THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR (1337-1453) The root of the Hundred Years' War must be sought in the affairs of Guienne. Already in the time of Edward I. the insecurity of the English position in south-western France was becoming manifest. Philip IV. of France had made serious encroachments upon English territory in that region, and for a moment had come near to its permanent acquisition. The Hundred Years' War was essentially due to the feeling that nothing but an attack upon the French monarchy could save the south-west of France for Eng land. Other grounds of hostility between England and France were quite subsidiary to this, important as they were in themselves. The most obvious was the aid which Philip VI. had given to the exiled David Bruce, when he was driven out of Scotland by Edward and his ally Baliol. The English king replied by welcoming and harbouring Robert of Artois, a cousin whom Philip VI. had ex pelled from France. He also made alliances with several of the dukes and counts of the Netherlands, and with the emperor Louis the Bavarian, obviously with the intention of raising trouble for France on her northern and eastern frontiers.
It was Philip, however, who actually began the war, by declar ing Guienne and the other continental dominions of Edward III. forfeited to the French crown, and sending out a fleet which rav aged the south coast of England in 1337. In return Edward raised a claim to the throne of France, because such a claim was in sev eral ways a useful asset to him both in war and in diplomacy. It was first turned to account when the Flemings, who had scruples about opposing their liege lord, the king of France, found it con venient to discover that, since Edward was the real king and not Philip, their allegiance was due in the same direction whither their commercial interests drew them. Led by the great dema gogue dictator, Jacob van Artevelde, they became the mainstay of the English party in the Netherlands.
Edward's claim—such as it was—rested on the assertion that his mother, Isabella, was nearer of kin to her brother Charles IV., the last king of the main line of the house of Capet, than was Charles's cousin Philip of Valois. The French lawyers ruled that heiresses could not succeed to the crown themselves, but Edward pleaded that they could nevertheless transmit their right to their sons. He found it convenient to forget that the elder brother of Charles IV., King Louis X., had left a daughter, whose son, the king of Navarre, had on this theory a title preferable to his own. This prince, he said, had not been born at the time of his grand father's death, and so lost any rights that might have passed to him had he been alive at that time. A far more fatal bar to Edward's claim than the existence of Charles of Navarre was the fact that the peers of France, when summoned to decide the suc cession question nine years before, had decided that Philip of Valois had the sole valid claim to the crown, and that Edward had then done homage to him for Guienne. If he pleaded that in 1328 he had been the mere tool of his mother and Mort imer, he could be reminded of the unfortunate fact that in 1331, after he had crushed Mortimer, and taken the power into his own hands, he had deliberately renewed his oath to King Philip.
Battle of Sluys.—In the commencement of his continental war Edward took little profit either from his assumption of the French royal title, or from the lengthy list of princes of the Low Coun tries whom he enrolled beneath his banner. His two expensive land-campaigns of 1339 and 134o led to no victories or conquests. The Netherland allies brought large contingents and took high pay from the king, but they showed neither energy nor enthusiasm in his cause. When Philip of Valois refused battle in the open, and confined his operations to defending fortified towns, or stockading himself in entrenched camps, the allies drifted off, leaving the king with his English troops in force too small to accomplish anything. The sole achievement of the early years of the war which was of any profit to Edward or his realm was the great naval triumph of Sluys (June which gave the English the command of the sea for the next twenty years. The French king had an enormous fleet, and with it threatened to invade England. Seeing that he could do nothing on land while his communications with the Low Countries were endangered by the existence of this armada, Edward levied every ship that was to be found, and brought the enemy to action in the Flemish harbour of Sluys. After a day of desperate hand to hand fighting the French fleet was annihilated. Henceforth England was safe from coast raids, could conduct her commerce with Flanders without danger, and could strike without difficulty at any point of the French littoral. As long as he persevered in the attempt to conduct the invasion of the northern frontier of France Edward achieved nothing.
Such schemes were finally abandoned because the king discov ered that his allies were worthless and his money spent. On his return from Flanders in 134o he became involved in an angry controversy with his ministers, whom he accused, quite unjustly, of wasting his revenue and wrecking his campaign thereby. He imprisoned some of them, and wished to try his late chancellor Archbishop Stratford, for embezzlement, in the court of the ex chequer. But the primate contended very vigorously for the right to be tried before his peers, and since the king could get no sub sidies from his parliament till he acknowledged the justice of this claim, he was forced to concede. Stratford was acquitted—the king's thriftlessness and not the chancellor's maladministration had emptied the treasury. Edward drifted on along the path to finan cial ruin till he actually went bankrupt in 1345, when he repudi ated his debts, and ruined several great Italian banking houses, who had been unwise enough to continue lending him money to the last. The Flemings were also hard hit by this collapse of the king's credit, and very naturally lost their enthusiasm for the English alliance. Van Artevelde, its chief advocate, was murdered by his own townsmen in this same year.
War in Brittany. —The second act of the Hundred Years' War, after King Edward had abandoned in despair his idea of invading France from the side of the Netherlands, was fought out in another quarter—the duchy of Brittany. Here a war of succession had broken out in which (oddly enough) Edward took up the cause of the pretender who had male descent, while Philip supported the one who represented a female line—each thus backing the theory of heritage by which his rival claimed the throne of France. By espousing the cause of John of Montfort Edward obtained a good foothold on the flank of France, for many of the Breton fortresses were put into his hands. But he failed to win any de cisive advantage thereby over King Philip. It was not till 1346, when he adopted the new policy of trusting nothing to allies, and striking at the heart of France with a purely English army, that Edward found the fortune of war turning in his favour.
Crecy and Calais.—In this year he landed in Normandy, where the English banner had not been seen since the days of King John, and executed a destructive raid through the duchy, and up the Seine, till he almost reached the gates of Paris. This brought out the king of France against him, with a mighty host, before which Edward retreated northward, apparently intending to retire to Flanders. But after crossing the Somme he halted at Crecy, near Abbeville, and offered battle to the pursuing enemy. Relying on the tactics which had been tried against the Scots at Dupplin and Halidon Hill, he drew up his army with masses of dismounted men-at-arms flanked on either side by archery. This array proved as effective against the disorderly charges of the French noblesse as it had been against the heavy columns of the Scottish pikemen. Fourteen times the squadrons of King Philip came back to the charge; but mowed down by the arrow-shower, they seldom could get to handstrokes with the English knights, and at last rode off the field in disorder. This astonishing victory over fourfold num bers was no mere chivalrous feat of arms; it had the solid result of giving the victors a foothold in northern France. For Edward took his army to beleaguer Calais, and after blockading it for nearly a year forced it to surrender. King Philip, after his experi ence at Crecy, refused to fight again in order to raise the siege. From henceforth the English possessed a secure landing-place in northern France, at the most convenient point possible, immedi ately opposite Dover. They held it for over two hundred years, to their own inestimable advantage in every recurring war.
The years 1345-1347 saw the zenith of King Edward's pros perity; in them fell not only his own triumphs at Crecy and Calais, but a victory at Auberoche in Perigord won by his cousin Henry of Lancaster, which restored many long-lost regions of Guienne to the English suzerainty (Oct. 21, and another and more famous battle in the far north. At Neville's Cross, near Durham, the lords of the Border defeated and captured David Bruce, king of Scotland (Oct. 17, 1346). The loss of their king and the de struction of a fine army took the heart out of the resistance of the Scots, who for many years to come could give their French allies little assistance.
Truce with France. The Black Death.—The renewal of the struggle in France was delayed by the appearance in England of the pestilence now generally known as the "Black Death." Its economic significance has been much exaggerated. It was spo radic in its incidence and heavy as was the mortality which it caused, it did not produce any dislocation of the national life. Its importance lies in the fact that it produced the most famous of mediaeval attempts to regulate wages and prices by law. The Statute of Labourers of 1351 tried, with more success than was once realized to restore the economic conditions which had pre vailed before the pestilence by establishing the rates of wages current in 1347. Despite much evasion, the statute succeeded in its main object and forms an important landmark in the history of English local government.
Renewal of the War with France.—Before the renewal of the war with France, Philip VI. died (135o), and was succeeded by his son John. The war did not entirely cease, but became local and spasmodic. In Brittany the factions which supported the two claimants to the ducal title were so embittered that they never laid down their arms. In 1351 the French noblesse of Picardy, apparently without their master's knowledge or consent, made an attempt to surprise Calais, which was beaten off with some diffi culty by King Edward in person. There was also constant bick ering on the borders of Guienne. But the main forces on both sides were not brought into action till the series of truces ran out in 1355. From that time onward the English took the offensive with great vigour. Edward, prince of Wales, ravaged Languedoc as far as the Mediterranean, while his younger brother John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, executed a less ambitious raid in Picardy and Artois. In the south this campaign marked real progress, not mere objectless plunder, for it was followed by the reconquest of great districts in Perigord and the Agenais, which had been lost to England since the 13th century. A similar double invasion of France led to even greater results in the following year, 1356. While Lancaster landed in Normandy, and with the aid of local rebels occupied the greater part of the peninsula of the Cotentin, the prince of Wales accomplished greater things on the borders of Aquitaine. After executing a great circular sweep through Perigord, Limousin and Berry, he was returning to Bor deaux laden with plunder, when he was intercepted by the king of France near Poitiers.
Battle of Poitiers and Peace of Bretigny. The battle that fol lowed was the most astonishing of all the English victories during the Hundred Years' War. The odds against the prince were far heavier than those of Crecy, but by taking up a strong position and using the national tactics which combined the use of archery and dismounted men-at-arms, the younger Edward not merely beat off his assailants in a long defensive fight, but finally charged out upon them, scattered them, and took King John prisoner (Sept. This fortunate capture put an enormous advantage in the hands of the English; for John, a facile and selfish prince, was ready to buy his freedom by almost any concessions. He signed two successive treaties which gave such advantageous terms to Edward III. that the dauphin Charles, who was acting as regent, and the French states-general refused to confirm them. This drove the English king to put still further pressure on the enemy; in he led out from Calais the largest English army that had been seen during the war, devastated all northern France as far as Reims and the borders of Burgundy, and then—continuing the campaign through the heart of the winter—presented himself before the gates of Paris and ravaged the Ile de France. This brought the regent Charles and his counsellors to the verge of despair; they yielded, and on May 8, 136o, signed an agreement at Bretigny near Chartres, by which nearly all Edward's demands were granted. These preliminaries were ratified by the definitive peace of Calais (Oct. 24, 1360, which brought the first stage of the Hundred Years' War to an end.
By this treaty Edward formally gave up his claim to the French throne, which he had always intended to use merely as an asset for barter, and was to receive in return not only a sum of 3,000,000 gold crowns for King John's personal ransom, but an immense cession of territory which—in southern France at least—almost restored the old boundaries of the time of Henry II. The duchy of Aquitaine was reconstructed, so as to include not only the lands that Edward had inherited, and his recent conquests, but all Poi tou, Limousin, Angoumois, Quercy, Rouergue and Saintonge a full half of France south of the Loire. This vast duchy the English king bestowed not long after on his son Edward, the victor of Poitiers. Northern France, Calais and the county of Guines, and also the isolated county of Ponthieu were ceded to Edward. All these regions were exempted for the future from all feudal dependence upon the French crown.
Submission of David of Scotland.—To complete the picture of the triumph of Edward III. at this culminating point of his reign, it must be mentioned that some time before the peace of Calais he had made terms with Scotland. David Bruce was to cede Rox burgh and Berwick, but to keep the rest of his dominions on condi tion of paying a ransom of Ioo,000 marks. This sum could never be raised, and Edward could always bring pressure to bear on the king of Scots by demanding the instalments. David gave no further trouble ; indeed he became so friendly to England that he offered to proclaim Lionel of Clarence, Edward's second son, as his heir, and would have done so but for the vigorous opposition of his parliament.
English Rule in France.—For a few years after the peace of 136o the political influence of Edward III. in western Europe seemed to be supreme. France, prostrated by the results of the English raids, by peasant revolts, and municipal and baronial turbulence, did not begin to recover strength till the thriftless king John had been succeeded by his capable if unchivalrous son Charles V. (1364). Yet the state of the English dominions on the continent was not satisfactory. Instead of creating a homogeneous Gascon State, which might have grown together into a solid unit, Edward had annexed broad regions which had been for a century and a half united to France. The disaffection of the south-western noblesse led to a renewal of the war before the peace had lasted for a decade. In 1367 the prince of Wales, to maintain English influence in Castile, led an army into that kingdom in support of its exiled ruler Peter "the Cruel," and in the battle of Najera defeated the rival claimant Henry of Trastamara, whose sym pathies were with the French court. The expedition seemed neces sary for the security of Aquitaine, but it led to the imposition of heavy taxation on this region and in 1368 the counts of Armagnac, Perigord and Comminges, appealed to the king of France as their suzerain against the legality of Edward's imposts. The French overlordship had been formally abolished by the treaty of Calais and when Charles V. cited Edward to appear before his parlement to answer the complaints of the counts, he was challenging Eng land to renewed war.
Further Renewal of the War.—War, therefore, broke out again in 1369. Edward III. assumed once more the title of king of France, while Charles V. declared that the whole duchy of Aquitaine had been forfeited for treason and rebellion on the part of its present holder. The second period of war, which was to last till the death of the English king, and for some years of ter, was destined to prove wholly disastrous to England. All the con ditions had changed since 136o. Edward, though only in his fifty-seventh year, was entering into a premature old age. The guidance of the war should have fallen into the hands of his eldest son, the victor of Poitiers and Najera, but the younger Edward had never recovered from the fatigues of his Spanish campaign ; his disease having developed into a form of dropsy, he had became a confirmed invalid and could no longer take the field. The charge of the military operations of the English armies had passed to John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, the king's younger son, whose strategy, in the early years of the renewed war, consisted mainly of attempts to wear down the force of France by devastating raids; he hoped to provoke the enemy to battle by striking at the heart of his realm, but never achieved his purpose. Warned by the disasters of Crecy and Poitiers, Charles V. and his great captain Bertrand du Guesclin would never commit themselves to an engagement in the open field. They let the English invaders pass by, garrisoning the towns but abandoning the countryside. But while the duke was executing useless marches across France, the outlying lands of Aquitaine were falling away, one after the other, to the enemy. The limit of the territory which still remained loyal was ever shrinking, and what was once lost was hardly ever regained. Almost the only reconquest made was that of the city of Limoges, which was stormed in Sept. 137o by the troops of the Black Prince, who rose from his sick-bed to strike his last blow at the rebels. His suc cess did almost as much harm as good to his cause, for the deliberate sack of the city was carried out with such ruthless severity that it roused wild wrath rather than terror in the neigh bouring regions. Next spring the prince returned to England, feeling himself physically unable to administer or defend his duchy any longer.
The greater part of Poitou, Quercy and Rouergue had been lost, and the English cause was everywhere losing ground, when a new danger was developed. Henry of Trastamara, the French ally, had now established himself as king of Castile, and in 1372 a Spanish fleet joined the French, and destroyed off La Rochelle a squadron which was bringing reinforcements for Guienne. From this date onward Franco-Spanish fleets were perpetually to be met not only in the Bay of Biscay but in the Channel; they made the voyage to Bordeaux unsafe, and often executed descents on the shores of Kent, Sussex, Devon and Cornwall. It was to no effect that, in the year after the battle of La Rochelle, Lancaster carried out the last, the most expensive, and the most fruitless of his great raids across France. He marched from Calais to Bor deaux, inflicted great misery on Picardy, Champagne and Berry, and left half his army dead by the way.
This did not prevent Bertrand du Guesclin from expelling from his dominions John of Brittany, the one ally whom King Edward possessed in France, or from pursuing a consistent career of petty conquest in the heart of Aquitaine. By 1374 little was left of the great possessions which the English had held beyond the Channel save Calais, and the coast slip from Bordeaux to Bayonne, which formed the only loyal part of the duchy of Guienne. Next year Edward sued for peace—he failed to obtain it, finding the French terms too hard for acceptance—but a truce at least was signed at Bruges (Jan. '375) which endured till a few weeks before his death.
In the last two years of the reign interest is once more centred on political issues. The ill success of the French war led to an attack on the king's ministers, and in 1376 the opposition found constitutional expression. In the "Good Parliament" of this year the leading ministers were impeached, a council of twelve peers was created to assist and control the king, and an elaborate pro gramme of reform was set out in a series of petitions. The king himself was too infirm to deal with the situation, but the duke of Lancaster handled it competently on his behalf, and prevented any permanent encroachment on the royal power. The political strug gle was complicated by the anti-clerical movement of the time (see LOLLARDS) ; and the duke for a short period allied himself with the critics of the ecclesiastical order and their leader John Wycliffe (q.v.) against the churchmen who formed the centre of opposition to the court party. In the middle of the crisis the old king died (June 21, 1377), his successor Richard son of Edward prince of Wales was a child of nine, and a rough balance between the various parties at court was maintained in the council which was appointed to govern England in his name.
Unfortunately the new government proved wholly unable either to conduct the struggle with France successfully or to pluck up courage to make a humiliating peace—the only wise course before them. The nation was too proud to accept defeat, and persevered in the unhappy attempt to reverse the fortunes of war. An almost unbroken series of petty disasters marked the first three years of King Richard. The worst was the failure of the last great devastating raid which the English launched against France. Thomas of Woodstock, the youngest son of Edward III., took a powerful army to Calais, and marched through Picardy and Champagne, past Orleans, and finally to Rennes in Brittany, but accomplished nothing save the ruin of his own troops and the wasting of a vast sum of money. Meanwhile taxation was heavy, the whole nation was seething with discontent, and—what was worse—no way out of the miserable situation was visible ; min isters and councillors were repeatedly displaced, but their suc cessors always proved equally incompetent to find a remedy.
The Great Revolt of z38r.—This period of murmuring and misery culminated in the Great Revolt of 1381, a phenomenon whose origins must be sought in the most complicated causes, but whose outbreak was due in the main to a eeneral feeline that the realm was being misgoverned. It was actually provoked by the unwise and unjust poll-tax of one shilling a head on all adult persons, voted by the parliament of Northampton in Nov. 1380. The last poll-tax had been carefully graduated on a sliding scale so as to press lightly on the poorest classes ; in this one a shilling for each person had to be exacted from every township, though it was provided that "the strong should help the weak" to a certain extent. But in hundreds of villages there were no "strong" residents, and the poorest cottager had to pay his three groats. The peasantry defended themselves by the simple device of understating the numbers of their families; the returns made it appear that the adult population of England had gone down from to 896,00o since the poll-tax of 1379. Thereupon the government sent out commissioners to revise the returns and exact the missing shillings. Their appearance led to a series of widespread and preconcerted riots, which soon spread over all England from the Wash to the Channel, and in a few days developed into a formidable rebellion. The poll-tax was no more than the spark which fired the mine; it merely provided a good general grievance on which all malcontents could unite. In the districts which took arms two main causes of insurrection may be differentiated; the first and the most widespread was the discon tent of the rural population with the landowners and the Statute of Labourers. Their aim was to abolish all villein-service, and to wring from their lords the commutation of all manorial customs and obligations for a small rent—fourpence an acre was gener ally the sum suggested. But there was a simultaneous outbreak in many urban districts. In Winchester, London, St. Albans, Canterbury, Bury, Beverley, Scarborough and many other places the rioting was as violent as in the countryside. Here the object of the insurgents was in most cases to break down the local oligarchy, who engrossed all municipal office and oppressed the meaner citizens ; but in less numerous instances their end was to win charters from lords (almost always ecclesiastical lords) who had hitherto refused to grant them. But it must not be forgotten that there was also a tinge of purely political discontent about the rising; the insurgents everywhere proclaimed their intention to destroy "traitors," of whom the most generally condemned were the chancellor, Archbishop Sudbury, and the treasurer, Sir Robert Hailes, the two persons most responsible for the levy of the poll-tax. Often the rebels added the name of John of Gaunt to the list, looking upon him as the person ultimately responsible for the mismanagement of the war and the misgovernment of the realm. It must be added that though the leaders of the revolt were for the most part local demagogues, the creatures of the moment, there were among them a few fanatics like the "mad priest of Kent," John Ball, who had long preached socialist doctrines from the old text: When Adam delved and Eve span Who was then the gentleman ? and clamoured for the abolition of all differences of rank, status and property. Though many clerics were found among the rebels, it does not seem that any of them were Wycliffites, or that the reformer's teaching had played any part in exciting the peasantry at this time. No contemporary authority ascribes the rising to the Lollards.
The riots had begun, almost simultaneously in Kent and Essex: from thence they spread through East Anglia and the home counties. In the west and north there were only isolated and sporadic outbreaks, confined to a few turbulent towns. In the countryside the insurrection was accompanied by wholesale burn ings of manor-rolls, the hunting down of unpopular bailiffs and landlords, and a special crusade against the commissioners of the poll-tax and the justices who had been enforcing the Statute of Labourers. There was more arson and blackmailing than murder, though some prominent persons perished, such as the judge, Sir John Cavendish, and the prior of Bury. In many regions the rising was purely disorderly and destitute of organization. This was not, however, the case in Kent and London. The mob which had gathered at Maidstone and Canterbury marched on the capital many thousands strong, headed by a local demagogue named Wat Tyler. whom they had chosen as their cantain • his most prominent lieutenant was the preacher John Ball. They announced their intention of executing all "traitors," seizing the person of the king, and setting up a new government for the realm. The royal council and ministers showed grievous incapacity and cowardice—they made no attempt to raise an army, and opened negotiations with the rebels. While these were in progress the malcontent party in London, headed by three aldermen, opened the gates of the city to Tyler and his horde. They poured in, and, joined by the London mob, sacked John of Gaunt's palace of the Savoy, the Temple, and many other buildings, while the ministers took refuge with the young king in the Tower. It was well known that not only the capital and the neighbouring counties but all eastern England was ablaze, and the council in despair sent out the young king to parley with Tyler at Mile End. The rebels at first demanded no more than that Richard should declare villeinage abolished, and that all feudal dues and services should be commuted for a rent of fourpence an acre. This was readily conceded, and charters were drawn up to that effect and sealed by the king. But, while the meeting was still going on, Tyler went off to the Tower with a part of his horde, entered the for tress unopposed, and murdered the unhappy chancellor, Arch bishop Sudbury, the treasurer, and several victims more. This was only the beginning of massacre. Instead of dispersing with their charters, as did many of the peasants, Tyler and his con federates ran riot through London, burning houses and slaying lawyers, officials, foreign merchants and other unpopular persons. This had the effect of frightening the propertied classes in the city, who had hitherto observed a timid neutrality, and turned public opinion against the insurgents. Next day the rebel leaders again invited the king to a conference, in the open space of Smithfield, and laid before him a programme very different from that propounded at Mile End. Tyler demanded that all differences of rank and status should cease, that all church lands should be confiscated and divided up among the laity, that the game laws should be abolished, and that "no lord should any longer hold lordship except civilly." Apparently he was set on provoking a refusal, and thus getting an excuse for seizing the person of the king. But matters went otherwise than he had expected; when he waxed unmannerly, and unsheathed his dagger to strike one of the royal retinue who had dared to answer him back, the mayor of London, William Walworth, drew his cutlass and cut him down. The mob strung their bows, and were about to shoot down the king and his suite. But Richard—who showed astound ing nerve and presence of mind for a lad of fourteen—cantered up to them and shouting that he would be their chief and captain and would give them their rights. The conference was continued, but, while it was in progress, the mayor brought up the whole civic militia of London, who had taken arms when they saw that the triumph of the rebels meant anarchy, and rescued the king out of the hands of the mob. Seeing such a formidable body of armed men opposed to them, the insurgents dispersed—without their reckless and ready-witted captain they were helpless (June 15, 1381).
This was the turning-point of the rebellion; within a few days the council had collected a considerable army, which marched through Essex scattering such rebel bands as still held together. Kent was pacified at the same time; and Henry Despenser, the warlike bishop of Norwich, made a separate campaign against the East Anglian insurgents, defeating them at the skirmish of North Walsham, and hanging the local leader Geoffrey Lister, who had declared himself "king of the commons" (June 25, 1381). After this there was nothing remaining save to punish the leaders of the revolt; a good many scores of them were hanged, though the vengeance exacted does not seem to have been greater than was justified by the numerous murders and bumings of which they had been guilty; the fanatic Ball was, of course, among the first to suffer. On Aug. 3o, the rough methods of martial law were suspended, and on Dec. 14, the king issued an amnesty to all save certain leaders who had hitherto escaped capture. A parliament had been called in November; it voted that all the charters given by the king at Mile End were null and void, no manumissions or grants of privileges could have been valid without the consent of the estates of the realm, "and for their own parts they would never consent to such, of their own free will nor otherwise, even to save themselves from sudden death." The rebellion, therefore, had failed either to abolish villeinage in the countryside or to end municipal oligarchy in the towns. Nevertheless serfdom continued to decline all through the latter years of the 14th century, and was growing obsolete in the 15th. This, however, was the result of economic causes and of the estab lishment of the legal principle which gave the tenant in villeinage security of tenure so long as he performed the services due from his holdings. The course of English social history was little affected by the events of 1381. The manorial system was already doomed, and the rent-paying tenant farmers, who had begun to appear after the Black Death, gradually superseded the villeins as the normal type of peasantry during the two generations that followed the outbreak that is generally known as "Wat Tyler's rebellion." Richard's Personal Rule.—King Richard, though he had shown such courage and ready resource at Smithfield, was still only a lad of fourteen. The subsequent course of events in his reign was to a great extent determined by his personal character. He was wayward, high-spirited and self-confident. He wished to restore the royal powers which had slipped into the hands of the council and parliament during his minority, and had small doubts of his capacity to restore it. His chosen instruments were two men whom his enemies called his "favourites," though it was absurd to apply the name either to an elderly statesman like Michael de la Pole, who was made chancellor in 1384, or to Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, a young noble of the oldest lineage, who was the king's other confidant. Neither of them was an upstart, and both, the one from his experience and the other from his high station, were persons who might legitimately aspire to a place among the advisers of the king. But Richard was tactless ; he openly flouted his two uncles, John of Gaunt and Thomas of Woodstock, and took no pains to conciliate either the baronage or the commons. His autocratic airs and his ostentatious prefer ence for his confidants—of whom he made the one earl of Suffolk and the other marquess of Dublin—provoked both lords and commons. Pole was impeached on a groundless charge of cor ruption and condemned, but Richard at once pardoned him and restored him to favour. De Vere was banished to Ireland, but at his master's desire omitted to leave the realm. The contemp tuous disregard for the will of parliament which the king displayed brought on him a worse fate than he deserved. His youngest uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, was a designing and ambitious prince who saw his own advantage in embittering the strife between Richard and his parliament. John of Gaunt having departed to Spain, where he was stirring up civil strife in the name of his wife, the heiress of Peter the Cruel, Gloucester put him self at the head of the opposition. Playing the part of the dema gogue, and exaggerating all his nephew's petulant acts and sayings, he declared the constitution in danger, and took arms at the head of a party of peers, the earls of Warwick, Arundel and Notting ham, and Henry, earl of Derby, the son of John of Gaunt, who called themselves the lords appellant, because they were ready to "appeal" Richard's councillors of treason. Public opinion was against the king, and the small army which his confidant De Vere raised under the royal banner was easily scattered by Gloucester's forces at the rout of Radcot Bridge (Dec. 20, 1387). Oxford and Suffolk succeeded in escaping to France, but the king and the rest of his adherents fell into the hands of the lords appellant. They threatened for a moment to depose him, but finally placed him under the control of a council and ministers chosen by them selves, and to put him in a proper state of terror, executed Lord Beauchamp, Sir Robert Tressilian the chief justice, and six or seven more of his chief friends. This was a piece of gratuitous cruelty, for the king, though wayward and unwise, had done nothing to justify such treatment.
To the surprise of the nation Richard took his humiliation quietly. But he was merely biding his time; he had sworn revenge in his heart, but he was ready to wait long for it. For the next nine years he appeared an unexceptionable sovereign, anxious only to conciliate the nation and parliament. He got rid of the ministers imposed upon him by the lords appellant, but replaced them by Bishop VVykeham and other old statesmen against whom no objection could be raised. He disarmed Gloucester by making a close alliance with his elder uncle John of Gaunt, who had been absent in Spain durirg the troubles of 1387-88, and was dis pleased at the violent doings of his brother. His rule was mild and moderate, and he succeeded at last in freeing himself from the incubus of the French war—the source of most of the evils of the time, for it was the heavy taxation required to feed this struggle which embittered all the domestic politics of the realm. After two long truces, which filled the years 1390-95, a definitive peace was at last concluded, by which the English king kept Calais and the coast strip of Guienne, from Bordeaux to Bayonne, which had never been lost to the enemy. To confirm the peace, he married Isabella, the young daughter of Charles VI. (Nov. 1396) ; he had lost his first wife, the excellent Anne of Bohemia, two years before.
Richard and Ireland.—The king seemed firmly seated on his throne—so much so that in 1395 he had found leisure for a long expedition to Ireland, which none of his ancestors had visited since King John. He compelled all the native princes to do him homage, and exercised the royal authority in such a firm manner as had never before been known in the island. But those who looked forward to quiet and prosperous times both for Ireland and for England were destined to be undeceived. In 1397 Richard carried out an extraordinary and unexpected coup d'etat, which he had evidently premeditated for years. Having lived down his un popularity, and made himself many powerful friends, he arrested the duke of Gloucester and sent him over to Calais, where he was secretly murdered. At the same time Gloucester's two chief confederates of 1387, the earls of Arundel and Warwick, were sentenced to death : the former was actually executed, the latter imprisoned for life. The other two lords appellant, Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, and Henry of Bolingbroke, the son of John of Gaunt, were dealt with a year later, when Richard used a private quarrel between them as a justification for their banishment.
Arbitrary Rule of Richard.—Having thus completed his ven geance on those who had slain his friends ten years before, Richard felt himself secure. He might have been so, if he had continued to rule as cautiously as during the time when he was nursing his scheme of revenge. But in the last phase of his reign he alarmed the conservative elements in the kingdom by language which implied that he regarded himself as an absolute king, and by the violence of his action. He declared that all pardons issued since 1387 were invalid, and imposed heavy fines on persons, and even on whole shires, that had given the lords appellant aid. He made huge forced loans, and employed recklessly the abuse of purveyance. He browbeat the judges on the bench, and kept many persons under arrest for indefinite periods without a trial. In 1398 he compelled a parliament at Shrewsbury to entrust its powers to a small committee of ten persons, all creatures of his own. This body he used as his instrument of government, treating its assent as equivalent to that of a whole parliament in session. There seemed to be an end to the constitutional liberties of England.
Henry of Bolingbroke Returns to England.—Such violence, however, speedily brought its own punishment. In 1399 Richard sailed over to Ireland to put down a revolt of the native princes, who had defeated and slain the earl of March, his cousin and their lord-lieutenant. While he was absent Henry of Bolingbroke landed at Ravenspur with a small body of exiles and mercenaries. He pretended that he had merely come to claim the estates and title of his father John of Gaunt, who had died a few months before. The adventurer was at once joined by the earl of Nor thumberland and all the lords of the north ; the army which was called out against him refused to fight, and joined his banner, and in a few days he was master of all England (July . King Richard, hurrying back from Ireland, landed at Milford Haven just in time to learn that the levies raised in his name had dis persed or joined the enemy. He deserted his army by night, and fled into the Welsh mountains, apparently with the intention of collecting fresh adherents from North Wales and Cheshire, the only regions where he was popular. But Bolingbroke bad already seized Chester, and was marching against him at the head of such a large army that the countryside refused to stir. At last Richard surrendered to his cousin at Flint, on Aug. 19, 1399, having previously stipulated that if he consented to abdicate his life should be spared, his adherents pardoned, and an honourable livelihood assured to him.
Henry of Lancaster came to the throne, for all intents and purposes as an elective king ; he had to depend for the future on his ability to conciliate and satisfy the baronage and the commons by his governance. For by his usurpation he had sanctioned the theory that kings can be deposed for incapacity and maladministra tion. If he himself should become unpopular, all the arguments that he had employed against Richard might be turned against himself. The prospect was not reassuring; his revenue was small, and parliament would certainly murmur if he tried to increase it. The late king was not without partisans and admirers. There was a considerable chance that the French king might declare war—nominally to avenge his son-in-law, really to win Calais and Bordeaux. Of the partisans who had placed Henry on the throne many were greedy, and some were wholly unreasonable. But he trusted to his tact and his energy, and cheerfully under took the task of ruling as a constitutional king—the friend of the parliament that had placed him on the throne.
Rebellion of the Earls.—The problem proved more weary and exhausting than he had suspected. From the very first his reign was a time of war, foreign and domestic, of murmuring, and of humiliating shifts and devices. Henry commenced his career by granting the adherents of Richard II. their lives, after they had been first declared guilty of treason and had been deprived of the titles, lands and endowments given them by the late king. Their reply to this very modified show of mercy was to engage in a des perate conspiracy against him. If they had waited till his popu larity had waned, they might have had some chance of success, but in anger and resentment they struck too soon. The earls of Kent and Huntingdon, close kinsmen of Richard on his mother's side, the earl of Salisbury—a noted Lollard—and the lords Des penser and Lumley took arms at midwinter (Jan. 4, 1400) and attempted to seize the king at Windsor. They captured the castle, but Henry escaped, raised the levies of London against them, and beat them into the west. Kent and Salisbury were slain at Ciren cester, the others captured and executed with many of their fol lowers. Their rebellion sealed the fate of the master in whose cause they had risen. Henry and his counsellors were determined that there should be no further use made of the name of the "law ful king," and Richard was deliberately murdered by privation— insufficient clothing, food and warmth—in his dungeon at Ponte fract Castle (Feb. 17, 1400) . It is impossible not to pity his fate. He had been wayward, unwise and occasionally revengeful ; but his provocation had been great, and if few tyrants have used more violent and offensive language, few have committed such a small list of actual crimes. It was a curious commentary on Hen• ry's policy, that Richard, even when dead, did not cease to give him trouble. Rumour got abroad, owing to the secrecy of his end, that he was not really dead, and an impostor long lived at the Scottish court who claimed to be the missing king, and was recognized as Richard by many malcontents who wished to be deceived.
Welsh Rising Under Owen Glendower.—The rising of the earls was only the first and least dangerous of the trials of Henry IV. Only a few months after their death a rebellion of a far more for midable sort broke out in Wales—where Richard II. had been popular, and the house of March, his natural heirs, held large estates. The leader was a gentleman named Owen Glendower, who had the blood of the ancient kings of Gwynedd in his veins. Originally he had taken to the hills as a mere outlaw, in conse quence of a quarrel with one of the marcher barons; but of ter many small successes he began to be recognized as a national leader by his countrymen, and proclaimed himself prince of Wales. The king marched against him in person in 1400 and 14o1, but Glendower showed himself a master of guerrilla warfare ; he refused battle, and defied pursuit in his mountains, till the stores of the English army were exhausted and Henry was forced to retire. His prestige as a general was shaken, and his treasury exhausted by these fruitless irregular campaigns.
War with Scotland.—External troubles continued to multiply during Henry's earlier years. The Scots had declared war, and there was every sign that the French would soon follow suit, for the king's failure to crush Glendower had destroyed his reputation for capacity. The rebel achieved his greatest success in June 1402, when he surprised and routed the whole levy of the marcher lords at Bryn G'las, between Pilleth and Knighton, capturing (among many other prisoners) Sir Edmund Mortimer, the uncle and guardian of the young earl of March, whom all malcontents regarded as the rightful monarch of England. A few months after the king's fortune seemed to take a turn for the better, when the Scots were defeated at Homildon Hill by the earl of Northumber land and his son Henry Percy, the celebrated "Hotspur." But this victory was to be the prelude to new dangers : half the nobil ity of Scotland had been captured in the battle, and Northumber land intended to fill his coffers with their ransoms ; but the king looked upon them as state prisoners and announced his intention of taking them out of the earl's hands. Northumberland was a greedy and unscrupulous Border chief, who regarded himself as entitled to exact whatever he chose from his master, because he had been the first to join him at his landing in 1399, and had lent him a consistent support ever since. He had been amply rewarded by grants of land and money, but was not yet satisfied. In indignation at the first refusal that he had met, the earl con spired with Glendower to raise rebellion in the name of the right ful heirs of King Richard, the house of March. The third party in the plot was Sir Edmund Mortimer, Glendower's captive, who was easily persuaded to join a movement for the aggrandizement of his own family. He married Owen's daughter, and became his trusted lieutenant. Northumberland also enlisted the services of his chief Scottish prisoner, the earl of Douglas, who promised him aid from beyond Tweed.
Insurrection in the North and West.—In July 1403 came the crisis of Henry's reign ; while Glendower burst into South Wales, and overran the whole countryside as far as Cardiff and Carmar then, the Percies raised their banner in the North. The old earl set himself to subdue Yorkshire ; his son Hotspur and the earl of Douglas marched south and opened communication with the Welsh. All Cheshire, a district always faithful to the name of Richard II., rose in their favour, and they were joined by Hot spur's uncle, the earl of Worcester. They then advanced towards Shrewsbury, where they hoped that Glendower might meet them. But long ere the Welsh could appear, King Henry was on the spot ; he brought the rebels to action at Hately Field, just outside the gates of Shrewsbury, and inflicted on them a complete defeat, in which his young son Henry of Monmouth first won his reputa tion as a fighting man. Hotspur was slain, Worcester taken and beheaded, Douglas desperately wounded (July 23, 1403). On receiving this disastrous news the earl of Northumberland sued for pardon ; the king was unwise enough to grant it, merely ishing him by fining him and taking all his castles out of his hands.
War with France Renewed.—By winning the battle of Shrews bury Henry IV. had saved his crown, but his troubles were yet far from an end. The long-expected breach with France had at last come to pass; the duke of Orleans, without any declaration of war, had entered Guienne, while a French fleet attacked the south-west of England, and burnt Plymouth. Even more menac ing to the king's prosperity was the news that another squadron had appeared off the coast of Wales, and landed stores and suc cours for Glendower, who had now conquered the whole princi pality save a few isolated fortresses. The drain of money to meet this combination of foreign war and domestic rebellion was more than the king's exchequer could meet. He was driven into uncon stitutional ways of raising money, which recalled all the misdoings of his predecessor. Hence came a series of rancorous quarrels with his parliaments, which grew more disloyal and clamorous at every new session. The cry was raised that the taxes were heavy not because of the French or Welsh wars, but because Henry lavished his money on favourites and unworthy dependents. He was forced to bow before the storm, though the charge had small foundation: the greater part of his household was dismissed, and the war taxes were paid not to his treasurer but to a financial committee appointed by parliament.
Rising of 14o5 in the North.—It was not till 1405 that the worst of Henry's troubles came to an end. This year saw the last of the convulsions that threatened to overturn him,—a rising in the North headed by the old earl of Northumberland, by Richard Scrope, archbishop of York, and by Thomas Mowbray the earl marshal. It might have proved even more dangerous than the rebellion of 1403, if Henry's unscrupulous general Ralph, earl of Westmorland, had not lured Scrope and Mowbray to a conference, and then arrested them under circumstances of the vilest treach ery. He handed them over to the king, who beheaded them both outside the gate of York, without any proper trial before their peers. Northumberland thereupon fled to Scotland without fur ther fighting. He remained in exile till January 1408, when he made a final attempt to raise rebellion in the North, and was defeated and slain at the battle of Bramham Moor.
Suppression of the Welsh Rising.—Long before this last-named fight Henry's fortunes had begun to mend. Glendower was at last checked by the king's eldest son, Henry of Monmouth, who had been given charge of the Welsh war. Even when French aid was sent him, the rebel chief proved unable to maintain his grip on South Wales. He was beaten out of it in 1406, and Aberystwyth Castle, where his garrison made a desperate defence for two years, became the southern limit of his dominions. In the end of 1408 Prince Henry captured this place, and six weeks later Harlech, the greatest stronghold of the rebels, where Sir Edmund Mortimer, Owen's son-in-law and most trusted captain, held out till he died of starvation. From this time onwards the Welsh rebellion gradu ally died down, till Owen relapsed into the position from which he had started, that of a guerrilla chief maintaining a predatory war fare in the mountains. From 1409 onward he ceased to be a public danger to the realm, yet so great was his cunning and activ ity that he was never caught.
End of the French and Scottish Wars.—The French war died down about the same time that the Welsh rebellion became insig nificant. Louis of Orleans, the head of the French war party, was murdered by his cousin John, duke of Burgundy, in November 1407, and after his death the French turned from the struggle with England to indulge in furious civil wars. Calais, Bordeaux and Bayonne still remained safe under the English banner. The Scottish war had ended even earlier. Prince James, the heir of Robert III., had been captured at sea in 1406. From 1408 till his death in 1413 Henry was freed from all the dangers which had beset his earlier years. But from 1409 onwards he became a mere invalid, only able to assert himself in rare intervals of conva lescence and the domestic politics of his last five years have little interest or significance.
The new king had everything in his favour; his father had borne the odium of usurpation and fought down the forces of anarchy. The memory of Richard II. had been forgotten ; the young earl of March had grown up into the most harmless and unenterprising of men, and the nation seemed satisfied with the new dynasty, whose first sovereign had shown himself, under much provocation, the most moderate and accommodating of constitutional monarchs.
Henry V. on his bade farewell to the faults of his youth. He seems to have felt a genuine regret for the unfilial con duct which had vexed his father's last years, and showed a careful determination to turn over a new leaf and give his enemies no scope for criticism. From the first he showed a sober and grave bearin; he reconciled himself to all his enemies, gave up his youthful follies, and became a model king according to the ideas of his day. There is no doubt that he had a strong sense of moral responsibility, and that he was sincerely pious. But his piety inspired him to redouble the persecution of the unfortunate Lol lards (q.v.) and his sense of moral responsibility did not prevent him from taking the utmost advantage of the civil wars of his unhappy neighbours of France.
Battle of Agincourt.—After preliminary negotiations Henry sailed for France in August 1415, with an army compact but not very numerous. On the eve of his departure he detected and quelled a plot framed by his cousin, Richard, earl of Cambridge, Lord Scrope and Sir Thomas Grey, a kinsman of the Percies. They had planned to raise a rebellion in the name of the earl of March, in whose cause Wales and the North were to have been called to arms. But March himself refused to stir, and betrayed them to the king, who promptly beheaded them, and set sail five days later. He landed near the mouth of the Seine, and corn menced his campaign by besieging and capturing Harfleur, which the Orleanists made no attempt to.succour. But such a large num ber of his troops perished in the trenches by a pestilential disorder, that he found himself too weak to march on Paris, and took his way to Calais across Picardy, hoping, as it seems, to lure the French to battle by exposing his small army to attack. The plan was hazardous, for the Orleanists turned out in great numbers and almost cut him off in the marshes of the Somme. When he had struggled across them, and was half-way to Calais, the enemy beset him in the fields of Agincourt (Oct. 25, 1415). Here Henry vindicated his military reputation by winning a victory even more surprising than those of Crecy and Poitiers, for he was outnum bered in an even greater proportion than the two Edwards had been in 1346 and 1356, and had to take the offensive instead of being attacked in a strong position. The heavily armoured French noblesse, embogged in miry meadows, proved helpless before the lightly equipped English archery. The slaughter in their ranks was terrible, and the young duke of Orleans, the head of the pre dominant faction of the moment, was taken prisoner with many great nobles. However, so exhausted was the victorious army that Henry merely led it back to Calais, without attempting any thing more in this year. The sole tangible asset of the campaign was the possession of Harfleur, the gate of Normandy, a second Calais in its advantages when future invasions were taken in hand. The moral effects were more important. The Orleanist party was shaken in its power; the rival Burgundian faction became more inclined to commit itself to the English cause, and the terror of the English arms weighed heavily upon both.
Conquest of Normandy.—In July 1417 Henry began his second invasion of France. He landed at the mouth of the Seine with a powerful army of 17,000 men, and aimed from the first at the steady and gradual conquest of Normandy. This he was able to accomplish without any interference from the government at Paris, for the constable Armagnac, who had succeeded the captive Orleans at the head of the anti-Burgundian party, had no troops to spare. He was engaged in a separate campaign with Henry's ally John the Fearless, and left Normandy to shift for itself. One of ter another all the towns of the duchy were reduced, save Rouen, the siege of which, as the hardest task, King Henry postponed till the rest of the countryside was in his hands. He sat down to be siege it in 1418, and was detained before its walls for many months, for the citizens made an admirable defence. Meanwhile a change had taken place in the domestic politics of France ; the Burgundians seized Paris in May 1418; the constable Armagnac and many of his partisans were massacred, and John the Fearless got possession of the person of the mad Charles VI., and became the responsible ruler of France. He had then to choose between buying off his English allies by great concessions, or taking up the position of champion of French interests. He selected the latter role, broke with Henry, and tried to relieve Rouen. But all his efforts were foiled, and the Norman capital surrendered, com pletely starved out, on Jan. 19, 1419. On this Burgundy resolved to open negotiations with Henry ; he wished to free his hands for an attack on his domestic enemies, who had rallied beyond the Loire under the leadership of the dauphin Charles—from whom the party, previously known first as Orleanists and then as Armagnacs, gets for the future the name of the "Dauphinois." The English king, however, seeing the manifest advantage of his position, tried to drive too hard a bargain; he demanded the old boundaries of 136o, with his new conquest of Normandy, the hand of the princess Catherine, and a great sum of ready money. Bur gundy dared not concede so much, under pain of alienating all his more patriotic supporters. He broke off the conference of Meulan, and tried to patch up a peace with the dauphin, in order to unite all Frenchmen against the foreign invader. This laudable intention was wrecked by the treachery of the young heir to the French throne ; on the bridge of Montereau Charles deliberately mur dered the suppliant duke, as he knelt to do homage, thinking thereby that he would make an end of the Burgundian party (Sept. 9, Treaty of Troyes.—This abominable deed gave northern France for twenty years to an English master. The young duke of Bur gundy, Philip the Good, and his supporters in Paris and the north, were so incensed with the dauphin's cruel treachery that they resolved that he should never inherit his father's crown. They proffered peace to King Henry, and offered to recognize his claim to the French throne, on condition that he should marry the princess Catherine and guarantee the constitutional liberties of the realm. The insane Charles VI. should keep nominal possession of the royal title till his death, but meanwhile the Burgundians would do homage to Henry as "heir of France." These terms were wel comed by the English king, and ratified at the treaty of Troyes (May 21, 1420). Henry married the princess Catherine, received the oaths of Duke Philip and his partisans, and started forth to conquer the Dauphinois at the head of an army of which half was composed of Burgundian levies. Paris, Picardy, Champagne, and indeed the greater part of France north of the Loire, acknow ledged him as their sovereign.
Henry had only two years longer to live ; they were spent in incessant and successful campaigning against the partisans of his brother-in-law, the dauphin Charles; by a long series of sieges the partisans of that worthless prince were evicted from all their northern strongholds. They fought long and bitterly, nor was this to be marvelled at, for Henry had a custom of executing as trai tors all who withstood him, and those who had once defied him did well to fight to the last gasp, in order to avoid the block or the halter. In the longest and most desperate of these sieges, that of Meaux (Oct. 1421–March 1422), the king contracted a dysenteric ailment which he could never shake off. He survived for a few months, but died, worn out by his incessant campaign ing, on Aug. 31, 1422, leaving the crown of England and the heir ship of France to his only child Henry of Windsor, an infant less than two years old.
Few sovereigns in history have accomplished such a disastrous life's work as this much-admired prince. If he had not been a soldier of the first ability and a diplomatist of the most unscrupu lous sort, he could never have advanced so far towards his ill chosen goal, the conquest of France. His genius and the dauphin's murderous act of folly at Montereau conspired to make the incredible almost possible. Indeed, if Henry had lived five years longer, he would probably have carried his arms to the Mediter ranean, and have united France and England in uneasy union for some short space of time. It is clear that they could not have been held together after his death, for none but a king of exceptional powers could have resisted their natural impulse to break apart. As it was, Henry had accomplished just enough to tempt his coun trymen to persevere for nearly thirty years in the endeavour to complete the task he had begun. France was ruined for a genera tion, England was exhausted by her effort, and (what was worse) her governing classes learnt in the long and pitiless war lessons of demoralization which were to bear fruit in the ensuing struggle of the two Roses.
Henry VI.—The guardianship of the infant Henry VI. fell to his two uncles, John of Bedford and Humphrey of Gloucester, the two surviving brothers of the late king. Bedford became regent in France, and took over the heritage of the war, in which he was vigorously aided by the young Philip Burgundy, whose sister he soon after married. Almost his first duty was to bury the insane Charles VI., who only survived his son-in-law for a few months, and to proclaim his little nephew king of France under the name of Henry II. Gloucester, however, had personal charge of the child, who was to be reared in England ; he had also hoped to become pro tector of the realm, and to use the position for his own private interests, for he was a selfish and ambitious prince. But the council refused to let him assume the full powers of a regent, and bound him with many checks and restrictions, because they were well aware of his character. The tiresome and monotonous domestic history of England during the next twenty years consisted of little else than quarrels between Gloucester and the lords of the council, of whom the chief was the duke's half-uncle Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, the last to survive of all the sons of John of Gaunt. The duke and the bishop were both unscrupulous; but the churchman, with all his faults, was a patriotic statesman, while Gloucester cared far more for his own private ends than for the welfare of the realm.
Bedford's Rule in France.—Meanwhile Bedford, a capable gen eral and a wise administrator, was doing his best to carry out the task which the dying Henry V. had laid upon him, by crushing the dauphin, or Charles VII. as he now called himself since his father's death. As long as the Burgundian party lent the regent their aid, the limits of the land still unsubdued continued to shrink, though the process was slow. Two considerable victories, Cravant (1423) and Verneuil (1424), marked the early years of Bedford's cam paigning; at each, it may be noted, a very large proportion of his army was composed of Burgundian auxiliaries. The alliance was threatened by the reckless marriage of Gloucester with Jacqueline, the heiress of Hainault (q.v.) whose lands were needed for the rounding off of the Burgundian territories. But Bedford was able to pacify the duke by disassociating himself from his brother's schemes, and the alliance was maintained until the English posi tion in France had been radically altered by the French revival which followed the appearance of Joan of Arc.
Her brief career belongs to French rather than to English his tory. But it affected the whole future of the war. With the relief of Orleans (1429) the tide turned, and the English began to lose their hold upon the north of France. French victories at Jarqeau and Beaugency (1429) were early signs of the change, and the coronation of Charles VII. was a direct challenge to the French supporters of Henry VI. The movement was not seriously checked by the capture of Joan by the Burgundian allies of England in 143o, and a final English victory became impossible when the duke of Burgundy in 1435 made terms with Charles VII. by the treaty of Arras.
Truce with France.—Bedford died at Rouen immediately after ward, and with him died the best hope of the English party in France, for he had been well loved by the Burgundians, and many had adhered to the cause of Henry VI. solely because of their personal attachment to him. Yet the next eight years of the war were in some respects the most astonishing period of its inter minable length. The English fought out the losing game with a wonderful obstinacy. Though every town that they held was eager to revolt, and though they were hopelessly outnumbered in every quarter, they kept a tight grip on the greater part of Normandy, and on their old domain in the Bordelais and about Bayonne. They lost nearly all their outlying possessions, but still made head against the generals of Charles VII. in these two regions. The leaders of this period of the war were the duke of York, and the aged Lord Talbot, afterwards earl of Shrewsbury. The struggle only ceased in when the English council, in which a peace party had at last been formed, concluded a two year truce with King Charles, which they hoped to turn into a permanent treaty, on the condition that their king should retain what he held in Normandy and Guienne, but sign away his claim to the French crown, and relinquish the few places outside the two duchies which were still in his power. To mark the reconcilia tion of the two powers Henry VI. was betrothed to the French king's niece, Margaret of Anjou. The two years' truce was re peatedly prorogued, and lasted till 1449, but no definitive treaty was ever concluded, owing to the bad faith with which both parties kept their promises.
Supremacy of the Beauforts in England.—The government in England was now in the hands of the faction which Bishop Beau fort had originally led, for after long struggles the churchman had at last crushed his nephew Humphrey. King Henry, though he had reached the age of 23 at the time of his marriage, counted for nothing. He was a pious young man, simple to the verge of im becility; a little later he developed actual insanity, the heritage of his grandfather Charles VI. He put full confidence in Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, and the duke of Suffolk; and his energetic wife, Margaret of Anjou, was equally devoted to these two ministers, and soon came to share their unpopularity.
The truce with France had offended the natural pride of the nation, which still refused to own itself beaten. The evacuation of the French fortresses in Maine and elsewhere, which was the price paid for the suspension of arms, was bitterly resented. Indeed the garrisons had to be threatened with the use of force before they would quit their strongholds. A violent clamour was raised against the ministers responsible for the truce, the dukes of Suffolk and Somerset, and the duke of Gloucester emerged from his retire ment to head the agitation. But he was arrested by the order of the queen and the ministers at the parliament of Bury, and five days later he died suddenly in prison. Six weeks afterwards the death of Bishop Henry Beaufort removed the last important sur vivor from the generation of Henry IV. The truce with France lasted two years after the death of Duke Humphrey. In July the French king invaded Normandy, and in a few months the duchy was lost. The final blow came when a small army of relief sent over from England was absolutely exterminated by the French at the battle of Formigny (April 15, 145o). Somerset, who had retired into Caen, surrendered two months later after a feeble defence, and the English power in northern France came to an end.
Jack Cade's Rebellion.—Even before this final disaster the indignation felt against Suffolk and Somerset had raised violent disturbances at home. Suffolk was impeached, and although al lowed to sail for France before his trial, he was intercepted and murdered on the sea. But, though Suffolk was gone, Somerset yet survived, and their partisans still engrossed the confidence of the king. To clear out the government, and punish those respon sible for the late disasters, the commons of Kent rose in insurrec tion under a captain who called himself John Mortimer, though his real name seems to have been John Cade. He was a soldier of fortune who had served in the French wars, and claimed to be in the confidence of the duke of York, the person to whom the eyes of all who hated Somerset and the present regime were now directed.
Cade was not a social reformer, like his predecessor Wat Tyler, with whom he has often been compared, but a politician. Though he called himself "John Amend-all," and promised to put down abuses of every kind, the main part of the programme which he issued was intended to appeal to national sentiment, not to class feeling. Whether he was the tool of other and more highly placed malcontents, or whether he was simply a ready-witted adventurer playing his own game, it is hard to determine. His first success was marvellous; he defeated the king's troops, made a triumphant entry into London and held the city for two days. He beheaded Lord Saye, the treasurer, and several other unpopular persons, and might have continued his dictatorship for some time if the Kentish mob that followed him had not fallen to general pillage and arson. This led to the same results that had been seen in Tyler's day. The propertied classes in London took arms to suppress anarchy, and beat the insurgents out of the city. Cade, striving to keep up the rising outside the walls, was killed in a skirmish a month later and his bands dispersed.
Richard, Duke of York, Heads the Opposition.—But the troubles of England were only just beginning; the protest against the misgovernment of Somerset and the rest of the confidants of the king and queen was now taken up by a more important per sonage than the adventurer Cade. Richard, duke of York, the heir to the claims of the house of Mortimer—his mother was the sister of the last earl of March—now placed himself at the head of the opposition. He had plausible grounds for doing so; though he had distinguished himself in the French wars, and was, since the death of Humphrey of Gloucester, the first prince of the blood royal, he had been ignored and flouted by the king's ministers, who had sent him into a kind of honourable banishment as lord-lieu tenant of Ireland, and had forbidden him to re-enter the realm. When, in defiance of this mandate, he came home and announced his intention of impeaching Somerset, he took the first step which was to lead to the Wars of the Roses.
Yet he was a cautious and in the main a well-intentioned prince. and the extreme moderation of his original demands seems to prove that he did not at first aim at the crown. He merely re quired that Somerset and his friends should be dismissed from office and made to answer for their misgovernment. Though he backed his demands by armed demonstration—twice calling out his friends and retainers to support his policy—he carefully re frained for five long years from actual violence. Indeed in 1452 he consented to abandon his protests, and to lend his aid to the other party for a great national object, the recovery of Guienne. For a moment the quarrel of York and Somerset was suspended, and the last English army that crossed the seas during the Hun dred Years' War landed in Guienne, and for a time swept all before it. But on July 1 7, 14J3 John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, and the greater part of his Anglo-Gascon host were cut to pieces at the hard-fought battle of Castillon. Bordeaux, though left to defend itself, held out for eighty days after Talbot's defeat and death, and then made its final submission to the French. The long struggle was over, and England now retained nothing of her old transmarine possessions save Calais and the Channel The ambition of Henry V. had finally cost her the long-loyal Guienne, as well as all the ephemeral conquests of his own sword.
The last crowning disaster of the administration of the favour ites of Henry VI. put an end to the chance that a way out of domestic strife might be found in the vigorous prosecution of the French war. For the next twenty years the battles of England were to be fought on her own soil, and between her own sons. It was a righteous punishment for her interference in the unnatural strife of Orleanists and Burgundians that the struggle between York and Lancaster was to be as bitter and as bloody as that between the two French factions.