1101.]

STATUTE AGAINST THE LOLLARDS.

45

dom. In the first year of his reign was passed the Statute "De heretico comburendo ""the first statute and butcherly knife," says Prynne, "that the impeaching prelates procured or had against the poor preachers of Christ's gospel." The fiery persecution of archbishop Arundel was grounded upon these charges :-" Whereas it is showed to our sovereign lord the king on the behalf of the prelates and the clergy,* that divers false and perverse people of a certain new sect, of the faith, of the sacraments of the church, and the authority of the same damnably thinking, and against the law of God and of the church usurping the office of preaching, do perversely and maliciously in divers places within the said realm, under the colour of dissembled holiness, preach and teach these days openly and privily divers new doctrines, and wicked heretical and erroneous opinions, contrary to the same faith and blessed determinations of Holy Church; and of such sect and wicked doctrine and opinions they make unlawful conventicles and confederacies, they hold and exercise schools, they make and write books, they do wickedly instruct and inform people, and as much as they may excite and stir them to sedition and insurrection, and make great strife and division among the people, and other enormities horrible to be heard daily do perpetrate and commit." The "convenient remedy" for such "novelties and excesses" was that none should preach, write, or teach against the faith of Holy Church; that all having in their possession books or writings of such wicked doctrines and opinions should deliver them up, or be arrested and proceeded against by the diocesan; and, finally, that if any persons be before the diocesan charged with such wicked preachings and teachings, and should refuse to abjure, or after abjuration fall into relapse, they should be left to the secular court; and the sheriff of a county, or mayor or bailiffs of a city or borough, after sentence, shall receive the same persons, and every of them, "and them, before the people, do [cause] to be burnt, that such punishment may strike in fear to the minds of other." Vain and detestable law-the parent of abominations that make the slaughters of the feudal ages, perpetrated in the heat and self-defence of battle, appear guiltless by the side of this deliberate wickedness in the name of the religion of mercy! In this hateful career Henry IV. was no impassive tool of the persecuting churchThe first victim was William Salter, a London clergyman, who was burnt on the 12th of February, 1401. The stake and the fagot were in full activity, till the Commons shuddered at the atrocities which Englishmen had now first to endure. In the reign of Richard II. the Commons would not permit that the Church should imprison heretics without the king's consent. Now heretics were to be burnt, upon the sole sentence of the ecclesiastical courts. A petition of the Lords in 1406, which we have just referred to, mixes up the charges of heresy against certain preachers and teachers with the charge of publishing rumours that king Richard was alive. This alleged offence was a possible cause of the king's bitterness against them. But it was also set forth in that petition that they stirred and moved the people to take away their temporal possessions from the prelates; and, it was added,

men.

"The petition and the statute are both in Latin, which is unusual in the laws of this time. in a subsequent petition of the Commons this act is styled 'the statute made in the second year of your majesty's reign, at the request of the prelates and clergy of your kingdom;' which affords a presumption that it had no regular assent of parliament."-Hallam, "Middle Ages," chap. viii. part. iii.

46

HOSTILITY OF FRANCE AND SCOTLAND.

[1401. "in case that this evil purpose be not resisted by your royal majesty, it is very likely that in process of time they will also excite the people of your kingdom to take away from the lords temporal their possessions and heritages." The Commons, who had also temporal possessions to lose, did not share this apprehension. They prayed Henry in 1410, that the Statute against the Lollards might be repealed, or even mitigated. He replied, that he wished one more severe had been passed; and to show how practical was his intolerance, he immediately signed a warrant for the burning of John Badby, a Lollard. The Commons deeply resented the temper of the king, and refused to grant a subsidy to be levied yearly without their renewed assent. But, in the reign of Henry V., a noble knight was burnt for heresy; and the "wicked doctrines were thrown back for another century and a half. In His own good time, He who "remaineth a king for ever" asserts His own laws against the trumpery edicts of earthly kings. The Lollards' dungeon at Lambeth is now a monument of the triumph of the Reformation.

It was with no vague meaning that Shakspere put into the mouth of Henry IV. the aphorism, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." His reign was a period of continued assault and danger on every side. France and Scotland refused to recognise Henry as the sovereign of England. Their truces, they maintained, were with Richard, and not with an usurper. With France the king was anxiously desirous of peace. But the princes and nobles of France, considering the deposition of Richard as the act of the people, were craving to punish a nation which they held as the most dangerous on earth through its pride and insolence. The king of France, subject to partial attacks of insanity, had received a terrible shock by the announcement of the events that had deprived his daughter of her queenly rank. Isabella was conducted back to Calais with ceremonies almost as magnificent

* Froissart.

1402.]

BATTLE OF HOMILDON-HILL.

47

as those which had attended her marriage five years before. But Henry, straitened in his finances, did not send back with her the dower which Richard had received. The duke of Orleans was for commencing hostilities against Henry. The duke of Burgundy was more cautious. These rival uncles of the insane king, by their furious discords kept France in a state of disorder and terror, which rendered the government incapable of any great enterprise. Bordeaux, and other parts of Gascony, were still retained by the English government, and these were attacked by the duke of Burgundy. But the people clung to the English rule. In 1400, Henry invaded Scotland. He marched to Edinburgh; and left the usual mark of feudal royalty by burning the city. In 1402, the Scots invaded England. Henry was chasing Glendower in the land of the ancient Britons, and attributing to necromancy the ill success which courage and constancy had prepared for him. The Scottish earl of March, who had abjured his allegiance to his own sovereign, had defeated the invading Scots at Hepburn-moor. The earl Douglas came with a great army to revenge the loss. They advanced beyond the Tyne, devastating and plundering with more than usual fierceness and rapacity. But the earl of Northumberland, his son Henry Percy, and the earl of March, had collected a large force in their rear, and awaited their return near Wooller. On Holyrood-day, the 14th of September, the Scots took up a strong position on Homildon-hill. The English army was placed on an opposite eminence. Percy commanded a descent into the valley; and as the Scots lined the sides of Homildon-hill, the English archers picked down their men with unerring aim, while Douglas gave no order for advance. At last the Scots charged down the steep, and the English retired a little. Again they halted, and again the deadly shafts flew so sharp and strong that few could stand up against the "iron sleet." The English men-at-arms in this battle drew not a sword. The victory was won by the terrible archers alone. Douglas and many nobles and knights were made prisoners; amongst whom was Murdoc Stewart, the son and heir of the duke of Albany, the regent of Scotland. The earl of Northumberland presented his illustrious prisoners to Henry, at Westminster; when the king exhorted Murdoc to be resigned to his captivity, for he had been taken on the battle-field like a true knight. The notion that Henry demanded the prisoners of Homildon-hill from the captors, that he might deprive them of ransom, is an error which Shakspere derived from Hall and Holinshed. It is distinctly proved that Henry reserved to the captors all their rights. The revolt of the Percies was possibly accelerated by the refusal of Henry to ransom Sir Edmund Mortimer, whose sister had become the wife of Hotspur. But the probability is, that no sudden impulses of passion excited their resistance to the authority of the man whom they had seated on the throne. The king was so unconscious of having provoked their resentment by any act of his own self-will, that the very army which encountered them at Shrewsbury was led by him, "to give aid and support to his very dear and loyal cousins, the earl of Northumberland and his son Henry, in the expedition which they had honourably commenced for him and his realm against his enemies the Scotch."* But the Percies had just cause of complaint against the government of Henry, in a matter which involved. no jealousy of their power which had advanced him to the throne, as Hume Henry to the Privy Council. See preface by Sir H. Nicolas to "Privy Council of England."

48

REVOLT OF THE PERCIES.

[1403.

describes the temper of the king. The Percies had incurred great expenses in their resistance to the Scots; and the government of Henry had been unable to reimburse them. There are letters to the king and to the council from the earl of Northumberland, in the summer of 1403, bitterly complaining of the non-payment of large sums due to him. There is a letter of the same period from Henry's son, the prince of Wales, complaining that his soldiers would not remain with him unless they were promptly paid their wages; and an order is made by the king in council, on the 10th of July, 1403, that a thousand pounds should be sent to the prince, to enable him to keep his people together. It is clear that the king was surrounded by financial embarrassments, which affected his own son as much as the Percies. He satisfied the Percies as far as he could by small payments and large promises. They probably saw in these embarrassments a symptom of the weakness of Henry's government, and believed that the revolt of Glendower would enable them, in conjunction with him, to establish a government in which they should have a more supreme power than under the rule of the politic Lancaster. They managed their plans with such caution, that whilst the king was marching towards the north, expecting to join them in Northumberland, Hotspur was marching through Lancashire and Cheshire, proclaiming that Richard was alive. At Burton-upon Trent, Henry heard the news of the revolt. Within a week, he had fought the battle of Shrewsbury.

The prince of Wales was on the Welsh borders, and joined his forces to those of his father before the army of Henry entered Shrewsbury, on the 20th of July. Hotspur had been joined by Douglas and his Scots; and by his uncle, the earl of Worcester, with a body of Cheshire archers. Glendower was on his march from Carmarthenshire; but the rapid movement of Henry to the west brought the royal troops in the presence of the northern army before the Welsh chieftain could unite his forces with those of his confederates. Under the walls of Shrewsbury lay the insurgents. They retired a short distance to Hateley Field. The solemn defiance of the confederates was sent to Henry during the night, denouncing him and his adherents as "traitors, and subverters of the commonwealth and kingdom, and invaders, oppressors, and usurpers, of the rights of the true and direct heir of England and France."

Hateley Field is about three miles from Shrewsbury. It is a plain of no large extent, with a gentle range of hills rising towards the Welsh border. On that plain, where he had fought for his life and his crown, Henry afterwards caused a chapel to be built and endowed, wherein mass might be chanted for the souls of those who died in that battle, and were there interred. The mass is no longer there sung; but there is the little chapel. As we stand upon that quiet plain,-looking upon the eastern Haughmond hill, "the busky hill" of Shakspere, and listen when "the southern wind doth play the trumpet,"—the words of the chronicler and the poet linger in our memories; and we think of that terrible hour, when "suddenly the trumpets blew, and the king's part cried Sainct George! and the adversaries cried Esperancé! Percie! and so, furiously, the armies joined." The Northumbrian archers, who had done such terrible execution at Homildon-hill, now

* Hall.

1403.]

BATTLE OF SHREWSBURY.

49

drew their bow-strings against their English brothers; and the king's men "fell as the leaves fall on the ground after a frosty night at the approach of winter."* The troops of Henry recoiled before their slaughtering arrows, and before the charge which Percy and Douglas led. The prince of Wales was wounded by an arrow in the face; but the valiant youth continued to fight where the battle was strongest. For three hours the field was contested with an obstinacy that marked the breed of the men who were fighting against each other. "At the last, the king, crying Saint George! Victory! broke the array, and entered into the battle of his enemies, and fought fiercely, and adventured so far into the battle, that the earl Douglas struck him down, and slew sir Walter Blunt and three others appareled in the king's suit and clothing." The king was raised, and again "did that day many a valiant feat of arms." Hotspur at length fell; an arrow pierced his brain. His death struck a panic terror into the hearts of his brave followers The straggling Welsh, who had joined the battle, fled to the woods and hills The gallant Douglas was taken prisoner, and few or none of his Scots escaped alive. On that Hateley Field, where about fourteen thousand men were engaged on each side, one half were killed or wounded. The earl of Worcester, the baron of Kenderton, and sir Richard Vernon, were amongst the prisoners delivered to the king. At the market-cross of Shrewsbury, where, a hundred and twenty years before, prince David of Wales had been executed as a traitor, Worcester, Kenderton, and Vernon paid the penalty of their revolt, with the same horrible barbarities that were inflicted, for the first time, upon the brother of Llewellyn. The earl of Northumberland was marching his retainers through Durham, when he received the news of the death of his son and his brother; and of the fatal issue of the sudden revolt of his house. He hurried back to his castle of Warkworth, and disbanded

his men. The earl was commanded to appear before the king at York. Henry was too politic to be unnecessarily severe; and the elder Percy escaped, even without a forfeiture.

* Walsingham.

VOL. II.

+ Hall.

E