The Three Edwards

by Thomas B. Costain

  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 h
is 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.

  CHAPTER XIX

  John Wycliffe

  1

  ALL through the reign of Edward III, with its periods of high achievement, even of glory, its moments of depression, its excitements, its reckless use of life and wealth in the pursuit of impossible goals, there had been among the people a movement toward something greater than military success and more lasting than conquest.

  This was not based on new teachings. John Wycliffe, the father of Lollardism in England, was not the first to preach and write of the need of reform in the Church. His beliefs stemmed from the inspired work of Francis of Assisi, who had sent his followers out among the people, to earn their bread by manual labor and the begging bowl, and to devote themselves unreservedly to the service of the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden. The rise of the Franciscans and the other mendicant orders—the Dominicans, the Beghards in the Low Countries, the Fratricelli—had been a widespread one. In England the coming of the brown friars had been welcomed and, although the orders had not continued in their first rigid beliefs and observances, the support of the people had not been lost.

  But if John Wycliffe was not the first to favor a Christian church of poverty and service to the great institution of power and wealth, under the leadership of men who were so often able statesmen rather than spiritual teachers, into which the Church had inevitably grown, he was the first to approach the problem from what might be called a practical standpoint. He perceived clearly, and preached openly, that a change of direction could not be expected to come about from within. The strength and wealth of the Church had grown on endowments; the tendency of individuals to leave their property, in part at least, to the Church, in the expectation of forgiveness and absolution from sin. How could the great men who fought their way to the top in this immensely rich and powerful organization be expected to see disendowment as anything but a mad dream of fanatics and troublemakers? Wycliffe said openly that the ever-increasing wealth of the Church could be touched only by lay action; in other words, that the state must step in.