ESTIMATES OF THE ENGLISH KINGS.
XIL—RICHARD II.
TO the dotage of a once great King succeeded the minority of a boy in the eleventh year of his age, and to a reign which. (notwithstanding its melancholy close) had been, as a whole, one of the most brilliant in our annals, succeeded a period which musb. be pronounced as one of the least reputable of any as respects. the conduct of both King and People. The contemporary pet, Gower, having before his eyes the actual state of England, thus. contrasts with it the true ideal of government :— " For all reason wolde this; That unto him which the head is, The members bincome shall bowe : And he shulde eke their truth alowe With all his herte, and make them chere, For good counsell is good to here. Although a man be wise hymselve, Net is the wisdom more of twelve."
Never has there been a time when this wise counsel of the poet's was more needed or more completely disregarded. Nowhere its English history is there a period in which we are so compelled by justice to look with almost equal disapprobation on the conduct of all political parties, and at no time has the national character appeared to so little advantage. The King would listen to no wise counsel, the great men would pay no reverence to his person, and the mass of society was turbulent and anarchic to an extent almost unpre-- cedent in this country. The political morality of all seemed to- have degenerated, and the disgraceful vicissitudes of violence and subservience in both King and People should always prevent any student of our history from declaiming against the conduct of other nations, and dogmatically pronouncing it an indisputabte proof of their incapacity for self-government or for any settled government at all.
The beat excuse for the conduct of Englishmen at this epoche is the unfortunate circumstances under which this reign com- menced, and under the influence of which the relations of King and People were first formed. A child succeeded to- t% great reputation, but also to an inheritance of disaster ; a People to the recent memory of triumphant success, and to the present shame of helpless and ignominious discomfiture. Richard was the grandson and son of the heroes of Crecy and Poictiers, and he succeeded to the government of a country whose shores were devastated by the hostile fleets of that people to the sove- reignty of whom his predecessor had laid claim, and a large part of whom he had actually succeeded in temporarily reducing under- his authority. The elder Edward had died in discreditable obscurity,. the younger had preceded him to the grave broken down by disease- and disappointment. The nation, one third of whose popula- tion had been swept away by pestilence, and which had been drained of its best blood by the demands of military service, and straitened, if not impoverished, by frequent exactions of money, was demoralized by long-continued and latterly disastrous warfare, and had lost its self-respect, as well as all respect for constituted authorities. The old standard of faith had been shaken by the preaching of the Lollards, without the firm establishment of a new one, and the mind of the nation at large had been, leavened rather with a distrust of all government and all social institutions than with any higher conceptions of right and order. The religious movement had taken a social turn, and the lower orders were awakening not only to a sense of their state of servi- tude, but to an apprehension of the spirit of Christianity wholly at. • case. His character was not one which it is easy to explain the Archbishop of York, and the keys of the Exchequer from the satisfactorily, for the seeming contradictions in it are such that we Bishop of Iiereford, while the Council was dismissed. The are almost left (with our scanty materials) to a doubtful alternative Revolution was .complete, and thenceforward Richard was King of styling him either an energetic tyrant or a weak voluptary. in fact as well as in name. The course he adopted was eminently In fact, he had in him the elements of both, combined characteristic. He did not begin by avenging himself on his late with a fitful and inconstant sense of right. He was the tutors, nor did he seek to inaugurate his new-born independence victim of early dictation ; he had been goaded by it into by any display of excessive extravagance or arbitrary notions. lie an intolerance of all advice and all restraint. He was had exhibited his real views, indeed, on the last point pretty made the involuntary mouthpiece of one ambitious man after clearly during his first abortive attempt at emancipation, by the another, each claiming his obedience on the ground of supe- unconstitutional opinions he extorted from the judges. But he was nor age and hereditary position in the State, and none corn- now studiously moderate and conciliatory. Seemingly satisfied manding it by the respect inspired by their own character, until with the possession of real power, he showed no present disposition he hated all but young men, believed in the wisdom of young to abuse it. It is acknowledged by all parties that his govern- men only, and thought that the only security for the devotion of meat for several years was nearly unexceptionable. Could the such to himself was the obligation under which they laboured of past have been obliterated from his memory, and had not the owing their great position to his favour alone. The Houses of degeneration of his disposition during these early years been of too Parliament, which might have mitigated the mismanagement of permanent a character, his reign might have had a very different his advisers, instead of merely controlling the Administration and termination. But he could not forget, and he would not forgive, restraining the extravagant tastes of the young King by a constant the indignities to which he had been subjected, and the death or but moderate supervision, and at the same time upholding the banishment and degradation of his favourites. His hatred was royal dignity against the encroachments of nobles and ministers, as deep-rooted as his patience and dissimulation were perfect. abused their newly acquired prerogatives, and made constitutional Little by little, as he gradually felt his way to his purpose, the government hateful to Richard by associating it merely with old symptoms of evil reappeared, and the relations of the King antagonism to all his wishes and disrespect to his person. Nor and those against whom he was secretly plotting became more un- was his a character for which such rude schooling was at all friendly. Buying off some and intimidating others into ignominious appropriate. He possessed, it is true, the luxurious constitution subserviency, he broke up the old party which had so long, bone- of the second and third Edwards, and not a little of the wilful ficially in one respect, but in another unwisely and unnecessarily selfishness of the former of these princes, but combined with these shackled him, and then he executed his long-deferred vengeance were a fierceness of temper and persistence of purpose more with a fierceness and unrelenting energy equal to the long delay. resembling his father or the First Edward. His luxurious He had forgiven nothing, and finding the nation willing to stand tastes, if his advisers had been more sagacious and congenial, by a stunned and passive spectator, he set no limits either to his might have risen to magnificence, instead of degenerating into vengeance or to his arbitrary exercise of power. The fiercer lavish and indiscriminate extravagance. If in his excessive love of part of his character had now the entire ascendant ; with his long making elegant presents he gave his uncle Lancaster, when the lat. self-restraint disappeared apparently his former judgment. He ter went to Spain, a golden crown, and his duchess another ; if, ceased to think of and provide against the future, he lived only in notwithstanding the necessities of his treasury, he spent on his mar- the present. He was no longer the mere elegant patron of Mere- riage 300,000 marks, besides the costly presents he made ; and if ture, the appreciator of Chaucer and Gower, the handsome and he presented Leo, the King of Armenia, when he came to England, accomplished master and companion of a De Vere and a De la with a thousand marks of gold in a gilt ship, with the grant of a Pole,—he was the blind despot, insulting every national feeling, pension of the same sum yearly, it is the disproportion rather than rousing every personal resentment, and destroying every sub- the inappropriateness of the profusion which we must condemn, stantial support to his throne. The reaction from tutelage had and his expenditure was narrowed in its scope and lowered in its been too great. the suspense of the long-coveted revenge had been stamp by the attempt to deprive him of his legitimate authority as too long for not merely his moderation, but his common-sense. a Sovereign. In consequence of the ill-judged character of the His mind seems to have given way under the trial and the con- interference, young Richard came to associate extravagance with summation. His energy degenerated into mere violence, injustice freedom of action, and seems to have acted rightly only when the at first indulged in through revenge became habitual with him ; advice of the constituted counsellors of the Crown had not been favouritism and misgovernment, once scarcely more than symbols proffered to that effect. Thus, in Ireland, where the authority and of self-assertion, became his settled policy ; and at last the man advice of Parliament and the Council of Peers were comparatively in who in former years had seemed to handle Henry of Bolingbroke abeyance, the King seems to have executed impartial justice to the as a mere instrument of his designs, lost at the critical moment best of his power, and to have redressed grievances and enforced all presence of mind and all decision, and became a panic-stricken order. His mind possessed too much natural vigour to be tamely and helpless prisoner in his cousin's hands, lending himself with a acquiescent under the subservience in which he had been brought now hopelessly ignominious humility to the ceremonial of his own up. He was a voluptuary, but he was not satisfied with the mere deposition and the elevation of the triumphant House of Lancaster.
variance with the distinctions of rank and class as well as with the pleasures of a voluptuary, without power or position in the State. exclusive canons of chivalry. Thus the demoralization of the He wanted to assert his power not so much, probably, for the upper and middle classes was coeval with the first blind and blun- sake of being able to abuse it, as from a desire for free agency. dering steps into freedom and self-respect of their long down- But however eager to be emancipated from control, he had the trodden and despised serfs; and the representatives and standards patience to wait his opportunity, the wit and cunning to dissimu- of social order and authority were never less likely to command late, as well as the promptitude to act when he thought the moment respect, than when that respect was most needful to preserve both had arrived. His presence of mind on the occasion of the Vat law and society from a terrible overthrow. The nobles, more and Tyler insurrection might have warned the Magnates of Parliament more abandoning the military career—now no longer a field of that they were not dealing with a contemptible adversary, and glory and gain—were thrown back on political intrigues and the might have led them to come to a timely understanding with him. desire of personal aggrandizement at home, and they found only But the warning proved vain, and blinded by their revengeful too tempting an opening for their ambition in the feeble rule of a feelings towards the conquered peasants, they forgot to guard minor, surrounded by ambitious uncles, and with no wise or against the revenge of a fettered King. Dissimulation had been efficient ministers to shape his policy or form his character. the result of the mortifications to which Richard had been subjected,
Under such unfavourable auspices, the son of the Black Prince and he played his game wonderfully well. Once, indeed, he was grew up from boyhood to youth and manhood, and these circum- premature in his action, and the confederated Lords triumphed, and stances must have had more than common influence over a charac- displayed their triumph, it would appear, in a rather unseemlland ter naturally possessing many elements of both good and evil. most injudicious manner. A second time, however, Richard gained had the men placed at the side of young Richard in his early his independence with a mere exertion of his personal will. After years been such as to command his inward respect, as well as waiting for a twelvemonth, in a great Council held after Easter, to enforce his outward acquiescence in their advice, and had the 1389, he unexpectedly requested his uncle Gloucester to tell him Parliamentary rivinze which the last reign had inaugurated, and his age. " Your Highness," the Duke replied, " is in your to which the circumstance of his minority necessarily gave addi- twenty-second year." " Then," said the King, " I must certainly tional power and vigour been steady and moderate, the worst be old enough to manage my own concerns. I have been longer tendencies in the King's character might never have fully developed under the control of tutors than any ward in my dominions. themselves, and the stronger and finer sides of his mind might I thank you, my lords, for your past services, but do not have predominated. But as it was, the reverse was exactly the require them any longer." He then demanded the seals from
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