Boling. As I was banish'd, I was banish'd But as I come, I come for Lancaster. away To upstart unthrifts? Wherefore was I born? I am denied to sue my livery here, And yet my letters-patents give me leave: North. The noble duke hath been too much abus'd. Ross. It stands your grace upon, to do him right. Willo. Base men by his endowments are made great. York. My lords of England, let me tell you this, I have had feeling of my cousin's wrongs, North. The noble duke hath sworn his coming is But for his own: and, for the right of that, York. Well, well, I see the issue of these arms; I cannot mend it, I must needs confess, Because my power is weak, and all ill left: But, if I could, by him that gave me life, I would attach you all, and make you stoop Boling. An offer, uncle, that we will accept. For I am loth to break our country's laws. SCENE IV.-A Camp in Wales. Enter SALISBURY and a Captain. Exeunt. Cap. My lord of Salisbury, we have staid ten days, And hardly kept our countrymen together, man; The king reposeth all his confidence Cap. 'Tis thought the king is dead; we will not stay. The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd, The one, Sal. Ah, Richard! with the eyes mind, [Erit. of heavy I see thy glory, like a shooting star, 1 SCENE I.-" His livery." MALONE gives the following explanation of this passage:-"On the death of every person who held by knight's service, the escheator of the court in which he died summoned a jury, who inquired what estate he died seized of, and of what age his next heir was. If he was under age, he became a ward of the king's; but if he was found to be of full age, he then had a right to sue out a writ of ouster le main,-that is, his livery,-that the king's hand might be taken off, and the land delivered to him." Bolingbroke had appointed attorneys to execute this office for him, if his father should die during the period of his banishment. 2 SCENE I.-"That late broke from the Duke of Exeter." Thomas, the son of the Earl of Arundel, was in the custody of the Duke of Exeter, and escaped from his house--broke from him. The description could not apply to "Reignold, Lord Cobbam;"and, therefore, Malone has introduced a line, which he supposes, or something like it, to have been accidentally omitted: "The son of Richard, Earl of Arundel, That late broke from the Duke of Exeter." 3 SCENE II." Like perspectives." These perspectives were produced by cutting a board, so that it should present a number of sides, or flats, when looked at obliquely. To these sides,. a print, or drawing, cut into parts, was affixed; so that looked at "awry" the whole picture was seen -looked at direct. -"rightly gaz'd upon' - it shewed "nothing but confusion." Dr. Plot, in his "History of Staffordshire," describes these "perspectives." John of Gaunt, who, in the first line of this play, is called, "Old John of Gaunt, time-honour'd Lancaster," was the fourth son of Edward III., by his Queen Philippa. He was called of Gant or Ghent, from the place of his birth;-was born in 1340, and died in 1399. The circumstance of the king naming him as Old John of Gaunt, has many examples in the age of Shakspere. Spenser calls the Earl of Leicester an old man, though he was then not fifty; Lord Huntingdon represents Coligny as very old, though he died at fifty-three. There can be little doubt, we apprehend, that the average duration of human life has been much increased during the last two centuries; and, at that I 2 period, marriages were much earlier, so that it was not uncommon for a man to be at the head of a family before he was twenty. When John of Gaunt was fifty-eight (in the year of Bolingbroke's appeal against Hereford), Henry of Monmouth, his grandson, was eleven years old; so that Bolingbroke, who was born in 1366, must have been a father at twenty-one. Froissart thus speaks of the death of John of Gaunt:-"So it fell, that, about the feast of Christmas, Duke John of Lancaster, who lived in great displeasure, what because the King had banished his son out of the realm for so little a cause, and also because of the evil governing of the realm, by his nephew, King Richard; (for he saw well if he long persevered, and were suffered to continue, the realm was likely to be utterly lost)-with these imaginations and 113 other, the duke fell sick, whereon he died; whose death was greatly sorrowed of all his friends and lovers." Shakspere found no authority in the Chronicles for the fine death-scene of John of Gaunt; but the principal circumstance for which he reproaches the king that England is now leas'd out," — is distinctly supported. Fabian says, "In this 22nd year of King Richard, the common fame ran, that the king had letten to farm the realm unto Sir William Scrope, Earl of Wiltshire, and then treasurer of England, to Sir John Bushey, Sir John Bagot, and Sir Henry Green, Knights." The subsequent reproach of the confederated lords that "Daily new exactions are devis'd; As blanks, benevolences," is also fully supported. The "blanks" were most ingenious instruments of pillage, principally devised for the oppression of substantial and wealthy citizens. For these blanks, they of London "were fain to seal, to their great charge, as in the end appeared. And the like charters were sent abroad into all shires within the realm, whereby great grudge and murmuring arose amongst the people; for when they were so sealed, the king's officers wrote in the same what liked them, as well for charging the parties with payment of money, as otherwise." The general condition of the country, while the commons were 'pill'd," and the nobles "fin'd," by Richard and his creatures, was, according to Froissart, most lamentable. We copy the passage, as it is highly characteristic of the manners of the times. The period thus described is that immediately before the departure of Richard for Ireland: -"The state generally of all men in England began to murmur and to rise one against another, and ministering of justice was clean stopped up in all courts of England; whereof the valiant men and prelates, who loved rest and peace, and were glad to pay their duties, were greatly abashed: for there rose in the realm companies in divers routs, keeping the fields and highways, so that merchants durst not ride abroad to exercise their merchandise for doubt of robbing: and no man knew to whom to complain to do them right, reason, and justice, which things were right prejudicial and displeasant to the good people of England, for it was contrary to their accustomable usage; for all people, labourers and merchants in England, were wont to live in rest and peace, and to occupy their merchandise peaceably, and the labourers to labour their lands quietly; and then it was contrary, for when merchants rode from town to town with their merchandise, and had either gold or silver in their purses, it was taken from them; and from other men and labourers out of their houses these companions would take wheat, oats, beefs, muttons, porks, and the poor men durst speak no word. These evil deeds daily multiplied so, that great complaints and lamentations were made thereof throughout the realm, and the good people said, the time is changed upon us from good to evil, ever since the death of good King Edward the Third, in whose days justice was well kept and ministered in his days there was no man so hardy in England to take a hen or a chicken, or a sheep, without he had paid truly for it; and now a days, all that we have is taken from us, and yet we dare not speak; these things cannot long endure, but that England is likely to be lost without recovery: we have a king now that will do nothing; he intendeth but to idleness, and to accomplish his pleasure, and by that he sheweth he careth not how every thing goeth, so he may have his will. It were time to provide for remedy, or else our enemies will rejoice and mock us." There is a remarkable corroboration of the state of cruel oppression in which the common people lived, furnished by a copy of the stipulations made by the Duke of Surrey, in 1398, on taking upon him the government of Ireland: "Iten, That he, the lieutenant, may have, at sundry times, out of every parish, or every two parishes, in England, a man and his wife, at the cost of the king, in the land of Ireland, to inhabit the same land where it is wasted upon the marshes." (Cotton MS.) This compulsory colonization must have been most odious to the people, who knew that the "wild men" of Ireland, amongst whom they were to be placed, kept the Government in constant terror. The seizure of Bolingbroke's patrimony by Richard, after the death of Gaunt, is thus described by Holinshed; and Shakspere. has most accurately followed the description as to its facts: "The death of this duke gave occasion of encreasing more hatred in the people of this realm toward the king, for he seized into his hands all the goods that belonged to him, and also received all the rents and revenues of his lands, which ought to have descended unto the Duke of Hereford, by lawful inheritance, in revoking his letters patents, which he had granted to him before, by virtue whereof he might make his attornies general to sue livery for him, of any manner of inheritances or possessions that might from thenceforth fall unto him, and that his homage might be respited with making reasonable fine: whereby it was evident that the king meant his utter undoing." The private malice of Richard against his banished cousin "The prevention of poor Bolingbroke, is also detailed in the Chronicles. Fired with revenge by these aggressions, and encouraged by letters from the leading men of England - nobility, prelates, magistrates, and rulers, as Holinshed describes them- promising him all their aid, power, and assistance, in "expulsing" King Richard Bolingbroke took the step which involved this land in blood for nearly a century. He quitted Paris, and sailed from Port Blanc, in Lower Brittany, with very few men at arms, according to some accounts-with three thousand, according to others. This event took place about a fortnight after Richard had sailed for Ireland. His last remaining uncle, the Duke of York, had been left in the government of the kingdom. He was, however, unfitted for a post of so much difficulty and danger; and Shakspere has well described his perplexities, upon hearing of the landing of Bolingbroke : "if I know How, or which way to order these affairs, Thus disorderly thrust into my hands, Never believe me." He had been little accustomed to affairs of state. Hardyng, in his Chronicle, thus describes him at an early period of his life : "Edmonde hyght of Langley of good chere, He used aye, and to the pore supportyng." Froissart describes him as living at his own castle with his people, interfering not with what was passing in the country, but taking all things as they happened. According to Holinshed, the army that he raised to oppose Bolingbroke, " boldly protested that they would not fight against the Duke of Lancaster, whom they knew to be evil dealt with." It seems to be agreed, on all hands, that Froissart, who makes Bolingbroke land at Plymouth, and march direct to London, was incorrectly informed. Holinshed, upon the authority of "our English writers," says, "the Duke of Lancaster, after that he had coasted alongst the shore a certain time, and had got some intelligence how the people's minds were affected towards him, landed, about the beginning of July, in Yorkshire, at a place sometimes called Ravenspur, betwixt Hull and Bridlington, and with him not past threescore persons, as some write: but he was so joyfully received of the lords, knights, and gentle men of those parts, that he found means (by their help) forthwith to assemble a great number of people, that were willing to take his part." The subsequent events, previous to the return of Richard, are most correctly delineated by our poet. Bolingbroke was joined by Northumberland and Harry Percy, by Ross and Willoughby. "He sware unto those lords that he would demand no more but the lands that were to him descended by inheritance from his father, and in right of his wife." From Doncaster, with a mighty army, Bolingbroke marched through the counties of Derby or Nottingham, Leicester, Warwick, and Worcester; -"through the countries coming by Evesham unto Berkley." The Duke of York had marched towards Wales to meet the king, upon his expected arrival from Ireland. Holinshed says, he "was received into the Castle of Berkley, and there remained till the coming thither of the Duke of Lancaster, whom when he perceived that he was not able to resist, on the Sunday after the feast of St. James, which, as that year came about, fell upon a Friday, he came forth into the church that stood without the castle, and there communed with the Duke of Lancaster On the morrow after, the foresaid dukes with their power went towards Bristow, where (at their coming) they shewed themselves before the town and castle, being an huge multitude of people." The defection of the Welsh under Salisbury is detailed in the writers of the period; and so is the prodigy of the withered bay-trees SCENE I.-Bolingbroke's Camp at Bristol.1 Enter BOLINGBROKE, YORK, NORTHUMBERLAND, PERCY, WILLOUGHBY, Ross: Officers behind, with BUSHY and GREEN, prisoners. Boling. Bring forth these men.Bushy, and Green, I will not vex your souls (Since presently your souls must part your bodies,) With too much urging your pernicious lives, And stain'd the beauty of a fair queen's cheeks wrongs. a Dispark'd my parks. To disafforest a forest, is to annul all the peculiar privileges which belong to it, and render it, with reference to the rights of the owner or lord, and the privileges of the tenants or vassals, the same as that of ordinary land. Bolingbroke, we presume, complains that when the favourites of Richard had disparked his parks, they let out the property to common purposes of pasture or tillage, and at the same time felled his woods;-thus, not only feeding upon his seignories, but destroying their ancient beauty and propriety. |