History of the English People, Volume III | Page 3

his coronation that he
would not only head an army in its march into France but that he would
march further into France than ever his grandfather had done. The
French Court retorted by refusing to acknowledge Henry as king, while
the truce concluded with Richard came at his death legally to an end. In
spite of this defiance however Burgundy remained true to the interests
of Flanders, and Henry clung to a truce which gave him time to
establish his throne. But the influence of the baronial party in England
made peace hard to keep; the Duke of Orleans urged on France to war;
and the hatred of the two peoples broke through the policy of the two
governments. Count Waleran of St. Pol, who had married Richard's
half-sister, put out to sea with a fleet which swept the east coast and
entered the Channel. Pirates from Britanny and Navarre soon swarmed
in the narrow seas, and their ravages were paid back by those of pirates
from the Cinque Ports. A more formidable trouble broke out in the
north. The enmity of France roused as of old the enmity of Scotland;
the Scotch king Robert the Third refused to acknowledge Henry, and
Scotch freebooters cruised along the northern coast.
[Sidenote: Richard's death]
Attack from without woke attack from within the realm. Henry had
shown little taste for bloodshed in his conduct of the revolution. Save
those of the royal councillors whom he found at Bristol no one had
been put to death. Though a deputation of lords with Archbishop
Arundel at its head pressed him to take Richard's life, he steadily
refused, and kept him a prisoner at Pomfret. The judgements against
Gloucester, Warwick, and Arundel were reversed, but the lords who
had appealed the Duke were only punished by the loss of the dignities
which they had received as their reward. Richard's brother and nephew
by the half-blood, the Dukes of Exeter and Surrey, became again Earls
of Huntingdon and Kent. York's son, the Duke of Albemarle, sank once

more into Earl of Rutland. Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, lost his new
Marquisate of Dorset; Spenser lost his Earldom of Gloucester. But in
spite of a stormy scene among the lords in Parliament Henry refused to
exact further punishment; and his real temper was seen in a statute
which forbade all such appeals and left treason to be dealt with by
ordinary process of law. But the times were too rough for mercy such
as this. Clouds no sooner gathered round the new king than the
degraded lords leagued with the Earl of Salisbury and the deposed
Bishop of Carlisle to release Richard and to murder Henry. Betrayed by
Rutland in the spring of 1400, and threatened by the king's march from
London, they fled to Cirencester; but the town was against them, its
burghers killed Kent and Salisbury, and drove out the rest. A terrible
retribution followed. Lord Spenser and the Earl of Huntingdon were
taken and summarily beheaded; thirty more conspirators fell into the
king's hands to meet the same fate. They drew with them in their doom
the wretched prisoner in whose name they had risen. A great council
held after the suppression of the revolt prayed "that if Richard, the late
king, be alive, as some suppose he is, it be ordained that he be well and
securely guarded for the safety of the states of the king and kingdom;
but if he be dead, then that he be openly showed to the people that they
may have knowledge thereof." The ominous words were soon followed
by news of Richard's death in prison. His body was brought to St.
Paul's, Henry himself with the princes of the blood royal bearing the
pall: and the face was left uncovered to meet rumours that the prisoner
had been assassinated by his keeper, Sir Piers Exton.
[Sidenote: Revolt of Wales]
In June Henry marched northward to end the trouble from the Scots.
With their usual policy the Scottish army under the Duke of Albany
withdrew as the English crossed the border, and looked coolly on while
Henry invested the castle of Edinburgh. The wants of his army forced
him in fact to raise the siege; but even success would have been
fruitless, for he was recalled by trouble nearer home. Wales was in full
revolt. The country had been devoted to Richard; and so notorious was
its disaffection to the new line that when Henry's son knelt at his
father's feet to receive a grant of the Principality a shrewd bystander

murmured, "He must conquer it if he will have it." The death of the
fallen king only added to the Welsh disquiet, for in spite of the public
exhibition of his body he was believed to be still alive.