The Last Plantagenet

by Thomas B. Costain

  Anne had been married in 1392 to the Earl of Stafford but he had died the following year. She must have had more of the Bohun beauty than her mother because she accumulated two other husbands later, the second being a brother of her first spouse. Richard refused to consider this suggestion on the sound ground that they were first cousins.

  The king soon made it evident that he had ideas of his own. The militant King of France and the beautiful Isabeau (who, it will be recalled, had come to him on approval) had a daughter named Isabella. She was only seven years old, but that would suit the King of England well. It would be many years before she could become his wife in anything but name and it would not be like replacing his beloved Anne. Perhaps by the time the small Isabella had grown up, the memory of Anne might have dimmed sufficiently. A second reason for this match, and this carried equal weight, was that it would serve to cement the peace between England and France. A sincere lover of peace, Richard wanted nothing so much as a permanent end to the long and bloody war.

  He realized that he would have to proceed cautiously in the matter. There was a strong war party in the country, headed by that recalcitrant pair, Woodstock and Arundel. They believed themselves capable of winning another Crécy or a second naval victory like that of Sluys. With both of them it was a case of mediocrity failing, or refusing, to recognize its limitations.

  CHAPTER XXII

  The Days of Development

  1

  RICHARD had learned other lessons. The lack of strength which had tied his hands when the barons surrounded him in the Tower in that bitter period of the Merciless Parliament must be corrected. It is probable that he had seen the need of well-trained royal forces quite early but had been unable to accomplish anything to that end. When Sir Simon Burley had been negotiating for a royal marriage in Italy he went to Florence for the sole purpose of speaking to John Hawkwood. That great English soldier, it will be recalled, had organized the White Company and had gone to Italy to make a good living in the pay of the warring Italian cities and great families. He had been so successful as the leader of the armies of Florence that he was living in retirement on his fine estate, La Rochetta, and was idolized by the population. If Hawkwood, easily the best professional soldier of the day and perhaps the greatest guerrilla fighter in history, had been induced to return to England, he would have kept the royal cause in the ascendancy against such amateur tacticians as the baronial leaders. But he was old at the time and the ache of many wounds was in his bones. He wanted no more soldiering. In fact, he died in the same year as Queen Anne, and the grateful republic not only gave him a magnificent funeral but erected an elaborate marble monument for him.

  With an eye to his future security, Richard now began to recruit a troop, made up almost exclusively of trained archers from the loyal county of Chester. This would prove effective later in the differences he would continue to have with opposition parties in the House.

  There were some lessons he had failed to learn. The tendency of his grandfather to borrow money wherever he could find it, without regard to his constitutional rights and certainly with little thought of repaying it, appealed to Richard as a proper course to follow. As there was no longer a need for war funds, the money he acquired in this manner was frittered away in extravagant living. The sycophants who gathered about his brilliant court even worked on his pride to the extent of convincing him he might be elected Holy Roman Emperor to succeed Wenceslaus of Bohemia, a brother of Anne’s and an incurable drunkard. This entailed the payment of bribes to the electors and the distribution of costly gifts.

  Richard was now in his middle twenties and had become a very handsome man, with a slight tendency to portliness. He wore a well-trimmed golden beard and was even more addicted than before to the elaborate fashions favored at the French court. He talked incessantly in a rather high-pitched voice and did not seem interested in any opinions but his own. Such, at least, is the picture to be found in the chronicles of the day, although it should be taken into consideration that most of them were hostile witnesses.

  This much may be accepted as certain. Queen Anne had died too soon.

  2

  For 200 years there had been no vigorous effort to improve the English hold in Ireland. The earlier plan by which Richard turned over the sister island to Robert de Vere had, of course, come to nothing. De Vere accepted the title of Duke of Dublin but did not set foot on Irish soil and so had not been able to apply his “eminent wisdom” to the situation nor to add anything to his “great achievements.” The stage had now been reached where definite steps had to be taken and Richard decided to lead an army across the Irish Sea.

  With more than 4000 men he sailed from Haverfordwest in September 1394, leaving his uncle Edmund of York as regent and taking Thomas of Woodstock with him as his chief aide. They found themselves opposed by an Irish army of considerable size led by Art MacMurrough. The resourceful Art did not attempt to meet the English in their heavy armor on open fields and so the invaders decided to march to Kilkenny where the Butler family held the great stone castle which had been built by Strongbow and much enlarged and strengthened by William the Marshal. MacMurrough proceeded to harass them in every possible way. The English found themselves falling into ambushes and subjected continuously to night attack. The Irish would swoop down on them at the most unexpected times, keening their wild battle cries, cutting off stragglers and destroying supply trains. Richard knew nothing of warfare, and little more could be said for Woodstock. When the English forces straggled into Kilkenny they had suffered such heavy losses that they were in a mood to discuss conciliation.

  Art MacMurrough agreed to meet the king in Dublin to discuss the situation. He arrived there in high spirits, riding a coal-black steed, still without saddle or bridle, and accompanied by many other Irish leaders. A palace was set aside for them at Hoggin Green and they spent Christmas there in feasting and drinking. The negotiations reached the point where the king conferred the honor of knighthood on Art and several of the other leaders.

  At this point word was brought to Richard by Archbishop Arundel which made it necessary for him to return at once. The issue of Lollardy had reached an acute stage. Sir Richard Stury and other knights attached to the royal court had set up scrolls on the door of St. Paul’s, containing accusations against the church and proclaiming the Lollard Conclusions.

  “Unless they recant, I shall hang them all!” cried Richard.

  He returned to England at once, leaving his army, or what was left of it, under the command of the young Earl of March, who had been declared successor to the throne. The Irish proceeded to win such battles as were fought and in one of them the young earl lost his life.

  3

  It developed that the Lollard party at court was headed by Sir Richard Stury and another knight named Sir Lewis Clifford, both of whom had been in high favor with the king. Richard was not in a lenient mood, however. Promptly on his return he exacted an oath from Stury to refrain from all further religious activities. Clifford was subjected to the heavy hand of ecclesiastical authority and recanted publicly. Later he was so disturbed by what he considered his lack of spiritual courage that he put in his will the following clause: “I, Lowys Clifford, fals and traytor to my Lord God and to all the blessed company of Hevene, an unworthie to be cleped a christian man, make and ordeyne my testament: my wreched carcass to be buried in the ferthest corner of the churcheyard, that on my stinking carcass be but a black cloth and no stone whereby any man may wit where my stinking carcass lieth.”

  That the movement was gaining such strength throughout the country was due in some degree to the conditions which had developed out of the schism in the papacy. With half of Christendom paying allegiance to one Pope and professing to believe the other an outcast from grace, and the nations on the second side believing the exact reverse, it was hard for devout men and women to keep a deep veneration for either Pope. The need to maintain two Popes with equal state and with parallel organizations made it necess
ary for both Rome and Avignon to exact a heavier toll. The corrupt practices which had stirred Wycliffe to preaching the need for reform within the church grew steadily worse. The University of Oxford, where the gentle Wycliffe had taught, had at first been the heart and soul of the liberal creed. Well to the west, where communications were slow and an hour’s flight of the crow meant a complete change of frontiers, it was far enough away from the firm hand of the bishops to maintain an independent stand. It was significant that the students reacted strongly to the new teachings. Poor, subsisting in cold and common lodgings, fired with zeal for knowledge, they mobbed the messengers of the bishops and went to lecture rooms with arms under their cloaks. But the autocratic hand of Archbishop Courtenay was bound sooner or later to impose the weight of ecclesiastical authority on even as venturesome a seat of learning as Oxford and, when Richard was summoned home, the preachers of the Conclusions were being driven out to find security in more obscure parts of the west.

  One of the cradles of Lollardy was Leicester, where an eloquent priest named William Swynderby preached openly. One John Aston journeyed through all parts of the realm, denying the truth of transubstantiation, but suddenly dropped out of sight. John Purvey, one of Wycliffe’s closest adherents, established a chapel outside Leicester and preached without fear or favor. Itinerant priests were welcomed into the homes of men of wealth and high station in the Midlands, such as Sir Thomas Latimer. When a London apprentice named Colleyn carried the new doctrine to Northampton, he was received in the home of the mayor of the city.

  But by this time the heads of the church were fully aroused to the danger. Much as they resented the heavy financial demands of Rome, they could not stand by while the people were led down the thorny road of apostasy. A housecleaning in Oxford drove the new men out of the town and gradually the firm hand of authority made itself felt in all the cities where the head of heresy had been raised. The Lollard priests were forced to take cover in the northwestern reaches where the forests of Monmouth and Hereford offered sanctuary, and even in the Welsh foothills where the voice of Canterbury was heard feebly if at all.

  For two years Richard gave lip service, at least, to the efforts of Archbishop Courtenay and his bishops to clean house in the country at large. On July 31, 1396, Courtenay died, and in his approach to the selection of a successor Richard was guided by considerations far removed from zeal for the orthodox.

  The king was now determined to effect a permanent peace with France, even at the cost of taking the seven-year-old Isabella as his second wife. He knew the idea was not popular with the people, who still blindly hoped for a renewal of the victorious early days. As leaders of the war party, Thomas of Woodstock and Arundel were against the match. The former had been partly won over, as already explained, by the creation of an earldom for his son and the offer of a handsome bribe. All that remained was to conciliate Arundel and, much as he disliked any such move, the king realized there was a way this could be done. Thomas of Arundel had been made Archbishop of York when the adherence of Neville to the king’s cause had resulted in his eviction. Why not offer him now the higher post made vacant by Courtenay’s death, with an understanding that he would lend his support to the French alliance?

  This maneuver, which in later years would have been termed Machiavellian, may have originated in the shrewd minds which surrounded the king. But Richard was beginning to display a degree of craftiness which would later become most marked, and it seems quite probable that the plan was his. The younger Arundel brother, who was ambitious enough to accept the primacy with this hidden stipulation, was chosen to succeed Courtenay, the bull of translation being published in January of the following year. The war on Lollardy must wait until this pressing problem of establishing peace with France had been carried out.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  “I Shall Then Be a Great Lady”

  1

  THE state of mind into which Charles VI of France fell at frequent and sudden intervals must have had its effect on his attitude toward the continuation of the war. He now wanted peace as much as Richard. There is every reason to believe that the two monarchs were right and that the war parties which existed in both countries, made up largely of ambitious uncles and strutting nephews as well as the noisy customers of alehouses, were wrong. Only the personal interest of these blustering war panders would be served by continuing the costly war.

  An unusual olive branch was sent to Richard by the King of France. A pilgrim from the Holy Land known as Robert the Hermit put in an unexpected appearance at Eltham Castle, escorted by seven horsemen of the French king. It was observed at once that there was a strange glint in his eyes, but it was not until he proceeded to tell his story that his full fanaticism became apparent. The vessel in which he returned from Palestine had been caught in a furious gale. For three days the ship had been driven in the teeth of the wind and all on board were convinced they were lost. But to Robert there appeared an apparition in the clouds, a shining figure like an angel.

  “Robert,” said this strange visitor from above, with uplifted hand and speaking in a tongue which the pilgrim did not recognize though he had no difficulty in understanding the words, “thou shalt escape this danger. Thou and all with thee for thy sake.” The voice went on to explain what he must do. He must seek out the King of France and lay an injunction on him to bring about a peace with England. “This war,” continued the heavenly visitor, “has raged too long—–Woe unto such as will not hear thee.”

  As soon as the apparition dissolved from sight, the winds ceased and a gentle breeze took the vessel to Genoa. Robert went to Avignon and saw the Pope, who instructed him to reach the King of France at once. The French royal uncles scoffed at the pilgrim and his story, so Robert had left France and made his way to England. Richard listened attentively to the hermit’s tale. He and John of Gaunt seemed ready to accept it as true, but Thomas of Woodstock, echoed by the Earl of Arundel, refused to believe a word of it. The two war leaders called the story the ravings of a madman and demanded that no credence be placed in it.

  For once they were right. Robert the Hermit returned to his home in Normandy and was never heard of again. Fortunately for the cause of peace, however, there were better reasons for pursuing a pacific policy than the visions of a half-crazed pilgrim.

  Thomas of Woodstock might rage and rail, but his wings were clipped by the fact that the 50,000 nobles promised him had not yet been paid; and he wanted the money very much. As for Arundel, his brother Thomas was soon to receive the pall as primate of all England, and the earl had to be careful lest this great boon be withheld. Richard had carefully laid his plans before the hermit brought his story to the English court.

  To those who objected to the tender age of the French princess, Richard had a reply which silenced them. “Every day will help to remedy this deficiency of age. Her youth is one of my reasons for preferring her, because she can be educated here and brought up in the manners and customs of the English. As for myself, I am young enough to wait for her.”

  2

  It so happened that Jean Froissart, the French historian and romanticist, was in England when the issue was being debated. He stayed with the royal household at Eltham and received his information at second hand from Sir Richard Stury, who apparently had been restored to royal favor. Froissart got the impression that the determination of the king to marry the French princess as a means to peace was so strong that nothing would be allowed to stand in the way. It was while he was at Eltham that the decision to send a deputation to Paris was passed in the House of Commons.

  Froissart’s impression of the king himself was gained at first hand. Because he had been so well regarded by the late Queen Philippa, Richard received him with open favor.

  The Frenchman had brought with him a presentation copy of his own writings, beautifully illuminated and bound in crimson velvet with ten silver gilt studs and roses in the middle. The Sunday after the deputation left for France, Froissart received a summons to tak
e the book to the king in person.

  Richard was still in bed but his beard had been freshly clipped and trimmed and he appeared handsome and in high spirits. He took the volume into his hands with every evidence of pleasure and started to leaf through it.

  “Of what does it treat, Sir Knight?” he asked.

  “Of love, Your Majesty,” replied the donor. Later he described it as full of “all matters of amours and moralytees.”

  This stimulated the interest of the king and he began to read aloud from some of the pages. Froissart records that Richard “read and spoke French in perfection.” After this tasting of the contents, the king handed the volume to one of the knights who stood at attention in the spacious and sumptuously furnished apartment, Sir Richard Creedon, with instructions to take it to the royal oratory.

  Everything about the court, as seen by the French visitor, bore witness to the truth of the stories circulated at the time of the magnificence with which the king lived and the extravagance he displayed in rewarding those about him. As a return for the book, he gave Froissart a chased silver goblet containing one hundred nobles, a most handsome sum for one who lived by his pen.

  3

  The embassy sent to Paris consisted of three members, including the Earl of Nottingham, who was marshal of England. They arrived with 500 mounted attendants and were lodged on the Croix du Tiroir. The King of France was enjoying one of his sane intervals and he received them warmly, making them a grant of 200 crowns a day for their expenses.

  Queen Isabeau had not yet begun on the intrigues and amours which would make her notorious and was still considered the most beautiful woman in Europe. She lived with her rapidly increasing family in the Hôtel de St. Pol. She was an extravagant chatelaine and a careless mother, for her two youngest daughters, Michelle and Katherine, were later brought up in the most neglectful way. Nothing was too good for Isabella, however, who seems to have been the favorite of the family. She resembled the queen in having the fresh Bavarian complexion and the black eyes of the Italian side of the house, but, whereas her mother had the smoldering challenge of a courtesan in her dusky eyes, those of the little princess were sweet and warm.