that he might lavish them on his minions, and lead a luxurious, indolent, and self-indulgent life; and in this state of things a remarkable circumstance occurred which tended to his overthrow.

The Duke of Norfolk happening to overtake Henry of Bolingbroke, now Duke of Hereford, on the road between Windsor and London, told him that the king had formed designs injurious to his father John of Gaunt and himself. The duke declared what he had heard in open Parliament, affecting to consider it a slander against the king; Norfolk maintained that he had spoken the truth, and, according to the knightly fashion of the age, challenged Hereford to single combat. The lists were prepared at Coventry, and the combat was about to begin, when the king, who was present, forbade it, sentencing Hereford to banishment for ten years, and Norfolk to exile for life Besides this, he confiscated nearly all of Norfolk's property; and when, shortly after, John of Gaunt died, he seized also on the patrimony of Hereford. Other violent measures followed these, and all England was excited to anger against Richard; bands of armed men began to appear in various parts of the country, and at length the nobles, making common cause with the citizens of London, resolved to recall Hereford.

Accordingly, in July, 1399, Henry of Bolingbroke landed in Yorkshire, with a retinue of about sixty persons. Richard was at this time in Ireland; whither he had gone with a large army to avenge the death of the Earl of March, presumptive heir to the crown, who had been killed by the natives. As there was at that time very little communication between England and Ireland, three weeks elapsed before Richard heard of the arrival of Bolingbroke; who by that time had obtained the support of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and of the Percys and others, and was at the head of 60,000 men. Richard returned immediately, and landed at Milford Haven in the month of August; but finding the popular feeling strongly against him, he assumed the garb of a priest, and retired into Conway Castle, where he remained for some time, though in so destitute a condition, that he was compelled to lie upon straw.

Famine, however, at last drove him from thence, and he surrendered to Percy, Earl of Northumberland, who seems to have offered him delusive terms. He was met at the Castle of Flint by Henry of Bolingbroke, to whom he bent his knee, as to his sovereign, saying, "Fair cousin of Lancaster, you are right welcome." Henry replied, "My lord, I am come somewhat before my time, but I will tell you the reason. Your people complain that you have ruled them harshly for twenty-two years; but, if it please God, I will help you to rule them better."

Richard replied, "Fair cousin, since it pleaseth you, it pleaseth me likewise;" and then the trumpets sounded to horse, and, mounted on a wretched hackney, Richard rode as a prisoner to Chester.

No one pitied him for his fall, and an old chronicler says that his very dog left his side to fawn upon his destroyer.

From Chester the victorious Bolingbroke proceeded with his prisoner to London, and lodged him in the Tower; and he then issued writs, still in Rutland's name, for the Parliament to meet on the 29th of September. On this day a deputation of lords and commons waited on the king in the Tower, to receive his formal renunciation of the crown, and he acknowledged his own unfitness for government, and delivered his royal ring to his cousin Henry. It was upon this resignation that Henry founded his principal claim; but, anxious to fortify his pretensions, he exhibited against Richard thirty-three articles of impeachment. These were read in Parliament; and as the king was declared guilty upon every one of them, his deposition was pronounced. The sentence was proclaimed by eight commissioners; and then Henry, who was seated in his usual place near the throne, rose, and having solemnly crossed himself, said, "In the name of God the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster, challenge this realm of England, because I was descended by right of blood from the good lord King Henry III.; and through that right, God of his grace hath sent me, with help of my kin and friends, to recover it; the which realm was in point to be undone, for default of good government and undoing of the good laws."

He then knelt for a few minutes in prayer on the steps of the throne, and was afterwards seated upon it by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

A.D.

REMARKABLE EVENTS OF THE PERIOD.

1220. The study of the sciences of astronomy and geography revived in Europe.

1221. The rebuilding of Westminster Abbey begun.

1223. The slaves on the royal estates in France set free.

1246. Tiles first used in England for the covering of houses, which before

this time were thatched.

1251. Silk much used by persons of high rank.

1253. Magna Charta solemnly confirmed.

1299. The Turks under Othman first attack the Greek empire.

1305. Wallace taken and executed in London as a traitor.

1307. About this time sea-coal began to be used in London, but only by brewers, dyers, &c.

1310. Lincoln's Inn Society established.

1312. The Order of Knights Templars abolished.

1320. Birth of John Gower, one of the earliest of English poets.'

A.D.

1324. Birth of the reformer Wickliffe.

1331. Flemish manufacturers of broadcloth invited to England. 1346. Cannon first used by the English at the battle of Crecy. 1349. A dreadful plague prevailed from May to September.

1361. Another terrible pestilence from August to the following May. 1361. Wickliffe attacks the abuses of the Church of Rome.

1369. The third pestilence rages from July to September.

1377. Windsor Castle rebuilt under the direction of William of Wykeham. 1380. The Bible first translated into English by Wickliffe.

CHAP. X.

THE RELIGION, GOVERNMENT, LAWS, LITERATURE, ARTS, COMMERCE, MANNERS, ETC. OF THIS PERIOD.

Religion. In the thirteenth century the papal dominion had reached its height in Europe, and in no country were the exactions and encroachments of the Roman pontiffs carried to a greater extent than in England. Few had the hardihood to resist these extortions; and, though Grostête, Bishop of Lincoln, raised his voice against them, it was not powerful enough to reach the mass of the population, and the demands of the Pope were always satisfied. The people were also further impoverished by the mendicant orders of monks: the Franciscans or Friars Minor, the Dominicans or Black Friars, the Carmelites or White Friars, and the Augustines or Grey Friars. These various orders, if they had, as they professed, a great desire to save the souls of the people, had also, it would seem, a no less ardent wish to get possession of their money; and they were mostly hostile towards each other, so that those who sought instruction from the Franciscans were told to beware of the Carmelites, the Carmelites denounced the Dominicans, and the Dominicans condemned the Augustines.

The exactions and assumptions of the Church of Rome, however, proved ultimately adverse to its own interest; for even in this period several measures were adopted to check the papal aggressions and limit the power of the Pope; and in the latter part of it the efforts of the legislature were seconded by the people. While king, lords, and commons were repelling by statutes the encroachments of the pontiffs, a great reformer shook the whole fabric of the doctrine, discipline, and policy of the church. This reformer was John Wickliffe (born about the year 1324); who, in a treatise entitled Of the last Age of the Church, boldly assailed the notions then commonly held on the subject of the authority of

the Pope. This was in 1356; and a few years later he attacked the mendicant orders, and subsequently inveighed against the conduct of the whole body of the clergy. His exertions in preaching, writing, and translating the Holy Scriptures made a deep impression on the popular mind; and when he was cited before the bishops of Lambeth, in the reign of Edward III., he had the support both of the nobles and the people. His favourite topic was the evil occasioned to the church by its wealth; and both he and his disciples went about barefoot and in the coarsest dresses. Wickliffe died in 1384, after having laid the foundation of religious reformation not only in England, but throughout Europe.

Government and Laws. In the reign of Henry III. the legis lative acts most worthy of notice were his confirmations of Magna Charta and the Charters of the Forest, which then formed the basis of all English laws. In the reign of his son, Edward I., however, greater progress was made towards liberty; and during the last thirteen years of his life the English law received more improvement than in any one reign up to that of the present sovereign. A point that deserves especial notice at this time is the introduction of the deputies from towns and boroughs into Parliament; in which practice originated the present House of Commons. Edward confirmed the Great Charter no less than eleven times; and at length converted into an established law the blessing of which the people had had only a precarious enjoyment, by decreeing that no tax should be levied without the consent of both Lords and Commons. The results of these laws were seen in the reign of Edward II.; under whose otherwise calamitous rule there was a great reduction of taxation, and very few grants were made by Parliament. The fifty years of Edward III.'s reign, indeed, brought a still greater increase; but this was for the purpose of maintaining wars which were popular with the people, and all duties levied were granted by annual vote, first by the representatives of the cities and boroughs only, and after 1373 by both houses in the usual form.

In the reign of Richard II. the parliamentary grant to the crown was first called a subsidy, the term afterwards commonly employed. This subsidy was for an exportation duty on wool, woolfels, and leather, and an act was subsequently passed offering a discount from the duties of these articles to all merchants who would pay the Calais dues in advance: this was the first attempt made to anticipate the revenue; a practice which in later times gave rise to the national debt.

Literature. The study of elegant literature was, during the period under consideration, almost abandoned for metaphysical disputation; and scarcely any other branch of learning was culti

vated by the numerous students in the colleges of England and the Continent than Aristotelian logic and metaphysics. In some of the most famous universities the students had to take a solemn oath to defend the opinions of Aristotle, though they were acquainted with his writings only by false translations. The results of such a system as this could not but be adverse to the progress of real knowledge.

Divinity soared far above the Scriptures; the Schoolmen valued themselves on making improvements in theology without consulting them, and the few who still studied them diligently were called in derision Bible doctors.

In the mathematical and physical sciences some great names are to be found in this period; those, for instance, of Roger Bacon, Robert Grostête, Bishop of Lincoln, and John of Leyden: but the occupation of the mass of students in the universities was to learn bad Latin and worse logic. Many of the disputes constantly going on were not only endless, but unmeaning, and tending to perplex the most important truths and give plausibility to the greatest absurdities. A logical disputant of this period was not ashamed to contend that "two contradictory propositions might both be true:" and these frivolous arguments were carried on with so much eagerness, that the disputants often proceeded from angry words to blows, and raised dangerous riots in the halls of learning.

The Latin tongue, though its elegancies were neglected, continued throughout this period to be the language of the learned, both in England and on the Continent; it was that in which all epistolary intercourse was carried on, and in which books were written, not only by Scholastic divines and philosophers, but by writers on geometry, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, and other branches of mathematical and natural science; but French, which was the language of the court and nobility in England from the period of the Conquest, was also occasionally employed in literary composition. The great body of the people used in their common affairs the languages of their ancestors, the Saxon and English; and ballads and metrical romances were written in the English language before the reign of Edward I.

The true founders of English literature, however, appeared in the reign of Edward III. These were Laurence Minot, who wrote a series of poetical pieces on the warlike achievements of that king; William Langland, author of the Visions of Pierce Plowman; John Gower, who wrote much English, as well as Latin and French verse; and last and greatest of all, Geoffrey Chaucer.

Arts. During this period little progress was made in agriculture. The country being almost constantly engaged in war, the