The Last Plantagenet

by Thomas B. Costain

  This largesse of honors won him the support of individuals, but did nothing to improve the king’s standing with the older nobility or the common people. In the London streets they chanted songs of derision and they coined a term to describe the new favorites, the duketti. The citizens of London became so antagonistic, in fact, that they claimed miracles were being performed at Arundel’s grave. Richard, whose sleep was said to be troubled with dreams of the dead earl and who complained that the clothes on his bed were wet with blood, went to the extreme of ordering that the tomb be paved over.

  It was necessary for the king to keep his Chester troops about him to prevent the trained bands and the apprentices with their clubs and knives from venting by violent measures their disapproval of him and of the carefully hand-picked Parliament.

  This question of protecting the House had been one which gave concern to many kings. In 1332, Edward III had thought it necessary to decree that “no man, upon pain of forfeiting all his substance, should presume to wear any coat of mail or other weapons in London, Westminster or the suburbs of the same.” A quite different form of protection had been applied in 1205 by the infamous King John, the black sheep of the Plantagenets. This was designed to protect the king from the members! They were required to send their children as hostages for their allegiance and their obedience to the king’s wishes. This method of gagging the House and preventing a free and courageous expression of opinion was, fortunately, never used again.

  Undoubtedly the hostility of the Londoners influenced the king in deciding to hold the next meeting of Parliament elsewhere. It was announced that the next session would be held at Shrewsbury on January 28. This was to prove one of the shortest of all sessions, lasting for three days only. Later it was called the Suicidal Parliament because of the effect of the legislation passed on Richard’s demand.

  This Parliament of three days proceeded to nullify everything that had been done by the House of 1388 and restored all property rights to those who had suffered then, or to their families. It provided, moreover, for a permanent board of eighteen members to serve with the king: ten of the upper ranks of the baronage, two earls to act for the clergy, and six commoners. The men nominated to this committee were partisans of the king and could be depended on to bend to his will. The authority vested in them was such that it would not be necessary to summon a full Parliament again.

  The king was granted a tenth and a fifteenth of all national revenue. The last act of this short-lived House was the almost unbelievable one of granting him a subsidy on all wool, woolfells, and leather for the term of his natural life!

  In three days Richard was granted the power to rule England as an absolute king!

  The Great Charter had not been revoked, but its restrictions would never be felt. The nobility were shackled to the royal chariot like conquered generals marching in chains in a Roman triumph. The House had given away its right to maintain a check on royal conduct by the withholding of financial supplies. The country was at peace and would continue to live for a full quarter century under the truce made with France. The king himself had been provided with a lifelong revenue, large enough to cover all his peace-time needs, extravagant though they might be.

  Other kings had disregarded the administrative checks placed on their power. But Richard had gone much further than that. He had succeeded in having this declared as his right. He could now regard himself as answerable only to God.

  2

  This seems a suitable place at which to pause and introduce a character whose part in the drama of Richard’s last years was veiled in mystery but who undoubtedly was to prove himself most useful to the king. There was a priest in the royal chapel named Richard Maudelyn. The first time the king set eyes on him he must have paused and wondered, for the young priest was in all respects a replica of himself. Not only did he have the same rather florid coloring and identical features but even his voice was so similar that no one could tell the difference.

  Was there a blood relationship between them, one having to do with the left hand? It seemed impossible that nature could have produced so unusual a double unless there had been some crossing of bloodlines. Edward the Black Prince had brought two illegitimate sons into the world before he succumbed to the matrimonial-minded Joan of Kent. Was the existence of this handsome young priest due to another adventure on the part of that great warrior? Or could the explanation be found in the rumor widely circulated that Richard was not the son of the Black Prince? There had been, it was whispered, many handsome priests in the royal household at Bordeaux, and the Fair Joan, having lost her first son born to the prince, was determined to replace him. This farfetched story (because Richard was born before his older brother died) was introduced later by his successor, Henry of Derby, and there were many time servers to profess a belief in it.

  The only thing about which there can be no shadow of doubt is that this handsome young Maudelyn was in the service of Richard and that the king took advantage of the amazing resemblance. He was not the first king, nor the last, to use a double for his own purposes. Richard was indolent and many of the duties he was supposed to perform were irksome to him. Why not substitute Maudelyn and let him meet unimportant visitors, or attend church services while the real king lolled about at his ease?

  Maudelyn was used as well for errands of much more importance—“secret and perilous missions,” according to one chronicle. It is on the official records that he accompanied the king on the second, and last, journey to Ireland. Here he was given the task of repairing the buildings in the castle at Dublin. A French writer, who was in Ireland at the time and has contributed a number of intimate pictures of the king’s activities, had this to say: “Many a time have I seen him [Maudelyn] riding through the country with King Richard, his master.” He adds this comment: “Never for a long time did I see a fairer priest.”

  This fair priest will be given credit later for mysterious activities during the years immediately preceding the change of kings and for a somewhat longer period after the deposition and death of Richard.

  3

  Despotic power was too potent a brew for one with the unstable mind and temper of Richard. He began to think of himself as wise and strong and courageous, in fact as the greatest monarch in the world. He dreamed of the day when the electors would meet and cast their votes for him as Holy Roman Emperor.

  But he never forgot the bitter lesson of the Merciless Parliament. Never again must he find himself in the power of forces antagonistic to him. He set his crafty mind to work on that problem or listened to someone near him who was cunning and unscrupulous. It was clear that he must get the most thickly populated and wealthy part of England under his thumb. A proclamation was issued that no longer “might he ride safely in his realm for dread of the men of London and seventeen shires lying round about.” Lists were prepared of those he considered dangerous and disloyal and from each of them he demanded a “submissory letter.” In these documents, which they were compelled to sign, they acknowledged themselves as “misdoers” and promised on pain of heavy fines to agree to all that the Suicidal Parliament had done. For any fines levied on this illegal basis the term pleasaunce was used. This far from gentle pressure helped to replenish the royal purse, but its chief value was that it gave the king a weapon to suspend over the heads of all who had signed the papers.

  The Chester archers accompanied the king whenever he appeared in public. Like all hired soldiers, they began to regard themselves as privileged. They would walk into a public house, demand a flagon of mead or ale, toss it off, and leave without paying. The badge of the White Hart aroused resentment wherever it was seen. It was not surprising that the people of London and of the seventeen shires felt for this vengeful king a dislike and fear which grew finally beyond the point of endurance. All that was needed to set the trained bands to marching and the men of the shires to arming was a leader.

  It is said (in the most unfavorable chronicles, it is true) that Richard’s manners became u
nbearable. He would stroll into a meeting of his parliamentary committee like a vision from some strange world of glowing colors and nightmare designs. In a condescending tone, and with a finger pressed to his fine white brow, he would comment on a proposed amendment of laws in some such words as:

  “The laws are in my mouth or in my breast. I alone can change the laws of the land.”

  Expressions such as this were quite as liable to cause an explosion of popular discontent as the powder with which he had experimented in the Tower when he was a boy. The crux of the matter may be found right there. Richard had not grown up.

  All tyrants, no matter how powerful they conceive themselves to be, live in fear. Every man is a potential enemy; the dagger in every other belt may be the one that will be plunged between the vital ribs. This sense of menace was so deeply entrenched in Richard that he would listen to strange preachings. He was even prevailed upon to hear the words of a hermit who came like another Jeremiah with a message of divine wrath.

  “Amend your ways, O King!” cried the hermit, shaking what might be called a forfending forefinger in Richard’s face.

  The weakness of this prophet of doom was that he believed in himself. When Richard demanded that he prove the divine source of his warning by walking on water, the hermit attempted to do so and was dragged out feet first in a half-drowned condition, to be hanged, in all probability.

  The king was confirmed in this new attitude by the lack of any restraint from Rome. Pope Boniface IX, a young man of thirty, found himself so pressed for funds to hold the kings of Europe in his support against the encumbent at the magnificent court of Avignon that he descended to the most barefaced simony. It seemed possible to purchase anything. Richard even managed to get letters from Rome which threatened the punishment of the church on any who failed to accept all measures of the Great Parliament, a term selected for the sessions just concluded of what men in England were already calling the most dangerous and reactionary of all Parliaments.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  Two of the Five

  1

  THREE memories of the past seemed to darken Richard’s mind and to fan his desire for revenge. They were the defeat of de Vere at Radcot Bridge, the unceremonious intrusion on his privacy in the Tower of London when the leaders of the opposition, with locked arms, had issued their ultimatum, and the fruitless pleading of his young queen for the life of Burley.

  On a day in December 1397, two of the new dukes, the king’s cousin Henry, the Duke of Hereford, although generally called Henry of Bolingbroke, and Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham and now Duke of Norfolk, were riding together to London from Brentford. There had never been much friendly feeling between them. Henry was a Plantagenet and a very probable successor to the throne, a man of kingly presence and great courage, and a favorite of the people. Norfolk was of the upper nobility, thickset and of great strength, now holding the office of marshal of England. Henry’s lack of cordiality for the other was undoubtedly due to the fact that Norfolk had acted as Richard’s instrument in the purging of his confederates.

  It was a cold and blustery day and so it is a matter for surprise that these two men, so different in temperament and design, would unmuffle sufficiently to indulge in extended talk as they rode fast to reach the welcome warmth of London, their horses’ hoofs striking sparks on the frozen surface of the highway. The talk was of such an incendiary nature that Bolingbroke went at once to Richard and gave him his own version of it. This report Norfolk instantly and vigorously denied.

  Had Norfolk been foolish enough to utter treasonable ideas to a man with whom he had never been on friendly terms? Or did the king’s cousin invent the conversation for purposes of his own? The truth was never arrived at, although it seems reasonable to believe that Henry of Bolingbroke’s version was close to the truth.

  Norfolk, according to Bolingbroke, spoke of the day when the appellants had linked arms and marched unceremoniously into Richard’s presence in the Tower. The talk seems to have developed along some such line as this:

  Norfolk: “How many were there of us?”

  Bolingbroke: “We were five, sir duke.”

  Norfolk: “Yes, my prince, we were five. The king’s uncle Thomas was in the center with Arundel and Warwick on each side of him. Two of them are now dead and the other committed to life imprisonment. Who were the other two, on the ends of the line?”

  Bolingbroke (turning in his saddle and looking his questioner squarely in the face): “You and I, sir duke, you and I.”

  Norfolk then proceeded to speak of doubts which filled his mind. Whenever he saw the king’s eyes on him, there was something in them which gave him small comfort. Could it be that Richard, even after so many years, was seeing him at one end of the line, his arm linked in that of one of the other conspirators who had died? Could he and Bolingbroke place any reliance on the pardons which had been granted them?

  He proceeded finally to give a positive reason for such fears. There had been a plot, he declared, to get rid of both Bolingbroke and his father, John of Gaunt. The two Holland brothers, who wanted to get all power in their hands, had been at the bottom of it. He, Norfolk, and the Duke of York had prevented the plotters from accomplishing their purpose.

  It was, he had concluded, an evil world and neither of them could put any faith in the king’s oaths.

  Bolingbroke made no comments but as soon as he reached London he went to the king and told him what had transpired. Richard had Norfolk summoned before him. The latter denied the story. “My dear lord, I say that Henry of Lancaster is a liar!” he declared. “In what he says of me, he lies like the false traitor that he is!”

  It was one man’s word against the other’s, both of high degree and, supposedly, of honor. Richard decided on an open hearing and fixed the day and the place: the festival of St. George sixty days thence, at Windsor Castle.

  When the day arrived, a scaffold had been erected inside the castle grounds, for the seating of the king and such members of the nobility and the church as would be in attendance. It was reported to the king that both men asserted it was impossible for them to be reconciled. Richard then ordered that both of the principals to the dispute be brought in, with heralds to present their respective cases. A knight who appeared for Bolingbroke said: “My sovereign lord, here is Henry of Lancaster, Duke of Hereford and Earl of Derby, who says, and I also for him, that Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, is a false traitor to your royal majesty and the whole kingdom.” Further it was charged against Norfolk that he had received 8000 nobles for the payment of the garrison at Calais, which sum he had kept for himself; that Norfolk had been the cause of all the treasons in the past eighteen years. Finally, it was proposed to prove this with his, Henry’s, body against that of Norfolk in the lists.

  Another knight then came forward and declared that everything said against Norfolk was a lie, and the duke himself stated that he had used the 8000 nobles for proper expenditures and that he beseeched the king to allow him combat against this accuser.

  At this point Henry of Bolingbroke threw down his gauntlet and Norfolk picked it up. It was decided that they would be allowed to fight it out in the lists at Coventry, and September 16 was selected as the date.

  2

  It has been a custom with princes who exercise despotic sway to offer the people spectacles and entertainments as a sop for the rights which have been taken from them. The emperors of Rome kept the hungry and wretched poor from too much discontent by having gladiators fight in the arena and Christians devoured by lions before their eyes. Richard was no exception, and during the brief period of his megalomania he took every occasion to dazzle the populace with his magnificence. He decided to use the trial by arms at Coventry for this purpose.

  He ordered a stately theater to be constructed on Gosford Green, with lists adjoining which would not have suffered by comparison with the famed tilting grounds at Ashby-de-la-Zouch where Ivanhoe performed so nobly. The king arrived the day before and was recei
ved as a guest in the round tower belonging to Sir William Bagot. Here he gave audiences at different times to each of the disputants. He seems to have been genuinely distressed that neither was prepared to yield an inch. They still protested that it was impossible for them to be reconciled. Somewhat reluctantly he gave instructions for the duel, which would be fought to the death, to be proceeded with in accordance with the laws of chivalry.

  The hour of prime, which meant six in the morning at this season, had been set for the spectacle to begin. Henry of Bolingbroke arrived well ahead of the stipulated hour and pitched his pavilion close to the lists. He was accompanied by a lordly train of gentlemen and followers, as well as the essential squires, a surgeon, and a confessor. Norfolk had his tent placed in a thick wood which lay between the entrance to the lists and the walls of the town.

  Promptly at the hour of prime, Bolingbroke came to the lists, riding a white courser with blue and white velvet trappings, on which swans and antelope were embroidered. The Duke of Aumale, who was acting as marshal for the occasion, met him at the barrier.

  “Your name and station?” he demanded.

  “I am Henry of Lancaster, Duke of Hereford, and I come hither to do my endeavors against Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, so as to prove him a traitor, false to God, the king, the kingdom and myself.”

  He then took an oath that his cause was just and true, and was admitted. He proceeded on foot to a chair of green velvet which had been placed at one end of the lists on a cloth of blue and green.

  The king arrived next with a train of great magnificence, most of the peers of the realm being with him and even that visitor on all difficult occasions, seemingly, the Count of St. Pol. The stands by this time were packed with people of substance while the high grounds adjoining were filled with spectators who had to stand. The rabble had come a-foot to revel in this exciting contest between two dukes who would break their lances in the lists and then, if necessary, belabor each other with mace and sword and dagger until one of them was dead. Standing there in sweat-stained jerkins and dusty caps, they looked avidly at the splendid raiment of those who were their betters by accident of birthing. It was a fair day, with a pleasant September sun in the sky and no threat of weather to disturb the prospects of a beautiful fight to the very death.