The Last Plantagenet

by Thomas B. Costain

The critics through the period of the minority were strongly against many of the advisers selected by the king. They granted the knightly qualities of Sir Simon Burley but resented his rapid rise from shabby gentility to affluence. They could not deny the ability of Michael de la Pole, but he was a commoner and they could not stomach his advancement in the royal confidence. But for Robert de Vere there was nothing good to be said. He was of impeccable descent but he lacked all the qualities which men who stand behind a king should possess.

  Two years after the charges were brought against John of Gaunt at Salisbury, the French king landed an army in Scotland. An army of defense was hastily organized and Richard took command himself, with all his uncles around him to lend advice, and Robert de Vere for good measure.

  The Scots followed their usual defensive tactics. When Richard crossed the border on August 6, 1385, the Scots fell back, leaving the road to Edinburgh open. While the English took possession of that city, the Scots made counterraids into Westmoreland and Cumberland and ravaged the country thoroughly and savagely. The young king did not know how to come to grips with this elusive foe. John of Gaunt urged him to advance beyond the Firth of Forth and compel the Scottish forces to drop back for defensive purposes. This was sound advice but the king listened instead to the indolent and untrained de Vere. That young gentleman pointed out that the Scots were behind the royal army and that the English position was becoming untenable. Get back before it was too late, advised the timorous de Vere. To the chagrin of the uncles and of every experienced soldier in the army, this course was adopted. Soured by this adolescent decision, the army retreated back across the border, leaving Edinburgh in flames and finding in the northern counties the smoking ruins that the Scots had left behind them. As usual the campaign had been a complete and sorry failure.

  Another member of the inner circle of favorites had ridden in the royal train to Scotland, John Holland, the half brother who had taken it on himself to murder the Carthusian friar at Salisbury. On the march north he became the central figure in a still more violent episode. One of his squires was attacked by an archer in the train of Hugh, the son of the Earl of Stafford. In an army made up of forces brought into the field by members of the nobility, such quarrels were common. Holland did not wait for any explanation, however. He started out that night for the Stafford camp in a surly temper. It happened that Ralph, a Stafford son, decided at the same time to wait on Holland in an effort to make amends. Their paths crossed in the darkness.

  “Who rides abroad at this late hour?” demanded Holland, reining in his horse.

  “Ralph of Stafford,” was the answer, the youth not having recognized the voice of the king’s half brother.

  Without waiting for another word, the surly Holland drew his sword and lunged out into the darkness. The blade pierced the young knight’s side and he fell from his saddle, mortally wounded. Without waiting to take any steps about the body, the killer turned and rode back to his own camp. He did not seem to have any compunction about what he had done. The brother of a king could do no wrong.

  But Richard took a different view. Fond as he was of these hotheaded older sons of his mother, he realized that he could not condone unprovoked murder. The Earl of Stafford demanded that the vicious Holland be made to pay for his murderous attack and it was clear that the nobility were back of him. Suddenly realizing that being half brother to a king was not a warrant for wanton murder, Holland fled into sanctuary in the church of St. John of Beverley. The king’s first hostile move was an order for the confiscation of all Holland’s properties.

  Word of what had happened reached the ears of the murderer’s mother. Finding that Richard was not prepared to throw the cloak of royal immunity over his guilty half brother, she sent frantic messages north, begging for mercy. Richard remained adamant. The queen mother’s condition had been growing worse and this blow was more than she could stand. She died in August of that year while her royal son was leading his army across the Scottish border and before receiving any definite word of her other son’s fate.

  The punishment finally imposed on Holland was light. He was ordered to provide chantries where Masses could be said in perpetuity for the soul of Ralph of Stafford, two to be stationed at the spot where the murder was committed and the third at his grave. In a very short space of time the confiscated properties were returned to him. He was permitted to marry Elizabeth, a daughter of John of Gaunt, and years later was made Duke of Exeter. The reason for the young king’s leniency is, of course, a matter of conjecture. He undoubtedly was influenced by the affection he had always felt for his older and lordly half brother and it seems equally clear that his belief in the infallibility of kings convinced him that Holland was above punishment. It is quite possible also that his grief for his mother swayed him to a belated attitude of mercy. One thing is certain: the family of the slain knight never forgave John Holland and became savagely critical of the king.

  In the hope no doubt of placating his troublesome family, Richard made his uncle Edmund the Duke of York and Thomas the Duke of Gloucester. To avoid any confusion of identities in the minds of readers it will be advisable to continue use of the name Woodstock in connection with Thomas, particularly as he will continue to play a prominent part in the annals of this stormy and unhappy reign.

  2

  Richard realized that he had not covered himself with glory in Scotland, but the failure of his efforts in the field did not persuade him to take a common-sense view of the need for reform in the administrative machinery he had set up. When the faults of Robert de Vere were dinned into his ears, his only response was to pile new honors on his favorite. Unfortunately he thought of Ireland as a suitable field for his friend.

  Conditions in that country were growing increasingly bad. The English had become little more than settlers, confining themselves to a section of the country which continued to shrink. There was a belt of land about Dublin, comprising the counties of Dublin, Meath, Kildare, and Louth, which was called the Pale. For some time the English had been staying exclusively within the Pale, even though its limits were growing narrower all the time. The Irish people, living beyond the Pale, continued to do as they pleased and paid no attention to English laws. The line between Irish and English was not as great as it would become later (particularly in the reign of Henry VI when the English were compelled by law to shave their upper lips to mark the distinction), but it was tightly drawn. The feeling had become so high that it was no longer a felony for an Englishman to kill one of the natives. All he had to do was to claim that the victim was a thief. It was not surprising that the English settlers had been steadily dropping back to the comparative safety of the city of Dublin. “The little place” was the term they now used for the Pale.

  Around the limits of the Pale the Irish leaders kept close watch and ward. The most active of them was one Art MacMurrough and, when he died in 1377, his son who was also called Art took up the work. Art the Second, twenty years of age, who rode without saddle or bridle and whose voice was a high-pitched and vibrant summons to battle, proved more belligerent than his father. He married an Anglo-Irish wife named Eliza de Veele, a lady of property, but this alliance did not lead to better relations with the English. The viceroy of the moment in Dublin decided that the fair Eliza had violated the law in marrying the handsome MacMurrough. When her lands in Norragh were confiscated, Art declared open war.

  From all parts of Ireland came assistance. The O’Briens, the O’Tooles, the O’Dempseys came marching to Art’s assistance and it began to look as though the Pale would shrink to the vanishing point.

  In London it was realized that a strong hand was needed in Ireland. The solution that Richard found was the appointment of de Vere, with powers that were almost royal in their scope. The selection was reported to a surprised Parliament as being made “in consideration of his noble blood, strenuous probity, eminent wisdom and great achievements.” It was stipulated that the conquest and unification of the sister island must be comple
ted in two years and that the annual deficit must be corrected in the same period of time. These conditions made the position an onerous one to assume and there was a sly tendency to look favorably on the appointment as a means of demonstrating the incompetence of the young man in a most unmistakable way.

  But the young king went a step further. He named de Vere the Marquis of Dublin, borrowing the title from the French table of nobility, or, conceivably, adapting it from the German markgraf. Now the title of duke was reserved for the sons of kings, so that an earldom was the highest honor that a member of the baronage could obtain. The new title was wedged in beneath that of duke, which meant that the holder, this thoroughly unpopular young man, could dangle it in the jealous eyes of all the earls in England. The barons could wink at an appointment which placed unbearable burdens on the shoulders of the favorite but to have him strutting proudly above them was more than they could stand.

  De Vere made matters worse by showing no inclination to take up his new and difficult duties. Instead of setting out immediately for Ireland, where there was fighting around the edges of the Pale and the English hold seemed to be weakening, he remained at court and enjoyed to the fullest the honors which went with the new title. The situation grew steadily worse in Ireland, but the marquis went on hunting and hawking and dining fastidiously at court where he was entitled to a prominent seat, close enough to royalty, in fact, to talk directly with the king and queen on matters which had to do with music, art, and books, matters which were well over the heads of the rest of the company who could throw their gnawed bones accurately over their shoulders but had never heard of the French Romances.

  De Vere then proceeded to stir the general feeling about him into a positive fury. He fell in love with a Bohemian girl who had come over in the train of Queen Anne and set about getting a divorce.

  It is necessary at this point to cast back some years. Edward III had been such a fond father that he dreaded marrying his beautiful daughters, presented to him at regular intervals by Queen Philippa, because it meant they would have to leave England and, perhaps, never come back. He seems to have been especially fond of his oldest daughter, the blonde and lovely Princess Isabella. Although many matches were discussed for her, she remained unmarried until she was thirty-one years old (decidedly middle-aged in those days), when a proud French nobleman named Enquerrand de Coucy was sent to England as one of the hostages demanded in negotiations about the captive King John of France. This French lord was only twenty-four years old and was as proud as Lucifer (King, duke, prince nor earl am I, read the motto on his crest, I am the Lord of Coucy), but he fell in love with the still rather dazzling Isabella. As it was a love match and as arrangements, moreover, could be made for the princess to spend much of her time in England, Edward had consented to the marriage. The happy pair brought two daughters into the world, the younger being named after her grandmother, Philippa. The princess, whose husband had been given wide estates and the English title of Earl of Bedford, was still one of the beauties of the court and rode to the hunt on saddles of red velvet embroidered with violets of gold; the uneven marriage was a most happy one, in spite of the fact that it broke up later because the proud lord of Coucy felt impelled to fight again on the French side. She was most generous and liked to be a fairy godmother, throwing money about with mad abandon. Naturally she was very much liked and her two little fair-haired girls were symbols of loyalty to the Crown.

  And this brings us to the year 1371 when the child Philippa was betrothed to Robert de Vere, who had inherited one of the finest ancestral estates in England. The marriage took place seven years later, on June 30, 1378. While her husband was being made the recipient of these many honors, the lady Philippa had grown into a handsome and well-esteemed lady. The roving eye of young Robert de Vere, however, was caught by the Bohemian girl who had come to England. His far from stable affections seemed to have been suddenly and disastrously unsettled.

  In some reports the girl is called a landgravine, and the Foedera changes this title to landgravissa, an obscure honor which can not be proved to have existed. Some English authorities declare that she was of low birth, the daughter of a Flemish saddler but, inasmuch as she was officially a lady in waiting on the queen, this statement can be dismissed. There is no more substance to the claim that she was dark and ugly. Dark she probably was, but the gay favorite could hardly have fallen in love with anyone lacking in physical attraction. It is clear, moreover, that she had been sent to England as custodian of the jewels and valuables bestowed on Anne by the empress and that she remained to act as a lady of the bedchamber. Her name was Launcecrona and she was undoubtedly chic and lively, with a foreign kind of prettiness. De Vere would have plenty of opportunities to observe her as she tripped about her duties at court, to note her trimness of figure, her gaiety and volatility of mood.

  There are two versions given of the course which events took. One is that Queen Anne was against the determination of de Vere to divorce his highborn wife and marry the vivacious Launcecrona. The other is that Anne, through fondness for her lady in waiting and perhaps under pressure from the king and his favorite, wrote to the Pope, urging that the divorce be granted. In the eyes of the little Anne the king could do no wrong and it is quite possible that she strove to carry out his wishes, even though she may have foreseen troubles ahead. The latter explanation was believed for a time and resulted in some loss of the popularity she enjoyed. The divorce was granted, on false evidence, during the year which de Vere wasted after his appointment to the overlordship of Ireland. The discarded wife being a full cousin of Richard and a niece of Thomas of Woodstock, it did not need the loud and angry protests of the latter to set tongues to wagging throughout the land.

  It must have been at this time that the king decided to ride the storm blowing about him because of his support of this unworthy friend by applying a touch of the royal spur. When Parliament met in October of the same year and demanded the resignations of some of the king’s advisers, he went to the opposite extreme and raised de Vere from the title invented for him to that of Duke of Dublin, thus putting him on a par with the royal uncles. The administrative position of the new Irish viceroy had in the meantime been clearly defined. De Vere was to have an almost absolute hand, even the right of coinage. The royal rights to homage alone were denied. The ransom of a French prisoner of war, John of Blois, which had been fixed at 30,000 marks, was allocated for the use of the new duke, who was to take with him to Ireland 500 men-of-war and a thousand archers. The right was granted him to quarter with his own arms the three golden crowns on a field azure which had belonged to the early kings of England.

  To demonstrate his belief that great things could be expected when this new overlord began his operations in Erin, the king accompanied him to Wales with great state and hurrah. The opposition breathed sighs of relief. They confidently expected developments which would please them when the overdressed, overconfident courtier found himself opposed to Art MacMurrough and the rest of the wild Irish.

  But the journey to Wales was a blind. De Vere was not going to Ireland yet.

  3

  Since John of Gaunt had in his later years turned mild and even idealistic in his attitude to the throne, a new party of opposition had been forming in England. As leader, in place of the now quiescent head of the family of Lancaster, was the younger brother, Thomas of Woodstock, a more militant and proud figure than John had ever been. At the right hand of this dark and grasping uncle stood Gaunt’s son, Henry of Derby. Despite the fact that it was Henry of Derby who had married Mary de Bohun and so alienated from Thomas half of the fair lands and rich inheritances of the Bohun family, the two were working together now with singleness of purpose. Derby had all the dynastic ambition of his father but combined with this a stubbornness of will and a readiness to gamble which John of Gaunt had lacked.

  A waning in Richard’s personal popularity in London had led to the elevation of Derby in his stead. The Londoners, tough and assertive
in most things, had a weakness for show and had always found it easy to cheer for the Plantagenets and the wives they brought over from the continent. Derby had the same princely appearance as Richard, the Plantagenet reddish golden glow and the straight strong figure, and the citizens and their apprentices were ready enough to transfer their affections. Richard had been so loudly acclaimed at the beginning that he did not fall completely out of favor until toward the end, but his stock could fall as sharply as it rose. It went into a decline when this savagely antagonistic group came together.

  This made a dangerous combination, the stormy Thomas and the coldly aspiring Henry of Derby. They could not be expected to stand together long, but for the moment they saw eye to eye and were prepared to work in unison.

  Back of the two leaders was the aggressive figure of Richard, Earl of Arundel, who was as bitterly against the king as Thomas of Woodstock and perhaps of a more revengeful nature. In support of this trio came more baronial magnates. Thomas de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, was the most prominent, a withdrawn type of man without any pretensions but lacking in the courage for political conflict, as would be discovered later. Next came Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, who was about Richard’s age and had been on friendly terms with the young king. He was not prominent in the early stages of the struggle but later would emerge in a contradictory role, most of the time with the king but always an uncertain adherent.

  Finally there was Courtenay, who was now Archbishop of Canterbury and so wielded much influence. He had been outspoken in his criticism of the king, in public as well as in private talks with Richard, and had earned the active dislike of the young ruler.

  The opposition scored heavily in the Parliament which sat in October 1386. They demanded that the king dismiss his chancellor and treasurer. His immediate answer was an expression of the pride of place and belief in kingly prerogative he had inherited from his father.