A Child's History of England

by Dickens, Charles

  because they were of high station; for, the King's mother, who had

  to pass through their camp at Blackheath, on her way to her young

  son, lying for safety in the Tower of London, had merely to kiss a

  few dirty-faced rough-bearded men who were noisily fond of royalty,

  and so got away in perfect safety. Next day the whole mass marched

  on to London Bridge.

  There was a drawbridge in the middle, which WILLIAM WALWORTH the

  Mayor caused to be raised to prevent their coming into the city;

  but they soon terrified the citizens into lowering it again, and

  spread themselves, with great uproar, over the streets. They broke

  open the prisons; they burned the papers in Lambeth Palace; they

  destroyed the DUKE OF LANCASTER'S Palace, the Savoy, in the Strand,

  said to be the most beautiful and splendid in England; they set

  fire to the books and documents in the Temple; and made a great

  riot. Many of these outrages were committed in drunkenness; since

  those citizens, who had well-filled cellars, were only too glad to

  throw them open to save the rest of their property; but even the

  drunken rioters were very careful to steal nothing. They were so

  angry with one man, who was seen to take a silver cup at the Savoy

  Palace, and put it in his breast, that they drowned him in the

  river, cup and all.

  The young King had been taken out to treat with them before they

  committed these excesses; but, he and the people about him were so

  frightened by the riotous shouts, that they got back to the Tower

  in the best way they could. This made the insurgents bolder; so

  they went on rioting away, striking off the heads of those who did

  not, at a moment's notice, declare for King Richard and the people;

  and killing as many of the unpopular persons whom they supposed to

  be their enemies as they could by any means lay hold of. In this

  manner they passed one very violent day, and then proclamation was

  made that the King would meet them at Mile-end, and grant their

  requests.

  The rioters went to Mile-end to the number of sixty thousand, and

  the King met them there, and to the King the rioters peaceably

  proposed four conditions. First, that neither they, nor their

  children, nor any coming after them, should be made slaves any

  more. Secondly, that the rent of land should be fixed at a certain

  price in money, instead of being paid in service. Thirdly, that

  they should have liberty to buy and sell in all markets and public

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  places, like other free men. Fourthly, that they should be

  pardoned for past offences. Heaven knows, there was nothing very

  unreasonable in these proposals! The young King deceitfully

  pretended to think so, and kept thirty clerks up, all night,

  writing out a charter accordingly.

  Now, Wat Tyler himself wanted more than this. He wanted the entire

  abolition of the forest laws. He was not at Mile-end with the

  rest, but, while that meeting was being held, broke into the Tower

  of London and slew the archbishop and the treasurer, for whose

  heads the people had cried out loudly the day before. He and his

  men even thrust their swords into the bed of the Princess of Wales

  while the Princess was in it, to make certain that none of their

  enemies were concealed there.

  So, Wat and his men still continued armed, and rode about the city.

  Next morning, the King with a small train of some sixty gentlemen -

  among whom was WALWORTH the Mayor - rode into Smithfield, and saw

  Wat and his people at a little distance. Says Wat to his men,

  'There is the King. I will go speak with him, and tell him what we

  want.'

  Straightway Wat rode up to him, and began to talk. 'King,' says

  Wat, 'dost thou see all my men there?'

  'Ah,' says the King. 'Why?'

  'Because,' says Wat, 'they are all at my command, and have sworn to

  do whatever I bid them.'

  Some declared afterwards that as Wat said this, he laid his hand on

  the King's bridle. Others declared that he was seen to play with

  his own dagger. I think, myself, that he just spoke to the King

  like a rough, angry man as he was, and did nothing more. At any

  rate he was expecting no attack, and preparing for no resistance,

  when Walworth the Mayor did the not very valiant deed of drawing a

  short sword and stabbing him in the throat. He dropped from his

  horse, and one of the King's people speedily finished him. So fell

  Wat Tyler. Fawners and flatterers made a mighty triumph of it, and

  set up a cry which will occasionally find an echo to this day. But

  Wat was a hard-working man, who had suffered much, and had been

  foully outraged; and it is probable that he was a man of a much

  higher nature and a much braver spirit than any of the parasites

  who exulted then, or have exulted since, over his defeat.

  Seeing Wat down, his men immediately bent their bows to avenge his

  fall. If the young King had not had presence of mind at that

  dangerous moment, both he and the Mayor to boot, might have

  followed Tyler pretty fast. But the King riding up to the crowd,

  cried out that Tyler was a traitor, and that he would be their

  leader. They were so taken by surprise, that they set up a great

  shouting, and followed the boy until he was met at Islington by a

  large body of soldiers.

  The end of this rising was the then usual end. As soon as the King

  found himself safe, he unsaid all he had said, and undid all he had

  done; some fifteen hundred of the rioters were tried (mostly in

  Essex) with great rigour, and executed with great cruelty. Many of

  them were hanged on gibbets, and left there as a terror to the

  country people; and, because their miserable friends took some of

  the bodies down to bury, the King ordered the rest to be chained up

  - which was the beginning of the barbarous custom of hanging in

  chains. The King's falsehood in this business makes such a pitiful

  figure, that I think Wat Tyler appears in history as beyond

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  comparison the truer and more respectable man of the two.

  Richard was now sixteen years of age, and married Anne of Bohemia,

  an excellent princess, who was called 'the good Queen Anne.' She

  deserved a better husband; for the King had been fawned and

  flattered into a treacherous, wasteful, dissolute, bad young man.

  There were two Popes at this time (as if one were not enough!), and

  their quarrels involved Europe in a great deal of trouble.

  Scotland was still troublesome too; and at home there was much

  jealousy and distrust, and plotting and counter-plotting, because

  the King feared the ambition of his relations, and particularly of

  his uncle, the Duke of Lancaster, and the duke had his party

  against the King, and the King had his party against the duke. Nor

  were these home troubles lessened when the duke went to Castile to

  urge his claim to the crown of that kingdom; for then the Duke of

  Gloucester, another of Richard's uncles, o
pposed him, and

  influenced the Parliament to demand the dismissal of the King's

  favourite ministers. The King said in reply, that he would not for

  such men dismiss the meanest servant in his kitchen. But, it had

  begun to signify little what a King said when a Parliament was

  determined; so Richard was at last obliged to give way, and to

  agree to another Government of the kingdom, under a commission of

  fourteen nobles, for a year. His uncle of Gloucester was at the

  head of this commission, and, in fact, appointed everybody

  composing it.

  Having done all this, the King declared as soon as he saw an

  opportunity that he had never meant to do it, and that it was all

  illegal; and he got the judges secretly to sign a declaration to

  that effect. The secret oozed out directly, and was carried to the

  Duke of Gloucester. The Duke of Gloucester, at the head of forty

  thousand men, met the King on his entering into London to enforce

  his authority; the King was helpless against him; his favourites

  and ministers were impeached and were mercilessly executed. Among

  them were two men whom the people regarded with very different

  feelings; one, Robert Tresilian, Chief Justice, who was hated for

  having made what was called 'the bloody circuit' to try the

  rioters; the other, Sir Simon Burley, an honourable knight, who had

  been the dear friend of the Black Prince, and the governor and

  guardian of the King. For this gentleman's life the good Queen

  even begged of Gloucester on her knees; but Gloucester (with or

  without reason) feared and hated him, and replied, that if she

  valued her husband's crown, she had better beg no more. All this

  was done under what was called by some the wonderful - and by

  others, with better reason, the merciless - Parliament.

  But Gloucester's power was not to last for ever. He held it for

  only a year longer; in which year the famous battle of Otterbourne,

  sung in the old ballad of Chevy Chase, was fought. When the year

  was out, the King, turning suddenly to Gloucester, in the midst of

  a great council said, 'Uncle, how old am I?' 'Your highness,'

  returned the Duke, 'is in your twenty-second year.' 'Am I so

  much?' said the King; 'then I will manage my own affairs! I am

  much obliged to you, my good lords, for your past services, but I

  need them no more.' He followed this up, by appointing a new

  Chancellor and a new Treasurer, and announced to the people that he

  had resumed the Government. He held it for eight years without

  opposition. Through all that time, he kept his determination to

  revenge himself some day upon his uncle Gloucester, in his own

  breast.

  At last the good Queen died, and then the King, desiring to take a

  second wife, proposed to his council that he should marry Isabella,

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  of France, the daughter of Charles the Sixth: who, the French

  courtiers said (as the English courtiers had said of Richard), was

  a marvel of beauty and wit, and quite a phenomenon - of seven years

  old. The council were divided about this marriage, but it took

  place. It secured peace between England and France for a quarter

  of a century; but it was strongly opposed to the prejudices of the

  English people. The Duke of Gloucester, who was anxious to take

  the occasion of making himself popular, declaimed against it

  loudly, and this at length decided the King to execute the

  vengeance he had been nursing so long.

  He went with a gay company to the Duke of Gloucester's house,

  Pleshey Castle, in Essex, where the Duke, suspecting nothing, came

  out into the court-yard to receive his royal visitor. While the

  King conversed in a friendly manner with the Duchess, the Duke was

  quietly seized, hurried away, shipped for Calais, and lodged in the

  castle there. His friends, the Earls of Arundel and Warwick, were

  taken in the same treacherous manner, and confined to their

  castles. A few days after, at Nottingham, they were impeached of

  high treason. The Earl of Arundel was condemned and beheaded, and

  the Earl of Warwick was banished. Then, a writ was sent by a

  messenger to the Governor of Calais, requiring him to send the Duke

  of Gloucester over to be tried. In three days he returned an

  answer that he could not do that, because the Duke of Gloucester

  had died in prison. The Duke was declared a traitor, his property

  was confiscated to the King, a real or pretended confession he had

  made in prison to one of the Justices of the Common Pleas was

  produced against him, and there was an end of the matter. How the

  unfortunate duke died, very few cared to know. Whether he really

  died naturally; whether he killed himself; whether, by the King's

  order, he was strangled, or smothered between two beds (as a

  serving-man of the Governor's named Hall, did afterwards declare),

  cannot be discovered. There is not much doubt that he was killed,

  somehow or other, by his nephew's orders. Among the most active

  nobles in these proceedings were the King's cousin, Henry

  Bolingbroke, whom the King had made Duke of Hereford to smooth down

  the old family quarrels, and some others: who had in the familyplotting

  times done just such acts themselves as they now condemned

  in the duke. They seem to have been a corrupt set of men; but such

  men were easily found about the court in such days.

  The people murmured at all this, and were still very sore about the

  French marriage. The nobles saw how little the King cared for law,

  and how crafty he was, and began to be somewhat afraid for

  themselves. The King's life was a life of continued feasting and

  excess; his retinue, down to the meanest servants, were dressed in

  the most costly manner, and caroused at his tables, it is related,

  to the number of ten thousand persons every day. He himself,

  surrounded by a body of ten thousand archers, and enriched by a

  duty on wool which the Commons had granted him for life, saw no

  danger of ever being otherwise than powerful and absolute, and was

  as fierce and haughty as a King could be.

  He had two of his old enemies left, in the persons of the Dukes of

  Hereford and Norfolk. Sparing these no more than the others, he

  tampered with the Duke of Hereford until he got him to declare

  before the Council that the Duke of Norfolk had lately held some

  treasonable talk with him, as he was riding near Brentford; and

  that he had told him, among other things, that he could not believe

  the King's oath - which nobody could, I should think. For this

  treachery he obtained a pardon, and the Duke of Norfolk was

  summoned to appear and defend himself. As he denied the charge and

  said his accuser was a liar and a traitor, both noblemen, according

  to the manner of those times, were held in custody, and the truth

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  was ordered to be decided by wager of battle at Coventry. This

  wager of battle meant that whosoever won the combat was to be

  considered in
the right; which nonsense meant in effect, that no

  strong man could ever be wrong. A great holiday was made; a great

  crowd assembled, with much parade and show; and the two combatants

  were about to rush at each other with their lances, when the King,

  sitting in a pavilion to see fair, threw down the truncheon he

  carried in his hand, and forbade the battle. The Duke of Hereford

  was to be banished for ten years, and the Duke of Norfolk was to be

  banished for life. So said the King. The Duke of Hereford went to

  France, and went no farther. The Duke of Norfolk made a pilgrimage

  to the Holy Land, and afterwards died at Venice of a broken heart.

  Faster and fiercer, after this, the King went on in his career.

  The Duke of Lancaster, who was the father of the Duke of Hereford,

  died soon after the departure of his son; and, the King, although

  he had solemnly granted to that son leave to inherit his father's

  property, if it should come to him during his banishment,

  immediately seized it all, like a robber. The judges were so

  afraid of him, that they disgraced themselves by declaring this

  theft to be just and lawful. His avarice knew no bounds. He

  outlawed seventeen counties at once, on a frivolous pretence,

  merely to raise money by way of fines for misconduct. In short, he

  did as many dishonest things as he could; and cared so little for

  the discontent of his subjects - though even the spaniel favourites

  began to whisper to him that there was such a thing as discontent

  afloat - that he took that time, of all others, for leaving England

  and making an expedition against the Irish.

  He was scarcely gone, leaving the DUKE OF YORK Regent in his

  absence, when his cousin, Henry of Hereford, came over from France

  to claim the rights of which he had been so monstrously deprived.

  He was immediately joined by the two great Earls of Northumberland

  and Westmoreland; and his uncle, the Regent, finding the King's

  cause unpopular, and the disinclination of the army to act against

  Henry, very strong, withdrew with the Royal forces towards Bristol.

  Henry, at the head of an army, came from Yorkshire (where he had

  landed) to London and followed him. They joined their forces - how

  they brought that about, is not distinctly understood - and

  proceeded to Bristol Castle, whither three noblemen had taken the

  young Queen. The castle surrendering, they presently put those