CHAPTER XVIII
1
THE year 1369 marked the beginning of the English decline in power and prestige. First came the visit of the French king’s scullion to declare the resumption of hostilities, at a time when the island kingdom was not prepared to wage successful war. In the same year occurred an event which can be considered as of almost equal consequence. Queen Philippa had been suffering for two years from a dropsy and as a result of the disease had become very heavy of body and so lacking in strength that she could not move from her couch. On August 14 the good queen knew that her time was at hand and sent for her royal husband, begging him to come to her at Windsor Castle. When the king arrived, she extended to him an arm from underneath the covers, having still too much pride to want him to observe how gross she had become, and placed her hand in his. The only other member of the family present was their youngest son, Thomas of Woodstock, in many ways the least admirable of them all, being full of pride and truculence, and his good looks (for of course all Plantagenets were handsome) differing from the rest in being darkly smoldering.
Philippa must have been unhappy that her other sons could not be with her; her beloved first-born who was, she knew to her sorrow, very likely to follow her soon into the shades; her amiable, huge-framed Lionel for whom she had felt a protective love and who had died abroad three years earlier after his brilliant marriage to the daughter of Bernabò Visconti; the suave and clever John of Gaunt.
“My husband,” whispered the queen, “we have enjoyed our long union in happiness, peace, and prosperity.”
Edward, whose affection had never faltered, even though he had not been blind to the charms of others, nodded in silent grief.
“I entreat,” she went on, “before I depart and we are forever separated in this world, that you will grant me three requests.”
Edward, his eyes brimming with tears, responded: “Dear lady, name them. They shall be granted.”
The requests seemed of small moment: the payment of her lawful debts, the fulfillment of the legacies in her will, and her wish that he be buried beside her in the cloisters of Westminster when his time came.
“All this shall be done,” declared Edward.
Very soon after this she made the sign of the cross and died. With her passing a serious change came about in the king. His deterioration in body, in mind, in spirit was very marked; and these changes were contributing factors to the final collapse of what he had striven so hard to achieve. There had been signs of it before, a loss of energy, an increasing moodiness, a tendency to debauchery. His tall and proudly straight back developed a stoop, his nose seemed to grow longer and thinner, and his freshness of color gave way to a tallowy gray, his eyes lacked their onetime fire. He still strutted a little and he dressed as usual in the expensive black velvet cloaks and tunics he had always affected, although a carelessness in the matter of food stains could not be overlooked. Even the inevitable cock’s feather in his velvet hat seemed to have lost its jauntiness.
He no longer came into the offices at Westminster like a blustering north wind, full of plans, bursting with confidence and pride, keen to be about the affairs of the nation. Instead he was likely to sit in long ruminative silences at his place beside the long marble table, while documents piled up around him and his ministers found it increasingly difficult to get decisions from him. His arrogance, his self-confidence, his ostentation showed only in flashes. He had ceased to be the conquering king and had become, to his subjects as well as to those close about him, old Edward of Windsor, who drank too much and who allowed a haughty, round-hipped hussy named Alice Perrers to lead him about publicly by the nose.
Alice Perrers had been one of the ladies of Queen Philippa’s household, and the king had made little effort to conceal his interest in her while his wife was still alive. He had given her a valuable manor house the year before and soon after the demise of Philippa he granted her several other pieces of property. It was generally believed that the girl had already presented Edward with two daughters and that these grants were to provide for them.
The queen must have been fully aware of what was happening, for in her will she left pensions to all the damsels of her bedchamber, naming each (including Philippa the Pycard, who became the wife of Geoffrey Chaucer); with one exception, Alice Perrers. Edward proceeded to compensate his mistress for this omission, issuing an order in the following terms: “Know all, that we give and concede to our beloved Alicia Perrers, late damsel of the chamber to our dearest consort Philippa deceased, and to her heirs and executors, all the jewels, goods and chattels that the said queen left in the hands of Euphemia, who was wife to Walter de Heselaston knight; and the said Euphemia is to deliver them to the said Alicia, on receipt of this our order.”
It is clear that there was a story back of this grant. As already stated, the sick and world-weary queen was fully aware that the one damsel for whom she had the least liking, the bold and buxom Alice, had won the favor of the king. She did not want any of her own prized possessions falling into the greedy hands of the interloper and undoubtedly made arrangements to prevent it. All her personal possessions were confided into the care of the reliable Euphemia, in the hope that they could be kept safely until such time as they might be distributed to those for whom the queen had intended them.
But courts are hotbeds of gossip and tittle-tattle. It was impossible for such a plan to be made without some word of it getting out. It came to the ears of Alice Perrers, who probably had anticipated some such action. The mistress of a king always has many enemies, but it is also true that there are invariably other members of the court sycophantic enough to hitch themselves to the rising star. The word of what the dying queen had done was whispered into the alert ear of the favorite and she lost no time, once the queen was dead, in going to Edward. There may have been quite a scene between them, but in the end the mistress won. She received the jewels and other possessions, and the story of what had happened went into quick circulation outside the palace.
All England soon learned the shoddy step into which the king had been cajoled by his favorite. Indignation was felt everywhere and the pride of the people in their once magnificent king began to wane.
2
After the death of the queen, Edward tossed shame aside and had Alice Perrers constantly with him. He held a great tournament at Smithfield and selected her in advance as Queen of Beauty. They rode in a colorful procession through the Chepe Ward from the Tower, with the beauteous Alice in the lead and wearing a costume which won her the description of Queen of the Sun: a rich yellow gown, covered with gold and precious jewels, and a flaring headpiece of the same color, all of which accented her lively brown eyes and long dark hair. In her train rode a number of ladies, some of the court, some of much less lofty degree, but all of them more wantonly attired than the favorite because they had donned men’s attire, with parti-colored tunics and tight hose and gold and silver girdles. All of them were very gay and noisy, ogling the knights who rode with them knee to knee. This was at best the fringe of the court, of course, none of the women being of good birth or standing; perhaps it might have been the medieval equivalent of what is now called “the younger set.”
The whole nation was shocked, the clergy indulged in pulpit tirades; but the tournaments went on, and the people turned out in dense crowds to gawk at the brazen hussies. The king seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.
His relationship with Alice Perrers took on a more dangerous aspect when she began to play the part of a medieval Madame Maintenon, sitting beside him at meetings of the council and actually ensconcing herself on the bench at Westminster and advising the judges as to what their verdicts should be. She lacked the finesse of the French dictatress, and her methods of interference became so open at last that a parliament called the Good took a step which had never been dared before. It publicly chided a king’s mistress by name and ordered her expelled from court. How the Henrys and John and Edward I and Edward III himself in his prime would have raged and roared and sharpened the ax and called loudly for the execution of all of them for this invasion of royal privilege! But poor old Edward of Windsor had outlived his fighting days. He took the reprimand like a schoolboy and actually did keep the indignant Alice away until a new parliament, called the Bad, came into existence and restored her to favor.
Not much is known about this lady who flaunted the preference of the aging king more openly than any of the bevy of mistresses of Charles II would ever do. Efforts have been made to prove that she was a woman of common birth, even a domestic drudge. This, however, seems absurd, because no one who had handled a broom or wielded a scrub brush would have been raised to the circle of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting. It is reasonably certain that she was of the family of Perrers in Hertfordshire, the daughter or perhaps the niece of the Sir Richard Perrers who had been sitting in Parliament earlier. Edward, becoming credulous in his old age, assumed that she was unmarried. He refused to believe she had a husband when the fact was brought out publicly, basing his stand on the grant to her of the manor of Oxeye (which involved her in furious altercation with the monks of St. Albans), in which she was described as a spinster. It soon became apparent, however, that she was married to one William de Windsor, who was willing to play the role of wittol.
In spite of this her power over the ruler grew steadily and she began to interfere in both royal and bench decisions. Not content with thus displaying her power over a king who had fallen into his dotage, the ambitious Alice went still farther afield. She entered into some kind of secret alliance with John of Gaunt, who was prepared to take advantage of the disorder which had descended on the kingdom. She undoubtedly had some part in the political chicanery which first kept the king from summoning a new parliament and later led to the calling of the well-packed body known as the Bad Parliament. Things had reached a sorry pass in England by this time; with the king behaving like a senile pantaloon, the Black Prince dying, and John of Gaunt, who had an instinct for mischief-making but lacked the courage to come out into the open, hovering about and pulling strings. It was a situation which gave boundless opportunities to a woman like Alice Perrers, and she seems to have taken full advantage of it.
So much for the fair Alice up to this point in the sorry tale of the last years of Edward. It has been assumed that she was fair, although the chronicles of the day are not specific about her appearance. One even goes to the length of calling her plain and asserting that she succeeded by “blandishment of her tongue.” She undoubtedly had a tongue skilled in the tattle of the court, but that would hardly have been enough. It might help to hold the aging philanderer, but she would have needed a pair of sparkling eyes and a trimness of figure to win him in the first place. The point is not important; whatever her weapons, she had caught him, and she seemed capable of holding him in spite of everything.
3
Merlin had predicted that one day an eagle would fly out of Brittany to rescue France, and the truth of this was eagerly accepted when Bertrand du Guesclin came into prominence in the middle years of the long war. He had been born in a quiet valley called Glay Hakim, the ugly-duckling son of a beautiful mother. He had a squat figure and a face somewhat on the order of a gargoyle, but he had enormous strength in his misshapen body, and inside him there burned a greatness of spirit such as nature creates only once in many centuries. His merits as a leader were so manifest after the Castilian campaign that the new King of France, Charles V, had the great good sense to appoint him constable of France instead of selecting one of the titled nonentities of his court. Du Guesclin himself protested that a poor knight-bachelor without fortune was not fit to lead the lords of France. The king, who had suffered enough from the incompetence of the lords of France, insisted.
The appearance of Bertrand du Guesclin as leader of the French changed the whole course of the Hundred Years’ War.
There was a bad moment at the very start, however, when the new constable found that the army he was to command consisted at that precise moment of five hundred men-at-arms. Now he had been fighting the English long enough to know that to win battles from them he would need trained archers using bows as powerful as the dread longbow; this, above all else.
“Sire!” he cried. “These are but a breakfast! What am I to do with them?”
“You understand war,” declared Charles. “But I understand peace. I will not risk a battle.”
This was the policy that the new king, remembering Crécy, Poictiers, Auray, and Navarrete, had decided upon. He would not throw great armies against the English on open fields. Nobles and knights he had by the thousand, but they had proven their inability to win battles. And where in France were there archers to equal the green-jerkined bowmen of England? No, the new plan was to wear the invaders out from behind castle walls and by forcing them into continuous marching and counter-marching.
With the Black Prince close to death’s door, the old king had to leave the command of his armies to John of Gaunt, who had some military capacity but who most certainly lacked the genius of his father and his older brother. Encountering a defense in keeping with the new French plan of campaign, the English armies which were sent across the Channel had to wander about in pursuit of forces which seemed to dissolve like marsh mists. Whenever the English paused to attack a castle, they found the story a different one. The French fought furiously behind their tall stone walls, and it was seldom that anything could be accomplished by siege operations. The English caught glimpses on the horizon of Paris and Rheims and Orleans, but there was little satisfaction in that. With a much larger army than any that the king himself or the Black Prince had ever led, John of Gaunt marched from Brittany to Gascony and saw nothing of Bertrand du Guesclin during the whole of that laborious progress through the heart of France. When he arrived at Bordeaux, his great army had been reduced to a shadow by disease and fatigue. He left the remnants there and hurried home.
The French king had been right. Wars could be won by not fighting battles.
Further proof of this came in every day. The French forces, not meeting any opposition, soon overran the province of Ponthieu, capturing Abbeville, St. Valery, and Crotoy in one week. This was especially galling for Edward of England. It meant that the field of Crécy, where he had won so much glory that the whole world had wondered, went back into his rival’s hands. This seemed the most bitter blow that could be dealt him, for Crécy had ceased on that eventful day to be a village in France and had become a great page in English history.
But Charles of France did not have anything like the same respect for the historic battleground. The blame for that shattering defeat rested on the memory of his grandfather, and in the royal family there was no great regard for that bitter and unsuccessful man. Charles had his eyes fixed on a spot farther north, the ancient city of Calais, washed by the waters of the Channel on one side and ringed by marshes on the other, the key to France which that same Philip had allowed the English to take while he sat far back with his futile army. Calais was much more than a piece of hillside where a defeat had been suffered. It was the bridgehead which the English needed so much, an arrow pointed straight at the heart of France.
The French king was so concerned about Calais that he kept relays of mounted couriers riding day and night between Paris and the north, bringing him news of everything that happened, hoping that someday there would be a hint of a development he could use. As he walked up and down in his map-hung room in Paris, he kept his head turned in order that his eyes might always be fixed on that important corner of France which remained captive.
When John of Gaunt sailed for England, Bertrand du Guesclin came out in force and proceeded to storm or to starve into subjection castle after castle and town after town, until he became master of all Saintonge and Angoumois. It was not long before the English possessions had been reduced to Bayonne and Bordeaux and the handful of land around Calais.
By this time the objective of the English had changed. They were no longer thinking in terms of a conquest of France or even the retention of a large part of their holdings. They were realizing that the best they could hope for now was to retain the important points of entry—Calais, Brest, and Bordeaux.
If England could retain the mastery of the seas won at the naval battle of Sluys, it would be relatively easy to maintain bridgeheads on the continent. When the French laid siege to the port of La Rochelle and the Spaniards sent a large fleet to attack that city from the sea, Edward saw that he must act at once. He assembled a great fleet to go to the relief of La Rochelle. It cost nearly a million crowns to secure and equip the ships of war, the largest sum yet expended in carrying on this costly war. Everyone knew the importance of the stake, and the hopes of the nation went with the sails of the great armada when it put to sea under the command of the Earl of Pembroke.
The Spanish fleet proved to be much more powerful than had been expected. As it happened also, the advantage of the wind was with the Castilians when battle was joined. The English commander seemed unable to overcome the handicaps he faced, although he continued to fight grimly for two days. In the end every English ship was either captured or sunk and every Englishman was killed or made prisoner. Pembroke himself was held in rigorous confinement for several years before the French king would consent to having him ransomed.
It should be understood that although the term “navy” has been used in dealing with the war at sea, there was no such thing as a navy in England. The way a fleet was put together was an example of the ruthless methods employed at the time to organize national defense. There were two admirals acting for the king in much the manner that a marshal had charge of land operations. The admirals were always soldiers of some experience and high in the echelons of the aristocracy but with little or no knowledge of the sea. One was in charge of operations in the North Sea and the other had for his share the English Channel. When a fleet was needed, the admirals would be notified to begin, and the first step was to impound every ship that sailed the seas, from the largest cog to the smallest shallop; all of them privately owned, of course. No ship would be allowed to leave any port until the admiral and his aides had selected those which seemed best suited to war service. Not until this had been done and the ships for use had been manned by methods similar to the “press gangs” of later centuries (by which armed parties would come ashore and seize for duty every able-bodied man they could find loose) were the rest of the vessels allowed to proceed with their regular function, the carrying of goods to and from England.
The admirals were in general notoriously unfitted for the work. They would prove so slow that for long periods all the merchant ships of England would be tied up in port, their hulls accumulating barnacles, their sails rotting, while the blue-blooded incompetents boggled about the task of getting the fleet equipped and ready. It happened thus that during these times of incompetent preparation the English flag would be off the seas. Piracy would spring up, with no way of checking it, and the fleets of other nations could ravish the coasts of England.
Edward III had always recognized the extreme importance of commanding the sea but he took no steps to create a national navy. When the need arose, it would be possible to get together a fleet by this time-honored incompetence. When the Good Parliament was sitting at Westminster, the French and Spanish ships were sweeping the seas and burning English ports and fishing villages. The Speaker, bold and outspoken Peter de la Mare, brought the situation up during the attacks made on the disorganization at Westminster. “There used to be more ships in one port,” he exclaimed, “than can be found today in the whole kingdom!”
When the Earl of Pembroke sailed for the relief of La Rochelle with the fleet which had been gathered at such monumental expense, every able-bodied seaman from the ports and creeks of Cornwall was aboard, many of them having been “pressed” into the service. This meant that the coasts of Cornwall were left unprotected and French vessels swarmed across the Channel to burn the towns and steal everything they could get their hands on. None of the Cornishmen came back from that ill-fated venture.
4
At this black juncture in what had been such an exciting and brilliant reign, with the king in his dotage, the Black Prince close to death’s door, and the war which had been won being now as surely lost, a strange story gained circulation in England. It was told in whispers, for it was treasonable stuff and a man might hang on the nearest gallows for the repeating of it.
On her deathbed, so ran the story, Queen Philippa had made a confession to William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester: that Duke John of Gaunt was not her son, nor the son of Edward III. The child she had brought into the world at Ghent had been a girl and through some carelessness had been suffocated. Fearful of the ire of the king, they had persuaded a porter in Ghent, whose wife had given birth to a son at the very same hour, to let them pass his child as the son of the queen. This story the queen swore to with almost her last breath and, moreover, she had laid an injunction on the bishop “that if ever it chanced this son of the Flemish porter affecteth the kingdom, he will make his stock and lineage known to the world lest a false heir should inherit the throne of England.”
It was pure invention, of course. John of Gaunt resembled his father more nearly than any of the others. He was of the identical commanding height and he had the same long profile, the same straight nose, and the same eye, restless, intelligent, and vibrant. This may have been one of the reasons why the king had a preference for Duke John over the others. The Black Prince was courteous but austere and reserved; Lionel was an amiable giant; Edmund of Cambridge was of shallow character; Thomas of Woodstock was quarrelsome, intolerant, and fiercely opinionated. On the other hand, Duke John was a brilliant talker, a fine raconteur, an urbane companion. He and his father could talk far into the night over their wine.
The true key to the character of John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster, has never been found. He was in his day, and still is, a mystery. Intensely ambitious, he never involved himself, in spite of many opportunities, in any definite move to seize power. It was not a lack of courage which held him back, for the valor of all the brothers was apparent. Perhaps it was a scrupulous reserve which came to the fore when he found himself facing desperate measures. The people of England sensed in him these inward desires for a larger part in the affairs of England than his position on the family tree warranted, and they based their estimate of him on that score, not allowing him any credit for not putting the thought into action.
He is charged with playing an evil part in the last years of his father’s life. There is a rather strong case against him and yet there are circumstances which make it hard to accept the verdict of history which depicts him as a rather low kind of criminal, a combination of pander and thief.
A small and ignoble coterie in the offices at Westminster had seized the reins which had fallen from the fumbling hands of the prematurely old king. Some were members of the Royal Council, two belonging to the second order of nobility, the third a wealthy merchant of London. Around this group had gathered a motley crew of hangers-on—thieves, smugglers, and swindlers; and between the lot of them, they were stripping the royal cupboard bare.
The chief villain seems to have been the London merchant, Richard Lyons by name, wealthy, unscrupulous, and able. He provided the funds. The other leader was William, fourth Baron Latimer.
The opportunities for corruption were unusually favorable, owing to the absence of a watchful eye from the throne. All goods exported to the continent were routed through Calais, where the government tax was collected. The members of the “ring” began to sell the right to unscrupulous merchants to export through other ports where the tax would not be collected. Richard Lyons was appointed farmer of the customs at Calais and took advantage of the chance to assess a higher duty than the government had set and to pocket the difference.
The most glaring activity of the inner circle was in connection with the debts of the king. For thirty years Edward III had been spreading his “paper” about, on the continent as well as in England, in the form of promises to pay for money advanced him on loan. Few of these notes had ever been redeemed, and the unfortunate holders, denied the right of suing the king, had long since despaired of getting their money back. Lyons and his aristocratic crew now went to the king’s debtors and bought the notes at a staggering discount, paying no more than ten, or even five, per cent of the amount due. They then took the redeemed notes to the Exchequer and had them paid for at face value, using their control of the Royal Council to compel payment by the crown officers. The profits in this highly shady business were nothing short of enormous and, as the loss was being sustained by the government, the guilt of the participants was of the blackest variety.
Finally they were guilty of “cornering” the market in commodities for public use. When certain goods were imported from the continent, these honorable gentlemen would buy up all available supplies and charge the public at a much-enhanced figure, claiming that the reason was a shortage in supply. Sometimes, for better measure, they would devise means of bringing the goods in free of duty in the first place, before proceeding to “squeeze” the poor public.
It was claimed that Duke John was the “boss” of this circle of unscrupulous rascals and that it was because of his power over the king that they were able to operate safely. His guilt was accepted pretty generally at the time, and he became so unpopular throughout the country, and particularly in London, that people clamored for his head. Through the ages historians have been inclined to believe in his guilt without much question, although it has been impossible to produce any form of positive evidence to prove his participation in the thievery.
It is hard to believe that a man of his intelligence and ambition would have been so shortsighted as to involve himself in this plundering of the public funds. There was something so mean and repulsive in the operations of the graft-ridden council that one of the duke’s background and training would have turned from it with disgust. Because of his first marriage to the Lancaster heiress he was the wealthiest man in England, holding more land and more titles than any of the other princes and peers. Would he stoop to such low practices as the shaving of his father’s notes and the juggling of customs duties to increase his fortunes? For him to take the lead in the knavery of graft-ridden Westminster would be proof of bad judgment amounting almost to idiocy.
There are still surer grounds for refusing to believe that John of Gaunt was as venal and stupid as he has been made out. His great ambition was to become a king; of England first or, failing that, of Castile. This is not based on surmise. When the Parliament was summoned in 1376, which was to become known as the Good Parliament, he was very active in a move to introduce the Salic Law into English acceptance. His reason was this: the first son of the Black Prince, the little Edward who had occupied such a warm place in the heart of that great warrior, had died before the health of the prince compelled him to return to England, and this meant that his second son, Richard, was now heir to the throne. Young princes had often been passed over or put out of the way. But if anything happened to little Richard, the next in line for the crown would be Philippa, the daughter of Prince Lionel, the second son, who had died in Italy. Philippa had married Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, and her claim to the throne could not be brushed aside in favor of John of Gaunt, save by the application of the Salic Law. Duke John was so anxious to clear this obstacle from his path that he conducted a busy campaign of buttonholing (buttons did exist in those days but not in large quantities) among the members of Parliament, but without winning many adherents. The point arises now: If circumstances removed the obstacles from his path, would John, who was openly a candidate for the throne, allow his reputation to become besmirched by participation in the looting of the government funds and in the lowest forms of fraud and thievery? Would he throw away his chance for the insignificant fruits of dirty politics?
John of Gaunt was a man of extreme elegance and sophistication as well as the possessor of a quick intelligence. He could not conceivably have been guilty of such shortsightedness. His course later, which is generally advanced as proof of his complicity, will be shown to have been dictated solely by his deep desire to feel the crown of England on his brow.
It should be explained at this point that Duke John’s marriage with Constance of Castile was not proving a happy one. He had fallen in love with a beautiful woman, Catherine, the daughter of a knight of Hainaut, Payne Roelt, and the widow of Hugh Swynford. The fair Catherine, whose sister was the wife of Geoffrey Chaucer, had been given charge of the duke’s children after the death of his first wife, and she had fallen in love with her handsome and fascinating employer. She had become his mistress very soon thereafter but, being of fine character and a gentle susceptibility, she had insisted on a careful screening of her compliance. Now, with his second marriage proving a failure, John allowed his infatuation for the beautiful widow to show.
The populace, always willing to believe the worst of him, took a hostile view of the affair. Bishop Brunton of Rochester, a man of passionate convictions as well as eloquence, attacked the duke from the pulpit, calling him “the adulterer and pursuer of luxury.” The duke’s love for Catherine, which later led to his marriage with her and the legitimatizing of their children, was linked in the public mind with the shoddy affair of the old king with Alice Perrers. It was charged that the duke stood by his father in the matter of the brazen Alice in order to keep the king from interfering in his own tangled affairs.
5
The Exchequer was empty. There was nothing new about this, because the extravagances of the king and his family had kept the government on the verge of bankruptcy ever since Edward had come to the throne. At this particular moment, however, the emptiness of the national “till” was accentuated by the activities of Messires Latimer, Lyons, et al. It was decided, reluctantly, to summon Parliament and ask for a vote of supplies.
The Parliament which came to Westminster in the late spring of 1376 was made up, fortunately, of men with a serious regard for the public weal and a stoutness of courage to stand out for reform in high places. The members were acquainted with the corruption in the Royal Council and they were determined to do a thorough piece of house cleaning before agreeing to vote supplies.
At no other time in the reign of Edward had there been such a tense atmosphere in advance of a session of the House. The country was in a bad way, the royal family had broken into two sections, the king was soon to die, and the succession had become almost a fighting issue. The Black Prince had watched things from a sickbed in his castle at Berkhampstead with so much apprehension that he now forced himself to rise and be driven to London. He realized that he would have to fight for the succession of his son and that in doing so he would find himself in opposition to the king.
The division of the two houses had not been accomplished then, although the knights from the shires and the citizens from the towns had fallen automatically into one body, while the barons and bishops formed an upper house. The lower house elected a speaker whose duties were not merely to preside and pass on points of procedure. He was the leader, the voice of the commons. It happened that in this crisis there was a bold and convincing voice ready to hand, Peter de la Mare, one of the two knights sent up to represent Hereford. He had been filling the post of seneschal in the household of the Earl of March, which placed him among the opponents of John of Gaunt.
The history of the Commons is a record of great men; fearless, honest, able leaders who risked their lives and sometimes forfeited them to protect the rights of the people. No bolder figure ever arose in a moment of stress than Peter de la Mare.
After the usual request from Chancellor Knyvet for a grant of taxes, the Commons retired to the chapter house of the abbey, taking with them a number of the strong men among the magnates to aid in their deliberations. The decision was arrived at that no taxes would be granted until there had been a systematic house cleaning at Westminster. Mare, elected Speaker, had the task of announcing in full Parliament what had been decided. He spoke with so much authority that the houses drew together as a unit behind him. The demand was made that the men guilty of the Westminster frauds should be impeached.
Richard Lyons, the wealthy London merchant, who was a poor specimen indeed to have arisen in that company of forceful men, appeared next day and proved himself a weak witness, conceding so much that the case of what was called the King’s Party fell to pieces. He even acknowledged holding back for himself the receipts paid in at Calais, on the ground that the king had been agreeable. It was whispered about through the house that, in the hope of providing a cushion for himself, Lyons had sent a large sum of money to the king (which Edward did not refuse, saying it was his money anyway) and that a barrel filled with gold was sent across the Thames to the Black Prince, who had taken up his quarters in the royal palace of Kennington. The prince rejected the bribe with indignation. His note to the sender of the gold read in part: “sending back all that the said Richard had presented him with, and bidding him to reap the fruits of his urges, and drink as he had brewed.” This did Lyons no manner of good. He was dealt with summarily, being removed from the council, fined heavily, and committed to prison “at the king’s pleasure.”
Before Latimer appeared in his own behalf, he had Lord Neville speak to the house. This proved a highly injudicious move. Neville spoke in a bombastic mood which succeeded in raising the hackles of the members. “It was intolerable,” he declared, “that a peer of the realm should be attacked by such as they.” After that it was not to be expected that Latimer would be treated with soft gloves. His share in the peculations and in the swindles arising out of the king’s debts was established; and he was deprived of all his offices and perquisites, including his place in the Royal Council. Sent at first to prison, he was later released on bail.
With the two major figures thus disposed of, the house handled the lesser defendants with equal severity. Lord Neville was removed from the council. Sir Richard Stury was dismissed from office and three prominent London merchants who had been allowed to dip their fingers in the rich pie—Elys, Peachy, and Bury—were forced to relinquish their profits.
After the lords and gentlemen of the council had been disposed of, the house turned to Alice Perrers. She was called before the Lords and was dismissed from her post at court. If she should voluntarily emerge from the seclusion to which she had been condemned, her lands were to be confiscated and a sentence of banishment pronounced against her.
John of Gaunt took little part in the proceedings. He had made no move to defend the members of the “ring,” who were supposed to be under his orders. On the morning before Lyons was brought in for questioning, the duke appeared in the house and expressed his desire to have an end made to the abuses at Westminster. He seemed appalled at the nature of the charges brought against the members of the council, which reflected directly on himself. If he had intended to fight the impeachments, he quietly drew in his horns. He had always been a temporizer. Whatever fighting he would do would come later; and in the meantime he openly broached the matter of introducing the Salic Law to govern the succession. He found the house adamant in its opposition on this point. Nothing would be done to lend aid to any ambitions he might be nursing for the throne.
6
The Black Prince had found his old stone house on Fish Street too dark and damp and had moved to the other shore, to Kennington. Here the grounds were open and there were no close walls to keep the sun from the windows. For several weeks he lay there in great agony of body and an equal anguish of the spirit. He knew that everything was going wrong in England. The war was being lost and the administration reeked of incompetence and corruption. It would be a poor heritage that would pass into the hands of his little son, provided the boy were permitted to ascend the throne. There was no certainty that his rights would be observed.
William of Wykeham, who had been discharged from all his posts by the King’s Party and forced to relinquish every piece of property he possessed, became the chief adviser of the prince. The passing of the years had brought wisdom and a mellowness of vision to the bishop-builder and, if the prince had been able to rise again from his couch, they would have been a strong team to oppose the connivings of the duke.
But for the prince to take any active part in the warring parties was now impossible. The disease had fastened on him with such violence that he existed in torment. The vital force ebbed, day by day. Finally, knowing that he had few hours left, the victor of Poictiers had the doors thrown open so that all who cared could pass through and see him for the last time. His servants were allowed to come first and he bade them farewell separately. At the end he asked to see his father and brother. They arrived together, knowing what the great prince would have to say to them.
The king’s time was rapidly running out, but he was still capable physically of walking and riding. His deterioration had been more of the spirit than the body. His face was crisscrossed with the tiny lines of age, his hands trembled, and his voice, when he spoke, was high and inclined to become shrill; but it was in what he said that the change in him was most to be observed. His once keen mind no longer functioned.
The duke was in a wary mood at first when he entered the room, but the condition of the older brother he had once loved and admired had its effect on him. His face softened as he listened to the halting speech of the dying man.
The Black Prince had his wife and son summoned to the room. Richard was an extremely handsome boy of nine years, a Plantagenet to his fingertips; golden-haired, blue-eyed, as straight as the small sword he carried on his thigh. Although slender, he was beautifully proportioned and there was grace in all his movements. He looked about him mutely, showing the dread that the young have of death.
The Princess Joan, no longer called the Fair Maid but a handsome matron nonetheless, was very much on her guard. She kept her eyes on Lancaster, knowing his ambitions and fearing him for them.
“I recommend to you my wife and son,” said the prince in a weak voice. “I love them greatly. Give them your aid.”
The Book was produced, and neither the senile king nor the vigorous younger brother showed any hesitation in swearing upon it to maintain the rights of the young prince. It was an affecting scene and brought much relief of spirit to the dying Edward.
Lancaster may have had inner reservations. His course made it clear that, at any rate, they returned to him later. In justice to him it must be said that, when the time came, he remembered his oath. He made no positive move to deprive the boy of his inheritance.
After the king and Duke John had left, the members of the nobility came and swore, each one in turn, to support the boy in his rights. When the last of them laid down the Book, the Black Prince gave them “a hundred thanks.”
Prince Edward lived for one more day. “My doors must be shut to none, not to the least boy,” he had ordered; and so he lay on his couch while a seemingly endless line of people filed through the room and saw him in his last moments. The agony of death was upon him, but he repressed all signs of suffering. Only when Sir Richard Stury passed him in the line did he express any feeling. Stury was one of the knaves who had profited in the Westminster corruption; he had already been before the house and had been declared guilty and forced to disgorge. The prince had nothing but contempt for him. It was perhaps in the man’s mind to make his peace, but the sight of him brought back a flare of anger in the dying man.
“Ha, Richard!” he said, his voice showing the reediness of near dissolution. “Come and look on what you have long desired to see.”
The knight tried to protest his loyalty, but the prince demanded his silence. “Leave me!” he managed to say. “Leave me, and let me see your face no more.”
It was apparent almost immediately thereafter that this incident had robbed the weak body of its last store of life. The prince sank back on his couch and closed his eyes. The Bishop of Bangor approached the couch and adjured him to ask forgiveness for all his own sins and to cleanse his mind of any feeling against those who had offended him.
“I will,” said the prince; but his tone lacked what the worthy bishop desired to hear.
The churchman moved about the room, sprinkling it with holy water, in the fear that some hint of evil spirit remained in the heart of the prince. In a few moments the eyes opened again and there was no trace in them of any hostile feeling.
“I give thanks, O God, for all Thy benefits,” he managed to say. “I humbly beseech Thy mercy for all my sins and for those who have sinned against me.”
It was on Trinity Sunday, June 8, 1376, that the great prince closed his eyes for the last time.
All England went into a deep mourning that was not only one of form but of the spirit. The dead man had become to them more a symbol of the greatness of the nation than his father, whose faults had always been understood and whose unfortunate last years were robbing him of the respect of the people. The prince had had his faults also, rising from racial traits, but there had never been anything small or selfish about him. It was always clear where he stood. Although he often took his stand against the wishes of the people, it had been on points of principle. While the old king doddered along on his pitiable approach to the grave and while Duke John, filled with undivulged desires and ambitions, made himself feared and disliked, the first-born of the family had died as bravely as he had lived, his spirit never faltering.
7
The course followed by John of Gaunt after the death of his brother made many things clear. He may have been sincere in the abandonment of any idea of brushing young Richard aside, but certainly he was going to make sure that no other obstacle remained in his path. There were possible ways in which this could be done.
First, there was the support of the king. Despite the pitiful condition into which Edward III had fallen, his word might still count if he came out definitely and asserted his desire to be succeeded by his son John. If this happened, he, John of Gaunt, would be absolved from his promise to the father of Richard. In any event, however, it would make him second in the line of succession. The daughter of Lionel and her place-seeking husband, the Earl of March, for whom Lancaster had nothing but hatred and contempt, would be out of the running. Accordingly Duke John did everything he could to strengthen his position with the king; and by doing so made clear certain things about his policy which had been mystifying before, particularly his attitude toward Alice Perrers.
The duke had no illusions about the feeling the people had for him. He knew they disliked him intensely. Why, he could not tell. It had never seemed to matter before; let the stinking rabble clamor against him! But at the same time he was realistic enough to know that popular support might be sufficient to win for him if the old king could not be persuaded to name him, or if the royal wish did not prove sufficient. How could the support of the people be won?
There were two courses open. He could come out strongly against the great nobles and landholders, whose power was becoming more and more obnoxious to the downtrodden people on the land. By the influence he now exercised over the old king he could take steps to break the feudal hold of the barons. The people who had felt no liking for him in the past would turn to him if he obtained for them some relief from the shackles which had been forced on them since the shortage developed in labor after the Black Death.
The second course was to stand out against the exactions of Rome and even to attack the strength of the English bishops. It was with no sense of irreverence that the people objected to the way the best land was falling more and more into the hands of the Church. There was in the Church itself a tendency to think along national lines and to fight against the continuous drain of church revenues to the treasury of Rome. Lollardism, it was called; and there were many Lollard priests preaching to the people against the old order. Among them, and already acknowledged as the leader of the movement for church reform, was a little man at Oxford whose frame was frail but whose spirit was stout and who was deeply learned and eloquent. His name was John Wycliffe.
What if he, John of Gaunt, made himself the advocate and protector of John Wycliffe? Could the acclaim of the populace be won in this way?
The Good Parliament accomplished two forward steps before it was dissolved on July 9. It demanded that the boy Richard be brought to the house and acknowledged as heir to the throne, and it appointed a council of leading men of the kingdom, all antagonistic to John of Gaunt, who were to act with the king on matters of policy. Among the new councilors were the Earl of March, Courtenay, Bishop of London, and William of Wykeham.
As soon as the members had returned home, John of Gaunt began to work openly on his two objectives. He saw the king constantly and made sure that the new councilors were barred from admission to him. Almost overnight he succeeded in undoing everything the Good Parliament had accomplished. Sir Peter de la Mare was thrown into prison at Nottingham Castle and kept there without trial. The council appointed by Parliament was summarily dismissed. Latimer was recalled as a member. The late Parliament was declared to have been unconstitutional and all its acts were removed from the statute books. Finally, Alice Perrers was restored to the favor of the king.
To a man as fastidious as Duke John, the old king’s relationship with this brazen woman must have been obnoxious. That he recalled her was evidence of his willingness to go to any lengths to hold the full favor of the king. He still hoped, perhaps, that the senile monarch would select him openly as successor to the throne. As things fell out, there would not be enough time to pave the way for any move as drastic as that.
A new Parliament was summoned the following year, and the duke saw that it was thoroughly hand-picked. Few of the members of the Good Parliament were returned. Sir Peter de la Mare was still in his dungeon at Nottingham and the duke’s seneschal, Sir Thomas Hungerford, was selected as Speaker. The only evidence of revolt against the juggernaut methods of the new dictator was among the bishops, who demanded the presence of William of Wykeham. Simon of Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been playing a somewhat subservient part, was pressed into summoning him to attend. Except for this minor repulse, the duke had things all his own way. Because of the weakness it displayed, this ignoble assemblage of legislators would go down in history as the Bad Parliament.
The duke made one tactical blunder. He attempted to put a harness of his own devising on the citizens of London. His proposal was to substitute a captain for the lord mayor and to put the city under the jurisdiction of the marshal of England, a post filled at that time by Lord Percy, the duke’s closest supporter. The men of London, who always played a stormy and independent part in the making of English history, controlled their own courts, and they were not going to let the king’s son slip manacles on their wrists.
The night after this proposed step had been introduced in the house, angry mobs filled the streets of London. Thousands of determined men swarmed down the river road to the Savoy. If the duke had been there, his career would have come to a violent end. But he was not there. He was, in fact, having supper peaceably in the city with a wealthy merchant named John of Ypres. A messenger, breathless from the speed with which he had come, arrived as they were settling down to the first course, which happened to be a dish of oysters. The duke, declared the messenger, must fly for his life. Lancaster got so hastily to his feet that he injured a knee and spilled the oysters over his handsome doublet and his well-fitting hose. He betook himself across the river in a very great hurry and found refuge for the night in the one place where the mob would be least likely to seek him, the palace of Kennington, where the widow of the Black Prince lived with her son, Richard. She received him graciously.
Duke John made many mistakes in his life, but never a more serious one than this effort to take away the established rights of London Town. The citizens never forgave him.