The Last Plantagenet

by Thomas B. Costain

  Certainly the boy heard from his mentor about the order of which his father spoke with such loftiness, chivalry. It was not an order in the sense that it had definite form, with a code written down fair in black and white and with acknowledged leaders. Rather it was a state of mind, a passionate belief which had grown out of crusading faith. All men whose station in life permitted could enter of their own free will into this lofty realm of knightly ideals and high emprise and remain as long as they broke none of the unwritten laws. If the point came up in their many talks as to what part common men played in this world of the spirit, Sir Simon brushed it aside. Chivalry was the creed of the status quo. Knights swore fealty to their liege lords and were ready to render up their lives for fellow knights; but the existence of men who tilled the soil or worked at benches was of no concern whatever.

  The ships carrying the royal entourage dropped anchor at Southampton in mid-January. The Black Prince was to be carried ashore on a litter, and an escort of soldiers stood at attention on the wharf, their noses red and their breath freezing. It was by the side of his knightly companion, therefore, that Richard stood when he had his first glimpse of the land over which he would some day rule, a day which was not far distant. There was a mournful note in the piping of the gulls. The royal banners hung limp, as snow fell straight down from leaden skies. Being so very young, he was tempted, perhaps, to shed a tear for sunny Bordeaux and to look with dread on this inhospitable and lowering land.

  CHAPTER II

  The Struggle over the Succession

  1

  THE Black Death had been followed by black years of failure in England. The once brilliant Edward III was an old man; his sharp mind had dulled, his eyes were rheumy, his long nose was bulbous and purple-veined, his step slow. If he was aware of the thievish tactics of his closest officials, he made no effort to repress them. Lancaster controlled Parliament and seemed to be preparing himself to step into his father’s shoes. The French wars had dwindled to a desperate English effort to maintain the entry ports of Calais, Brest, and Bordeaux and to hold back French invaders along their own coast. Royal extravagance had finally brought the country close to bankruptcy.

  Perhaps it was the need for a firmer hand that roused the Black Prince to efforts of which he had previously seemed incapable. He accompanied the king in August of the year after his return on an expedition against the French. This proved an abortive move and the armies did not make a landing. It is chiefly of interest because young Prince Richard was appointed regent of the realm in the absence of his father and grandfather. He was not quite six years old.

  In 1374 Prince Edward found it necessary to preside at a meeting of the bishops and barons at Westminster to discuss a demand received from Pope Gregory XI for a large subsidy. Gregory had one distinction, that he had left Avignon and returned to Rome, thus ending what had been called the Babylonish Captivity. However, he had found such disorder in Italy that he sought aid to the extent of 800,000 florins in combating the aggressions of Florence. As England was held, more or less theoretically, to be still under papal control by reason of King John’s surrender nearly two centuries before, it was made clear in the Pope’s letter that the country was expected to pay a large share of this amount.

  This had been a fighting issue through all the reigns which followed that of John, but the bishops, meeting first on May 20, 1374, to consider the demand, decided that the Pope was within his rights. This supine attitude may have been due in part to the illness of Archbishop Whittlesey who ordinarily would have directed the decision into safer lines. His wasted form almost swallowed in the elaborate canonicals of his office, the archbishop hesitated so long to declare himself that the temper of the king’s son flared into an expostulation.

  “My lord bishop,” he exclaimed, “you are an ass!”

  Whether this had any effect on the decision, the bishops finally reversed themselves and the Pope had to go without his subsidy.

  Perhaps the prince regretted his irascibility when it was learned that the archbishop, who once had been tall, impressive, and quite eloquent, had retired to his favorite manor of Otford in the chalk hills near Canterbury in a weakened condition. The primate proved to be mortally ill. After making his will on June 5, leaving most of his estate to his poor relatives, he breathed his last the following day.

  Prince Edward, his manners and wits sharpened by the continuous pains and aggravations of his disease, must have felt as unfavorably disposed to the successor selected for the see of Canterbury, but for a different reason. Simon of Sudbury, Bishop of London, was chosen, with the casual approval of the king and the full sanction of the Pope. Sudbury was most unpopular in London for a number of reasons. He had spent many years in the papal service at Avignon and was regarded as French in his views and sympathies; and the people had a fanatical hatred of the French. He was skilled in law, and all the people hated lawyers. He was blunt of speech and did not care whose toes he trampled upon. Finally, he stood shoulder to shoulder with John of Gaunt, and nothing could induce the Londoners to forgive him for that.

  A story may be told of his bluntness of speech. In the year preceding the return of the Black Prince occurred the fourth jubilee of St. Thomas the Martyr, and the roads to Canterbury were thronged with pilgrims. It happened that the outspoken Sudbury, riding with his train, encountered a long procession of the seekers after grace, who set up a clamor for his blessing. Now it happened that the bishop did not believe entirely in the honesty of this fervor which induced so many people to drop everything and plod their way to Canterbury with their penitential staffs. He proceeded to tell them of his doubts.

  Most of them, he declared, were going to the shrine of the Martyr because they expected to receive absolution of their sins. He was sure also, and said so in no uncertain terms, that they would backslide and take up again their sinful ways as soon as they returned to their homes. “How much better would it have been,” he declared, “had you remained at home and won the indulgence ye crave by renouncing your sins and living decent lives!”

  The pilgrims, needless to state, were deeply offended. A soldier in the party, one Thomas of Andover, stepped out of the line and shook his fist at the blunt prelate.

  “Why, Lord Bishop,” he demanded to know, “do you dare speak thus against St. Thomas? At peril of my life, I declare thou shalt end thy days in violence and ignominy!”

  Thomas of Andover might claim on the strength of this the right to be considered a prophet, for Simon of Sudbury was destined to die at the hands of common men who remembered all the reasons they had for disliking him, not excluding this instance of his unorthodox thinking.

  2

  At no stage in his career did Edward the Black Prince show to such advantage as in the few years allowed him to live after his return to England. He had won such popularity by leading English armies in the French wars that nothing he did, not even his brutal disregard for the lives of common people, was allowed to detract from the love his countrymen had for him. As administrator of the Aquitanian possessions he had been indifferent and slipshod and always wildly extravagant; but all this was easily forgiven him and soon forgotten. But it was a different man who came back to an England in the slough of defeat and want, to find his once great father verging on senility and the supporters of his brother Lancaster controlling Parliament and the administrative offices.

  His decisions from that moment to the day of his death were unerringly right. He strove from his sickbed to direct affairs into the right channels. His judgment of men was as sound as his insight into issues. The Black Prince in eclipse was greater than the victorious leader charging down the vine-clad slopes at Poictiers.

  The physicians could not put a name to the disease which had gripped him. From the length of time it took him to die (he lived six years after his return) and the violence of the pains from which he suffered, it seems practically certain that it was cancer. Medical practitioners had little knowledge of that disease, calling it canker, and w
ere quite helpless in fighting it. The prince, subjected to all manner of absurd dosages and the undignified methods which ignorance conceived, grew slowly but steadily worse. Through it all his spirit remained high, and his intelligence was sharpened, perhaps, by withdrawal from too close contact with the course of events to a point where he saw all things in the clear white light of understanding. He appreciated to the full the possibility that a boy of Richard’s tender years might be shoved aside in the matter of the succession.

  On the day before his death he took the only step remaining to him. He asked his father and his brother Lancaster to come to him at Kennington. They arrived together and he had Richard and the princess Joan summoned to the room.

  “I recommend to you my wife and son,” he said. “I love them greatly. Give them your aid.”

  When a Bible was produced, the doddering king and the ambitious Lancaster swore upon it to maintain the rights of the boy.

  After Edward III had bade his son a final farewell and had left the room, certain members of the nobility were admitted. They all swore to support Richard in his rights. At the finish, the dying man indulged in what perhaps was his last smile. He looked about him and said to the assembled barons, “I give you a hundred thanks.”

  3

  The people of England have always taken the liveliest interest in the House of Commons, which is natural enough because they were largely responsible for this form of government. The name seems to be of Italian origin and is found in English records in 1246 for the first time, although it had been in usage long before. No phase of English history is more interesting than the parliamentary records, particularly about the men who were summoned to attend or who came in by the elective method; the great men and the villains, the courageous leaders and the toadies, the farsighted and the backward-lookers, the liberals and the conservatives. A national habit of finding names for certain Parliaments began in the earliest days and has provided a method of appraisal. Generally, of course, the labels applied have had a decidedly partisan bias.

  There was, for instance, the Mad Parliament in 1258, so called because of the historic quarrel between Henry III and Simon de Montfort. The Weathercock King called his brother-in-law, Montfort, a traitor and the latter retaliated by declaring that, if Henry were not a king, he would make him eat his words: a warm passage certainly between a ruler and a subject.

  Then there was the Unlearned in 1404, which gained its name because there was not a single lawyer among the members. The lawyers of the day were responsible, needless to state, for the label.

  Among others were the Parliament of Bats, the Merciless, the Diabolical, the Meddlesome, the Addled (which met in 1614 and was dismissed without having passed any kind of measure at all), the Rump, the Barebones (named after a Puritan member, Praise-God Barebones), and the Drunken. The last named was held in Scotland, the first to be summoned after the Stuart Restoration. There had been much drinking of toasts the evening before and the claret bottles had been passed around and around. When the House opened, the Speaker was incapable of remaining seated in his chair and an adjournment was necessary.

  It happened that before the Black Prince died the fiftieth Parliament was summoned. The name Good has been applied to it, and with the best of reasons. It convened in 1376 and found itself saddled with the task of cleaning up the administrative mess which the old king had allowed to develop at Westminster and, fully as important, the settlement of the succession. The members selected Peter de la Mare as Speaker, the first time a commoner had acted in that capacity. He was a man of great courage and ability and he made such a vigorous attack on the group about the king that he was asked to lead the discussion when the two branches of Parliament met together. The result was that two members of the nobility were dismissed from office and sent to prison. They cleaned out as well the rascals of lower degree, mostly London merchants who had been active members of the clique. Then an unprecedented step was taken. The old king’s mistress, Alice Perrers, was sent packing and informed that if she showed her handsome nose in court again she would be stripped of all her property. The king, who had been in some respects the most haughty of the Plantagenets, accepted this rebuff without a word of protest.

  The sentiment of the Good Parliament was strongly anti-Lancaster. Duke John sensed that, for the time at least, he must bend to the wind. He even visited the House and agreed that the Augean stables at Westminster needed cleaning out.

  Parliament took a decided stand in the matter of the succession, declaring that Richard should be considered the rightful heir and requesting that the boy appear before them. Lancaster moved unobtrusively about the fringes of the House and spoke cautiously to this member and that, but made no move to block the will of the majority. He strove, nonetheless, to have a measure passed similar to the French Salic Law which excluded women from ruling. His purpose was to bar the possibility of the crown passing to the daughter of his deceased brother Lionel who had come into the world ahead of him. The daughter, who had been named for her grandmother Philippa, and was married to the Earl of March, was next in line of succession after Richard. The members listened, but gave him no measure of support. Let the French have their Salic Law; the people of England preferred their own way of doing things.

  If Duke John had had his way, the history of the country would have been vastly different.

  It was on January 25 that Richard made his appearance before the House. Few of the members had ever seen him and there was a stir in the vaulted chamber and a turning of heads when the ten-year-old youth arrived. His mother had been sensible enough to see that he was attired as plainly as the men he would face. His slender limbs were in hose of one color and his shoes lacked the high curl of the French fashion. He was, without a doubt, the handsomest boy they had ever seen and the gift he had for rising to an occasion, which was to be demonstrated at several crucial moments in his life, stood him in good stead. Seating himself in the elaborate chair which had been placed for his use, he faced the members with complete self-possession. When he spoke, his words were well chosen and his voice clear and steady. Here, said the members one to another, was a real king in the making.

  The result of the visit was to clear away any possible doubts. He was called “the very heir-apparent” and, after the death of his father, they petitioned that he be created Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of Chester, the titles the Black Prince had held. This was done on November 20.

  The succession was now a matter of legal record. But the old king was still alive and in his befuddled mind there seemed to be a certain reservation, based on his liking for the most congenial of his sons, the plausible Duke John. Given sufficient time, Lancaster might be able to fan this small spark of uncertainty into a blaze of action. It might even be possible to win from the doddering occupant of the throne the pronouncement of a wish for his oldest surviving son to succeed him.

  4

  One question must arise in every mind in considering the state of things in England at this point: if Duke John had so many enemies, why did he possess such great power? Could not those who feared and hated him, which included most of the nobility, many of the bishops, and the citizens of London to a man, combine to thwart him in his ambitious schemes? The answer to these questions consisted largely of one word—Wealth. In addition to the possessions which came to him in his own right as a son of the king, he had at the age of nineteen married his cousin Blanche, the second daughter and co-heiress (there being no sons in the family) of Henry, Earl of Lancaster. The Lancastrian holdings of land were almost beyond computation, as the result of royal grants and a genius for acquisitive marriages. His immediate descendants had continued to gather in castles and estates and had become inevitably the richest family in the kingdom. In March 1361, two years after the marriage of John and the multiple-dowered Blanche, his father-in-law died and he became Earl of Lancaster in his wife’s right. The next year the elder daughter, Maud, also died. She had married the Duke of Bavaria and had be
en left a widow with no children. So all her estates came into the hands of the princely mogul, together with the earldoms of Derby, Lincoln, and Leicester, the older daughter’s share. One year later Edward III created his favored son the first Duke of Lancaster.

  Blanche died of the plague while John was campaigning in Castile and soon thereafter he married Constance, an illegitimate daughter of Pedro the Cruel. This matrimonial alliance would later involve him in abortive efforts to seize the Spanish throne and, in the fullness of time, to a divorce.

  At the time of the death of the Black Prince, Duke John was easily the richest man in England. He owned Kenilworth, the most famous of English castles, and had gone to great effort and expense to turn it into a home of beauty as well as an almost impregnable fortress. To this end, he had erected a new suite of buildings, including a banqueting hall of rare architectural merit. What he accomplished at Kenilworth was a proof of something often overlooked, that he was a man of sophisticated taste and discernment. In the north he owned the almost equally famous castle of Pontefract. He had scores of other possessions, largely in the northern counties, and owned the castles of Leicester, Lancaster, Pevensey, and Monmouth, to name only the better known.

  On the bank of the Thames, west of the city, was the palace called the Savoy, which the Lancastrian duke used as his London home. It was packed with the beautiful things the discerning eye of its owner had acquired on the continent. As far as the arts were concerned, John was the best-versed man in England. He could drop into a conversation such names as Niccola Pisano and Guido Cavalcanti. If the Londoners had found nothing in him to dislike or criticize, they would have hated him for the Savoy alone. The richness and wonder of the place was so great a contrast to the poverty and suffering in the city; and John did not hesitate to display his learning and his sense of superiority.