or take to sheep farming, which wants few hands.
Parliament went on saying: “Oh, ye villeins,
you shall work for the old wages; oh, ye landowners, you shall not pay higher ones.” But it was not a bit of good. There was a great deal of work to be done; there were very few men to do it, and those men asked and received higher wages. For a year or two it seemed as if society would come to an end.
Then, slowly, things got a little better, but,
as you shall hear, there was a fierce rebellion of the peasants in the next reign. Edward
Ill’s last years were unhappy. His son, the
Black Prince, governed Aquitaine, and was beguiled by a Spanish scoundrel, called King
Pedro, to interfere in a Spanish civil war.
Wherever the Prince and his archers fought they won, but his army suffered dreadfully from the climate. A new King of France took the opportunity to renew the great war (1369)
His captains had been learning tactics from their English foes by the simple process of being beaten till they understood how to hit back, and slowly and patiently began to win back castles and frontier provinces in Aquitaine. The Black Prince, sore stricken with fever, turned every now and then, like a dying leopard, and tore his victorious foes, but in vain. He died in 1376; and his father, Xing
Edward, worn out with hard battles and also with luxurious living between compaigns,
died in the next year. The heir was little
Richard, son of the Black Prince, aged eleven.
Two greedy and unscrupulous uncles, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Thomas,
Duke of Gloucester, were glaring at the boy and at each other. So the great reign closed in gloom and fear for the future.
CHAPTER VI
THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES; RICHARD II TO RICHARD III, 1377-1485.
As we go on in English history each period seems to have a character of its own. The twelfth century, in spite of Stephen’s reign,
is hopeful; the thirteenth is glorious, rich, and fairly peaceful. In the fourteenth begins a decline, of which it is difficult to explain all the causes; both men and classes have begun to snarl at each other. In the fifteenth, the period now before us, they are going to bite each other; the century seems to be a failure all round.
The nation at large was by no means rotten;
but men’s sense of right and wrong had been corrupted by the French and Scottish wars.
Too much fighting is as bad for men as too little. Also they were losing their faith in the Church, which had ceased to be the protector of the poor and thought mainly of keeping its enormous riches safe. Men were soonto lose their faith in the Crown as well, and even in the Law. In a rude state of society,
when the barons were again becoming too rich and too powerful, and the Crown becoming too poor and too weak, the excellent system of government by Parliament, and even the excellent law courts, were of very little use;
the barons used both for their own ends, and they kept armed men to enforce their views.
In those days armies were only raised for particular campaigns, and, when peace came,
were disbanded; and the soldiers, who had perhaps been fighting for ten years in France,
were not likely to be peaceful when they came home. So they used to attach themselves to some great lord or baron who could employ them in his private quarrels. The numbers of the barons were now very small, but each was proportionately more powerful; and a great man might perhaps hold four or five earldoms.
The younger sons of the kings held many of these, and were often the worst rowdies at the fashionable game of “ beggar-my-neighbour”
and “king of the castle.” In my schoolboy days, when we were asked what we knew of any particular baron in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, we usually thought it safe to answer:
“He was the King’s uncle and was put to death.” Most of the King’s uncles and cousinswere put to death, and more of them deserved to be.
As regards the mere “politics” and wars of the hundred and eight years from the accession of Richard II to the death of Richard III,
there is little that you need remembpr.
Richard II had many good qualities, but he was rash and hot-headed; while he was a boy his uncles and some four or five other great barons were always trying to rule in his name; when they found this difficult, they conspired against him and killed his best friends.
When he came of age they despised him because he kept the peace with France, whereas they and their plundering followers had enjoyed the war. Richard, however, was no coward, and when he was not yet fifteen he had a fine opportunity of showing his pluck. In
1381 the question of the wages of farm labourers, which had been so much upset by the
Black Death in 1348, led to a fearful outbreak called the “Peasant Revolt” (1381) all over the richest lands of England. It was headed by one Wat Tyler. London was occupied by the rebels, and King and courtiers had to fly to the Tower. Again the ship of state seemed in danger of foundering; but the] peasants lacked real leadership. Young King Richard II (he was then fourteen) showed the greatest pluck
Tyler was killed and the revolt was put down,
not without a good deal of hanging. When that was over, men’s eyes began to open to the fact that new conditions of life had begun.
“Villeinage” was dead; the only labourers left were free labourers, who naturally would bargain for the highest wages they could get.
Also, much land had ceased to be ploughed and had gone back into pasture for sheep;
for wool increased in value every year, and sheep need few hands to guard them.
But for the rest of his reign the King was either chafing against his uncles and their friends, or else planning schemes of vengeance against them. In 1397, after long waiting,
he struck swiftly at the leaders of the barons,
killing his uncle Thomas and banishing his cousin Henry of Lancaster (son of John of
Gaunt, Edward Ill’s third son). Then he got
Parliament to pass certain acts which gave him almost absolute power, and all sober men,
who reverenced both the Crown and the “Constitution” (which, roughly speaking, means government through Parliament), stood aghast at this.
In 1399 Henry of Lancaster returned, accused
Richard of misgovernment, deposed him, and perhaps had him murdered. He then took the crown, and for fourteen years tried to ruleEngland as King Henry IV, but without much success. The very barons who had aided him to usurp the throne said he did not reward them enough; they rose against him and a sort of civil war began in 1403 and smouldered on for three or four years. Henry was not a bad fellow personally; he was devoted to the Church,
and the Church supported him; so did the House of Commons, which got much power in his reign. But to keep order, the first task of a
King, was too hard a task for him. He died in 1413. His son Henry V, equally devoted to the Church, was a much stronger and cleverer man; there was no civil war in his short reign.
But this was mainly because he put all his energies into renewing the war with France.
This really was wicked: whatever right
Edward III might have had to the French crown, Henry Y could have none, for he was not the best living heir of Edward III. The
Earl of March was the best living heir of
Edward III, for he was descended from Edward’s second son, King Henry V only from his third; but March had been quietly shoved aside when Henry IV seized the English crown.
However, France was in a worse condition than England: her King Charles VI was mad,
and her great nobles were tearing each other and their beautiful country to pieces. Henry
V saw his opportunity and used it without mercy or remorse. He probably thought that such a war would at least draw away all the baronial rowdies and their followers from
England, and it did. Henry set about the business of ma
king war in the most practical manner. We owe him one great blessing: he was the first King since the Conquest who began to build a Royal fleet, as distinguished from the fleet of the Cinque Ports (which he also kept going); he was the first to use guns on a large scale, both on his ships and with his land army. Guns and gunpowder had been known before the middle of the fourteenth century, but so far had been little used. Their use explains Henry’s success in his sieges in
France, for with big guns you can batter down stone walls pretty quickly, whereas Edward
III had spent eight months over the taking of
Calais, which he only won by starving it out.
The French towns defended themselves gallantly, but before his death Henry had managed to conquer all Normandy, and had even reached the River Loire. But his great feat was the glorious Battle of Agincourt, won against enormous odds in 1415. Finally in
1420 he got hold of the poor, mad Charles VI,
entered Paris with him and compelled him to conclude the Treaty of Troyes, by which he,
Henry, should succeed to the French crown and marry the French Princess Katharine.
Then, in the flower of his age, and leaving to an infant of nine months old the succession to both crowns, he died in 1422.
There was one good “King’s uncle,” John,
Duke of Bedford, who did his best to keep these two crowns on his nephew’s head; but there were other uncles and cousins who were not so good. Little Henry VI grew up into a gentle, pious, tender-hearted man, who hated war, hated wicked courtiers, loved only learning and learned men, founded the greatest school in the world (Eton), and shut his eyes to the fact that England was getting utterly out of hand. Bedford just managed to hold down Northern France (which had always hated the Treaty of 1420) until his own death in 1425; after that all Frenchmen rallied to their natural King, Charles VII. The noble
French “Maid of God,” Joan of Arc, came to lead her people and inspired them with the belief that God would fight for them if they would fight bravely for their country. She was just a peasant-girl of no education, but of beautiful life and well able to stand hardship;
she believed that the Saints appeared to her and urged her to deliver France. The French soldiers came to believe it too, and she led them
to battle dressed in full armour and riding astride of a white horse. She allowed no bad language to be used in the army: “If you must swear, Marshal,” she said to one of the proudest
French nobles, “you may swear by your stick,
but by nothing else.” The English caught her and burned her as a witch, but she lives in the hearts of all good Frenchmen (and Englishmen) as a saint and a heroine until this day. Step by step the English were driven back till all Normandy, all Aquitaine were lost,
and in 1453 nothing remained to us but Calais.
King Henry YI was not sorry; by this time he knew how wicked his father’s attack upon
France had been. But the fighting instinct of
Englishmen was desperately sore; defeat after such victories seemed unbearable. And, while the barons’ quarrels round the King’s tottering throne became shriller and shriller, there were but too many men in England ready to fight somebody, they did not much care whom so long as there was plunder at the end. Henry’s wife, Margaret of Anjou, a fiery, cruel woman,
ignored her gentle husband and governed in his name. She had already made herself the partisan of one of the two baronial factions,
and had struck down the King’s uncle, the
Duke of Gloucester. Her favourite minister,
the Duke of Suffolk, was actually caught andbeheaded by common sailors on board a King’s ship as he was flying to France. What should we say if a lot of British sailors now caught and beheaded Mr. Asquith on board the
Dreadnought? In the same year, 1450, there was a fearful insurrection in Kent, led by a scamp called Jack Cade, who marched into
London and beheaded several more of the King’s ministers. Law and order were utterly at an end.
The Duke of York, who was now the best living heir of Edward III, at length took up the cudgels against the House of Lancaster. |
There was civil war for some six years (1455- |
61), and battle after battle. The horror of it all had driven the good King, on two occasions, out of his mind. It was called the war of the House of York against the House of
Lancaster, of the “White Rose” against the i
“Red Rose”; really, it was the war of some i dozen savage barons on one side against another I
dozen on the other. Each of them had a little army of archers and spearmen; each had perhaps the grudges of a century to pay off upon some rival. The war hardly affected the towns at all, and stopped trade very little,
and even the country districts, except in the j actual presence of the armies, seem to have suffered little. The growth of wool, at any
rate, and with it the increase of riches, went on as fast as ever. “The King ought to put a sheep instead of a ship on his coins,” was a common saying of the day. Of course the coasts were utterly undefended, and pirates of all sorts had a happy time in the Channel.
If any line of division can be discovered in the country we may say roughly that the North and West were Lancastrian, the South and
East (then the richest counties) Yorkist. At last Henry VI was deposed, Queen Margaret took flight and Edward, Duke of York, became
King as Edward IV. He was a thoroughly bad man, being cruel, vindictive and, except in warfare, lazy. But Margaret had been vindictive too, and, as regards cruelty, there was little to choose between the parties; after every battle the leaders of the vanquished side were put to death almost as a matter of course.
But, just as Henry IV had quarrelled with the barons who had crowned him, so did Edward
IV quarrel with his “Kingmaker” and best friend, the Earl of Warwick. Warwick thereupon deposed Edward and took poor Henry
VI, who had been an ill-used prisoner in the
Tower of London, and put him back on the throne again. It was only a six months’ restoration (1470 — 1), for Edward returned, slew
Warwick in battle, slew Henry’s only son after the battle, slew all the Lancastrian leaders he could catch, and finally had King Henry murdered in the Tower. After this he “reigned more fiercely than before”; he struck down his own brother George, Duke of Clarence; he employed spies, tortured his prisoners, and hardly called Parliament at all; he took what taxes he pleased from the rich. But he kept order very little better than Henry VI had done.
Once he thought he would play the part of a “fine old English King,” so he led a great army across to France in 1475, but there allowed himself to be bribed by the cunning
Louis XI to go home again without firing a shot. At his death in 1483 his brother, the hunchback Richard, seized the crown, and murdered Edward’s two sons (Edward V and
Richard, Duke of York) in the Tower. Richard
III was a fierce, vigorous villain, and had, in two years and a half, succeeded in murdering a good many nobles, both of the Lancastrian and Yorkist parties.
Finally, all the sober English leaders who still kept their heads began to send secret messages to a famous exiled gentleman, Henry Tudor,
Earl of Richmond, who was descended through his mother from the House of Lancaster, begging him to come over from France and upsetthe tyrant. He was to marry Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth, and thus to unite the red and white roses. Henry landed in South
Wales with a very small army, which increased as he marched eastward. He met King
Richard, defeated and slew him at Bos worth in Leicestershire, 1485. Then he advanced to London and was received with joy and relief as King Henry VII.
Apart from the politics and wars of this dreary period there are one or two things to be noticed of much greater interest for us. Every age is only preparation for the next, and the seeds of many of the great “awakenings” of the sixteenth century were sowe
d in the fifteenth.
First, of the religious awakening. We had long been accustomed to growl at the riches of the Church, but, till the end of Edward Ill’s reign, no one had questioned its spiritual powers. No one had doubted that priests could really pardon sin. Men hated the Pope,
but no one had yet doubted that he was the
“Head of the Church” any more than they had doubted that every priest performed a miracle every time he consecrated the Holy Sacrament.
Few had even questioned that by payment of money to Rome you could buy salvation. But the popes, when they got back to Rome in 1415after the great “Schism,” were little more than Italian bishops, mainly occupied with wars against their neighbours. No doubt their bark was still terrible, but what about their bite? Had they, people wondered, any teeth left to bite with?
At the end of Edward Ill’s reign the great
English scholar, John Wyclif, began to ask questions about all these things, and to argue that the favourite doctrines of the Roman
Church were all comparatively new, that they were not part of Christ’s teaching, and could not be found in the Bible at all. He published an English translation of the Bible; hitherto men had only a Latin version of it, and the
Church did not encourage laymen to read it.
He also founded an order of “poor priests,”
who were to go about preaching simple
Christianity.
The English bishops were absolutely terrified,
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 833