Period II. Cooperation of Richard in Good Government

A period of true parliamentary growth and government began with Richard's personal rule in 1389. The cliques of the nobles were broken up. The king, with a moderation which has puzzled students of his character, forsook favorites and extravagance, and ruled constitutionally through his ministers and with the advice of parliament. It is possible that Richard was playing a shrewd game, intending to lull into a feeling of security the leaders of the parliaments of 1386 and 1387, in order to strike them down later with greater certainty of success. However this may be, for eight years he governed as a constitutional king. Finances were ably managed, taxation was light and fairly proportioned, and important measures were passed, touching commerce, the church, and the nobles.

In developing his commercial policy Richard was at first inclined to encourage aliens to trade in England, as Edward III had done. But the towns, particularly London, had protested against the privileges granted to aliens, inasmuch as the weaving industry was making progress in England, and English artisans were already working up wool into cloths at home. Therefore, in 1392, parliament passed a law, providing that no merchant stranger alien should buy or sell to another alien, nor sell to retail" within the kingdom. This reversed the policy of Edward III, and proved a great discouragement to the alien trade. On the other hand, it stimulated native English industry, and made possible the control of the internal and retail trade of England by Englishmen.

No less important were the statutes dealing with the church. Already had parliament declared that the pope should not control benefices nor aliens hold benefices in England, and that no Englishman should appeal from the king's courts to the pope. But so persistent had been the efforts of the clergy to evade these statutes (of provisors and Pr munire) and so willing had the king been to neglect them, that up to this time they had never been really enforced. In 1390 a second Statute of Provisors was passed, which not only prohibited any one from accepting a benefice at the hands of the pope, but also declared that the pope could have no control over any appointment to benefices whatever. In 1393 a second Statute of Pr munire declared that the pope could not annul any judgment of the king's court, hear any appeals from England, excommunicate bishops or any other of the king's liege people," or send sentences of excommunication, bulls, instruments or anything else whatsoever which touched the king, against him, his crown, and his regality."

In the third place, parliament sought to abolish a practice which had become widespread among the nobility, and was at the same time so deep-rooted, that, as events were to show, it could not be eradicated by legislation. This practice was the maintenance, by the great lords, of bodies of retainers, often sufficient in number to form almost a petty army. The practice had become common after 1290, when the statute Quia Emptores forbade subinfeudation. To supply the place of the sub-tenants, who by their tenure had been obliged to do military services for their lords, the dukes and earls had gathered about them men whom they hired to fight their battles. These men wore the lord's livery, and were fed at his expense; at this time and in the next century their brawls were frequent sources of trouble. Attempts had been made to prevent this practice, by Edward III, by the Good Parliament, and now by the parliament of Richard II in 1390, but ineffectively, and the evil was to be swept away only during the wars of the next century.

Period III. Deposition of Richard II

From 1389 to 1397 Richard ruled with moderation and prudence, avoiding extravagance and war, and aiding in the passage of laws useful to the nation at large. In 1394 Anne of Bohemia died. Two years afterward Richard, having entered into a truce with France, solemnized the occasion by marrying a mere child, the daughter of the French king. From that time his character changed. Believing in the existence of a plot of the nobility and remembering the indignities heaped upon him in 1386 and 1387, he began to take vengeance on his enemies. The parliament of 1397 was elected under the direct influence of the king and cannot be deemed an independent body. Through its aid the earl of Arundel was impeached and executed; the duke of Gloucester, exiled to Calais, died there, murdered, as has been proved without question, by command of Richard; Warwick was exiled to the Isle of Man; and others were accused and outlawed? The parliament of the next year (1398) was equally a packed body, and its chief act was to grant the king a duty on wool and hides for life. When this had been done, the king became independent of parliament and practically absolute.

This policy aroused the opposition of a party that found a leader in Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, one of the late Lords Appellant. At first Bolingbroke had found favor with Richard, his cousin, who had made him duke of Hereford. But in 1398 he had been banished by the king without apparent cause. This act, coupled with Richard's seizure of the lands of John of Gaunt, after the latter's death in 1399, turned Bolingbroke, now duke of Lancaster, against the king. When, therefore, in 1399, Richard unwisely left England to drive back the Celts, who were encroaching on the English settlements in Ireland, Henry landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire and quickly gathered the malcontents about him.' Richard, returning from Ireland, was captured at Conway Castle, in Wales, and realizing that the lords and the nation were against him, abdicated his throne. In his act of resignation Richard gave up all his prerogatives. In the presence of parliament the act of deposition was read, and twenty-three reasons were given why the throne should be declared vacant. This done, Henry of Lancaster claimed the crown in a speech delivered in English, and parliament recognized the claim.1 In so doing it passed by the earl of March, the man with the better hereditary right, and gave the title to the stronger claimant. Henry of Lancaster became Henry IV. This victory of parliament was really a victory for the nobility. The nation had little to say in the matter.

Character of Richards Reign

The end of the century brings us to a significant turning-point in the development of England. The most powerful men in the country were the great lords possessing retinues, fortified castles, family traditions and names, controlling, government and warring with each other, a reconstructed and artificial feudal class. But more important for the future of England were the towns, already entering upon a new commercial and artisan life, the freeholders, already the yeomanry of England, and the villeins, well advanced in their progress toward freedom. Of all these classes the reign of Richard gives us a glimpse, showing them in a state of transformation. The factional quarrels of the nobility foreshadowed the death grapple of the Wars of the Roses ; the growth of the towns made possible a native English commerce in the hands of the Merchant Adventurers ; the rise of the yeomanry and the release of the villeins from bondage looked forward to a new agriculture and a new system of labor, and gave to the nation a new social class, no longer bound to the soil and unprotected by the courts. The reign of Richard shows that England was in the midst of a silent revolution.