83 RICHARD II. RICHARD II. 84 On the 14th of January 1382, Richard was married to Anne of Bohemia, daughter of Charles IV., the late emperor of Germany. The next two years were filled up with a war against the French in Flanders, conducted by Henry Spenser, the young and fighting bishop of Norwich, who in the late commotions had distinguished himself by his decisive style of dealing with the rebels; first, as Froissart tells us, meeting them in the field, and then, when he had routed them, exchanging his sword and armour for a crucifix and sacerdotal robes, and thus arrayed, confessing and absolving his prisoners as he hurried them to the gibbet, and who now went over to the Continent to assist the burghers of Ghent in their contest with the Count of Flanders and the French king, and in support of the cause of Urban VI., in the general European war excited by the struggle between that pope and his rival Clement VII. The bishop in his first campaign defeated the Count of Flanders, and took the town of Gravelines; but in the spring of 1384 he was obliged to make his way back with much precipitancy to England, where he was arraigned by the parliament for the failure of the expedition, and his temporalities were confiscated till the king should be repaid the money it had cost. In 1385 the war with France was transferred to Scotland; and in the summer of that year Richard, for the first time, appeared at the head of his army, which penetrated as far as Aberdeen, having on its way reduced Edinburgh, Dunfermline, Perth, and Dundee to ashes, without having however during its whole progress seen the face of the enemy. An expedition of John of Gaunt to Spain, to assert his claims to the throne of Castile and Leon, grounded on his marriage with Constance, the eldest daughter of the late king Peter the Cruel, after occupying him for about three years, terminated, in 1388, in the marriage of the duke's daughter Catharine to Henry, prince of Asturias, the heir of the reigning Castilian king, John I., an alliance which seated the descendants of the English duke for many generations upon the throne to which he aspired. the king's three uncles-John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster; Edmund the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was chancellor, and Sir Robert of Langley, then earl of Cambridge, afterwards duke of York; and Hales, the treasurer. At last, on the 15th, the career of the demaThomas of Woodstock, then earl of Buckingham, afterwards duke of gogue was suddenly terminated by the bold hand of Sir William Gloucester-were all excluded; but this arrangement appears to have Walworth, the lord mayor, who, when Tyler, coming forth from his been collusive, and intended merely to lull the popular dislike and men, rode up to the king stationed in front of the abbey of St. Barsuspicion of Lancaster, in whose interest most of the counsellors are tholomew in West Smithfield, plunged a dagger into his throat, on said to have been; and who, although he at first retired to his castle which he was speedily despatched by one or two other persons in the of Kenilworth, was the next year appointed to the command of a royal suite. Richard himself on this occasion, young as he was, fleet fitted out to act against France. In the course of that year, showed both firmness and presence of mind. The insurgents, deprived 1878, great honour was obtained by John Philpot, a citizen of London, of their leader, were easily induced to lay down their arms; and in a who, having equipped a small naval armament at his own expense, set few weeks the rising of the commons was completely suppressed in all sail with it against the Scottish privateer Mercer, who had recently parts of the kingdom. The victory obtained by the king and the carried off all the ships in the port of Scarborough, and succeeded in government was followed by the shedding of torrents of blood on the capturing him with all his prizes. During the next three years the scaffold it is said that the persons executed amounted in all to about war with France was prosecuted in Brittany under the conduct of the 1500; Straw, Ball, and the other leaders being among the number. Earl of Buckingham; but the death of Charles V., in September 1380, All the promises also that had been made to the congregated multihaving been speedily followed by a peace between the Duke of Brittany tudes while they had still arms in their hands were broken. The and the new French regency, Buckingham, now finding an enemy in Essex men had only asked for the abolition of bondage, the fixing of his former ally, was glad to return home with his army in April a maximum for the rent of land, the universal liberty of buying and 1381. selling in fairs and markets, and a general pardon; and before they Meanwhile in England the heavy pecuniary exactions called for by broke up and retired to their homes they had actually received a the war were hastening on a crisis which other causes had been long written grant of these demands under the king's hand. Even Wat contributing to bring about. Three contending forces may be dis- Tyler and the men of Kent, when they came to specify their terms, tinctly perceived at work in the ferment which now broke forth. had insisted upon nothing more extravagant than that the forest law First, there was the crown, or rather its natural ally the ancient aris- should be repealed, and all warrens, waters, parks, and woods thrown tocracy, in whose hands the young king on the present occasion was, open, so that the killing of fish, fowl, and game of all kinds should be and of which he may be considered as the mere representative or everywhere free to every man. instrument, striving to protect from encroachment the almost exclusive control of the national affairs which it had possessed at least from the era of the Conquest. Secondly, there was the recently-established House of Commons, the representative of the minor gentry and the middle classes, pressing forward to secure a share in the government, and, with the instinct of a growing power, eagerly seizing hold of every opportunity of forwarding its object, its chief means being the right of taxation, of which it was already in the undisputed enjoy ment, and which it had learned to apply with considerable skill as a screw for compressing the crown, and extorting from it new concessions and privileges. It may be remarked that the present state of affairs, with the king a boy and a cipher, and the government in the hands of a regency, was peculiarly favourable for such attempts on the part of the House of Commons. Lastly, there was the great body of the population, forming the labouring class, of which by far the larger portion was yet engaged in agriculture, and in a state of villeinage or servitude, bound to the soil, and so confounded in some sort with the cattle and chattels of the landlord, counted, or at least treated, as things, not as persons, at any rate in so far as all rights of a political character were concerned. But the example of what had recently taken place in other countries, in France and in Flanders, and the progress that the development of society had made among ourselves, had inspired even this, the lowest class, with a general desire of acquiring a new position in the commonwealth-of being raised from bondage to freedom and citizenship. Of course, both on the part of the House of Commons (or middle classes), and still more on that of the villeins, what was reasonable and right in this ambition may have been mixed with much that was ill-considered, extravagant, and impracticable; their efforts may have been in some respects ill-directed, both in regard to ends and means; but in the main, what took place must have happened if society was to advance at all, or even if it was to retain any principle of life. The explosion of these various elements was provoked by the state of pecuniary necessity to which the crown was Meanwhile, during the absence of the duke, the ascendancy at home reduced in the years 1379 and 13 0. First, to induce the Commons had been assumed by his younger brother Thomas, now duke of to grant the money that was wanted, it was found necessary, after a Gloucester; and in the latter part of the year 1387, an ill-conceived short struggle, to submit to their demands, of not only being allowed and worse-directed attempt of Richard to take the management of to inspect the accounts of the royal treasury, but even of appointing affairs into his own hands had resulted in the complete defeat of that the king's ministers. Then, in December 1380, the famous Capitation design by Gloucester, the execution of Richard's two principal counTax was imposed, which gave rise to the rebellion of Wat Tyler in sellors, the Chief Justice Tresilian and Sir Nicholas Brember the the summer of the year following. This formidable movement began lord mayor of London, and the expulsion of the Archbishop of York, at Fobbings, near Brentwood in Essex, on the 30th of May 1381, when and of the royal minions De Vere, duke of Ireland, and De la Pole, the people rose against Thomas de Bampton, one of the commissioners earl of Suffolk, from the kingdom. The "wonderful parliament," as who had been appointed to superintend the collection and enforce the it was called, which met on the 3rd of February 1388, after ratifying payment of the tax. It thence spread over Essex, Kent, Suffolk, the proceedings of the victorious party, also sent Sir Simon Burley Norfolk, and other counties along the eastern and southern coasts; and three other knights to the scaffold, banished four more of the the most noted among the popular leaders being two priests called judges to Ireland, and in short completely put down the king's faction. Jack Straw and John Ball. Watt, the Tyler (or tiler), of Dartford, On the 15th of August this year was fought the famous battle of who killed the royal tax collector, in consequence of an outrage com- Otterbourne, or Chevy Chase, in which the Scots lost their commander, mitted on Tyler's daughter, and then placed himself at the head of Earl Douglas, but the English were finally driven from the field, after the Kent men, seems however to have been by far the most deter- both their leader Lord Harry Percy (popularly designated Hotspur) mined and ferocious of the rebel captains. Two other persons of the and his brother Lord Ralph had fallen into the hands of the enemy. names of Lister and Westbroom, were called Kings of the Com Richard remained in the state of subjection to which he had been mons in Norfolk and Suffolk. In the earlier part of the month of reduced by the "wonderful parliament" for more than a year. At June, Tyler and his followers, having marched upon London, perpe- last, at a great council held in May 1389, he unexpectedly intimated trated a series of frightful devastations: they sacked the archbishop's that, being now in his twenty-second year, he intended to take the palace at Lambeth, demolished the Marshalsea and King's Bench management of affairs into his own hands; and the suddenness of the prisons, and the Duke of Lancaster's palace of the Savoy, set loose movement secured its success for the moment. Gloucester found it the prisoners in Newgate and the Fleet, and destroyed the former necessary to retire into the country. But, in fact, although no building; set fire to the Temple, and to the Priory of the Knights further attempt was made for the present formally to set Richard aside, Hospitallers at Clerkenwell; and massacred great numbers of the his own indolence and indisposition to business very soon threw the wealthier classes, among others the two first officers of the kingdom-government into the hands of his uncle Edmund, duke of York, and Lancaster's son, Henry of Bolingbroke, earl of Derby. John of Gaunt also now returned from the Continent, and had influence enough to force a seeming reconciliation between his royal nephew and Gloucester, and to bring back that duke and his party to court. After this some years passed without any changes or other events of importance. The country was still professedly at war both with France and Scotland; but after the suspension of hostilities had been long kept up by a succession of short amnesties, a truce for four years was concluded with both countries in 1394. His queen, who was called "the good Queen Anne," having died on Whitsunday of that year, Richard soon after solicited the hand of Isabella, the beautiful but still infant daughter of Charles VI.; after many delays, the treaty of marriage was finally arranged in October 1396; and at the same time a further peace and alliance was concluded between the two countries for the space of twenty-eight years. The returned exile brought with him only forty followers; but by the time he had reached St. Albans, on his unimpeded march to the capital, his army had increased to sixty thousand men. The Duke of York, in whose charge the government had been left, withdrew towards Bristol, to which place the Earl of Wiltshire, Bussy, Green, and others of the king's friends and servants had previously filed. Bolingbroke merely showed himself to the citizens of London, and having received their plaudits and addresses of congratulation, set out for the west. York and he met in Berkeley Castle, where the regent after a short conference yielded to all his demands. They marched together to Bristol, where, having taken possession of the castle, Bolingbroke directed Wiltshire, Bussy, and Green, to be executed, and then set out for Chester, and established himself in that city. Meanwhile Richard, long detained by tempestuous weather, had at last landed at Milford Haven on the 5th of August. He brought This French marriage is believed to have materially contributed to with him the greater part of the army he had carried over to Ireland the domestic revolution that soon after followed. It was opposed two months before; but the men nearly all deserted the first night before it was contracted, and reprobated afterwards, by Gloucester and they found themselves again upon English ground. Richard then the popular party; and on the other hand Richard is supposed to disguised himself as a Franciscan friar, and, accompanied by the Duke have counted upon the assistance of his father-in-law the French king, of Exeter and some others of his friends, fled to Conway, where it to enable him to rid himself of and avenge himself on his uncle. In was understood that the Earl of Salisbury was in command of a the beginning of July 1397, first the Earl of Warwick, and two days numerous royalist force; but upon his arrival he found that that too after the Earl of Arundel, the most intimate friends and confederates had broken up some days before. On the 18th the Earl of Northumber of Gloucester were suddenly arrested by the orders of the king, land came to him from Bolingbroke, and induced him to accompany who carried his project into effect with profound dissimulation and him to Flint Castle, where, on the following day, Bolingbroke pretreachery; and a few days after Gloucester himself was seized in his sented himself at the head of about 80,000 men. The unhappy king castle of Plashy, in Essex, and immediately conducted a prisoner to proceeded to Chester in the train of his conqueror, and thence in a Calais. A parliament was then called, which met on the 17th of few days he was carried to London, where he was forthwith lodged in September, and which, awed by the display of military force made by the Tower. Here, on the 29th of September, he consented to read a the king, and led by the example of the dukes of Lancaster and York renunciation of the crown before a deputation of prelates, barons, and the Earl of Bolingbroke, all of whom Richard had previously knights, and lawyers, and to declare that, if he had the right of naming seduced or forced into a public approval of the arrests, ratified all that his successor, the man he would fix upon should be his cousin of had been done, and impeached the three peers, and also Arundel's Lancaster. Such at least is the account inserted by Henry's order brother, the Archbishop of Canterbury, of high treason. The arch- in the rolls of parliament. On the next day the two houses of par bishop and Warwick were banished for life; Arundel was beheaded liament met together in Westminster Hall, and voted his deposition, on Tower-hill; and when an order was sent to the governor of Calais immediately after which the Duke of Lancaster rose and claimed the Castle to bring up his prisoner Gloucester, the answer returned was crown, and was unanimously recognised as king. [HENRY IV.] that he had died, and few doubted that he had been made away with Richard did not long survive his dethronement. On the 23rd of by the king's orders. It was immediately after this affair that Boling-October the house of peers, in a new parliament, on being consulted, broke was raised to the dignity of Duke of Hereford; Richard's half-by King Henry's order, as to what should be done with him, recom. brother, Sir John Holland (the son of his mother by her second mended that he should be closely confined in some castle, the know. husband), being at the same time made Duke of Exeter. The sub-ledge of which should be kept secret from the people; and in servient parliament, before it separated, devolved the whole power of conformity with their advice, he was a few days after privately congovernment and legislation upon a commission of twelve peers and six veyed away from London. All that is further known is, that in the commoners, all devoted to the king; and having also obtained from following February rumours were every where spread that he was them the grant of a revenue for life, Richard might now be considered dead, and that in the beginning of March his body, or what was as almost an absolute sovereign. declared to be such, was brought with funeral pomp from Pontefract Castle to London, and there exhibited openly to the people. Afterwards it was reported, by some that he had starved himself to death, by others that he had been starved by his keepers, according to a third version of the story, that he had been violently made away with by Sir Piers Exton, assisted by seven other assassins. For many years also rumours continued to arise from time to time that he had made his escape, and was still alive in Scotland; and an attempt has recently been made to establish the probability of this strange story; but the supposed new evidence brought forward in support of it has been satisfactorily shown to be quite inconclusive. This state of things however did not last long. Intoxicated by the success of his schemes, Richard now set no bounds to his exactions and extravagance; and instead of being satisfied with the discomfiture and destruction of so many of the persons whose opposition he had had so much reason to fear, he seems to have been only thereby incited to the devising of means for ridding himself of others whom he still apprehended to be dangerous. Of those who had supported him in the prosecution of the late Duke of Gloucester and his friends, the two most powerful were the Duke of Hereford, and Mowbray, earl of Nottingham, now duke of Norfolk. While Hereford was riding from Windsor to London in December of this same year, he was overtaken by Norfolk, who, according to the account given by Hereford, more than hinted to him that he had reason to suspect the king was watching for an opportunity of destroying them both; his words were carried to Richard, probably by Bolingbroke himself; that nobleman, at any rate, when called upon in parliament to state what had passed, charged Mowbray with having given utterance to the treasonable expressions; and the result was, that after Mowbray had denied the charge, and the two had in compliance with the award of a court of chivalry, presented themselves on the 16th of September 1398, at Coventry, to decide the matter by wager of battle, Richard suddenly interposed, forbade the combat to proceed, and pronounced sentence of banishment for ten years on Hereford, and for life upon Norfolk. The issue of the duel, whatever it might have been, would probably have only delivered him from one of his enemies; this method removed both. But one of them doubtless resolved while professing for the moment to submit to the sentence, that he would not be long in returning. Henry of Bolingbroke had been for some time sedulously and successfully attracting to himself the popular favour which his cousin Richard was fast losing or throwing away; and probably no other subject whom the king might have banished from England could have carried the affections and hopes of so many of his countrymen along with him. This he himself well knew. Accordingly, when in the beginning of February 1399, about three months after his departure, his father died, and the estates which had now become his inheritance were seized by the crown, he did not hesitate as to the course which he should take. Richard had set sail from Milford Haven on the 31st of May, at the head of a fleet of two hundred transports, to quell an outbreak of some of the native tribes of the south of Ireland: Bolingbroke, now calling himself duke of Lancaster, landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire, on the 4th of July. Of the alterations made in the statute law during the reign of Richard II., the most important was the extension of the former Acts against provisors, or persons obtaining papal presentations to benefices before they were vacant, by a series of new Acts, and especially by the 16 Ric. II., c. 5, commonly called the Statute of Præmunire. In 1382 a statute was passed for apprehending and punishing the followers of the religious reformer Wycliffe, who are described as malevolent persons going about from country to country, and from town to town, in peculiar habits, with pretence of great sanctity, and without licence of the pope or the ordinary, preaching daily in the churches, churchyards, markets, fairs, and other open places where the people were assembled in greatest numbers, discourses full of heresies and notorious errors, to the great injury of the faith, and destruction of the laws and estate of holy church, &c. But this Act was repealed the same year, on the representation of the Commons that it had been passed without their assent. Just before its enactment twenty-four opinions, attributed to Wycliffe, had been con demned as heretical and dangerous by a synod of churchmen; the reformer appealed against the decree, but was ultimately induced to submit, and he remained in quiet at his rectory of Lutterworth, till his death, about two years after. His opinions however had already made great progress among the people; and the spirit which he had awakened by his preaching and writings continued to live and spread after his death, and no doubt materially contributed to prepare the way for the overthrow of the old religion, which was effected a hundred and fifty years later. In the preceding year (1381), after the suppression of Tyler's rebellion, the offence of treason was extended to the act of beginning a riot, rout, or rumour, by the 5 Ric. II., st. i. c. 7; but this severe enactment was repealed in the reign of Edward VI. This is one of the ancient statutes constituting the offence called 'Scandalum Magna tum. To the reign of Richard II. have been assigned the complete establishment of the court of the high admiral, and the enlargement of the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery by the first issuing of subpæna. Finally, the right of impeachment and prosecution by the Commons in parliament, which had been first asserted in the latter years of Edward III., was finally established in this reign by the impeachment of the Earl of Suffolk, the late chancellor, in 1386. Richard II. had no issue by either of his wives (his second indeed was only a child of ten years of age at the time of his death); nor are any natural children assigned to him by the genealogists. Queen Isabel returned to France in 1401, and became the wife of her cousin Charles, duke of Orleans, after bearing a daughter to whom, she died, at the age of twenty, in 1409. RICHARD III., king of England, was the youngest son of Richard, duke of York, whose descent is given in the article on EDWARD IV. Richard was born on the 2nd of October, 1452, at Fotheringay Castle in Northamptonshire. On the defeat and death of the Duke of York at Wakefield Green, 31st December 1460, where the duke's second surviving son Edmund, styled earl of Rutland, was also killed, Richard and his elder brother George, afterwards duke of Clarence, were sent by their mother to Utrecht, where they remained under the protection of Philip, duke of Burgundy, till the crown of England was acquired (about two months after) by their eldest brother Edward. Soon after this event Richard was created duke of Gloucester, made a knight of the Garter, and appointed to the office of lord high admiral, though as yet only in his tenth year. In 1469 he was made one of the wardens of the Scottish marches: in 1470 he fled with the king, his brother, to Flanders on the sudden restoration of Henry VI. by the Earl of Warwick in 1471 he commanded the foreward of his brother's army at the battle of Barnet; and he also assisted in gaining for Edward his next and crowning victory of Tewksbury. He and his brother Clarence are asserted to have been the actual murderers of Henry's son Prince Edward, after the battle. [EDWARD IV.] To Gloucester also was popularly ascribed at the time the murder of Henry himself in the Tower a few weeks after. [HENRY VI.] The following year the Lady Anne Nevil, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, and widow of Prince Edward, was prevailed upon to give him her hand. In 1478 Gloucester took a foremost part in the attainder and destruction of his brother Clarence, whose removal placed him next after the king's issue in order of succession to the throne. In 1482 he commanded an expedition against Scotland, in the course of which he took the town of Berwick and penetrated as far as Edinburgh. He had only recently returned from this expedition, and was still in command of his army on the borders, when the death of his brother took place, in the beginning of April, 1483. On the receipt of this intelligence, Richard immediately prepared to set out to London, stopping however on his way at York, where he summoned the gentlemen of the county to swear allegiance to Edward V., taking the oath first himself. At Northampton he was met on the 29th of April by the Duke of Buckingham, and it is believed that the measures, probably in part arranged previously by letter, were then finally concerted, by which Richard should be elevated to the throne. On the next day Edward's uncle, Earl Rivers, and his half brother, Lord Grey, who were at Stony Stratford with the king, were both arrested by Gloucester's orders; and possession was also taken of the royal person. From his arrival in London to the disappearance of the young king and his brother towards the end of June [EDWARD V.], Gloucester, who now called himself Lord Protector, kept his residence at Crosby Place in the City, where he held frequent conferences with his confidants. On the 13th of June, Lord Hastings was arrested by his orders in the council-room at the Tower, and immediately led to execution; and two days after, the Lord Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, and Sir Richard Hawes underwent the same fate before the gate of Pontefract Castle. The public were informed by proclamation that these persons had been put to death as having, with the queen and her adherents, intended to murder and destroy the Protector and his cousin the Duke of Buckingham, and the old royal blood of the realm.' Lord Stanley, the Archbishop of York, and the Bishop of Ely were also arrested. On Sunday the 22nd of June Dr. Shaw preached his famous sermon at Paul's Cross, in which he denounced both the present and the late king as bastards; and on the Tuesday following the Duke of Buckingham harangued the citizens to the same effect from the hustings in Guildhall. The next day, Buckingham, accompanied by other lords, by Shaw the lord mayor (brother of the preacher), and by a number of other citizens, proceeded to Baynard's Castle, the residence of the Duchess of York, where Richard then was, and in a long address offered him the crown and royal dignity in the name of the three estates of the land. Richard, with some affected hesitation, replied that he felt it to be his duty to obey the voice of the people, and that he would from that day take upon himself the royal estate of the two noble realms of England and France. On the following day, the 26th, he proceeded to Westminster Hall, and there formally declared himself king. The commencement of his reign is counted from that day, though he was not crowned till the 6th of July. Whether it was the fear inspired by the known determination and unscrupulousness of Richard's character, and the executions at London and Pontefract, that operated upon the public mind, or that any considerable part of the nation really preferred his claims to those of his nephew and the rest of his late brother's children, it must be admitted that his accession, so far from having been opposed in the first instance from any quarter, appears to have been every where hailed with all the evidences of popular approbation and rejoicing. Part of this favour, if it was not a mere show, he may have owed to the clemency and condescension which he affected as soon as he found himself fairly seated on the throne, and to the expectations of a mild or lax government which the very doubtfulness of his title would excite. But the story, in truth, has been so imperfectly transmitted to us, that it is difficult to weave any consistent or satisfactory theory out of the unconnected details that have been preserved. All we know is, that Richard, having immediately after his coronation set out with his queen on a tour through the northern parts of the kingdom, and having been everywhere received with apparently the most cordial gratulations by all classes, was suddenly surprised, while sojourning at York, by intelligence of a formidable confederacy which had been formed against him by the friends of his two nephews in the southern and south-western counties, with his own chief adviser the Duke of Buckingham at its head. It appears that a rising would have taken place immediately throughout Kent, Essex, Sussex, Berkshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Devonshire, had it not been prevented for the moment by its being ascertained that the two royal children were dead. This intelligence however only changed the plan of the conspirators. By the advice of the Bishop of Ely, the crown was offered to Henry, earl of Richmond, on condition that he should marry Edward IV.'s daughter the Princess Elizabeth; and as soon as his acceptance of the proposal was received from beyond seas, his partisans called their followers to arms on the same day, the 18th of October, in all the parts of the country where they had influence. But this insurrection was quelled almost as soon as it broke out. Richmond, after having reached the coast of Devon, did not venture to disembark; Buckingham was deserted by a force of Welshmen that he had raised at Brecknock, and, falling into the king's hands, had his head imme diately struck off in the market-place of Salisbury; of his associates the most fortunate escaped beyond seas; and by the end of the month not an enemy of Richard's remained in arms in England. A parliament was now summoned, which, having met on the 23rd of January 1484, immediately passed an Act declaring Richard to be undoubted king of the realm of England "as well by right of consanguinity and inheritance, as by lawful election, consecration, and coronation," and bastardising the issue of the late King Edward IV. by Elizabeth Rivers, whom it designated as the late wife of Sir John Gray, and denied to have any rightful title to the dignity of queendowager. This Act is known by the name of the Titulus Regius,' and is the earliest of what are called the Private Acts, none of which are given in any of the printed collections of the statutes. The Titulus Regius' however has been printed by Sir Robert Cotton, in his 'Abridgment of the Rolls of Parliament.' This Act was followed by others (also classed as private Acts), attainting and confiscating the property of all the principal persons engaged in the late revolt. But various acts of public utility were also passed by this parliament; among others, one authorising every justice of the peace to admit a prisoner to bail, and directing that no officer should seize the goods of a prisoner till after his conviction; one regulating the impannelling of juries; one declaring and amending the law respecting the levying of fines; and several relating to commercial affairs, which, if they were not in all points grounded on the most enlightened principles, were at least in accordance with the opinions of the time, and must be regarded as evidences of a considerable interest taken by this parliament in the economical welfare of the country. Soon after this however Richard deemed it expedient to adopt a new policy. The queen-dowager, whom the parliament had just declared to have been only the late king's mistress, he now, in alarm at the projected alliance between her eldest daughter and the Earl of Richmond, affected to court as his near and honoured kinswoman; he proposed marrying the Princess Elizabeth to his own son Edward; and when that prince died (in April 1484), and his queen, Anne, who had borne him no other children, soon after fell sick, he offered to marry Elizabeth himself. And strange as it appears, both mother and daughter went eagerly into this scheme; the princess in particular showed the utmost impatience for the marriage with her uncle, at least this is the statement made by Sir George Buck, who asserts that he saw a letter written by her to the Duke of Norfolk, protesting that the king was "her joy and maker in this world, and that she was his in heart and thought," and fretfully expressing her fears that Queen Anne "would never die." But when Anne at last did die (on the 16th of March 1485), not without suspicion of poison, his two confidants, Radcliffe and Catesby, succeeded in dissuading Richard from venturing upon this incestuous marriage, which they assured him would excite the popular indignation from one end of the kingdom to the other; and he then took great pains to proclaim that nothing of the kind had ever been contemplated. He had the preceding year disembarrassed himself of one considerable source of annoyance and distraction by concluding a peace with Scotland for three years; and affiancing his niece, the lady Anne de la Pole, daughter of his sister the Duchess of Suffolk, to James III.'s eldest son, the Duke of Rothsay, afterwards James IV. (a transaction however which did not issue in an actual marriage). But at home the aspect of things was now becoming more unsatisfactory every hour. He durst not venture in the state of the public mind to call a parliament, and he found himself at once without money and nearly without an adherent upon whose fidelity he could depend. One after another of the most eminent of those who had hitherto stood by him fled to France to join the Earl of Richmond. At last, on the 7th of August Henry landed at Milford Haven; and on the 22nd of the same month the result of the battle of Bosworth deprived Richard at once of his crown and his life. (HENRY VII.] Richard left at least one natural son, known by the name of John of Gloucester, who, although yet a minor at his father's death, had been already appointed governor of Calais. There is also a romantic story told of a Richard Plantagenet, who died in the parish of Eastwell in Kent, in 1550, an old man of eighty-two, after a life spent as a working bricklayer, and who asserted that he was present at Bosworth Field, where Richard informed him he was his son; but this legend rests on the slightest authority. A natural daughter, named Katherine, is assigned to Richard, who was to have been married to the Earl of Huntingdon, but who died in 1484, before she had reached the age agreed upon. The Duchess of York, the mother of Edward IV. and Richard III., we may here notice, survived all these events, not dying till 1495. Both the character of Richard III. and many of the events of his reign have been subjects of dispute among modern writers, some of whom have gone the length of attempting to make out that all the crimes imputed to him are the mere fabrications of his enemies. Much to this effect that Horace Walpole has advanced in his famous 'Historic Doubts,' and later writers have repeated, had been anticipated by Sir George Buck, in his Life and Reign of Richard III.,' published so long ago as the middle of the 17th century. Buck's work however also contains a considerable quantity of matter not elsewhere preserved, at least in a printed form. The chief original historian of this reign is Sir Thomas More, in his unfinished tract, entitled 'A History of the Pitiful Life and Unfortunate Death of Edward V. and the Duke of York his brother; with the Troublesome and Tyrannical Government of the Usurpation of Richard III., and his miserable End.' There are the Latin annalists, John Rouss, or Rosse, and the continuator of the History of Croyland.' RICHARD PLANTAGENET, Earl of Cornwall, and titular King of the Romans and Emperor of Germany, was the second son of John, king of England, and was born January 5, 1208. He was created Earl of Cornwall by his brother Henry III. in 1226; and he figures as one of the leading personages throughout that turbulent and distracted reign, showing generally much moderation and good sense in his endeavours to assuage the contentions between the king and the barons, with whom he occasionally sided against the more outrageous excesses of the royal authority, although, as might be expected, without any participation in the design of abridging the ancient prerogatives of the crown, and not without a natural regard in other respects to the interests created by his position. Although he showed some military talent on more than one occasion, his abilities on the whole seem to have been, like his politics, moderate, and of a middle character; he had no pretensions to a brilliant or commanding intellect, but he was at least as far removed from the weak-mindedness of the king his brother, generally evincing in his public conduct at least good sense and discretion, as well as a calm and conciliatory temper. It was a consequence of this moral and intellectual constitution however that, if he had no great vices, he should also be without great virtues; and that the reigning principle of his character should be a cold selfishness, which, though it might shrink from any course of violent aggression upon the rights of others, would yet be active in seeking all safe advantages; and, in that pursuit, would be in danger of sometimes tripping or overreaching itself, notwithstanding all its clear-sightedness and habitual caution. Richard, moreover, if he had no lofty or daring ambition, seems to have had a considerable share of vanity, which also would be apt to assist in betraying him in certain circumstances. If we take these considerations along with us, it will be easy to understand his career. After having first joined the barons who attempted to check the royal despotism, and afterwards more than once interposed successfully as a mediator between them and the king, we find him entirely separating himself from their latter and more decided proceedings; and, in the final struggle with De Montfort and his associates, which put in jeopardy even the possession of the crown by his family, resisting the insurgents as keenly as Prince Edward himself. The most remarkable incident however of Richard's history is his election as King of the Romans in 1256. This honour he is believed to have owed entirely to his great wealth, which enabled him to bribe several of the electors; but it is matter of dispute whether, after all, the majority of votes was really given to him, or, at another election a few weeks after, to his competitor, Alphonso, king of Castile. Richard is commonly reckoned among the German emperors next after William, count of Holland, the successor of Conrad IV.; but some historians distinguish the whole period from the death of Conrad in 1254, to the accession of Rodolph I. in 1273, by the name of the Grand Interregnum. Richard was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, and occasionally exercised such of the imperial rights as could be exercised by a stroke of the pen or the expenditure of a little sealing-wax; but he never enjoyed any real authority in Germany, nor indeed did he show himself much in that country. He was taken prisoner by De Montfort, along with the king his brother, at the battle of Lewes, in May 1264, and was confined in Kenilworth Castle for more than a year. He died in his house at Berkhampstead, on the 2nd of April 1272. Richard was thrice married: first, in 1230, to Isabel, daughter of the great Earl of Pembroke, and widow of the Earl of Gloucester, who died in 1240; secondly, in 1243, to Sanchia of Provence, a sister of his brother's wife, Queen Eleanor, who died in 1261; thirdly, in 1267, to a German lady, Beatrice, daughter of Theodoric de Falkmoute, and niece of Conrad, archbishop of Cologne, who survived him. Of five children which he had by his first wife, and two by his second, all died without issue. His second, and then eldest, son Henry, was assassinated in the church of St. Lawrence at Viterbo in Italy, by Simon and Guy, the two sons of De Montfort, on the 3rd of March 1271. The earls of Berkeley claim to be descended from a natural daughter of Richard, earl of Cornwall, Isabel, who married Maurice de Berkeley, the father of the first Baron Berkeley. RICHARD DE BURY was born in 1287, upon the estate of his father, Sir Richard Angerville, or in Bury St. Edmunds; but it is probable that the predilection which occasioned his taking the name of that place arose from his having received the first rudiments of scholastic education there from his uncle, John de Willoughby, a clergyman. When sufficiently qualified he was sent to Oxford, where he continued to study till he received the appointment of tutor to Prince Edward (afterwards Edward III.), with the office of receiver of his revenues in Wales. This situation enabled him to afford assistance to his royal pupil in the hour of adversity, for when Edward fled with his mother to Paris, and was distressed for want of money, De Bury secretly hastened to succour him, taking with him a large sum in gold, which he had collected while in office; but his flight being discovered, he was pursued by the king's lieutenant, with a band of twenty-four horsemen, even to Paris, where he narrowly escaped detection by being concealed during seven days in the belfry of the convent of Friars Minors. When Edward came to the throne the fidelity of his tutor was rewarded by a rapid advancement to dignities both in church and state. He was first made cofferer to the king, then treasurer of the wardrobe and clerk of the privy seal; he also visited Rome twice as legate to Pope John XXII., and on both occasions was treated with great honour and distinction, being made one of the pope's principal chaplains, and presented with a bull nominating him to the first see that should become vacant in England. He made himself remarkable on his second journey by the splendour of his retinue: when he went into the presence of the pope and his cardinals he was uniformly attended by twenty-six clerks and thirty-six esquires, all attired in the most sumptuous manner. His expenses for the journey amounted to 500 marks. Whence the means were derived may be seen in the list of his appointments, which, besides the above-named, were, during the first six years of Edward's reign, two rectories, six prebendal stalls, the archdeaconries of Salisbury and Northampton, the canonry of Weston, and the deanery of Wells. While at Paris, on his return from Rome, he received intelligence that the bishopric of Durham was vacant, and that the king had written to the pope requesting his presentation to that see. It happened that the right of election was vested in the prior and chapter of Durham, who, notwithstanding they had also a letter from the king, proceeded to elect Robert de Graystanes, a monk and subprior of Durham, who was confirmed and consecrated by the Archbishop of York, as Bishop Godwin says, with more haste than good speed, for the temporalities were at the king's disposal, and he withheld them till he received the pope's answer, which happened to be dated one day prior to the election of Graystanes, and confirmatory of the appointment of De Bury. Upon this Graystanes was deposed, and De Bury consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, on the 19th of December 1333. When he The ready submission to this infringement of the right of appointment by all the parties concerned, has been severely remarked upon by those who were not interested in it. In 1334 De Bury was made chancellor and high treasurer of England. Within the three following years he was thrice at Paris as ambassador to the king of France upon the subject of Edward's claim to the crown of that kingdom, and in the same character he visited Antwerp and Brabant. He had been installed at Durham by proxy, and had once visited the see, but in 1337 he did homage to the Archbishop of York. It does not appear when he resigned any of his political appointments, but he probably did not pass much of his time in his diocese till after 1338. had leisure, we find him deeply involved in pursuits far more congenial to his taste and suitable to his sacred office than politics. Accident made him a statesman, but he was a scholar from habit and natural inclination. In early youth he delighted in the society of learned men, but of books "in which wisdom is contained" he was an enthu siastic lover and the most distinguished collector of his age. Fortunately for him the king encouraged this disposition, and allowed him to use the influence of office in the promotion of his views. He purchased freely in his travels and at home, where he made himself acquainted with every collection, public and private. Moreover, he says, when it became commonly reported that books, especially old ones, were more precious in his estimation than money, or such new- The best account of his researches and of his life will be found in the Philobiblon,' a small treatise written for the purpose of explaining his objects, of giving directions about books generally, and particularly about his own collections, and even of justifying his conduct, for there were many who derided his pursuits, and thought them altogether extravagant. This tract was first printed at Cologne in 1473; after wards at Spires in 1483; Paris, 1500; Oxford, 1599; and in the collections of Goidast and Schmid: a limited impression of an English translation (by Mr. J. B. Inglis) was published by Rodd in 1832. There is no other known work by him extant, though one is mentioned under the title of 'Orationes ad Principes,' and some letters are spoken of. He certainly had an extensive correspondence with the most distinguished literary men of his time. Petrarca, with whom he conversed, calls him a man of an ardent and enthusiastic turn. He bears an excellent character generally; his wealth was freely bestowed upon the deserving but needy scholar, and he was equally munificent in distributing alms to the poor. His book evinces a benevolent disposition, though we must except against his refusing the use of books to the laity, but his precautions against the abuse of them are worthy of all commendation. He died at Auckland on the 14th of April 1345, aged fifty-eight, and was buried with due honours in the southern angle of the cathedral of Durham. with the map and a fac-simile of the manuscript, as well as a commentary on the Itinerary.' It was also reprinted as one of Six Old English Chronicles,' in a volume of Bohn's Antiquarian Library,' 1848. The discovery of this treatise was regarded as an era in the study of British and Roman-British antiquities. The Itinerary contains eighteen journeys which Richard says he compiled from certain fragments written by a Roman general and from Ptolemy and other authors; he mentions a hundred and seventy-six stations (while Antoninus has only 113), some of them a considerable distance north of the wall of Severus, besides which there are numerous chasms which show that many names have been lost or obliterated. The credit and fidelity of this work have been attacked, but they have been defended by a reference to local investigation the result of which has in some instances been favourable to the authenticity of the work. On the other hand it is often extremely incorrect, and the account which Bertram gives of the manuscript, which he says "came into his hands in a very extraordinary manner with many other curiosities," is far from satisfactory. What has become of "the original manuscript" from which he professes to have made the copy he sent to Stukeley does not appear to be known: it is not in the Royal Library at Copenhagen where it was expected to be found. Many good scholars and antiquaries however still believe the work to be authentic, but the tendency of opinion is decidedly the other way. Gibbon says of Richard that "he shows a genuine knowledge of antiquity very extraordinary for a monk of the 14th century." He is frequently quoted by his Latin name Ric. Corin., i.e. Ricardus Corinensis. RICHARDSON, DR. CHARLES, was born in July 1775. He was intended for the profession of the law, and his early education was adopted for that pursuit. He however did not long follow it, but turned his attention to literature, and especially to philology. In 1805 he issued his first production, Illustrations of English Philo logy,' in which he supported the principles advocated by Horne Tooke and which contained criticisms on Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, with observations on Dugald Stewart's essay 'On the Tendency of some late Philological Speculations.' Subsequently he undertook to furnish the lexicographical portion of the Encyclopædia Metropolitana,' the first part of which was published in January 1818, but after the issue of the fourth part, the work was suspended through the failure of the publishers, until it was resumed by Mr. Mawman. In 1835, the publisher being the late Mr. Pickering, the 'Dictionary' as a separate work first began to be issued, and it was completed in 1837. It is undoubtedly the best dictionary we have, it remedied many of the defects of Johnson, as the author had a far more extended acquaintance with foreign languages. It was deservedly successful, and other editions both in 4to and as an abridgment in 8vo have been since issued. Mr. Pickering's failure however, who possessed a share of the copyright, occasioned difficulties which were at length overcome by the copyright becoming vested in the hands of the author, Mr. Whittingham of the Chiswick press, and Mr. George Bell. Dr. Richardson has also published an essay on the Study of Languages,' an exposition of the principles which guided him in the composition of the dictionary, founded on those of Horne Tooke in the 'Diver sions of Purley.' He has also contributed some interesting papers on subjects connected with philology to the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' and has produced some useful and ingenious remarks on passages of Shakespere. [See SUPPLEMENT.] · RICHARD OF CIRENCESTER, or Ricardus Corinensis' (sometimes called the Monk of Westminster), a monkish historian of the 14th century, so named from his being a native of Cirencester in Gloucestershire. No traces of his family or connections have been discovered, nor has the exact time of his birth been ascertained, although the superior education which he received has led to the supposition that his family was of the higher ranks. He entered the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter, Westminster, in 1350: his name occurs in various documents in 1387, 1397, 1399, and he is registered in one of the chamberlain's lists preserved among the abbey records, by the name of Circestre. He composed several elaborate works on Saxon and British history, and to increase his knowledge he visited most of the libraries in this country for reference to original manuscripts. He obtained a license to visit Rome from his abbot in 1391, the original of which is still in existence. It is supposed that he undertook this journey between 1391 and 1397, for he appears to have been confined in the abbey infirmary in 1401, and to have died in that or the following year. His work entitled 'Historia ab Hengista ad ann. 1348,' is in two parts. The first part is from the arrival of the Saxons to the death of Harold. His theological works were Tractatus super Symbolum Majus et Minus,' and Liber de Officiis Ecclesiasticis. But he is chiefly known from his celebrated treatise entitled 'De Situ Britanniæ,' which was first discovered in manuscript in 1747 by Charles Julius Bertram, professor of the English language at the Royal Marine Academy at Copenhagen, who sent a transcript of the whole to Dr. Stukeley, with a fac-simile of the manuscript. In 1757 Dr. Stukeley published an analysis of the work, with the Itinerary;' and other particulars may be seen in the second volume of Dr. Stukeley's 'Itinerarium Curiosum,' and in Whitaker's 'Manchester.' In the same year the treatise was published at Copen-western branch of that river, at the same time that Dr. Richardson hagen by Professor Bertram, with the remains of Gildas and Nennius, under the title Britannicarum Gentium Historia Antiquae scriptores tres Ricardus Corinensis, Gildas Badonicus, Nennius Banchorensis,' &c., Svo, but this work became scarce. In 1809 an edition was published in London, entitled 'The Description of Britain, translated from Ricardus of Cirencester, with the original treatise De Situ Britanniæ, RICHARDSON, SIR JOHN, KNIGHT, M.D., was born in 1787, at Dumfries, in Scotland. His father, Gabriel Richardson, was a magistrate of the county of Dumfries, and provost of the town. John Richardson received his early education at the grammar-school of Dumfries. In 1801 he entered the University of Edinburgh, where he studied chiefly with a view to the medical profession. He entered the navy in 1807 as an assistant-surgeon. He served at the siege of Copenhagen, and afterwards on the coasts of Spain and Portugal, and was promoted to be acting-surgeon of the Hercules, 74 guns. In 1816 he took his degree of M.D. at the University of Edinburgh, and in 1818 married his first wife, a daughter of William Stiven, Esq., of Leith. In 1819 Dr. Richardson accompanied Captain Franklin as surgeon and naturalist on his first expedition to the shores of the Arctic Sea. Their labours, sufferings, and privations, have been alluded to in the memoir of FRANKLIN, REAR-ADMIRAL SIR JOHN. That expedition was not com pleted till 1822, and Captain Franklin's Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea in 1819 to 1822,' was published in 1823. In 1825 Captain Franklin undertook the command of a second expedition to the shores of the Arctic Sea, and Dr. Richardson again accompanied him as medical officer and naturalist. They arrived in safety at Great Bear Lake, and passed the winter of 1825-26 at Fort Franklin, which they constructed for that purpose. Having descended the Mackenzie River to the spot where it separates into two main branches, the expe dition was formed into two detachments. Captain Franklin and Lieutenant Back, having the command of two boats, descended the and Mr. Kendall, also with two boats, descended the eastern branch. Captain Franklin, with his detachment, traced the shores of the Arctic Sea from the Mackenzie River westwards to nearly 149° W. long., while Dr. Richardson, with the other detachment, traced the coast eastwards to the mouth of the Coppermine River. Dr. Richardson and his party then ascended the Coppermine River in their boats eleven |