Richard The Chird (46 page)

Richard likewise issued a proclamation to the citizens of the county which reveals the anxious cares of the King who must be always earning his right to the crown. Briefly he commended those of his subjects who had remained loyal or had quickly forsaken the rebellion, and announced rewards for the taking of rebels still at large. These practical considerations were but a prologue to what was most on the King's mind: he earnestly emphasized his determination

to see due administration of justice throughout this his realm to be had, and to reform, punish, and subdue all extortions and oppressions in the same. And for that cause with all, that at his coming now into this his said county Kent, that every person dwelling within the same that find himself grieved, oppressed, or unlawfully wronged, do make a bill of his complaint and put it to his highness, and he shall be heard and without delay have such convenient remedy as shall accord with his laws; for his grace is utterly determined that all his true subjects shall live in rest and quiet, and peaceably enjoy their lands, livelodes^ and goods, according to the laws of this his land,

which they be naturally born to inherit. And therefore the King chargeth and commandeth that no manner man, of whatsoever condition or degree he be, rob, hurt, or spoil any of his said subjects in their bodies or goods, upon pain of death; and also that no manner man make, pick, or continue any quarrel to other for any old or new rancour, hate, malice, or cause, or offers made, upon pain of death, nor also take man's meat, horse-meat [Le., fodder], or any other victual or stuff, without he pay truly therefore to the owners thereof, upon pain of losing of his horse, harness, goods, and his body to prison at the King's will. . . .*

Perhaps the greatest consequence of the rebellion lay in its effect upon King Richard. Instead of warning him to make himself as strong as possible, it drove him with ever-increasing strain to labor in the quest of allegiance. But the class of men who would have most reason to appreciate the offer of justice did not represent the political or military might of the kingdom.

It was his High Court of Parliament, however, upon which Richard was principally depending to express to the whole realm the kind of rule he meant to exercise. During these weeks while he was pressing on the naval warfare against the Bretons and going his progress in Kent, the King and his councilors were preparing an agenda for the forthcoming sessions unlike any that had been known since Parliament began, perhaps a century before, to think of itself not only as the King's High Court but also as the nation's representative legislature. 7

Originally summoned to meet on November 6 but postponed by the outbreak of the rebellion, Parliament assembled in the Painted Chamber at Westminster on Friday, January 23. Chancellor Russell delivered the opening address, based as usual on the gospel text for the day:

—"our old new-reconciled enemies' 7 —who have broken oaths and treaties; worse yet, the kingdom has been led into darkness by those who recently rebelled against their King, an act contrary to the commandments of God Himself. This darkness can be remedied only if the people of England employ the light of reason for "the advancing of the common weal." 8

On the following Monday the Commons showed their good will toward the King by presenting as their Speaker, William Catesby, one of his most trusted councilors and Esquire of the Body; and the Parliament then set to work upon bills similar to those which its predecessors had been passing during the past three decades of rebellions and uncertainties regarding the succession to the throne. It enacted a settlement of the crown upon King^ Richard—the Titulus Regis— and ordained his son Edward as heir apparent, by confirming and recapitulating the bill which had been promulgated in the informal Parliament of the previous June. It passed an act of attainder against the chief fomenters of the late rebellion and authorized the King to make grants of lands forfeited by attainder; the three traitorous bishops of Ely, Salisbury, and Exeter were only disabled from enjoying any possessions, and the property rights of rebels' wives were solicitously safeguarded. The King asked for no imposition of taxes, but on the last day of the session the Speaker announced that the Commons had voted the customary royal subsidies of tunnage and poundage—a duty on merchandise imported and exported—and the tax on the exportation of wool and hides. In addition there were the usual "private" acts. Viscount Lovell and Sir James Tyrell were granted certain lands to which they made claim; and a petition of the Earl of Northumberland's was approved that all attainders and confiscations of land which had been enacted against the House of Percy since the days of Henry IV be annulled. Some petitions from religious establishments were also granted, and humbler interests had their hearing. At the request of the inhabitants of Croyland, in the fen country, who from time immemorial had reared swans "from which a great part of their relief and living hath been sustained," a bill of the previous Parliament was annulled which declared that no one not a lord's

son or possessing lands worth five marks a year should possess "any Marke or Game of his own Swans."

The remarkable work of the Parliament lay in a series of statutes directly sponsored by the King and his council. Three of these were aimed at correcting economic injustices; three, at safeguarding the rights of the individual against abuses of the law itself.

The wholesale confiscations of property during the Wars of the Roses and the failure of the common law to keep pace with various tricks that had been invented for fraudulently disposing of estates had thrown the traditional methods of conveying land into confusion. Men found their property rights contested by titles they had never heard of, and as the Paston Letters eloquently testify, could be brought to the brink of ruin by endless lawsuits. The first of Richard's statutes took action against u privy and unknown feoffements," a practice by which a seller of land concealed from the buyer that a part of the property had already been disposed of to somebody else. It was enacted that henceforth every estate feoffment, gift of land, and the like "shall be good to him that it is made unto and against the sellers and their heirs." Another statute sought to prevent the concealment of property transfers, called "fines," which were made in the Court of Common Pleas, by providing that such fines must be proclaimed by the court and notices of the transaction sent to various officials. A statute of limitations made its appearance in this act: persons wishing to take action because of the proclamation of a fine were given five years in which to bring suit. The third statute abolished an economic injustice which had been visited upon the realm by the royal power itself. Edward IV's direct demands for money, euphemistically called benevolences, were condemned, and the right of the King to make such exactions was "dampned and annulled forever."

The other three statutes sought to refine and reform the machinery of justice, so that forms of law might no longer be used as instruments of extortion and oppression. One statute was aimed at correcting abuses in the courts of piepowder, that is, the courts

which sat only to determine offenses committed at fairs and which were usually under the direction of the bailiff or steward of the land on which the fair was held. One of King Edward's Parliaments had authorized these officials to rule in matters which did not originate at fairs; but since this statute had resulted in a variety of oppressions practiced by bailiffs and stewards, it was now enacted that they have jurisdiction only over cases arising at fair time. Much more important were the other two statutes, designed to protect innocent men against the perversion of legal forms by their predatory or malicious neighbors. One was an act for "returning of sufficient jurors." Officials who impaneled juries were forbidden to choose any juror who was not "of good name and fame" and who did not possess freehold land worth twentv shillings a year or copyhold land worth twenty-six shillings, eight pence. Sheriffs and bailiffs who failed to obey the law were to be fined forty shillings, and all indictments brought by unqualified juries were declared void. This act was promulgated because "it daily happens" that men of no substance were finding means of being elected to jury duty in order to force indictments of innocent men or to quash indictments of guilty ones. The last statute was designed to protect men who were arrested and kept in prison without bail on accusations "of light suspicion" or of malice. Justices of the Peace were given the power, on arrests for suspicion of felony, to give bail, just as if the accused had been indicted before these Justices in their sessions. Of equal importance was the provision that the goods of persons arrested for suspicion of felony should not be seized before conviction.

To the commons and the gentry these laws offered a prospect of fair dealing in the courts which they had not seen for decades; but they undoubtedly were one of the chief reasons why Richard did not retain the support of a number of the nobility and upper gentry. For these laws were aimed directly at curbing the practices by which this class had overawed and preyed upon its weaker neighbors throughout the past century. By striking at evils which were mainly the result of the system of livery and maintenance, Richard was serving justice at the risk—a risk he

must have realized—of alienating the men whose military power he would need in the day of battle.

Examples of government-sponsored legislation may be found in the parliamentary enactments of King Edward's reign, but seldom before had a King presented to his High Court a coherent program of statutes for the reformation of the machinery of law. Though Richard had certainly profited by the advice of such enlightened statesmen as John Russell, John Gunthorpe, and Thomas Langton, this program clearly sprang from the principles by which he had sought to rule from the first day of his reign.

The Commons too originated a number of statutes which reflect the mercantile interests and concerns of the age. Similar ones had been passed by the Parliaments of Edward IV and a great many more would be enacted in Tudor days. Like some kindred measures of our own time, these attempts at tinkering with the economy by means of minute legislative regulation met with indifferent success. One of these acts, for example, attempted to eliminate certain deceitful devices for stretching cloth, the practice of exporting the finest wools from the kingdom (to the hardship of native cloth manufacturers), and the use of cheap dyes that faded. The statute sounds reasonable enough, but on the following October 25 King Richard, at the earnest request of the merchant class, proclaimed the annulment of the act because it hurt more than it helped.* Another act prohibited the importation of silk lace and ribbons and of such hardware as scissors, bells (except hawks* bells), nails, leather purses, painted glasses, and the like. Still others defined the contents of a butt of malmsey wine as 126 gallons and required the Italian merchants, who had outrageously driven up the price of bowstaves and fraudulently sold them "ungarbled"—i.e., ungraded—to import with each butt of malmsey or tyre wine ten good bowstaves.

One of these acts is memorable because of a provision which King Richard inserted in it. This was the statute "touching the merchants of Italy" which stringently regulated the conditions under which these alien traders might import and export goods, and forbade them to set themselves up as handicraftsmen or to

take lodgers, except foreigners of their own nation (since the houses of merchant strangers were overflowing with aliens from all lands busy making secret bargains).

To this measure animated by xenophobia, Richard attached the following limitation: "Provided alway that this act or any part thereof, or any other act made or to be made in the present parliament, in no wise extend . . . any let, hurt or impediment to any artificer or merchant stranger of what nation or country he be ... for bringing into this realm, or selling by retail or otherwise, of any manner books written or imprinted, or for the inhabiting within the said realm for the same intent, or to any writer, limner, binder, or imprinter of such books, as he hath or shall have to sell by way of merchandise, or for their abode in the same realm for the exercising of the said occupations. . . ." To Richard and his councilors belongs the honor of having devised the first piece of legislation for the protection and fostering of the art of printing and the dissemination of learning by books.

When Parliament came to the end of its short but fruitful session on February 20 and the King bade farewell to his Lords and Commons, he must have experienced one of the rare moments of content which his reign afforded him. In the grave and enduring pigment of parliamentary authority he had painted large for the whole realm to see his principle of rule by desert, his offer of peace and justice in exchange for a national allegiance to the Crown.

But in a land so wearied by the turbulence of the past fifty years that subjects could aspire to no more than order and were readier to respond to a demand for obedience than an offer for good will, this message could not exert the quickening power on which he had set his hope.

About ten days after Parliament was dismissed, King Richard secured the capitulation of one of his bitterest enemies. Not many yards from where the Commons assembled for their deliberations in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey, King Edward's Queen and her five daughters remained still in sanctuary. There,

at the very heart of his kingdom, they maintained themselves, a potent source of conspiracy, a living reproach to his rule. While Parliament was in session, Richard sent to the Queen a formal deputation. The Woodville matriarch who had desperately sought to dispossess the Protector was "strongly solicited" to come to terms with the man who had dispossessed her son. Yet, though her presence in the sanctuary was embarrassing, if not dangerous, Richard made her no glowing promises. Indeed, while the negotiations were in progress, Parliament enacted a statute which deprived her of her property and annulled all her letters patent. 10