The Last Plantagenets (4 page)

Becoming involved in the dissensions arising out of the teachings of John Wycliffe, the Bad Parliament (a label which was most clearly earned) stirred up a hornet’s nest by summoning Wycliffe to appear for a hearing in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Nothing came of it except a widespread belief that Duke John was supporting the Lollards, a name applied to the followers of that great teacher. If this were so, it meant that he saw some political advantage to be gained. Certainly he was incapable of a deep enough concern in spiritual matters to take any such position.

In the spring it became necessary for a deputation from the city to wait upon the king at Shene. Having heard stories of his physical
disintegration, they were surprised to find him strong enough to sit up straight in his chair and to take part in the discussions not only with clearness of understanding but even a hint of amiability. It was one of the poor old monarch’s good days, apparently, but the urbanity of his bearing did not lead him into the making of any concessions. The members of the deputation left the royal residence in a state of concern. The Edward III they had faced was quite capable, it seemed, of continuing to rule for some time longer, long enough, perhaps, to lend his support to the machinations of the duke.

The enthusiasm which young Richard had aroused among the members of the Good Parliament was now shared by the country at large. Everything about him seemed worthy of praise. He was the son of the once great hero, the Black Prince. He showed signs of attaining the kinglike stature of the Plantagenets, his face had the beauty of his winsome mother, he carried himself well, he spoke with an intelligence rare in one of his years. If anything happened to him, the people of England, like the Cornish boys of a later century (in what proved to be a better cause), would know the reason why.

The unanimity of city and town, of hamlet and thorp, of castle and inn and toft, in favor of the young prince, was due in some degree to the indifference which other members of the royal family induced in the public mind. No one had any desire to see a woman on the throne, save perhaps Edmund Mortimer who was the husband of Princess Philippa and the most hearty and outspoken hater of Duke John. Edmund of Langley, the son born next after John, was an amiable and ruddy fellow who, to do him justice, had no scrap of dangerous ambition in him at all. He liked soldiering and had taken his part in many campaigns in France. He had done rather well, but not nearly well enough to gain any recognition in the face of the spectacular exploits of the great first son. The last son, Thomas of Woodstock, was at this time in his early twenties and was already showing signs of the arrogance, bad temper, and mulish insensitivity which would cause so much trouble later on. Not of the stuff which makes for popularity, this Thomas.

This being the situation, all England sat in anxiety while the old king clung to life, and Duke John conspired, and the boy Richard was kept under careful watch; for no one had forgotten the sad fate of another royal nephew, the unfortunate Arthur of Brittany. So completely had the people forgotten the victor of Crécy, the golden spendthrift King Edward
III, that his death on June 21, 1377, alone and untended, went almost unnoticed in the enthusiasm with which the boy Richard, with Sir Simon Burley carrying the royal sword before him, was received when he came to London unopposed to claim the throne.

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HERE is a faintly remembered legend in England about a king of Mercia, in the days when the country was split into four small kingdoms, who died and left his throne to his saintly eight-year-old son, Kenelm. There happened to be a much older daughter named Quendryth who had other ideas. She wanted to do the ruling herself. Accordingly she conspired with accomplices who obligingly murdered the boy king and buried his body in a pass in the Cotswolds; and she then gave it out that anyone who as much as whispered the name of Kenelm would be put to death. Under these circumstances the incident might soon have been forgotten.

But a milk-white dove circled over Rome and finally deposited a piece of parchment, which it had carried in its bill, on the altar in St. Peter’s. The papal scribes could not read the message because it was written in an alien language. An Englishman in Rome deciphered the contents, however, which told about the murder and explained where the body would be found in the Clent Hills. A search was made, the body was discovered, and something unpleasant happened, we trust, to Quendryth. The ruins of a chapel, which was built to mark the spot, stand to this day.

It was customary to hold coronations in England on Sundays, but as the eve of the feast of Saint Kenelm fell on Thursday, July 16, it was thought appropriate to crown this new boy king on that date. The idea may have originated with his mother, who had taken the arrangements into her own hands. At any rate, it was so planned and carried out in a blaze of extravagance.

Perhaps it was remembered also that on October 28, 1216, a nine-year-old boy had been crowned king in the cathedral at Gloucester. The barons who filled the nave on that occasion must have felt the same
deep-seated unease which permeated the common people in the streets, because the rather handsome prince, who would reign for fifty-six years as Henry III, was son of the incredible John. What kind of a man would he grow up to be and what manner of monarch would he make? The ceremony was on the frugal order, for the Crown jewels had been lost in the Wash and a plain gold circlet was used as a crown. The treasury was empty and the dauphin of France had landed an army and taken possession of London and most of the eastern counties. Even the coronation dinner had to be a plain and hasty one.

A somewhat similar situation existed in 1377. The national finances were verging on bankruptcy and French fleets were ravaging the southern coasts of England. No one seemed to feel, however, that the same reservations felt over the accession of Henry, son of John, need be extended to Richard, son of Edward the Black Prince—except perhaps the closest adherents of the Duke of Lancaster. Had not this boy already given proof of the finest qualities? Let the conduits run with wine and count not the cost of the precious jewels which made the coronation robes as stiff as the lighter forms of armor! The ceremony was carried out, in fact, in an excess of enthusiasm and a wild emptying of pockets, in which the usually cool-headed citizens of London led the way.

Richard left for London, arrayed in a robe of white satin and seated on a handsomely accoutered charger. As has already been stated, Sir Simon Burley stood in front with bared sword. The city had gone to unusual lengths to convert its habitual griminess into a semblance of fairyland. There was a huge floral castle with four towers, each containing a beautiful girl. As the youth rode by, they showered him with what seemed to be small leaves of gold, a bad omen for a king who might so easily develop the extravagant ways of the Plantagenets.

At noon on the next day the ceremony began with what seems to have been the first formal appearance of a king’s champion. One Sir John Dymoke, who could trace his descent back to the barons of Fontenay-de-Marmion, hereditary champions of the Dukes of Normandy, rode on his horse into the abbey and in a loud voice issued a challenge to mortal combat to anyone disputing the rights of the new king. There was a dramatic dashing to the ground of a gauntlet and then the proffer of a drink in a golden cup to the candidate for the crown. The champion became the owner of the cup, the charger he had ridden, and the armor he had worn.

The Bishop of Rochester preached the sermon, exhorting all present to support the young king and leaving the impression that Richard was the choice of God and that the new king would be responsible only to the deity for his actions. It had seemed to most of the spectators that
by this time the young king was getting too weary to pay much attention to this ecclesiastical bolstering of his own father’s beliefs; and yet subsequent events seem to suggest that the sense of it became lodged in his mind.

The archbishop conducted the ceremonies, removing the boy’s upper garments, while a cloth of gold was held around him to hide him from the eyes of the curious. Even the royal shirt had been cut in two pieces and was held together by silver links. He was then anointed with chrism, a consecrated oil mixed with balm. There followed the usual coronation ritual, the taking of oaths, the intoning of prayers and hymns, the placing of the crown on his head and in his hands the scepter, orb, and sword, then the stole, the spurs, and over all the jewel-encrusted pallium. After more prayers and hymns and the offertory, in the course of which Richard laid a heavy purse of gold on the altar, there came the Mass and communion, then more chants.

It was plain to see then that the boy was very weary. His cheeks were white and he was finding it hard to hold up his head. Sir Simon Burley, who had a great affection for his young charge, took it on himself at this point to introduce a distinct innovation into the proceedings. Picking the boy up in his arms, he carried him out to a litter on which he was to be taken back to the palace and over which four wardens of the Cinque Ports held a canopy of blue silk.

One of the boy’s slippers fell off as he was carried out and the mob in the street fought furiously for possession of it.

The day after the coronation a council was chosen to take control during the term of the boy’s minority. The selection of members was a total defeat for Duke John. He was not included nor were either of his brothers, Edmund of Cambridge or Thomas of Woodstock, an act of discrimination which raised hackles in the royal family. The list included two bishops, Courtenay of London and Erghum of Salisbury, two barons, Edmund of March and Richard of Arundel, two baronets, and four knights bachelor. That the Archbishop of Canterbury was left out was not only a slap in the face for the primate, Simon of Sudbury, but a further indication of the ground lost by Lancaster, who counted Sudbury among his adherents.

It was recognized that the king would be under his mother’s care and that she would be considered his guardian. Despite the belief that she leaned to the teachings of John Wycliffe, she had kept her hold on the sympathies of most men, who remembered her as the beautiful and
vivacious Maid of Kent. She was, in truth, growing too stout to be considered beautiful any longer. But she had a shrewd approach to the necessities of the times, except when personal considerations entered in. Her conduct during the period that she acted as head of the royal court did not involve her in any outspoken criticism.

The Parliament which met on October 13 was as anti-Lancastrian as the Good Parliament. Its first act was to choose Peter de la Mare as Speaker. It remodeled the council by the addition of eight members and decreed that the selection of personal attendants for the young king should rest in the Commons. A more vital step was to make impossible the annulment or repeal of measures passed in Parliament except with the consent of the House. This, of course, was aimed at the duke who, after the dissolution of the Good Parliament, had summarily ruled illegal everything which had been enacted.

The House busied itself with the problems of the day and made liberal grants for administration and the defense of the realm, with the stipulation that two treasurers, agreeable to the Commons, should be appointed at once to superintend the collection. The king accepted the condition and named two London merchants, William Walworth and John Philipot, a most direct indication of the extent of the duke’s loss of influence.

On December 22, Alice Perrers was brought before the Lords, and the sentence passed against her in the Good Parliament was confirmed. However, this was not the last heard from this persistent lady of most doubtful virtue. A year later her husband (the old king had maintained a fiction that she was not married), whose name was Sir William de Windsor, brought action to have this order revoked. For reasons hard to understand or swallow, revoked it was. She seems to have been as pertinacious as a gadfly and was in and out of the courts on one pretext or another for the next twenty years.

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HEY have been passed over, tolerated, winked at!”

The writer was Pope Gregory XI, who had left Avignon and sailed back to Rome, where he was beset by troubles. He was addressing himself to Archbishop Simon of Sudbury and to Bishop Courtenay of London, concerning the reception his previous epistles had met. “Yes, you and the other prelates of the church of England, you who ought to be the pillars of the church, defenders of the faith, you have winked at them! You ought to be covered with shame and blushing, you ought to be conscience stricken, for thus passing over these iniquities!”

The unhappy and perplexed Pope, soon to die, had been trying to drive the heads of the church into positive action against John Wycliffe and his teachings. The papal demands had been passed over, it was true, and even this new attack roused no spirit of suppression in the upper hierarchy. The feeling in England was such that the rise of a leader of dissent from the heavy hand of the papacy had been almost inevitable. Wycliffe, a lecturer at Oxford and a man of great eloquence, had been the one to voice openly this discontent. There was a wide, though perhaps silent acceptance of his views in all classes of society and, when he preached in London, the people of that turbulent and realistic town turned out in multitudes to listen.

This was a form of attack which an organization as strongly entrenched as the church of Rome could not tolerate. And so when Wycliffe grew bolder and began to preach on points of creed and dogma, the Pope had moved quickly against him. Wycliffe had laid himself open to charges of heresy. The letters, which had received so little attention, had been papal demands for action against this daring propagandist.