While he was thus industriously engaged on the king’s business, Chaucer had little time for writing, but it is generally believed that while he labored at Windsor or surveyed the work being done on the banks of the Thames, he was gathering material for his great masterpiece, the Canterbury Tales. The pilgrims from the west came down the river paths near Windsor and it was there perhaps that he saw the curious individuals who later were brought to life in his rich and resounding verse: the Squire, the Prioress, the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner, the Friar, and the Oxford Clerk. His ears were filled with the accents of the native tongue and the colloquialisms which he later used to such realistic effect.
King Richard had no part in making the Canterbury Tales possible beyond this, but certainly, if the poet had not been taken again under the wing of royal patronage, he might have found it impossible to give further rein to his robust imagination.
CHAPTER XXI
The Death of Good Queen Anne
1
AN EVENT which occurred on June 7, 1394, can be accepted as the forerunner of a second period of strife. On that day Queen Anne died suddenly.
The love between the king and his consort had been deep and free of any connubial stress. Anne had always been at his side and her influence had been for peace and order. It is not likely that she held any brief for the lords who had been responsible for the deaths of their friends, but she undoubtedly encouraged Richard to be forgiving, on the surface at least. The urge to revenge himself was always at the back of his mind and it seems almost certain that he would have taken steps against the appellants earlier if she had not been there to counsel moderation.
It was due to her, certainly, that during the previous year Richard had taken steps to heal the breach between himself and the city of London. He had asked the city for a loan of £1000 and had been refused. For some reason the citizens resented it bitterly when a Lombardy banker had offered to accommodate the king. He was dragged from his counting-house and torn to pieces in the streets. In a rage Richard removed the courts of law from London to York and announced his intention of making the latter city the seat of Parliament. London soon felt the pinch of these measures and begged the queen to intercede on their behalf. Anne promised to do so and was able finally to persuade the king to grant the city his pardon.
It was decided to make a great event of the reconciliation. The royal couple rode together through the city, the queen wearing her crown and a gown studded with precious stones. The king was presented with a pair of white horses, accoutered with cloth of gold and hung with silver bells, the queen with a handsome white palfrey. As they passed under Temple Bar, the king was sufficiently moved to declare: “Peace to this city! For the sake of Christ, his mother and my patron St. John, I forgive every offense.” During the great state banquet at Westminster which followed, the lord mayor was assured of the king’s forgiveness. “Take back the keys and sword,” said Richard. “Keep my peace in your city, rule its inhabitants as formerly, and be among them my representative.”
Little is known of the circumstances of Queen Anne’s death. She became suddenly ill and succumbed in two days. There was no great sweep of the plague at this particular moment but the country was never entirely free of it. The germ could be picked up at any time, particularly in London and during the summer months. The symptoms, and the suddenness of her death, seem to indicate that she was one of the victims.
The king was with her when she died and his grief was so great that he gave orders to raze the palace at Shene to the ground. These instructions were not followed, although the state apartments were dismantled later. The king never set foot in Shene after the state funeral. Characteristically he decided that she was to be buried with a pomp suited to “a daughter of the Caesars.”
Although one story has it that she was called upon to repudiate on her deathbed the holding of heretical views, there is no evidence to support the statement. It was true there had been whispers that she leaned that way but it would not have been strange if she did. The new teachings were having such wide acceptance in England that it was said two out of three people were Lollards.
The Psalter of the queen was written in Latin, German, and Bohemian and she had read the four gospels in English, which indicates that she had possessed a Wycliffe Bible. Before reading the gospels, however, she had submitted them to Thomas of Arundel that she might have his opinion as to their orthodoxy—a curious choice of mentor for he was not known particularly as a man either of piety or learning. Thomas had assured her that there would be no wrong in studying the version of the man of Lutterworth, although he later declared himself against any distribution of the Wycliffe Bible among the English people. The queen may have felt an interest in the new teachings but not a deep or abiding one. Certainly she could not have been indiscreet enough to declare such an opinion, knowing that her husband, as might have been expected, was as strongly against any hint of change in religious belief or observance as he was against any infringement of royal prerogative.
2
It is no exaggeration to say that Richard was brokenhearted over the death of the young queen. After the first wild explosion of grief, when he ordered the demolition of Shene Palace, he could think of no way to display his love save to give Anne the most elaborate funeral that the country had ever seen. It is said that the preparations for this demonstration of royal sorrow took two months, during which time the body was kept at Shene. It was found that there was not enough fine wax in the country to make all the candles that Richard deemed necessary and a large quantity had to be imported from Flanders to supply the flambeaux and torches. This accounted for much of the delay.
Above all else he wanted in attendance every peer of the realm and his wife. To this end he wrote a form letter which was sent to all of them.
Very dear and faithful cousin:
Inasmuch as our beloved companion, the queen (whom God has hence commanded), will be buried at Westminster the third of August next, we earnestly entreat that you (setting aside all excuses) will repair to our city of London the Wednesday previous to the same day, bringing with you our very dear kinswoman, your consort, at the same time.
We desire that you will, the preceding day, accompany the corpse of our dear consort from our manor of Shene to Westminster; and for this we trust we may rely on you, as you desire our honour, and that of our kingdom.
Given under our privy seal at Westminster, the 10th day of June, 1394.
This, it will be seen, was a command. In view of the urgency of the notice, it is hard to understand something that happened, which will be told later.
It was ordained further that all in attendance should wear black gowns and hoods and that the trappings of the horses should be of sable hue. Along the route from Shene to Westminster the houses displayed black hangings, the alehouses were closed with their signs draped in black, the church bells tolled in slow and muted measure.
It should be noted that, as the final word on the controversy over the deceased queen’s religious beliefs, Thomas of Arundel preached the funeral oration, in the course of which he told of Anne’s request that he pass on the question of reading the gospels in the vulgar tongue (as English was invariably called). He made it clear that he had advised her to do so.
To give some idea of what the scope of the funeral arrangements meant to the city of London, it is necessary to glance at some statistics.
It will be hard to believe how small England had become in point of population as a result of the Black Death. There had once been 4,000,000 people in this land of milk and honey (as the invading Normans had called it), this country so full of life and bustle and contention, its ports packed with ships, its rivers congested with wool and tin barges and with the long trains of its barons, and those of bishops and abbots with their tonsured followers a-muleback, and with parties on pilgrimage, and its inns noisy with merchants and minstrels and lower branches of the fellowship of the pied poudre, the dusty feet. In the year 1377 there were no more
than 2,200,000 people in England and by the year 1400 the total had shrunk further by 100,000. London, that city of wealth and power and arrogance, had a population at which the least of its suburbs today would sniff with scorn—35,000. York, the metropolis of the north, with its minster and its established wealth packed within the circuit of its Roman walls, could boast of no more than 10,900.
Though the terrible plagues had cut the population in two, there had been, peculiarly enough, no material decrease in the baronage. Including all branches of the nobility, the total in Richard’s reign is given, roughly, as 150.
Reference has already been made to the size of the trains which the proud barons took with them on their travels. This was due to pride in some degree but mostly to a feeling of insecurity. The magnates did not trust one another and they had an even greater fear of the king, whichever king happened to be on the throne. The demand of Richard that each should bring his wife was a further complication, for the good ladies seemed to need as many people about them as their lords: falconers, grooms, farriers, confessors, almoners, maids, seamstresses, laundresses.
It goes without saying that the commonality from thereabouts would tramp on shank’s mare to see the good queen carried to her early grave.
Considering the tone of Richard’s invitation, nay command, it may be taken for granted that as many as 15,000 people would converge on London. For several days there would be chaos in that close huddle of small houses.
Richard’s grief had not abated in any degree during the two months which had elapsed and he must have been in a daze when the huge cortege was being formed to accompany the queen’s body to Westminster. He was not so sunk in his sorrow, however, to fail of noting one conspicuous absentee when the peers fell into line according to their rank and importance. The Earl of Arundel was not in attendance.
The smoldering coals of the king’s hatred for this antagonistic peer were fanned into an active flame. He considered Arundel’s action to be deliberate, a gesture to show how little respect he felt for the queen who had owed to him the most bitter moment in her life. It was clear to the king, as he rode his black charger, that Arundel considered himself above any form of obedience. He, the proud victor at sea and the popular hero of the people, could do what he pleased. Nothing that the earl had done in the past seemed on a par with this willful slight, this insult to the memory of the queen.
The sum of Arundel’s offending was still not complete. The funeral services were held the following day and he arrived late at Westminster, in fact after the ritual was under way. This was bad enough but he had the temerity to approach the bereaved husband and ask permission to leave early, giving as his reason the pressure of matters of importance.
It seems to have been Richard’s lot to disturb the even tenor of moments of the utmost solemnity at Westminster. He had lost a shoe during his coronation, and now, when his beloved consort was being consigned to the grave, he lost his head. His hands trembled with rage as he considered the ease and unconcern on Arundel’s face. Without making any response, he took a baton from the hands of an attendant and struck the earl over the head with it. The blow was delivered with such force that Arundel fell to the floor and his blood spread over a large portion of the paving.
“Remove him to the Tower!” was the order that the king gave to those about him.
After the stunned Arundel had been carried out, the floor had to be cleansed of blood before the offices for the dead could be resumed. It was said that every face in the crowded edifice turned white with fear, because it was a general belief that divine vengeance for the killing of Thomas à Becket in Canterbury Cathedral would not be felt until the abbey at Westminster had been polluted with blood. The thought in each bowed head was, What form would the displeasure of the Lord take, now that this condition had been fulfilled?
No action was taken against Arundel at this time, but he was held in the Tower for a week before being released. If people who placed credence in this prophecy waited for the wrath of the deity to manifest itself at once, they were disappointed. Later there were many who thought back to the incident at the abbey and connected it with the tragic events in the last years of Richard’s reign.
This was not the only incident where Arundel’s pride had involved him in difficulties. A week before, there had been a dispute in Parliament over his inactivity when John of Gaunt had faced a local insurrection in Chester. The duke brought up the point and produced from Arundel an explosion of wrath in the course of which the latter charged the elder uncle with exercising an undue influence over the king. Not stopping there, he criticized the king for making Gaunt the ruler of the Aquitanian possessions. Hot words passed back and forth and finally Richard had taken it on himself to deny a set of four charges which Arundel had exhibited against the duke.
The king brought the episode to a close by declaring he saw no fault in anything his uncle had done and insisting that Arundel must apologize openly for his conduct. This was a wry dose for the proud earl to swallow. Finally he forced himself to stand up and beg pardon in the following cryptic terms:
Sir: Sith it seemeth to the king and the lords, and eke that each here hath been so mickle grieved and displeased by my words; it forethinketh, and I beseech you of your grace and lordship to quit me your man-tallant.
Not a frank and outgiving form of apology, certainly. But it seems to have sufficed at the moment.
3
Whether the loss of his wife brought about a change in Richard or did no more than remove a restraining influence, it is very clear that his course from that time on showed a firmer but less admirable approach to the problems of kingship.
Other wives of royal rank died in the same year. John of Gaunt’s Spanish spouse, Constance, was the first, to be followed soon after by the delicate and lovely Mary, wife of John’s eldest son, Henry of Derby. The passing of these ladies had an immediate effect on the political scene. John of Gaunt was now free to wed a third time and he wanted to marry beautiful and talented Katharine Swynford, his mistress for some years who had borne him a family of handsome sons and a daughter. Richard was agreeable to this and so brought down on himself the ire of the Earl of Arundel, not a hard thing to do at any time. It happened that Arundel had married again also, his bride being Philippa, the widow of the Earl of Pembroke. The point of dissent was that Philippa was a daughter of the Earl of March and on that account stood directly in the line of succession. Under the circumstances the consent of Richard should have been obtained, but Arundel had shrugged this aside, his pride preventing him from deferring to the king. To make matters worse, Philippa proceeded to snub Katharine Swynford, calling her openly “the concubine” and at times employing even more insultingly clear Anglo-Saxon terms. Arundel glowered his approval of the stand taken by his new wife.
In this determination to cause trouble in the royal family another lady had joined, the wife of Thomas of Woodstock, the plain and avaricious older sister of Mary, now deceased. It has already been told how Thomas and his wife, who was said to resemble a parrot, had coolly appropriated Cole Harbor, the London home of the Bohun family which had been willed to Derby’s wife, Mary. They had given it up most unwillingly. Although Mary was now dead, worn out by childbearing, Derby retained Cole Harbor for his children while he himself, to forget his grief, set off on a series of crusading junkets.
When Richard agreed to his uncle’s marriage with the fair Katharine and even consented to the legitimizing of the Swynford children (giving them the family name of Beaufort), the fat was indeed in the fire. Thomas of Woodstock considered himself the logical contender for the throne if Richard did not marry again and bring children into the world. But these newly acknowledged children of John of Gaunt might now be considered to stand ahead of him in the line of succession. Thomas was furious, his wife even more so. Arundel was only too glad to range himself beside them in refusing to acknowledge Katharine Swynford.
And so there they were again, shoulder to shoulder in discontent, th
e two furiously angry critics of the king, who had dragged Sir Simon Burley to the block. Queen Anne, always the advocate of moderation, was no longer at Richard’s side to whisper her wise counsels. The stage was set for the final acts in the tragedy.
Richard displayed some good sense in this difficult situation. He realized he could do nothing to soften the black tempers of Arundel but it might be possible to placate Thomas of Woodstock, who after all carried the real weight in the partnership. The latter could be bribed. The king agreed to find a title for Lord Humphrey, the oldest son of Thomas, and to pay his uncle 50,000 nobles, a quite substantial sum. The earldom of Rochester was created and conferred on Humphrey. Thomas ceased his grumbling, for the time being.
This condition, however, could not be expected to last for any length of time. Thomas had nothing but contempt for Richard and, as leader of the war party (fancying himself as great a fighting man as the Black Prince, if given the opportunity), he would never acquiesce long in the king’s very wise determination to prolong the peace with France.
4
Although Richard continued to grieve for his lost wife, the question of a second marriage arose almost at once. It was the first duty of kings to provide a successor to the throne, preferably a son. There was a very strong feeling in the country that the newly made widower should lay aside his grief and find himself another wife.
Thomas of Woodstock was against this. He did not want Richard to produce an heir because that would mean the final extinction of his own pretensions. If, however, the question of a second marriage had to be faced, he, Thomas, had a plan to retrieve some advantage. Why should not the king marry his eldest daughter, Anne?
The Last Plantagenet Page 19