2б
Constitutional IIistoru.
[сплр.
Short reign
of peace.
Conspiracy
of the earls,
January
1400.
Its failure
and punish-
ment.
neither king nor archbishop, parliament nor synod, had thought
it necessary to wait for the formal act or to hesitate in removing
archbishop Walden from his hazardous exaltation. Archbishop1
Arundel had taken his place in both the assemblies, had
crowned the king and had been restored to his temporalities
long before the papal letter could have reached England. This
conduct seemed to promise that, however strenuously orthodox
Henry might be, his relations to Rome would not be marked
by servility, and that the house of Lancaster would act up to
the spirit of the constitution in both Church and State.
304. The reign of peace lasted for little more than a month.
Henry, perhaps, had done either too much or too little. An.
eastern potentate would have struck off the heads of the
Hollands and extinguished the house of Mortimer, regardless
of the infant innocence of the little earl of March. But Henry
does not seem to have cast a thought on Mortimer, and the
ready acquiescence of the Hollands in his assumption of the
crown either deceived him or left him without a plea for
Ciushing them. Yet he had in the two degraded dukes, in
Salisbury and in le Despenser, four very determined enemies ;
and his cousin Rutland was not beyond suspicion. Whether
the degraded lords were goaded into desperate action by their
own fears, or whether they really miscalculated national opinion
so far as to hope for Richard’s restoration, cannot be deter-
mined. They formed a plot to seize the king on Twelfth
Night, and replace Richard on the throne. The conspiracy
was discovered, whether betrayed by Rutland or suspected by
his father, and foiled. The earls of Kent and Salisbury were
seized and murdered by the mob at Cirencester ; lord Ie De-
spenser fled and fell a victim to the hereditary hatred of the
citizens of Bristol ; the earl of Huntingdon was taken in Essex,
and notwithstanding the intervention of the countess of
Hereford, Henry’s mother-in-law and Arundel’s sister, was
Rogerus scilicet tunc per papain in possessione juris, et dominas Thomas,
quia necJum per papain res>titutus, per seculi taιnen. potestatein in posses-
sione facti, quae praevaluit in omnibus, quia sibi soli crucis Cantuariensis,
eibi a dicto Kogero remissae, paruit in omnibus delatio ; ’ Chron. p. 37.
Difficulties.
XVIII.]
27
beheaded at Pleshey ɪ. Lord Lumley was taken and killed at
Cirencester. Of these cruelties Henry was no wise guilty, but
be did not punish the murderers, and shortly afterwards in-
creased the number of victims by more legal executions at
Oxford and London. Sir Thomas Blount, Sir Benedict Shelley,
and twenty-seven or twenty-eight others were executed at
Oxford; Bichard Magdalene and John Feriby clerks, Thomas
Schevele and Bernard Brocas knights, in London2. The failure Fate of
~ . Rifihftrd1
of the attempt sealed the fate of Richard; whether he was
murdered at Pomfret, or starved himself to death, or escaped
to live in Scotland an idiot and a prisoner, he had already
quitted the stage of history3. We may believe that Henry
spoke the truth when he declared that he had no hand in his
death. A solemn funeral was celebrated for the unhappy
victim at Langley on the 14th of February; and although the
king rewarded the services of the men and women of Ciren-
cester with an annual present4 of venison, he proclaimed on
the 24th that accused persons were not again to be beheaded
without trial5.
305. Meanwhile the political difficulties which overshadowed Tiieyoar
the whole reign were looming at no great distance. France ι⅛eign
would not recognise the new king, or accept his proposals for dlfficultιeβ∙
an alliance by marriage, and demanded the restoration of
Richard’s child-widow. The Scots were stirring at the insti-
gation of the French; the Welsh were preparing to rise under
Owen Glendower. Invasion was imminent. Richard’s treasures,
if they had ever existed, had been spent or stolen. The year
1400 was a very busy year for Henry. In the summer he Invasionof
marched north to insist on the homage of Scotland ° : he
1 Ann. Henr. p. 327. Hardyng says that the countess ordered the exe-
cu2ti'ξl ; P∙ 3≡6∙
Otterbourne, p. 228 ; Ann. Henr. pp. 329, 330 ; Leland, Coll. ii. 484 ;
Adam of Usk, p. 41.
On the evidence about Richard’s death see Webb, in Archaeol. xx.
2°2 sq. ; Amyot, ⅛itj. pp. 424-442.
5 Rymer, viii. 150.
Ib. viii. 124 ; Ordinances, i. 107 sq., 113.
Otterbourne, p. 230 ; Ann. Henr. p. 333 ; Eulog. iii. 387 ; Wals, ii,
th ; Chron. Giles, p. 20.