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The king embarks to invade France, but is driven back by bad weather.

A.D. 1373. De Montfort (John IV.) is expelled from Britanny.

John of Gaunt marches through France from Calais to Bordeaux; the march occupied from July to December; the French did not attempt to dispute his passage, but harassed his troops with continual skirmishes.

A.D. 1374. A truce concluded, Feb. 11, to last till May 1, 1375, is but ill observed, and Gascony is meanwhile almost entirely reduced by the French.

A.D. 1375. De Montfort lands in Britanny, and recovers much of the duchy; the truce is extended to April 1, 1377, and he is obliged to abandon his conquests.

A.D. 1376. The Black Prince dies, June 8; Richard, his son, is created Prince of Wales, Jan. 26, 1377. A.D. 1377. A poll-tax of fourpence on each person over fourteen years of age is granted1.

A general pardon granted, on occasion of the king's jubilee [50 Edw. III. c. 3].

The king dies, at Shene, (now Richmond,) June 21, and is buried at Westminster.

He took refuge in England, where, except for a short period in 1375, he remained until 1379, in which year he was invited back by his subjects. In 1380 a large force was sent to his assistance, under the command of the earl of Buckingham, but he soon after made his peace with the king of France, on condition of renouncing the alliance he had so long maintained with the English. He died in 1399.

1 A similar grant in the following reign gave occasion for the great rising of the common people under Wat the tyler.

in In some copies of this statute a clause is found excluding William of Wykeham, the late chancellor, from its benefit.

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RICHARD, the son of Edward the Black Prince and Joan of Kent, was born at Bordeaux, in February, 1366. On the death of his father, he was created Prince of Wales, and he very shortly after succeeded to the throne, when only in his twelfth year. The first ten years of his reign were passed in tutelage, while the state was disturbed by the contentions of his ambitious uncles, (the dukes of Lancaster and Gloucester); and though on occasion of the insurrection of the commons, which occurred in the sixteenth year of his age, he gave proof of courage and ability, he soon fell into the fatal error of abandoning the management of affairs to unprincipled favourites, Michael de la Pole and Robert

a Michael de la Pole was descended from a wealthy merchant of Hull, who was the first mayor of that town. He served with distinction in France under the Black Prince, and also accompanied John of Gaunt to Spain. Under Richard II. he attached himself to the court, soon became a favourite, and at length was appointed chancellor, (March 13, 1383). He obtained many lavish grants from the king, and in 1386 was created earl of Suffolk. In the same year he was impeached by the Commons, and being afterwards appealed of treason by the duke of Gloucester and others, he fled in disguise to Calais, and thence to Paris, where he died, Sept. 5, 1388; his vast possessions were forfeited, and his magnificent house in London

Vere, whom he loaded with wealth and honours. At length John of Gaunt engaged in an expedition into Spain, when the duke of Gloucester became supreme, and the favourites were impeached and banished, or put to death. The lords appellants, as Gloucester and his associates were called, declared that by these proceedings no dishonour was meant to the king, whose youth and inexperience had been imposed upon, but they left him only the shadow of power. He bore this for a while, but in the year 1389 he came suddenly into the parliament, and formally inquiring his age, on the reply that he was in his 23rd year, declared he would no longer bear the government of tutors, and at once deprived of office and drove from the court the duke and his party.

A few years of peace and apparent contentment fol

given to Sir John Holland, the king's half-brother. His son, also named Michael, was restored in blood by Henry IV., and his greatgrandson was William, duke of Suffolk, the favourite minister of Margaret of Anjou.

b Robert de Vere, son of Thomas, earl of Oxford, was born in 1362; he was of a light and profligate disposition, and acquiring thus the favour of Richard II., was loaded with extraordinary honours by him. First he received in mar

riage the lady Philippa, the king's kinswoman, and the grant of her lands; then he was created marquis of Dublin, and at length duke of Ireland (Oct. 13, 1386,) by a patent which rendered him, as far as the king's wishes were allowed to take effect, a sovereign prince. He, however, abandoned his wife, and married a waiting woman of the queen; this was speedily followed by his being imprisoned on a charge of treason, but he escaped in disguise, and raising some troops, endeavoured to overthrow the rule of the duke of Gloucester. He was defeated, outlawed, and obliged to flee to the continent, where he was killed while hunting in Louvaine, in 1392. The king retained an affection for him which he manifested by having the corpse brought to England and bestowing a pompous funeral on it, in the year 1395.

Arms of De Vere,

Earl of Oxford.

lowed this resolute step, during which the king made a visit to Ireland, and by his affability and liberality conciliated many of the most powerful chiefs; but his popularity was marred by a peace with France and marriage with a French princess, as it was generally suspected that Calais and the Channel Islands were intended to be given up, as Brest and Cherbourg had already been. The duke of Gloucester took advantage of the discontents thus occasioned, and intrigued to regain his lost ascendancy, but the king was now directed by his half-brother, the earl of Huntingdon, a bold and cruel man, and the duke and his confederates were suddenly seized and put to death.

Richard now appeared firmly established on the throne, when a quarrel between the dukes of Norfolk and Hereford, who had aided him against his uncle, induced him to banish them both. Norfolk submitted to his sentence and died abroad, but his opponent (who had lingered in France, and had become duke of Lancaster by the death of his father,) soon returned with a few friends under pretence of claiming his inheritance, was joined by the Percies and others, seized the king on his return from a second expedition to Ireland, brought him captive to London, and procured his formal deposition, Sept. 30, 1399, after a troubled and inglorious reign of twenty-three years o.

Richard was very unpopular with the Londoners, who commonly styled him only Richard (or John) of Bordeaux, and affected to doubt his legitimacy. He had seized their charters and extorted money from them, and they had so great a share in his overthrow, that the people of the north afterwards spoke of Henry of Lancaster as only chosen by "the villeins of London."

Richard was then in the Tower, but the parliament soon after desired that he might be "kept secretly," and so fully was this carried out, that he soon after disappeared, and nothing is certainly known of the time, place, or manner of his death, though it is quite clear that the received account that he was murdered at Pomfret by Sir Piers Exton is untrue, and that the body exposed at St. Paul's (March 12, 1400) was not his, but probably that of Maudelyn, a priest who bore a strong resemblance to him, and is believed to have been his natural brother.

The English writers of the period all speak vaguely on the subject of Richard's death, and acknowledge that reports of his being alive were long circulated, but they appear to have been too much under the influence of the usurping Lancastrians to venture to say more. From documents among the public records, of both England and Scotland, however, and the statements of Scottish and French chroniclers, it has been surmised with a high degree of probability, that Richard escaped from Pomfret early in the year 1400, simultaneously with the rising in his favour of the earls of Huntingdon, Kent, Salisbury, and others, and found a shelter in Scotland, where he was visited by some of his friends in

Some say he was killed by Exton, some that he was starved to death, others that he starved himself; qualifying their accounts, however, with "as it is said,” “according to common rumour," &c.

This view of the matter was suggested by Mr. Tytler, in his History of Scotland; several eminent writers have dissented from it, but some of them were not aware of documents existing in the English Record Office, which at least establish Richard's escape from Pomfret; others allege that one Thomas Ward (whose name, however, does not occur in cotemporary writers) was employed to personate Richard, in order to embarrass the government of Henry.

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