearfully in debt—could only say "Very well, gentlemen, I'm in your hands," and turn into the town of Ghent, where he took lodgings for a limited period. While here he amused himself by taking the title of King of France, and he had the French lily quartered on his arms; which, as Philip said when he heard of it, was "like the fellow's impudence."
Edward had previously endeavoured to draw his adversary into a battle, but the latter shirked the contest under various pretexts. Some say that he was ready for a terrific combat and was "just going to begin" when he received a letter predicting ill luck, from the King of Naples, who was looked upon as a sort of Wizard of the South, or royal conjuror. No fight took place, and Edward ran across to England in the middle of February 1340, to make a call upon the pockets of his people. The Parliament foolishly throwing good money after bad, granted immense supplies, for which the king thanked them in the fulness of his heart, for the fulness of his pocket. Returning to Flanders, he met the enemy at the harbour of Sluys, on the 24th of June 1340, when a battle ensued, in which Edward astonished his own followers by his most successful debut in a naval character. He gave orders to the sailors as freely as if he had been playing in nautical dramas and dancing naval hornpipes from the days of his infancy. So complete was the victory of the English that nobody dared inform the French king of the extent of his calamity, until the court jester was fool enough to put the news in the shape of a conundrum to Philip. The latter was enjoying his glass of wine and his nut, when the buffoon in waiting declared that he had a nut to crack which would prove somewhat too hard for his royal master. "Were it a pistaccio or a Brazil," cried the king "I would come at the kernel of it." When however the riddle was put [Rapin, vol. iii. page 178. We have used every possible exertion to obtain a copy of this celebrated riddle, but without having succeeded. The nearest approach we have made to it is an old conundrum in the fly leaf of the Statutes at Large, which is nearly as follows:—"What was the greatest fillip to the success of Edward?" There is no answer added, but there can be little doubt that some allusion to Philip's loss giving a fillip to Edward is intended.] and the sovereign had guessed it, the unhappy fool found it no joke, for he was sorely punished for his ill-judged pleasantry.
Edward's success brought round him troops of friends, and finding himself strong, he wrote a letter addressed to Philip of Valois, offering to tackle him singly in a regular stand-up fight man to man, to pit a hundred soldiers against a hundred on the other side, or to pitch into each other's armies by a pitched battle, embracing the entire strength of their respective companies. The French King, who was not disposed to give battle, which he thought might end in his taking a thrashing, evaded the matter, by saying that he had seen a letter addressed to Philip of Valois, but as it could not be meant for him, he should certainly decline sending an answer. This shabby subterfuge succeeded 5b baffling the English king, who consented to a truce and returned to his own country.
Edward arrived in London late one night in November, without a
Edward's arrival at the Tower.
penny in his pocket. He went at once to the Tower, where everybody had gone to bed, for he was not expected, and where there were signs of culpable negligence. There was no fire in his room, and nothing to eat; which put him into such an ill-humour, that he had three of the judges called up to be thrown into prison, he turned out the Chancellor, the Treasurer, and the Master of the Rolls, besides committing to jail a number of subordinate officers. Those who had been employed in collecting the revenue, were the especial objects of his rage, for he expected to have received a large sum, and was irritated beyond measure at the contemptible amount of available assets. Stratford, the Archbishop of Canterbury, on hearing of the king's arrival at the Tower—in what has perhaps been since called a "towering passion," from the historical fact—observed to his informant, "Oh! indeed. Well, I shall be off out of his way," and fled to his official residence. The king sent him a summons, which he refused to attend, and threatened with excommunication any rascally officer who might attempt to execute the process. Want of money soon softened Edward's heart, and Parliament refused a grant until there had been another confirmation of Magna Charta, which served the double purpose of a blister to draw the people's cash and a plaster to heal their wounded liberties.
In the year 1341, little David of Scotland came over with a little money and a few troops lent to him by the king of France, and with this assistance the Bruce made a tolerably decent appearance in his own country. Edward having projects of wholesale robbery abroad, gave up Scotland as a piece of retail plunder, that was wholly beneath his attention, and concluded a truce with David, who compromised with Baliol, by appointing him to keep watch and ward against the Scottish
Fancy Portrait of Inspector Baliol.
borderers. A situation in the police seems to have been a sorry compensation for one who had aspired to a throne, but it is probable that the pride of Baliol was in some degree consulted by nominating him A 1 in his new capacity.
One would have thought that Edward had had enough of continental warfare, and that "look at home" would have been his motto for the remainder of his reign, but he was soon induced to join in a squabble that had arisen about the crown of Brittany John the Third, the late Duke, had lately died, leaving one brother and a niece named Jane, who having the misfortune to be lame, had got brutally nicknamed La Boiteuse, in accordance with the coarse and unfeeling practice of that chivalrous period. The contest for the Duchy was between this young lady, who had married Charles de Blois, the French king's nephew, and her uncle John de Montfort, who professed to have a superior claim, and who savagely pooh-poohed her pretensions by allusions to her infirmity. "Hers is indeed a lame case," he would fiendishly exclaim. "Why by my troth, she hasn't got a leg to stand upon." This argument was the old rule of grammar, that the masculine is worthier than the feminine; but this arrangement La Boiteuse determined to kick against. Charles de Blois, her husband, did homage to his uncle Phil for the duchy—Brittany being a fief of France—while John de Montfort propitiated Edward by doing homage to him as the lawful sovereign. Philip and Edward thus became bottleholders to the two competitors; but through the tardiness of the English king in supporting his man, de Montfort was taken prisoner. This gentleman had the advantage—or the disadvantage as the case may be—of being married to a high-spirited woman. It is fortunate for a man wedded to a vixen wife, when the affectionate virago, instead of making a victim of him, vents her fury upon his enemies.
Mrs. de Montfort had, according to Froissart, "the courage of a man and the heart of a lion." In addition to these fascinating qualities she had the tongue of a true woman. She went about with her child m her arms, holding forth in a double sense, for she held forth her infant, and was continually holding forth on the subject of her husband's wrongs to the populace. A pretty woman, who takes to public speaking, is always sure of an approving audience; but when she began to give recitations in character, by putting a steel casque on her head and a sword in her hand, the effect was truly marvellous. She took a provincial tour, with the never-failing motto of "Female in Distress" as her watchword; and a host of young men engaged themselves as assistants under her banner. She threw herself into a place called Hennebon, where she was besieged by the French, but she ran up and down the ramparts with all the agility of a young tigress. She stood firmly among a shower of arrows, and though danger darted across her every now and then—so much that her casque got a rapid succession of taps—she merely observed that she had never been afraid of a living beau and would certainly not shrink from a bow without vitality. Aid was expected from the English, but as it did not arrive the Bishop of Leon began to croak most horribly, and proposed to capitulate. The Bishop had been to the larder, and finding provisions running exceedingly low, declared there was nothing left for them but to eat humble pie as speedily as possible. He had succeeded in raising an emente d'estomac in the garrison, when the Countess, who had begged the troops to hold out a little longer, saw the English fleet from the window of her dressing-room. "Here they are!" cried she as she ran down stairs; and the whole of the inhabitants were soon watching the arrival of the boats with intense interest. Sir Walter Manny commanded the squadron, and after a good night's rest and a capital dinner the next day, which concluded amid a slight shower from the French battering-ram, he declared that he would not run the risk of having any more batter pudding from the same quarter. "That ram." he exclaimed, "must not again disturb me over my mutton;" and he had no sooner dined than he went forth, followed by a few select soldiers, and broke the instrument to pieces.
The French, having raised the siege of Hennebon, left Lady de Montfort leisure to go over to England for the purpose of getting a present of troops that Edward had promised her. She was returning to France with her reinforcements when she fell in with a French fleet, and they fell out as a natural consequence. De Montfort's wife rushed on deck in a coat of mail over her petticoat of female, and fought with
Madame de Montfort astonishing the French fleet.
tremendous vigour. One of the foe tauntingly told her the needle was a fitter instrument for her than the sword, when she rushed upon him, exclaiming, "I want no needle, fellow, to trim your jacket." She cut the thread of several existences, and there is no doubt that had the gun cotton been discovered in those days, she would have used it for the purpose of whipping, basting, hemming in, felling to the earth, and, in a word, sewing up her unfortunate antagonists. Darkness having set in upon this fearful set out, the battle was cut short, for night dropped her curtain in the middle of the act, and brought it to an abrupt conclusion.
Edward now came over to superintend the war in person, and he began by looking the danger in the face, which he accomplished by laying several weeks opposite the foe—an example that was followed by the other side; and thus the two armies continued to take sights at each other during the entire winter. At length a truce for three years and eight months was agreed upon; but its conditions were not attended to. John de Montfort was to have been released from prison, according to the agreement; but Philip, by pitiful quibbles, found excuses for keeping him in closer custody. At length, the old gentleman escaped in the disguise of a pedlar; but he was cruelly hounded by his enemies, and with a pack at his back was for some time hunted about, until, by dint of the most dogged perseverance, he arrived safely in England. Coming to the door of his own house, he set up a faint cry of "Stay-lace, boot-lace, shoe-tie," in a disguised voice, which brought the mistress of the establishment to the window; but she merely shook her head, to indicate that nothing was wanted. Upon this the supposed pedlar threw off his hat and wig, and being instantly recognised, was dragged into the hall, to the surprise of the various servants, until the words "It's your master come back," furnished a clue to the mystery. His wife's joy at meeting her "old man," as she affectionately called him, was extreme; but the excitement was too much for the veteran, who went bang off, like an exhausted squib, while Lady de Montfort fell in an explosion of grief by the side of her husband.
The fortune of war had been oscillating with the regularity of a pendulum between England and France, when the Earl of Derby threw himself into the scale with tremendous weight, and turned it completely in England's favour. In the emphatic language of the day, he was "down upon the French like a thunderbolt." Edward went off to Flanders to treat with the free cities for their allegiance, and, in fact, ascertain the price of those friends of Liberty. Louis the Count, though deprived of nearly all his revenue, kept up his independence, and refused to pay allegiance or anything else to Edward. The English king tried to effect a transfer of the loyalty of the Flemings from Louis, the Count of Flanders, to his own son. Edward the Black Prince; and with this view he obtained the support of his old friend James von Arta veldt, the brewer, whose stout gave him a great ascendancy over the actions of the people. He addressed to them a good deal of frothy declamation, and endeavoured to brew the storm of revolution; but it ended in very small beer, amid which Artaveldt himself was eventually washed away through the impetuosity of the stream he had himself set in motion. A popular insurrection broke out, and the brewer behaved with great gallantry. He wore a casque on his head which pointed him out as a butt for the malice of his enemies. He was
Assasination of Artaveldt the Brewer.
cruelly murdered, and Edward vowed vengeance when he heard that the lifeless bier was all that remained of his friend the brewer.
In 1346, the English king landed on the coast of Normandy, with an army containing not only the flower of his own troops, but a regular bouquet, in which the English rose was blended with the Welsh leek and a sprig of the Irish shilelah. He marched towards Paris, and his van had even entered the suburbs of that city; but, without attacking the capital, he contented himself with a little arson in the small towns in the neighbourhood. His antagonist was not inactive, and succeeded in getting the English into a corner, from which escape seemed almost impossible. It was necessary to cross the Somme; but Philip and the river were rather too deep for Edward and his soldiers. Having waited till the tide went down, they took a desperate plunge, and the foe having also resolved on making a splash, the two armies met in the middle of the stream, where they fought with an ardour that was not damped by the surrounding element. Edward and his troops found as much difficulty in reaching the Bank as if they had made the attempt in an omnibus during one of the blockades of Fleet Street. At length they succeeded, and after travelling for some distance, they put up in the neighbourhood of the village of Cressy. On the 26th of August, 1346, the English sovereign took an early supper, and went to bed, having given instructions for his boots to be brought to his door by dawn on the following morning. The whole army slept well, considering it was the first night in a strange place; and, having been called by that valuable valet, the lark, every one was up and down by the hour of daybreak.
Breakfast was scarcely con eluded when Edward ordered the army to arms, and sent for the Herald in the hopes of getting the news; but from this quarter he learned nothing. At length he took up his Post, and chose three leaders, a column being assigned to each of them. The first was under the command of his young son, Edward the Black Prince, a youth of fifteen, who held very high rank in the army, having been included in every brevet, notwithstanding the brevity of his service. Two experienced captains—the Earls of Warwick and Oxford—were employed under him to do the work, so that the boy prince had nothing to do but to reap the glory of his position. Reaping laurels under such circumstances was a common practice in those days; and the vulgar expression "with a hook" may have originated in allusion to the reaping of the harvest created by another's merit. It must, however, be stated in justice to the Black Prince, that he proved himself quite equal to the position in which fortune had placed him. If we examine his character, we shall find in it many good points, and it may fairly be said that the Black Prince was by no means so black as history has painted him. The three divisions took up their position on the hill, and the archers stood in front, forming a semicircle or bow, from which they could more effectually discharge their arrows. The Battle of Cressy is perhaps one of the most interesting in English history; and though part of it was fought in a tremendous shower of rain, which has caused some
Edward III. on the morning of the Battle of Cressy.
frivolous writer of the period to give it the name of Water Cressy, we are
not induced by this idle and impotent play upon words to lose our respect for
one of the greatest exploits of our countrymen.
Philip slept at Abbeville on the 25th of August, and rising in a terrible ill-humour
set out early in the morning to give battle. He started off in such a fit of
sulkiness that he did not even give the word to "march," and breaking
suddenly into a run, his impatience carried him far in advance of his army.
By the time he came in sight of the foe, he was ever so much ahead of his own
troops, and was obliged to sit clown quietly until they had come nearly up to
him. By some mismanagement, the troops at the back started off quicker than
those in front, who began to hesitate still more as they approached the enemy,
and thus one part of the army beginning to back while those behind pressed forward,
a state of confusion which can only be described as a dreadful squeege, was
the immediate consequence. "Now then, stupid," resounded from rank
to rank, and comrade addressed comrade with the words "Where are you shoving
to?" The king got hurried head foremost almost into the English camp, in
spite of the vehement cries of "Keep back!" which however were no
sooner acted upon than the rear ranks were seized with a panic, and the soldiery
began tumbling over each other like those battalions in tin which in youthful
days have fallen prostrate beneath the power of the pea-shooter.
Philip, who had never intended to take the honour of a foremost rank, was pushed willy-nilly into the front place, like a gentleman who happened to be walking down the Haymarket on an opera night, and found himself suddenly engulfed in a stream which washed him off his legs, and left him high and dry in a stall to which he had been driven by the impetuosity of the torrent. Finding himself in the heat of an engagement in which he had not intended to be so closely engaged, his French majesty called to the Genoese crossbow-men to advance, but they pleaded sudden indisposition and fatigue, when Philip's brother deeply offended them by exclaiming—"See what we get by employing such scoundrels, who fail us in our need." The Genoese were rather nettled—that is to say, somewhat stung—by this remark, and made a rush which was worth no more than a rush, for they were really worn out with their morning's walk, and felt fitter to be in bed than in battle. Though their arms and legs were tired, they still had the full use of their lungs, and began to shout out with tremendous vehemence, in the hope of frightening the English. This horrible hooting had no effect, and a Scotch veteran, by happily exclaiming "Hoot awa!" turned the laugh in favour of the English. Upon this, the Genoese gave another fearful yell, when one of Edward's soldiers inquired whether the crossbow-men wanted to frighten away the birds, and gave them the nick-name of the heavy scarecrows. They advanced a step, when the English archers sent forth a volley of arrows, which fell like a snow-storm upon the Genoese, who converting their shields into umbrellas, tried to take shelter under them. Philip was so disgusted with this pusillanimous conduct, that he cried out in a fury, "Kill me these scoundrels, for they stop our way without doing any good;" and the poor Genoese caught it severely from both sides.
During the battle Edward sat on the tip-top of a windmill, situated on the summit of a lofty hill, where, completely out of harm's way, he
Edward III. at the Battle of Cressy.
could watch the progress of the action. While in this elevated position, he was asked by a messenger to send a reinforcement to the Prince of Wales, who was performing prodigies of valour. "I'm glad to hear it," said the affectionate father; "but," he added, "return to those who sent you, and tell them they shall have no help from me. Let the boy win his spurs," continued the old humbug, who was too selfish to put himself out of the way to assist his son, and would rather have let him perish, than make any sacrifice to aid him in his arduous struggles.
When these unaided exertions came to a triumphant issue, the father endeavoured to gain a reflected glory from the brilliance of his son's achievements. It is, however, due to the reputation of the latter to assert that the glory was all his own; for his selfish father had taken care of himself, while the son fought the battle alone, and won it without any assistance that it was in the power of his parent to have afforded him.
Poor Philip fought desperately as long as he could, till John of Hainault, who had several times advised him to "go home and go to bed, for it was of no use," went up to the horse of the French king, seized the bridle, and quietly led him off in the direction of the nearest greenyard. Seeing it was a bad job, Philip requested to be taken to the castle of La Broye, but the gates were shut, and the chatelain, looking out of window, inquired who was knocking him up at such an unreasonable hour. "Me," cried Philip, in the grammar of the period; but "who's me?" was the only response of the governor. "Why, don't you know me? I'm Philip, the fortune of France." "Pretty fortune, indeed!" muttered the chatelain, as he came down stairs, keys and candle in hand, to admit his unfortunate sovereign. The king's suite had dwindled down to five barons, [Froissart.] who turned in anywhere for the night, on sofas and chairs, while Philip took the spare bed usually kept for visitors.
Thus ended the memorable Battle of Cressy, from our account of which we must not omit the incident of the King of Bohemia, who, old and blind, was perverse enough to tie the bridle of his horse to those of two knights, and with them he plunged into the midst of the battle. Considering that he could not have seen his way, there is something very rash, though perhaps very valiant, in this behaviour. Nor should we in our admiration of the bravery of the King of Bohemia, forget to sympathise with the two knights, upon whom he must have been a precious drag, by tying his horse's bridle to theirs, and making them no doubt the victims of a most unfortunate attachment. The King of Bohemia of course fell, for the union he had formed was anything but strength, and the Prince of Wales picking up his crest—a plume of ostrich feathers—adopted it for his own, with the celebrated motto of Ich Dien. [Doubts have been lately cast on this old story. See the Cabinet Portrait Gallery of British Worthies, vol. i., page 81.] The literal meaning of this motto is simply "I serve," but it has been very naturally suggested that "I am served out" would have been a more appropriate translation of the phrase, as long as it appertained to the unfortunate King of Bohemia. Rapin, the French historian, who is naturally anxious to make the best case he can for his countrymen, attributes their defeat at Cressy to the use of gunpowder by the English, who introduced, for the first time in war, a small magazine of this startling novelty. Such a magasin des nouveautes of course would have taken the French by surprise, and would easily have accounted for any little deficiency of valour they might have exhibited. When the battle was over, Edward sneaked out of his windmill, where he professed to have been "overlooking the reserve," and joined his successful son, whom he warmly congratulated on his position.
The night after the battle was of course a gala night with the English, who lighted fires, torches, and candles, including probably "fifty thousand additional lamps," in celebration of the victory. So excellent, however, were the regulations on the occasion, that we have not heard of a single instance of disturbance or accident. The day after the battle was disgraced by a series of attacks on some French unfortunates, who not knowing of the defeat of their king, were coming to his assistance. It happened that, as if to make the English quite at home, a regular English fog set in, and some French militia, not being able to see their way very clearly, mistook a reconnoitreing party of the enemy for their own countrymen. The French hastened to join their supposed comrades, but soon found out their mistake from the cruel treatment they experienced. Other stragglers, who had missed their way in the mist, were also savagely attacked, and when Edward heard the facts, he sent out Lords Gobham and Stafford, with three heralds, to recognise the arms, and two secretaries to write down the names of those that had fallen. The party returned in the evening, with a list of eleven princes, eighty bannerets, twelve hundred knights, and thirty thousand commoners. We can only say that the herald of those days could not have been such a very slow affair as the Herald of these, and the secretaries must have written not merely a running but a galloping hand to have in so few hours deciphered the arms, and made a list of the names of such an enormous number of individuals.
Having remained over Sunday at Cressy, Edward set out on Monday morning for Calais, with the intention of besieging it. While he was occupied abroad, his enemy, little David Bruce, at the instigation of Philip, attempted to disturb England. After a brief campaign, in which the Scotch king was joined by the Earls of Monteith and Fife, David Bruce was placed in custody. Monteith lost his head for showing his teeth, and Fife would have had a stop put to him, but for his relationship to the Royal Family, his mother having been niece to the first Edward.
Calais was kept in a state blockade, for the English king had resolved upon hemming in and starving out the inhabitants. John de Vienne, who was the governor, finding provisions getting low, turned what he called the "useless mouths" out of the place, and among these "useless mouths" were a number of women, who must have been rare-specimens of their sex to have kept their mouths in a state of uselessness. The brutal policy of John de Vienne was to continue weeding the population as long as he could by turning out the old and helpless, the women and the children. Seventeen hundred victims were thrust from the town and driven towards the English lines by the Governor of Calais, who was reckless of the lives of the citizens so long as the sacrifice enabled him to hold out and gain a character for bravery.
It is easy for a military commander to win a reputation for extreme heroism if he is utterly regardless of the expense, and chooses to pay for it in the blood of those under his control; but it is the duty of the historian to audit the accounts and justly strike the balance In looking into the case of John de Vienne we adjudge him guilty of fraudulent bankruptcy in his reputation, for he sought to establish himself in the good books of public opinion by trading on the lives of the citizens of Calais, which were his only capital. If he were now before us, we should assume the part of a commissioner, and should say to him, "Go, Sir. We cannot grant you your protection from the heavy responsibilities you incurred when you wasted human life which you were bound to preserve as far as you were able. You have violated a sacred trust; and we must therefore adjourn your further examination sine die, for it is quite impossible to grant you your certificate."
As long as John de Vienne could find anything to eat, and could have his table tolerably well provided, he held out; but when starvation threatened himself as well as the citizens, he asked permission to capitulate. Edward, annoyed by the obstinacy of the resistance, refused to come to any terms short of an unconditional surrender, but he at length consented to spare the town on condition of six burgesses coming forth naked in their shirts, with halters round their necks, and without anything on their legs, as a proof of their humiliation being utterly inexpressible. When John de Vienne was apprised of this resolution, he called a meeting in the market-place, and stated the hard condition which Edward had imposed, but the governor had not the heroism to propose to make one of the party required for the sacrifice. He was exceedingly eloquent in urging others to come forward, and was loud in his protestations that such an "eligible opportunity," such an "opening for spirited young men" would never occur again; but the citizens turned a deaf ear to all his arguments. No one seemed inclined to set a noble example, but all the inhabitants gave way to a piteous fit of howling, until Eustace de St. Pierre, a rich burgess, drying his eyes and mopping up his emotion with the cuff of his coat, offered himself as the first victim. Five others followed his example, and the six heroes, taking off their trowsers, prepared to throw themselves into the breach, and slipping off their slippers, went barefooted into the presence of the conqueror. He eyed the miserable objects with malicious pleasure, and according to Froissart, insulted the unhappy burgesses by a series of grimaces, like those with which the clown accompanies the ironical inquiry of "How are you?" which he always addresses to his intended victim in a pantomime. The wretched state of the burgesses shivering in their shirts—but not shaking in their shoes, for they were bare-footed—had a softening influence on all but Edward, who with a clownish yell of "I've got you," desired that the headsman might be sent for immediately. The queen threw herself on her knees, and representing that she had never asked a favour of Edward in her life, entreated him to spare the trembling citizens "Look at them!" exclaimed her Majesty, as she dragged one forward and turned him round and round to show what a miserable object he was. "Look at them! and observe how piteously they implore mercy; for though their tongues do not speak, their teeth are constantly chattering." Edward looked at his wife, and then at the citizens. "I wish," said he to the former, "that you had been—somewhere else, but take the miserable beggars and do what you can with them." Philippa instantly took the coil of rope from the necks that were so nearly on the point of "shuffling off the mortal coil," and told them to go and get rigged out in a suit of clothes each, which made the oldest of them observe that "the rigger of the queen was much less formidable than the rigour of the king, with which they had been so lately threatened."
Queen Philippa interceding with Edward the Third for the six Burgesses of Calais.
The imbecility to which fear had brought their minds is fearfully shadowed forth in this miserable piece of attempted pleasantry, and it was perhaps fortunate that Edward did not overhear a pun, the atrocity of which he might have been justified in never pardoning. The six citizens having received their dressing, in a more agreeable shape than they had expected, and having sat down to an excellent dinner, provided at the queen's expense, were dismissed with a present of six nobles each, that they might not be without money in their pockets. As they partook of the meal prepared for them, the wag of the party, whose vapid jokes had already endangered the lives of himself and his companions, ventured to observe that he should look upon the ordinary as one of the most extraordinary events in his life; but as none of the king's servants were at hand to overhear the miserable jeu de mot, it was not followed by the fatal consequences we might otherwise have been compelled to chronicle.
On the 3rd of August, 1347, Edward and his queen made their triumphant entry into Calais, which was transformed into an English colony; and as the residents at that early period were debtors to the generosity of the sovereign, the place has become a favourite resort for debtors even to the present moment.
Edward having returned to England began to try the squeezability of his parliament, and got up various pretexts for demanding money. He pretended to ask advice about carrying on the war with France, but the parliament suspecting his intention declined giving any answer to his message. He next had recourse to intimidation, by spreading a report that the French contemplated invasion; and though it was little better than a cry of "Old Bogy," it had the desired effect. There is no doubt that Edward was guilty of obtaining money under false pretences, for he and Philip had agreed between themselves for a truce, and yet each taxed his subjects under the pretence that war might be imminent.
About the year 1344, according to some, but in the year 1350, on the authority, of Stowe, the celebrated Order of the Garter was founded. If we may put faith in an old fable, it originated in the Countess of Salisbury having danced her stockings down at a court ball; when the king seeing her garter dangling at her heels, took hold of it and gave it to her, exclaiming, Honi soit qui mal y pense, which was a cut at some females who pretended to be shocked at the incident. Their smothered exclamations of "Well, I'm sure!" "Upon my word!" and "Well really I never! Did you ever!" were thus playfully rebuked by Edward
Origin of the Order of the Garter.
the Third, who afterwards made the words we have quoted the motto of the Order. We need scarcely tell our readers in this enlightened age, that Honi soit qui mal y pense, is equivalent to saying that those who see harm in an innocent act, derive from themselves all the evil that presents itself.
Edward's old enemy Philip of France was now dead, but his son and successor, John, continued the truce, or renewed the accommodation bill, which was entered into for the purpose of stopping proceedings on either side. In state affairs as in pecuniary matters, these temporary arrangements are seldom beneficial, for they cause a frightful accumulation of interest, which must some time or other be paid off or wiped out at a fearful sacrifice.
The continental successes of the English king were marred by the trouble that Scotland gave to him, and he was often heard to say that "though he could make the French poodle—by whom he meant the King of France—do as he pleased, he hated the constant barking at his heels of the Scotch terrier." He therefore determined on attempting to buy the country out and out. So, going over to Roxburgh, he asked Baliol point-blank what he would take for the whole concern, exactly as it stood, including the throne, the title-deeds of the kingdom, and the crown and sceptre. "Let me see; what has it cost me?" said Baliol, evidently contemplating a bargain; but Edward interrupting him with "A precious deal more than it is worth," somewhat modified the figure that was on the tip of the tongue of the Scotch sovereign. "Will fifty thousand marks be too much," observed the vendor, with an anxious look; but Edward's rapid "Oh, good morning," instantly told the wary Scot the shrewdness of his customer. "Stop, stop," said Baliol, "I like to do business when I can. What will you give? for I'm really tired of the thing, and would be glad to accept any reasonable offer?" Edward resumed his seat, made a few calculations on a scrap of vellum with a pocket stile, and then jumping up, exclaimed, "I'll tell you what I'll do with you. I'll give you five thousand marks down, and an annuity of two thousand pounds per annum."
The bargain was struck; with the title-deeds laden, Edward joyfully flew to his own country, and he had scarcely turned his back when "Adieu," said Baliol, "you are not the first humbug who, coming to cheat, have got cheated yourself." The fact was, that the Scotchman, with characteristic cunning, got the best of the bargain; for the crown had been fearfully ill-used, the sceptre had got all the glitter worn off by the hard rubs it had endured, and the throne would cost more to keep in substantial repair, than twice its value.
Edward having bought up the country, began to exercise the right of ownership, by setting fire to little bits of it. He marched through the Lothians, where he met with loathing on every side, and set Haddington as well as Edinburgh in flames, which caused Scotland to be prophetically called the Land of Burns by a sage of the period.
While the king was thus engaged at home, his son Edward, the Black Prince, so called from the colour of his armour, which he had blackleaded, to save the trouble of keeping it always bright, was occupied in France, where he fought and won the famous battle of Poictiers. The truce had, with the customary faithlessness of royalty in those days, been broken. Young Edward, having a small force, made a most earnest appeal to his army, and said something very insinuating about "his sinewy English bowmen."
Before the commencement of the battle, a diplomatist of the name of Talleyrand, who seems to have been worthy of his celebrated modern successor, rode from camp to camp trying to arrange the affair, and making himself very influential with both parties. John was, however, so confident in the superiority of his numbers, that he declined a compromise except on the most humiliating terms to the Black Prince, who looked blacker than ever when the degrading proposition was made to him.
On the 19th of September, 1356, the battle began with a duet played by two
trumpets—one on each side—but this did not last long, for neither
party desired to listen to overtures. The French commenced the attack, but they
came to the point a little too soon, for they actually ran upon the arrows of
the English bowmen. The Constable of France tried to inspire courage into the
troops on his side by roaring out "Mountjoy! St Denis!" but a stalwart
Briton, telling him to hold his noise, felled him to the ground. A strong body
of reserve, who carried their reserve to downright timidity, fled without striking
a blow. They had scarcely drawn their swords, and received the word of command
to "cut away," when they did literally cut away, and having cut refused
to come again. John of France flourished his battle-axe with ferocious courage;
but at last he received two tremendous blows in the face which brought him to
the ground. His son Philip, a lad of sixteen, fought by his side, encouraging
him with cries of "Give it 'em, father!" which aroused the almost
exhausted John, and caused him to recover his legs. Every kind of verbal insults
was offered to him by the enemy, and particularly by the Gascons, who indulged
in a great deal of their usual gasconade. "Stand and surrender!" cried
a voice; to which John replied, "If I could stand, I would not surrender,
but I suppose I must fall into your hands."With this he tottered into a
circle of English knights, by whom he was nearly torn to pieces in the scramble
that arose for the royal captive. Some among the crowd of his victors endeavoured
to induce his Majesty to place himself under their charge, and one or two began
to talk to him in bad French, when Sir Denis, a real Frenchman, who had been
dismissed from the service of his own country and entered that of England, addressed
the monarch politely in his native tongue. John was in the act of offering up
his glove to this gentleman as a token of surrender, when the royal gauntlet
was torn to pieces by the surrounding knights, who all wanted to have a finger
in it. Every one was eager to claim the French monarch, who seemed on the point
of being torn to pieces like a hare by a pack of ill-bred hounds. "I took
him," exclaimed fifty voices at once, when the Earl of Warwick, rushing
into the front, thundered forth in a stentorian voice, "Can't you leave
the man alone!" and drawing John's arm within his own, led off the conquered
king to the camp of Edward. Warwick took little Philip by the hand, and presented
father and son to the Black Prince, who received them with much courtesy. [Froissart.]
He invited them both to supper, waited on the French king at table, and soothed
his grief with probably such kind expressions as "Poor old chap!"
"Never mind, old fellow!" and other words of respectful sympathy.
The Black Prince made them his companions to London, which they entered in the
character of his prisoners, on the 24th of April,
1357. The pageant was very magnificent, the citizens hanging out their plate
to do honour to the occasion; and the windows were filled with spoons, just
as they are when a modern Lord Mayor's show is to be seen within the city. Edward
had now a couple of kings in custody;
Edward, the Black Prince, conducting his Prisoner.
but in November, 1357, one of them, David Bruce, was released, upon drawing a bill for 100,000 marks on his Scotch subjects. There can be no doubt that the latter were regularly sold by their weak-minded monarch, who had become the mere creature of the English sovereign John remained in captivity in London, while Edward carried the war into France; but having got nearly as far as Paris, he was caught in a shower, which completely wet him down, and diluted all the spirit he had, up to that point, exhibited. [Froissart, Knyght, Rymer, and Company.] The wind was terrific; but it was not one of those ill winds that blow nobody good, for the blow it inflicted on the courage of Edward made good for those he came to fight against. The French justly hailed the rain as a welcome visitor, for it completely softened Edward by regularly soaking him. On the 8th of May, 1360, peace was concluded, and John was set at large on condition of the payment of three million crowns of gold, which was rather a heavy sum for getting one crown restored to him. Some hostages were given for the fulfilment of the bargain; but poor John found he had undertaken more than he could perform, and though he did not exactly stop payment, it was because he had never commenced that operation. He was exceedingly particular in money matters, and it annoyed him not to be able to fulfil his pecuniary arrangements. Some of his bail having bolted, he could bear the degradation no longer, and he voluntarily went over to London, where he put himself in prison, as a defaulter, though others say it was a love-affair in England, rather than his honesty as a debtor, which brought him up to town. The royal insolvent did not long survive, for he died in the month of April, 1364, at the Palace of the Savoy; and it was tauntingly said of him by a contemporary buffoon, that the debt of nature was the only debt he had ever paid.
The Black Prince, who had been created Duke of Aquitaine, governed for his father in the South of France, but was induced to espouse the cause of one Pedro, surnamed the Cruel, who, for his ferocious conduct, had been driven from the throne of Castile. Bertrand du Gueselin, a famous knight in his day, and Don Enrique, the illegitimate brother of the tyrant, had expelled him from his dominions, when the Black Prince, tempted by offers of an enormous salary, undertook to restore Pedro to his position. Edward fought and conquered, but could not get paid for his services; and, as he had undertaken the job by contract, employing an army of mercenaries at his own risk, he was harassed to death by demands for which he had made himself liable. Captains were continually calling to know when he intended to settle that little matter, until he got tired of answering that it was not quite convenient just now; and he that had never turned his back upon an enemy, ran away as hard as he could from the importunity of his creditors. Pedro, abandoned by his chief supporter, agreed to a conference with his half brother Enrique; but cruelty seems to have been a family failing, for the couple had scarcely met when they fell upon each other with the fury of wild beasts, and Pedro the Cruel was stabbed by Enrique the Crueller, who threw himself at once, upon the throne. [Froissart.—Mariana]
Charles of France now thought that the harassed mind and declining health of the Black Prince afforded an eligible opportunity of attacking him. His Royal Highness resisted as well as he could; but he was so exceedingly indisposed that he was carried about on a litter from post to post, as if he had been compelled to rest at the corner of every street through sheer exhaustion. He marched, or rather was jolted, towards Lcomic_pics/Images, the capital of the Limousin, which he stormed in two places at once; and at the sight of the pair of breaches he had made, the women fled in inexpressible terror and confusion. His conduct to these poor defenceless creatures was merciless in the extreme; and this one incident in the life of the Black Prince is sufficient to give to his name all the blackness that is attached to it. Some allowance may, however, be perhaps made for the state of his health, which now took him to England to recruit—not in a military but in a physical sense—but it was too late, for he died at Canterbury, on the 8th of January, 1376, to the great regret of his father, who only kept the respect of the people through his son's popularity.
Edward III. had been for some time leading a very disreputable life, and had been captivated by one Alice Perrers, to whom he had given the jewels of the late queen, and who had the effrontery to wear them when abroad in the public thoroughfares. Among other freaks of his dotage was a tournament which he gave in Smithfield—the origin, no doubt, of the once famous Bartholomew Fair—where Alice Perrers figured in a triumphal chariot, as the Lady of the Sun, the king himself appearing in the character of the Sun, though it was the general remark that, as the couple sat side by side, the Sun looked old enough to be the father.
It was towards the close of this reign that Wycliffe, the celebrated precursor of Huss, Luther, and Calvin, as well as the curser of popery, began preaching against the abuses of the Catholic clergy. His cause was espoused by the Duke of Lancaster, who had been in power since the death of the Black Prince, and who is said to have taken Wycliffe's part so ardently, as to have threatened to drag the Bishop of London by the hair of his head out of St. Paul's Cathedral. Considering that the priest was all shaven and shorn, it would have been difficult for Lancaster to have carried out his threat by tugging out the bishop in the manner specified. It is a curious fact that this alleged attack on one of the heads of the church was soon followed by a general burden on the national poll, in the shape of a poll-tax, which was imposed to provide for the renewal of the war, as the truce in existence was on the point of expiring.
Edward had now become old and miserable; for having done nothing to gain the affection of others, he was abandoned at the close of his life, by even the members of his own family. One or two sycophants clung to him, in the hope of getting something; but his children had all separate interests of their own, for the cold and selfish conduct of their parent had driven them quite away from him. He endeavoured to give decency to the close of his existence, by a general amnesty for all minor offences; but it was now too late to gain him friends, and the wretched old man was left alone with Alice Perrers. He died in her arms at his villa at Sheen, near Richmond, on the 21st of June, 1377, and she took advantage of being by his side at his death, to rob him of a valuable ring, which she took from his finger in his last moments, when he was too weak to resist the robbery. Were the shade of Edward III. to present itself before us for a testimonial, we should advise the spectre, for its respectability's sake, not to ask us for a character.
Much good was done in the reign we have been describing; but this is only another illustration of the well-known truth that the prosperity of a country does not always depend on the virtues of the sovereign Perhaps the most valuable measure passed by Edward was an act limiting to three principal heads the cases of high treason, of which a hundred heads, all filled with teeth, might until then have been considered symbolical. This wholesome statute had at least the effect of changing a Hydra into a Cerberus The leash of crimes that this Cerberus was empowered to hunt down were, conspiring the death of the king, levying war against him, or adhering to his enemies. A curious question arose some time afterwards under the last of these three divisions, when a loyal subject was nearly being condemned for adhering to the king's enemies, though it appeared he had adhered only in the sense of sticking to them, with a view to punish them.
The conduct of Edward III. to David Bruce, his brother-in-law, was unjust in the extreme; and though the Black Prince made his way by his own talents, he does not appear to have owed his advancement to any assistance that his father ever afforded him. Some useful alterations were made in the law, and the power of the Commons advanced; but the taxes were fearfully increased, as if the liberality of the people was expected as an equivalent for the liberality of the Government. The money collected was not altogether wasted in war, for some of it went in the building of Windsor Castle, of which William of Wickham was the architect. The first turnpike ever known in England, was started also under Edward III., between St. Giles's and Temple Bar, where to this day the successor of the ancient pikeman rushes forth to levy a toll on the carts that enter the city. On the same principle, that out of evil good often comes, Edward III. may be regarded as a benefactor to his subjects
RICHARD THE SECOND, SURNAMED OF BORDEAUX.
IF little and good were always identical, Richard II. would have been a very good king, for he was a little boy of eleven years of age when the crane of circumstances hoisted him on to the throne of his grandfather. Young Richard was the only surviving son of Edward the Black Prince, and out of compliment to the juvenile monarch, his coronation in Westminster Abbey was made as gaudy as possible. No expense was spared in dresses and decorations; but the ceremony not being over till it was high time all children should be in bed and asleep, the boy king was completely exhausted before the spectacle was half over. Stimulants were administered to keep the child up; but when the heavy crown was placed on his brow, the diadem completely overbalanced a head already oscillating from side to side with excessive drowsiness. His attendants tumbled him into a litter, and hurried him to a private room, where, by dint of the most scarifying restoratives held to his nose, he so far recovered as to be enabled to create four earls and nine knights, partake of a tremendous supper, dance at a ball, and listen to a little minstrelsy. [We get these facts from Walsingham, who gives an elaborate account of the coronation. Walsingham says, they waltzed till all was blue, which means, until the coerulean dawn began to make its appearance.]
It was at the coronation of Richard II. that we first find mention in history of a champion rushing into Westminster Hall, throwing his gauntlet on the ground, and offering to fight any number—one down and another come on—who may dispute the title of the sovereign The gallantry of the challenge is not very considerable, for it is a well-understood thing beforehand that the police will keep all suspicious characters out of the Hall, and the only difficulty required is in backing out of the Hall on horseback; as, if a claimant to the throne should actually appear, the champion would no doubt back cleverly out of his challenge. Even this trifling merit must, however, be assigned to the horse, who is generally a highly-trained palfrey from the neighbouring amphitheatre, and is let out, trappings and all included, to the Champion of England for the performance in which his services are required.
Fancy Portrait of the Champion of England.
Though Richard was not too young for the position of king, it was not to be supposed that a boy of his age could be of any use whatever, and twelve permanent councillors were therefore appointed, to do the work of government. It was expected that the Duke of Lancaster, alias John of Gaunt, would have been appointed regent, but not one of the king's uncles was named, and John, looking gaunter [John of Gaunt was not so called from his gaunt stature, as some suppose, but from Ghent, or Gaud, (then called Gaunt) where the gent, was born.] than ever, with drew in stately dudgeon to his Castle of Kenilworth.
The truce with France having expired, without renewal, some attacks were made on the English coast, and advantage was taken of the circumstance to ask the Parliament for a liberal supply. Every appeal to the patriotism of the people was in those days nothing more than an attack upon their pockets; and it is not improbable that, by an understanding among the various kings of Europe, one of them should be threatened with attack if he required a pretext for obtaining a subsidy from his subjects.
Notwithstanding the money taken from the public purse for the national defence, the work was so utterly neglected by the Government, that John Philpot, a shipowner and merchant of London, equipped a small fleet of his own, with which he captured several of the enemy's vessels. The authorities feeling the act to be a reflection on their own shameful dereliction of duty, censured Philpot for his interference; but the worthy alderman, by replying—"Why did you leave it to me to do, when you ought to have done it yourselves?" effectually silenced all remonstrance.
Young Richard, or those who acted for him, continued to make ducks and drakes of the money of the English, which was being constantly wasted in wanton warfare. The setting up of a duke here, or the taking down of a king there, though the English felt no interest whatever in either the duke or the king, became a pretext for levying a tax on the people. In order that none should escape, so much per head was imposed on every one from the highest to the lowest. The tax varied with the rank of the person; and while a duke or archbishop was assessed at six thirteen four, (£6 13s. 4d.) a lawyer was mockingly mulcted of six and eightpence. Such was the unpopularity of the poll-tax, that a regular pollish revolution speedily broke out, which was fomented by the exactions of some mercenary speculators to whom the tax had been farmed out by the Government. Commissioners were sent into the disturbed districts to enforce payment, and one Thomas de Bampton, who sat at Brentwood in Essex, with two serjeants-at-arms, was glad to take to his legs, to escape the violence of the populace, who sent him flying all the way to London, where he rushed with his two attendants into the Common Pleas, and asked for justice. Sir Robert Belknape, the chief, was sitting at Nisi Prius, when Bampton begged permission to move the Court as far as Essex. The judge followed by clerks, jurors, and ushers, consenting to the motion, went off to Brentwood, where they had no sooner arrived, than poor Belknape was seized by the nape of the neck and forced to flee, while the clerics and jurors were much more cruelly dealt with.
Leaders were all that the people wanted, when a notorious priest who got the name of Jack Straw—from his being a man of that material— put himself at the head of the discontents. The throwing up a straw will often tell which way the wind blows, and the elevation of Jack certainly indicated an approaching hurricane. During the excitement, one of the tax-gatherers called upon one Walter the Tyler, of Dartford, in Kent, to demand fourpence, due as Miss Walter's poll-tax. Mrs. Walter, with the vanity of her sex, wishing to make herself out younger than she really was, declared that the girl was not of the age liable by law to the imposition. The collector made a very rude remark on that very tender point, the age of the elder lady, when she screamed out to her husband, who was tiling a house in the neighbourhood, to come and "punish the impertinent puppy." Walter, who had still his trowel in his hand, replied by crying out "Wait till I get at you;" and the tax-gatherer insolently calling out "What's that what you say, Wat?" so irritated Walter, that he at once emptied a hod of mortar on to the head of the collector. The functionary was, of course, dreadfully mortar-fied at this incident, but the trowelling he got with the trowel completely finished him. Everybody applauded what Wat had done, and he was soon appointed captain of the rebels. They released from prison a methodist parson, named John Ball, or Bawl, whom they called their chaplain. A nucleus having been formed, the mob increased with the rapidity of a snow-ball, picking up the scum of the earth at every turn, until it arrived at an alarming magnitude. The Tyler first visited Canterbury, where he played some practical jokes upon the monks, and then came to Blackheath, where, finding the young king's mother—the widow of the Black Prince—he gave the old lady a kiss, and in this operation nearly every rebel followed his leader. Such were the liberties taken by the mob in their zeal on behalf of liberty, which they often affect to pursue by means of the vilest tyranny, cruelty, cowardice, and oppression. The insurgents made for London, when Walworth, the mayor, endeavoured to oppose their entrance; but his efforts were vain, and several parts of the city were burnt and plundered. The Temple was destroyed by fire, and the lawyers running about in their black gowns amid the flames suggested a very obvious comparison. Newgate and the Fleet prisons were broken into, when all the scamps from both places at once assumed the character of patriots, and joined the cause of the people.
It is astonishing how easily a scamp who is unfit for any honest occupation can at once become a friend of the masses. The prisons might at any time contribute a fresh supply, when the stock of lovers of liberty on hand may seem to be diminishing. Rapine and murder were pursued with impunity for some time, the government leaving matters to take their chance; until a formal demand having been made by the mob for the heads of the Chancellor and Treasurer, it was thought high time to effect a compromise. A proclamation was issued announcing the king's intention to be at Mile End by a certain hour, and the people were politely requested to meet him there. On his reaching the spot where he intended to talk things over with his subjects, he found sixty thousand of them assembled; and as they all began talking at once, a little confusion arose, until the appointment of a regular spokesman. At length the demands of sixty thousand tongues were reduced to four heads, and to these the king agreed very graciously. The dispute might have ended mildly at Mile End, but for the violent proceedings of those who kept away from the meeting These got into the Tower directly Richard's back was turned, and the least of their offences was the rudeness they manifested towards the widow of the Black Prince, who had either dropt in to tea with the Archbishop and Chancellor, or was permanently residing there. This lady had got the name of the Fair Maid of Kent, a title that had many local variations, according to the part of the county in which she was spoken of. Sometimes they called her the Dartford Daisy, sometimes the Canterbury Belle, sometimes the Greenwich Geranium, sometimes the Woolwich Wallflower, and occasionally, even, the Herne Bay Hollyoak.
The rioters finding her in the Tower, treated the Fair Maid of Kent with excessive rudeness, comparing her lips to Kentish cherries, and making them the subject of the well-known game which is played by what is termed bobbing at the fruit specified. She was in fact nearly smothered in the Tower, with the kisses of the malcontents. Her ladies were of course dreadfully shocked, and their screams of "Mi!" at the treatment of their mistress, were truly terrible. When remonstrated with on the liberty they were taking, they declared liberty to be the sacred object they were bent on furthering. The Fair Maid of Kent was at length dragged away by her attendants, who concealed her in a house called the royal wardrobe, or perhaps put her into a clothes cupboard, to keep her out of the way of the rioters.
The Mile End charter had been very nicely written out by order of the king, but Wat Tyler and his followers refused to have anything to do with it Richard tried another charter with more concessions, but this had no effect; and at length he drew up a third, which went still further than the two first; for the king, or those who advised him, cared not how much was promised to answer a temporary purpose, as there was never any difficulty in breaking a pledge that might be found inconvenient. Whether or no Wat suspected the worthlessness of charters, which might be sworn to one day and treated as waste paper the next, he refused to be satisfied with either of the documents offered to his approval. Finding written communications utterly useless, Richard rode into town with the intention of seeing what could be done by means of a personal interview.
On reaching Smithfield he met Wat Tyler, and drew up opposite the gate of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, which was in those days an Abbey. The incident which then happened has been variously described by different pens; but unless we had at our command some of the Smithfield pens that happened to be present at the time, we could not vouch for the accuracy of any particular statement Some say that Tyler came up in a bullying attitude, and flourished a dagger; others allege that he seized the king's bridle, as if he would take out of the royal hands the reins of power: a few hint that Wat was intoxicated, either with brief authority or something equally short; but all agree that he received his quietus at the hands of one of his Majesty's attendants.
The merit, or responsibility of the death of Wat Tyler, has usually been assigned to Walworth, Lord Mayor of London, who is said to have killed the rebel with his mace; [Others say that the mace in the hands of Walworth was not the official mace, but a mace belonging to a billiard marker in the mob. It is pretty certain, that wherever the mace may have come from, the insolence of Tyler furnished the cue.] but it is doubtful whether the civic potentate would be carrying his mace about with him during a morning's ride.
The fall of the Tyler had a most depressing influence on his followers, and Richard riding up to them, offered his services as their leader. "Tyler was a traitor," cried the king: "I will be your captain and your guide;" when several of the mob consented to transfer themselves, like so many tools, from the hands of Wat to those of Richard. Some of the rioters sneaked quietly away, while those that remained were paralysed; for it was always the characteristic of an English mob, to go on very valiantly as long as they had it all their own way, but to turn tail and flee on the very first symptom of earnest resistance.
Richard, finding himself once more powerful, instead of tempering justice with mercy, threw in a strong seasoning of the most highly spiced cruelty, and commenced a series of executions, in which there were nearly fifteen hundred victims to royal vindictiveness. As might have been expected from the state of royal honour at the time, he at once revoked all the charters to which he had agreed—an act which proved that Tyler took a very fair view of the worth of the concessions he had rejected. Jack Straw, one of the rioters, after being tauntingly told by the authorities that he, Straw, deserved to be thrashed, was among the sufferers by the law; and an act was passed by which "riots and rumours and other such things" were turned into high treason. Considering that rumour has an incalculable number of tongues, which are not unfrequently all going at once, there must have been plenty to do under the act by which all rumours were converted into high treason.
In the year 1382, Richard was married to Anne of Bohemia, a most accomplished Bohemian girl, and the daughter of Charles IV., the highly respectable emperor. The king had in the commencement of his reign been surrounded by a low set, placed about him by his mother, the Princess of Wales, for the purpose of excluding his uncles, who could not be expected to mix with ministers and officers whose vulgarity was shocking, and whose meanness was quite detestable. One of these fellows, John Latimer, a Carmelite friar, and an Irishman, gave Richard a parchment containing the particulars of a conspiracy to place the crown on the head of his uncle, the Duke of Lancaster. The Duke swore that the whole story was false; his accuser swore the contrary, and the dispute was at length settled by the strangulation of Latimer. Sir John Holland, the king's half-brother, was the alleged perpetrator of the savage act; and indeed this gentleman subsequently disgraced himself by a homicide in the royal camp, for he pounced upon and killed one of the favourites. "You're no favourite of mine," roared Holland, as he perpetrated the ruffianly act; which proves the Holland of that day to have been a very coarse material.
The Duke of Lancaster having gone abroad to urge a stale, and rather hopeless, claim to the throne of Castile, Richard was left in the power of his more turbulent uncle, the Duke of Gloucester. This unpleasant person at once proposed a permanent Council of Regency, to which the king objected, when, with dramatic effect, one of the commons produced from under his cloak the statute by which Edward II. had been deposed, and holding it to Richard's head, implied that his consent or his life were his only alternatives. Upon this he gave his consent, but about two years afterwards, at a council held in May, 1389, he suddenly took what is commonly called a new start, and rising up, addressed Gloucester with the words, "I say, Uncle, do you know how old I am?" "Of course I do," replied Gloucester, a little puzzled at the oddness of the question; "you are in your twenty-second year; and a fine boy you are of your age," continued the crafty Duke; "but why so particular about
Richard thinks it high time he managed his own affairs.
dates at the present moment?" "Because," replied the king, "I've been thinking, if I'm not old enough to manage my own affairs now, I never shall be."
An expression of "hoity toity!" came into the countenance of the duke; but Richard continued, with much earnestness, that all the young men of his age were released from the control of their guardians, and he did not see why he should any longer be kept morally in pinafores. With this he thanked the council for their past services, which, however, he declared he should no longer require. Before there was time to prevent him, he had snatched the seals from the Archbishop, and seized the bunch of keys from the Bishop of Hereford. Everybody was completely dumfoundered by this exhibition on the part of a lad who had never before been known to do more than stammer out a bashful "bo!" to some goose he may have met with in his youthful wanderings. Gloucester was driven from the council, and the whole thing was done before any one present had time—or if he had time he certainly omitted the opportunity—to say "Jack Robinson." An affecting reconciliation afterwards took place between Gloucester and the king; but we believe the reconciliation itself to have been more affected than the parties who were concerned in it.
Richard had soon afterwards the misfortune to lose his wife; and in 1394 he went over to Ireland with a considerable army, but, as it would seem, less for the purpose of making war than making holiday. The English king never struck a blow, and the Irish did not resist, so that the whole affair was a good deal like that portion of the performance of Punch, in which one party is continually bobbing down his head, while the other is furiously implanting blows on vacancy. Richard entertained the Irish with great magnificence, and at one of the banquets said the evening was so pleasant he wished he could make several knights of it. Some of the guests taking up the idea, persuaded him to make several knights by knighting them, which he did with the utmost affability.
Richard did not remain very long a widower, for in October 1396 he married Isabella the daughter of Charles VI., an infant prodigy, for she was scarcely more than seven, though a prodigy, according to Froissart, of wit and beauty. Our private opinion—which we do not hesitate to make public—is that there must have been some mistake about the infant's age, and that the parents and nurses of that period were not so particular in proving registers and records of birth as they might, could, or should have been. The wit of a child of seven must have been fearfully forced to have been so early developed; and in spite of the tendency there has always been to exaggerate the merits of royalty, we respectfully submit that the facetiae of a child of seven must have been of the very smallest description. The king, who had never been cordially reconciled to Gloucester, was annoyed by the opposition of the latter to the royal marriage, and resolved on striking a blow at his uncle as well as at one or two of his chief partisans. Richard's plan was to ask people to dinner, and in the middle of one of the courses, give a signal to a sheriff's officer, who was concealed under the table-cloth, from which he sprang out and arrested the visitor. He served the Earls of Warwick and Arundel one after the other in this way, having invited them each in turn to a chop, which it was designed that they should eventually get through the agency of a hatchet. [This must not be confounded with an old legend, that he asked his friends occasionally to a chop at Hatchett's—the well known hotel in Piccadilly.]
His uncle Gloucester was not to be caught in this way, and declined several invitations to a tete-a-tete, when Richard, determined to accomplish his object, went to Bleshy Castle in Essex, where his uncle was residing. "As you won't come to see me, I've come to see you," were the king's artful words, when he was naturally invited to partake of that fortune du pot which is the ever-ready tribute of English hospitality While Richard was doing the amiable with the Duchess, Gloucester, the Duke, was seized by one of the bailiffs in the suite—disguised, of course, as a gentleman of the household—and hurried to the Essex shore, where he was shoved off in a boat, and conveyed, almost before he could fetch his breath, to Calais.
It was the practice of Richard to do things by fits and starts; so that he accomplished an object very often by getting people to aid him with out knowing exactly what they were about, in consequence of the suddenness with which he claimed their services. A few days after poor Gloucester had been "entered outwards" for Calais, the king went to Nottingham Castle, where, taking his uncles Lancaster and York by surprise, he pulled out a document, requesting them to favour him with their autographs. They could not very well refuse a request so strangely made, and it eventually turned out that they had put their names to a bill of indictment against Gloucester, Warwick, and Arundel. A Parliament was called to try the traitors, who were condemned, as a matter of course; for Richard, walking into the house with six hundred men-at-arms and a body guard of archers, was pretty sure of a large majority. Arundel was beheaded, and a writ was issued against Gloucester, commanding him to return from Calais, to undergo the same disagreeable process.
Fortunately, or unfortunately for the duke, he was dead before the writ could be served; but the Parliament, though they could not kill him twice over, indulged the satisfaction of declaring him a traitor after his decease, by which all his property became forfeited. This proceeding was a good deal like robbing the dead; but it was by no means contrary to the spirit of the period. Warwick pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment in the Isle of Man—a sort of lucus a non lucendo, which was called the Isle of Man from there being scarcely a man to be seen in the place from one week's end to the other.
The peculiar richness of this reign consists in the historical doubts, of which it is so full that the chroniclers are thrown into a state of pleasing bewilderment. Nobody knows what became of Gloucester while in captivity at Calais; and therefore every writer is at liberty to dispose of the Duke in any manner that may tempt an imagination inclining to riot and rampancy. The treatment of his Royal Highness becomes truly dreadful in the hands of the various antiquarians and others who have undertaken to deal with him. By one set of authorities he is strangled, in accordance with the alleged orders of the king; others kill him of apoplexy; a few poison him; ten or a dozen drown him; six or seven smother him; but all agree in the fact that he was surreptitiously settled. We are the only faithful recorders of the real fact, when we state upon our honour that nobody knows the manner of the duke's death, which is involved in the dense fogs of dim obscurity. Into these we will not venture, lest we lose our own way and mislead the reader who may pay us the compliment of committing himself to our guidance.
Richard having got rid of Gloucester, was anxious for the removal of Norfolk and Hereford, whom he involved in a quarrel with each other, intending that they should realise the legend of the Cats' of Kilkenny. When, however, they had entered the lists to decide their dispute by wager of battle, Richard thought it better to run no risk of either of them escaping, and he therefore sentenced both to banishment. Poor Norfolk, a pudding-headed fellow, who might have gone by the name of the Norfolk Dumpling, was soft enough to die of grief at Venice, on his road to Jerusalem, whither he contemplated a pilgrcomic_pics/Image. Hereford remained in France, having been promised a pardon, but as it did not arrive he took French leave to return to England, in 1399, after scarcely more than a year's absence. His retinue was so small as to be utterly ridiculous, for it consisted of one exiled archbishop, fifteen knights, and a small lot of servants, who may be put down as sundries in the little catalogue. One fool, however, makes many, and one rebellious earl was soon joined by a number of other seditious nobles.
The plan of Hereford was that of the political quack who pretends to have a specific for every disease by which the constitution is affected. He published a puffing manifesto declaring that he had no other object but the redress of grievances, and that the crown, was the very last thing to which his thoughts were directed. One of his confederates to whom Hereford was reading the rough draft of his proposed address, suggested that the disclaimer of the crown which it contained, might prove inconvenient, when the royal diadem was really obtainable. "Don't you see," replied the crafty Hereford with a smile, "I have not compromised myself in any way. I have only said it is the last thing to which my thoughts are directed, and so indeed it is, for I think of it the last thing at night as well as the first thing in the morning." Thus with the salve of speciousness, did the wily earl soothe for a time the irritations of his not very tender conscience.
The manifesto had its effect, for it is a remarkable fact that they who promise more than it is possible to perform, find the greatest favour with the populace; for an undertaking to do what cannot be done always affords something to look forward to. Expectation is generally disappointed by fulfilment, and the most successful impostors are consequently those who promise the most impracticable things without ever doing anything. The imposition cannot be detected until the impossibility of the thing promised is demonstrated; and this does not often happen, for the difficulty of proving a negative is on all hands admitted. It was therefore a happy idea of Hereford, as a political adventurer, to promise a redress of every grievance; and if he could have added to his pledge of interference de omnibus rebus an assurance of his ultimately applying his panacea to quoedam alia, there is little doubt that he would have been even more successful than he was in augmenting the number of his followers.
By the time he reached London he had got sixty thousand men of all sorts and sizes about him, for the people in those days were fond of changing their leaders, and Hereford was popular as the latest novelty. The Duke of York—the king's uncle—moved to the West-end, as Henry and his forces entered at the East; but Henry of Bolingbroke— alias Hereford, who was also the nephew of York—invited the latter to a conference. After talking the matter over, the worthy couple agreed
Henry of Bolingbroke and the Duke of York transacting business.
to a coalition; the conduct of York being very like that of an individual left to guard a house, and joining with the thief who came to rob the premises.
Richard, who was in Ireland, knew nothing of what was passing at home, for in consequence of contrary winds, the non-arrival of "our usual express" was for three weeks a standing announcement with all the organs of intelligence. When he received the news from his "own reporter," he started for Milford Haven, where he was almost overwhelmed with disagreeable information from gentlemen who evinced the genius of true penny-a-liners in making the very most and the very worst of every calamitous incident. Richard's soldiers seeing that their king more than ever required their fidelity and aid, immediately, according to the usual practice, ran away from him "They deserted," says the Chronicler, "almost to a man," and it is to be regretted that we have not the name of the "man" who formed the nearly solitary exception to the general apostacy. Whoever he may have been, he must have exercised a great deal of self-command, for he was of course his own officer; he must have reviewed himself, as well as gone through the ceremony of putting himself on duty, and taking himself off at the proper periods. We must not, however, take too literally the calculations of the old chroniclers, who reduce the number of Richard's adherents to an almost solitary soldier, for the truth appears to be, that the king mustered almost six thousand men out of the twenty thousand he had brought with him from Ireland. Flight was therefore his only refuge, and selecting from his stock of fancy dresses the disguise of a priest, Richard, accompanied by his two half-brothers, Sir Stephen Scroop the Chancellor, and the Bishop of Carlisle, with nine other followers, set off for the Castle of Conway. There he met the Earl of Salisbury and a hundred men, who had eaten every morsel of food to be found in the place, and Richard was occupied in running backwards and forwards from Conway to Beaumaris, then on to Carnarvon, then back to Conway again, in a wretched race for a dinner.
It is pitiable to find a king of England reduced to the condition described in the old nursery ditty. He went to Conway for provisions; but—
"When he got there
The cupboard was bare;"
and the same result followed his journey to Beaumaris and Carnarvon Notwithstanding the number of bones that his subjects had to pick with him, there was not one in the larders of the three castles he visited "And so," in the emphatic words of the nursery rhyme, "the poor dog had none." So complete was the desertion of Richard, that the Master of the Household, Percy, Earl of Worcester, called all the servants together, and broke his wand of office, accompanying the act by exclaiming—"Now, I'm off to Chester, to join the Duke of Lancaster." This ceremony was equivalent to a discharge of all the domestics under him, and the king, had he returned to his abode, would have been compelled to "do for himself" in consequence of the disbanding of all his menials. The members of the establishment, fancying they had an opportunity of bettering themselves, did not hesitate to follow the example of their chief, and there is no doubt that a long list, headed want places, was at once forwarded to the Duke of Lancaster.
Having ransacked every corner of Conway Castle without finding any provisions, Richard had nothing left, but an unprovisional surrender. He got as far as Flint Castle, which was only three miles from Chester; but he found the inhabitants had flinty hearts, and he met with no sympathy. Henry of Bolingbroke came to meet him, when Richard, touching his hat, bid welcome to his "fair cousin of Lancaster." "My lord," replied Henry somewhat sarcastically, "I'm a little before my time, but really your people complain so bitterly of your not having the knack to rule them, that I've come to help you." Richard gave a mental "umph," but added, "Well, well, be it as you will;" for his hunger had taken away all his appetite for power. After a repast, unto which the king did much more ample justice than he had ever done to his subjects, a hackney was sent for, and Richard rode a prisoner to Chester. No one pitied him as he passed, though the spectacle was
Richard II. conducted a prisoner to Chester.
a truly wretched one. The horse was a miserable hack, while Richard himself was hoarse with a hacking cough, caught in the various exposures to wind and weather he had undergone in his vicissitudes. The dismal cortege having put up at Litchfield, for the king and his horse to have a feed, of which both were greatly in want, Richard made a desperate attempt, while the waiter was not in the room? to escape out of a window. He had run a little way from his guards, but a cry of "Stop thief" caused him to be instantly pursued, and when taken he was well shaken, for the trouble he had occasioned. He was treated with increased severity, and on arriving in London was conveyed amid the hootings of the mob to the Tower.
Parliament had been appointed to meet on the 29th of September, 1399, and on that day Richard received in his prison a deputation, to whom he handed over the crown and the other insignia of royalty. Not satisfied with the delivery of the sceptre as a proof of the king's abdication, a wish was expressed to have it in writing, and he signed, as well as resigned, without a murmur. His enemies had, in fact, determined on his downfall, and they seemed anxious to be prepared at all points for dragging the throne from under him. In order to make assurance doubly or trebly sure, an act of accusation against him was brought before Parliament on the following day, when Richard's conduct was complained of in thirty-three, or as some authorities have it, thirty-five [The Pictorial History of England, which is generally very accurate, mentions thirty-three articles. Rapin sets out the substance of thirty-one of the articles, and adds that there were four others.] separate articles.
There is no doubt that Richard had behaved badly enough, but the articles, taking the definite and indefinite together, attributed to him a great deal more than he had really been guilty of. His punishment having taken place before his trial, it was of course necessary, for the sake of making matters square, that the offence should be made to meet the penalty. Had he been tried first and judged afterwards, a different course might have been taken, but as he had already been deposed, it was desirable—if only for the look of the thing—that he should be charged with something which would have warranted the Parliament in passing upon him a sentence of deposition. Upwards of thirty articles were therefore drawn up, for the great fact that in laying it on thick some is almost sure to stick, was evidently well known to our ancestors He was charged with spending the revenues of the crown improperly, and choosing bad ministers, though he might have replied that bad had been the best, and that he and Hobson were, with reference to choice, in about the same predicament. He was accused, also, of making war upon the Duke of Gloucester, as well as on the Earls of Lancaster and Chester, to which he might have responded that they began it, and that it was only in his own defence he had treated them as enemies. It was alleged against him, also, that he had borrowed money and never paid it back again; but surely this has always been a somewhat common offence, and one which the aristocracy should be the last persons in the world to treat with severity. In one article he was charged with not having changed the sheriffs often enough, and, as if to allow him no chance of escape, another article imputed to him that he had changed the sheriffs too frequently. Some of the counts in the indictment were utterly frivolous, and the twenty-third stated that he had taken the crown jewels to Ireland, as if he could not legally have done what he pleased with his own trinket-box.
It must be presumed that Richard allowed judgment to go by default, for all the accusations were declared to be proved against him. If he had been assisted by a special pleader, he might have beaten his accusers hollow on demurrer, for many of the counts in the declaration were, in legal phraseology, utterly incapable of holding water. [Mackintosh, who keeps the facts always very dry, seems inclined to our opinion that the indictment would not have held water.] Notwithstanding the weakness of the articles, they were not attacked by any one in Parliament except the Bishop of Carlisle, who, in a miserable minority of one, formed the entire party of his sovereign. The venerable prelate, in a powerful speech, talked of Richard's tyranny, including his murder of Gloucester, as mere youthful indiscretion; and described his excessive use of the most arbitrary power, as the exuberance of gaiety. The Bishop's freedom of speech was fatal to his freedom of person; for he was instantly ordered into custody by the Duke of Lancaster. No one followed on the same side as the prelate, whose removal to prison had the effect of checking any tendency to debate, and the articles were, of course, agreed to without a division. Sentence of deposition was accordingly passed on the king, who had been already deposed, and the people of England revoked all the oaths and homage they had sworn to their sovereign. Such, indeed, was the determination of his subjects to overturn their king, that his deposition was not unlike the practical joke of drawing the throne literally from
A Practical Joke. Deposition of Richard II.
under him. They knew he had not a leg to stand upon, and they seemed determined that he should not have a seat to sit down upon; for even established forms were overturned in order to precipitate his downfall.
What became of Richard after his having been deposed, is a point upon which historians have differed; but the favourite belief is, that he was cut off with an axe by one of his gaolers at Pomfret Castle, where he was kept in custody. Some are of opinion that he was starved, and died rather from want of a chop than by one having been administered. Mr. Tytler believes that the unfortunate ex-monarch escaped to Scotland, where he resided for twenty years; but the story is doubtful, for even in Scotland it is impossible to live upon nothing, which would have been the income of Richard after his exclusion from the royal dignity.
When we come to weigh this sovereign in the scale, we can scarcely allow him to pass without noticing his deficiency. He seems to have had originally a due amount of sterling metal, but the warmth of adulation melted away much of the precious ore, as a sovereign is frequently diminished in value by sweating. To this deteriorating influence may be added that of the clipping process, to which he was subjected by his enemies, who were bent on curtailing his power. Pie had by nature a noble and generous disposition, which might have made him an excellent monarch. But our business is with what he really was, and not with what he might have been. He was alternately cowardly and tyrannical, in conformity with the general rule—applicable even to boys at school—that it is the most contemptible sneak towards the stronger who is towards the weaker the fiercest bully. Wholesome resistance tames him down into the sneak again, and in pursuance of this ordinary routine, Richard from an overbearing tyrant, became a crouching poltroon, when his enemies got the upper hand of him.
It was during this reign that the authority of the pope was vigorously disputed in England, chiefly at the instigation of John Wickliffe, who denied many of the doctrines of the church of Rome, and protested against its supremacy. Its influence was, moreover, weakened by its being in some sort "a house divided." Avignon had been for some time the papal residence, but the Italian cardinals having persuaded the pontiff to return to Rome, the French cardinals set up a sort of opposition pope, who continued to live at Avignon. Urban did the honours with great urbanity in the Eternal City, while Clement carried on the papal business at the old establishment in France, and Europe became divided between the Clementines and Urbanists.
These two sects of Christians continued to denounce each other to eternal perdition for some years, and their trial of strength seemed to consist chiefly in a competition as to which could execrate the other with the greatest bitterness. This dissension was no doubt favourable to the views of Wickliffe, who, like other great reformers, renounced in his old age the liberal doctrines by which he had obtained his early popularity.
We have alluded in the course of this chapter to a combat which was about to take place between the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk, in pursuance of the practice of Wager of Battle, which was in those days prevalent. It may seem unjust and ridiculous to the present generation, that the strongest arm or stoutest spear should have settled a legal difference, but even in our own times it is frequently the longest purse which determines the issue of a law-suit. The only difference is that litigants formerly knocked about each other's persons instead of making their assaults upon each other's pockets, and the legal phrase, that "so and so is not worth powder and shot," preserves the allegory of a combat, to which an action at law may be compared with the utmost propriety. There has always been something chivalric in entering upon the perilous enterprise of litigation, and we are not surprised that the forensic champions of England should have been originally an order of Knights Templars. The only military title which is still left to the legal corps is that of Sergeant, and the black patch in the centre of their heads is perhaps worn in memory of some wound received by an early member of their order in the days of Wager of Battle. The sword of justice may also be regarded as emblematical of the hard fight that is frequently required on the part of those who seek to have justice done to them by the laws of their country.
Contemporaneously with the Wager of Battle, there was introduced during the
reign of Henry II. a sort of option, by which suitors who were averse to single
combat, might support their rights by the oaths of twelve men of the vicinage.
Thus it was possible for those who were afraid of hard hitting to have recourse
to hard swearing, if they could get twelve neighbours to take the oath that
might have been required. These persons were called the Grand Assize, and formed
the jurors—a word, as everybody knows, derived from the Latin juro, to
swear—but the duty has since been transferred from the jury to the witnesses,
who not unfrequently swear quite as hard as the most unscrupulous of our ancestors.
We have seen that there were very few improvements in the reign of Richard II.;
but we think we may justly say of the sovereign, that though he did no good
to his country, yet, in the well-known words of a contemporary writer, "He
would if he could, but he could'nt."
ON THE MANNERS, CUSTOMS, AND CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.
BEFORE entering on the fourth book of our history, we may perhaps be allowed to pause, for the purpose of taking a retrospective glance at the condition, customs, candlesticks, sports, pastimes, pitchers, mugs, jugs and manners of the people. It is curious to trace the progress of art, from the coarse pipkin of the early Briton to the highly respectable tankard [The tankard has no name distinctly bitten into it.] found in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, which proves the teeth of the monks to have been decidedly liquorish. We must not however plunge prematurely into the pot of a more polished era: but we must go regularly back to the earthenware of our earliest ancestors.
The furniture of the Britons was substantial rather than elegant. A round block of wood formed their easiest chair, which, we need hardly say, was easier to make than to sit upon. The earth served the purpose of a bed, not only for the parsley but for the people; and in winter they made fires on the floor, till the Romans, who brought slavery in one hand, gave the brasier with the other. Thus did even subjugation tend to civilisation, and the very chains of the conqueror contained links for the enlightenment of the conquered.
The diet of the Britons was as poor as their apartments, and consisted chiefly of wild berries, wild boars, and bisons. We have no record of their cookery, and it is doubtful whether they cooked at all, though some antiquarians have endeavoured to find evidence of a stew, a roast or a curry, and have ended after all in making a mere hash of it. In clothes the Britons were by no means strait-laced, though their intercourse with the Gauls was of inexpressible advantage to them, for it introduced the use of Braccae, or trowsers made of fine wool woven in stripes or chequers, [It is probable that we get out our own word braces from the Braccae of our forefathers.]
Of the domestic habits of the early tenants of our isle very little is known, and we regret to say there can be little doubt they might most of them have been indicted for polygamy had they lived under our present system of laws, for a plurality of wives was in those days nothing singular.
Their mode of bringing up children is wrapt in obscurity, but the treatment, if we are to believe a story told by Salinus, [Pictorial History of England, vol I., Book I., Chapter vi., page 129.] was rather less tender than vigorous; for the first morsel of food was put into the infant's mouth on the point of his father's sword, with the hope that the child would turn out as sharp a blade as his parent. The Saxons brought very material improvements to the mode of living in our island, though we cannot compliment them on the comfort of all their upholstery. Their chairs were a good deal like our camp-stools, without the material which forms the seat; for the Anglo-Saxons were satisfied to sit in the angle formed by the junction of the legs of the article alluded to.
The drinking-cups in use at this period began to be very elaborate, and were made of gold or silver, while glass was a luxury unknown, though the venerable Bede, who had a good deal of glass in his family, mentions lamps and vessels of that material. The Anglo-Saxons had beds and bolsters; but from illustrations we have seen in the Cotton MS., we think that if, as they made their beds, so they were obliged to lie, our ancestors could not have slept very pleasantly. Some of the Saxon bedsteads were sexagonal boxes, into which it was impossible to get, without folding one's self up into the form of an S; and another specimen is in the shape of an inverted cocked hat, somewhat smaller than the person by whom it is occupied. Nothing but a sort of human half-moon could have found accommodation in this semilunar cradle, in which to have been "cribbed, cabined, and confined," could not have been very agreeable.
Costume could scarcely be considered to have commenced before the Anglo-Saxon period, for the Britons persevered in a style of undress which was barely respectable. It is therefore most refreshing to find our countrymen at last with stockings to their feet and shirts to their backs, in which improved case they are to be met with in the Anglo-Saxon period. The shoe also stands boldly forward at about the same time, and shows an indication of that polish which was eventually to take a permanent footing. Amid the many irons that civilisation had in the fire at this date, are the curling-irons for ladies' hair, which began to take a favourable turn during the Anglo-Saxon period. The armour worn by the military part of the population was very substantial, consisting chiefly of scales, which gave weight to the soldiery, and often turned the balance in their favour. This species of defence was, however, too expensive for the common men, who generally wore a linen thorax or "dickey," with which they offered a bold front to the enemy.
It would be exceedingly difficult to give an accurate account of Anglo-Saxon life, for there are no materials in existence out of which a statement could be framed; and though some historians do not object to have "their own materials made up," we should be ashamed to have recourse to this species of literary tailoring. We think it better to cut our coat according to our cloth; and we had rather figure in the sparest Spencer of fact, than assume the broadest and amplest cloak, if it were made of a yarn spun from the dark web of ambiguity. What we say, we know, and what we are ignorant of, we know much better than to talk about.
The Anglo-Saxon husbandman was little better than a serf who was paid for his labour by the landowner; but the former furnished the base, without which there would have been no locus standi for the latter's capital. It was customary in those days to encourage the peasantry by prizes, which did not consist of a coat for a faithful servitude of nearly a life, but a grant of a piece of the land to which the labourer had given increased value by his industry. The proprietors of the soil had not yet learned the wisdom of trying how much a brute could be made to eat, and how little a human being could exist upon.
Anglo-Saxon Husbandman.
With reference to the domestic habits of the period, it has been clearly ascertained that people of substance took four meals a day, and as they took meat at every one, their substance can be no matter of astonishment. The Britons had not been in the habit of dressing their food, which is not surprising, for they scarcely dressed themselves; but the Anglo-Saxons were not so fond of the raw material. With them the pleasures of the table were carried to excess, and drinking went to such an extent, that every monk was prohibited from taking any more when his eyes were disturbed, and his tongue began to stammer. The misfortune, however, was, that as all who were present at a banquet, generally began to experience simultaneously a disturbance of the eye and a stammering of the tongue, no one noticed it in his neighbour, and the orgies were often continued until the stammering ended in silence, and the optical derangement finished by the closing of the organs of vision.
The chase was a popular amusement with the Anglo-Saxons, but it does not seem to have been pursued with much spirit, if we are to believe an illustration from the Cotton M.S. [Julius, A. 7.] of the practice of boar-hunting Two men and one dog are seen hunting four boars, who are walking leisurely two and two, while the hound and the hunters are hanging back, as if afraid to follow their prey too closely. In another picture, from the Harleian MS., seven men are seen huddled together on horseback, as if they had all fainted at the sight of a hawk, who flaps his wings insolently in their faces. Nothing indeed can be more pusillanimous than the sports of the Anglo-Saxons as shown in the illustrations of the period. The only wonder is, that the animals hunted did not turn suddenly round and make sport of the sportsmen.
The condition of the great body of the people was that of agricultural labourers, who, it is said, were nearly as valuable to their employers or owners as the cattle, and were taken care of accordingly. In this respect they had an advantage over the cultivators of the soil in our own time, who remain half unfed, while pigs, sheep, and oxen, are made too much of by constant cramming.
The Normans added little to the stock of English furniture, for we have looked through our statistical tables and find nothing that would furnish an extra leaf to our history. It is, however, about this time that we find the first instance of a cradle made to rock, an arrangement founded on the deepest philosophy; for by the rocking movement the infant is prepared for the ups and downs of life he will soon have to bear up against.
The reign of John introduces us to the first salt-cellar on record, though, by the way, the first vinegar cruet is of even earlier date, for it is contemporary with the sour-tempered Eleanor, who is reported to have played a fearful game at bowls with the unfortunate Rosamond.
When Fashion first came to prevail in dress, Taste had not yet arrived, and the effect was truly ridiculous. It does not follow, however, that if Fashion and Taste had existed together, they would have managed to agree; for though there is often a happy union between the two, they very frequently remain at variance for considerable periods. Fashion being the stronger, usually obtains the ascendancy in the first instance; but Taste ultimately prevails over her wayward rival. In nothing so much as in shoes, have the freaks of Fashion been exemplified. She has often taken the feet in hand, and in a double sense subjugated the understanding of her votaries. In the days of Henry I. shoes were worn in a long peak, or curling like a ram's horn, and stuffed with tow, as if the natural toe was not sufficient for all reasonable purposes. The rage for long hair was so excessive that councils [At Limoges, in 1031, by Pope Gregory VII. in 1073, and at Rouen in 1095.] were held on the subject, and the state of the crops was considered with much anxiety The clergy produced scissors at the end of the service to cut the hair of the congregation; and it is said of Serlo d'Abon, the Bishop of Seez, that he, on Easter day 1105, cut every one of the locks off Henry I.'s knowledge-box.
We have hinted at the out-of-door amusements of the people, but those pursued within doors may deserve some passing notice. The juggler, the buffoon, and the tumbler were greatly in request, and we see in these persons the germ of the wizards, the Ramo Samees, the clowns, with their "Here we ares," and the various families of Indian rubber incredibles, Mackintosh marvels, or Kensington untrustables, that have since become in turns the idols of an enlightened British public. That there is nothing new under the sun, nor in the stars— at least those belonging to the drama—is obvious enough to any one who will examine the records of the past, which contain all that are declared to be the novelties of the present. Learned monkeys, highly-trained horses, and—to go a little further back—terrific combats, or sword dances, in which deadly foes go through mortal conflicts in a pas de deux, are all as old as the hills, the dales, the vales, the mountains, and the fountains. Even the reading easel—for those who wish to read easily— which was advertised but yesterday, and patented the other day, was a luxury in use as early as the fourteenth century. Even Polka jackets, imported from Cracow in Poland, were "very much worn," and, for what we know, the Polka itself may have been danced in all its pristine purity. In head-dresses we have seen nothing very elegant, for, during Richard II.'s reign, a yard or two of cloth, cut into no regular pattern, formed a bonnet or hood for a lady, while an arrangement in fur very like a muff, constituted the hat of a gentleman.
Out-of-door sports were much in favour during the fourteenth century, and the priesthood were so much addicted to the pleasures of the chace.
Fox-hunting Bishop of the Period.
that a clergyman was prohibited from keeping a dog for hunting unless he had a benefice of at least ten pounds per annum. The fox-hunting parson is therefore a character as old as the days of Richard II., in whose reign the Bishop of Ely was remarkable for activity in the field, where the right reverend prelate could take a difficult fence with the youngest and best of them. He was particularly active in hunting the wolf, and he often said jestingly, that the interests of his flock prompted him to pursue its most formidable enemy.
We have seen what our ancestors were in their habits, pleasures, and pursuits, none of which differed very materially from those that the people of the present generation are or have been in the habit of following. As the child is father of the man, the infancy of a country is the parent of its maturity. Reproduction is, after all, the nearest approach we can make to novelty, and though in the drama of life "each man in his time plays many parts," there is scarcely one of which he can be called the original representative.