The Last Plantagenets (20 page)

But the young king went a step further. He named de Vere the Marquis of Dublin, borrowing the title from the French table of nobility, or, conceivably, adapting it from the German
markgraf
. Now the title of duke was reserved for the sons of kings, so that an earldom was the highest honor that a member of the baronage could obtain. The new title was wedged in beneath that of duke, which meant that the holder, this thoroughly unpopular young man, could dangle it in the jealous eyes of all the earls in England. The barons could wink at an appointment which placed unbearable burdens on the shoulders of the favorite but to have him strutting proudly above them was more than they could stand.

De Vere made matters worse by showing no inclination to take up his new and difficult duties. Instead of setting out immediately for Ireland, where there was fighting around the edges of the Pale and the English hold seemed to be weakening, he remained at court and enjoyed to the fullest the honors which went with the new title. The situation grew steadily worse in Ireland, but the marquis went on hunting and hawking and dining fastidiously at court where he was entitled to a prominent seat, close enough to royalty, in fact, to talk directly with the king and queen on matters which had to do with music, art, and books, matters which were well over the heads of the rest of the company who could throw their gnawed bones accurately over their shoulders but had never heard of the French Romances.

De Vere then proceeded to stir the general feeling about him into a positive fury. He fell in love with a Bohemian girl who had come over in the train of Queen Anne and set about getting a divorce.

It is necessary at this point to cast back some years. Edward III had been such a fond father that he dreaded marrying his beautiful daughters, presented to him at regular intervals by Queen Philippa, because it meant they would have to leave England and, perhaps, never come back. He seems to have been especially fond of his oldest daughter, the blonde and lovely Princess Isabella. Although many matches were discussed
for her, she remained unmarried until she was thirty-one years old (decidedly middle-aged in those days), when a proud French nobleman named Enquerrand de Coucy was sent to England as one of the hostages demanded in negotiations about the captive King John of France. This French lord was only twenty-four years old and was as proud as Lucifer (
King, duke, prince nor earl am I
, read the motto on his crest,
I am the Lord of Coucy
), but he fell in love with the still rather dazzling Isabella. As it was a love match and as arrangements, moreover, could be made for the princess to spend much of her time in England, Edward had consented to the marriage. The happy pair brought two daughters into the world, the younger being named after her grandmother, Philippa. The princess, whose husband had been given wide estates and the English title of Earl of Bedford, was still one of the beauties of the court and rode to the hunt on saddles of red velvet embroidered with violets of gold; the uneven marriage was a most happy one, in spite of the fact that it broke up later because the proud lord of Coucy felt impelled to fight again on the French side. She was most generous and liked to be a fairy godmother, throwing money about with mad abandon. Naturally she was very much liked and her two little fair-haired girls were symbols of loyalty to the Crown.

And this brings us to the year 1371 when the child Philippa was betrothed to Robert de Vere, who had inherited one of the finest ancestral estates in England. The marriage took place seven years later, on June 30, 1378. While her husband was being made the recipient of these many honors, the lady Philippa had grown into a handsome and well-esteemed lady. The roving eye of young Robert de Vere, however, was caught by the Bohemian girl who had come to England. His far from stable affections seemed to have been suddenly and disastrously unsettled.

In some reports the girl is called a landgravine, and the
Foedera
changes this title to
landgravissa
, an obscure honor which can not be proved to have existed. Some English authorities declare that she was of low birth, the daughter of a Flemish saddler but, inasmuch as she was officially a lady in waiting on the queen, this statement can be dismissed. There is no more substance to the claim that she was dark and ugly. Dark she probably was, but the gay favorite could hardly have fallen in love with anyone lacking in physical attraction. It is clear, moreover, that she had been sent to England as custodian of the jewels and valuables bestowed on Anne by the empress and that she remained to act as a lady of the bedchamber. Her name was Launcecrona and she was undoubtedly chic and lively, with a foreign kind of prettiness. De Vere would have plenty of opportunities to observe her as she tripped about her duties at court, to note her trimness of figure, her gaiety and volatility of mood.

There are two versions given of the course which events took. One is that Queen Anne was against the determination of de Vere to divorce his highborn wife and marry the vivacious Launcecrona. The other is that Anne, through fondness for her lady in waiting and perhaps under pressure from the king and his favorite, wrote to the Pope, urging that the divorce be granted. In the eyes of the little Anne the king could do no wrong and it is quite possible that she strove to carry out his wishes, even though she may have foreseen troubles ahead. The latter explanation was believed for a time and resulted in some loss of the popularity she enjoyed. The divorce was granted, on false evidence, during the year which de Vere wasted after his appointment to the overlordship of Ireland. The discarded wife being a full cousin of Richard and a niece of Thomas of Woodstock, it did not need the loud and angry protests of the latter to set tongues to wagging throughout the land.

It must have been at this time that the king decided to ride the storm blowing about him because of his support of this unworthy friend by applying a touch of the royal spur. When Parliament met in October of the same year and demanded the resignations of some of the king’s advisers, he went to the opposite extreme and raised de Vere from the title invented for him to that of Duke of Dublin, thus putting him on a par with the royal uncles. The administrative position of the new Irish viceroy had in the meantime been clearly defined. De Vere was to have an almost absolute hand, even the right of coinage. The royal rights to homage alone were denied. The ransom of a French prisoner of war, John of Blois, which had been fixed at 30,000 marks, was allocated for the use of the new duke, who was to take with him to Ireland 500 men-of-war and a thousand archers. The right was granted him to quarter with his own arms the three golden crowns on a field azure which had belonged to the early kings of England.

To demonstrate his belief that great things could be expected when this new overlord began his operations in Erin, the king accompanied him to Wales with great state and hurrah. The opposition breathed sighs of relief. They confidently expected developments which would please them when the overdressed, overconfident courtier found himself opposed to Art MacMurrough and the rest of the wild Irish.

But the journey to Wales was a blind. De Vere was not going to Ireland yet.

Since John of Gaunt had in his later years turned mild and even idealistic in his attitude to the throne, a new party of opposition had been forming in England. As leader, in place of the now quiescent head of
the family of Lancaster, was the younger brother, Thomas of Woodstock, a more militant and proud figure than John had ever been. At the right hand of this dark and grasping uncle stood Gaunt’s son, Henry of Derby. Despite the fact that it was Henry of Derby who had married Mary de Bohun and so alienated from Thomas half of the fair lands and rich inheritances of the Bohun family, the two were working together now with singleness of purpose. Derby had all the dynastic ambition of his father but combined with this a stubbornness of will and a readiness to gamble which John of Gaunt had lacked.

A waning in Richard’s personal popularity in London had led to the elevation of Derby in his stead. The Londoners, tough and assertive in most things, had a weakness for show and had always found it easy to cheer for the Plantagenets and the wives they brought over from the continent. Derby had the same princely appearance as Richard, the Plantagenet reddish golden glow and the straight strong figure, and the citizens and their apprentices were ready enough to transfer their affections. Richard had been so loudly acclaimed at the beginning that he did not fall completely out of favor until toward the end, but his stock could fall as sharply as it rose. It went into a decline when this savagely antagonistic group came together.

This made a dangerous combination, the stormy Thomas and the coldly aspiring Henry of Derby. They could not be expected to stand together long, but for the moment they saw eye to eye and were prepared to work in unison.

Back of the two leaders was the aggressive figure of Richard, Earl of Arundel, who was as bitterly against the king as Thomas of Woodstock and perhaps of a more revengeful nature. In support of this trio came more baronial magnates. Thomas de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, was the most prominent, a withdrawn type of man without any pretensions but lacking in the courage for political conflict, as would be discovered later. Next came Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, who was about Richard’s age and had been on friendly terms with the young king. He was not prominent in the early stages of the struggle but later would emerge in a contradictory role, most of the time with the king but always an uncertain adherent.

Finally there was Courtenay, who was now Archbishop of Canterbury and so wielded much influence. He had been outspoken in his criticism of the king, in public as well as in private talks with Richard, and had earned the active dislike of the young ruler.

The opposition scored heavily in the Parliament which sat in October 1386. They demanded that the king dismiss his chancellor and treasurer. His immediate answer was an expression of the pride of place and belief in kingly prerogative he had inherited from his father.

“I would not dismiss the meanest varlet in my kitchen at their bidding!” he declared.

He refused to go before the House to discuss the demands and posted off instead to the royal residence at Eltham. His uncle of Woodstock went there to have it out with him, accompanied by the Bishop of Ely, who was a brother of the Earl of Arundel. Woodstock did not mince words. If Richard did not return at once, as his oath of office demanded, he might share the fate of Edward II. On no other occasion in English history had a threat of deposition been voiced so openly and so sharply and, it must be said, with so little justification. It was inevitable that a boy of such immature years would make mistakes, and thus far Richard’s weaknesses had not been serious enough to jeopardize the welfare of the realm. In the matter of the war, his role had been no more dilatory than that of the House. It still could be anticipated that with sympathetic guidance he could be taught to play his role. If anyone else had been wearing the crown, Woodstock would have been bundled off to the Tower to face charges of treason. He seems to have had no fear whatever, knowing that the adolescent ruler was in no position to play a strong hand.

Richard’s weakness was that he had not built a strong enough party about him to face the demands of the magnates. In addition he had placed in their hands a rod for his own back by his persistent favoring of Robert de Vere. About the king and his adoring queen at Eltham there was a small group of supporters, but he had no force he could rally at once to his aid. On the other hand, Thomas of Woodstock could bring ample strength into action against him. Realizing his impotence, Richard returned to London and faced the determined House.

The result was that Pole, who now had the title of Earl of Suffolk, was superseded as chancellor. This able minister was impeached and sentenced to a term of imprisonment as well as a heavy fine. That Parliament was content to make him the scapegoat and leave de Vere alone is hard to understand, unless the members thought that, being a commoner, he was more vulnerable than the high-placed Duke of Dublin.

Richard was compelled, moreover, to acquiesce in the appointment of a commission of eleven members to exercise for a year the power of control in the royal household.

W
ITH troubles enough at home, the nation now found itself threatened by French aggression on a huge scale. The French king, Charles V, called in history Charles the Wise, had died, leaving a situation very similar to that in England. His heir and successor was a year younger than Richard, and the late king had fixed his majority at fourteen years. But, as in England, there was a group of royal uncles who struggled among themselves for authority during the years of his minority and beyond, the Dukes of Anjou, Berry, Burgundy, and Bourbon. They were a troublesome lot, intent on fattening their own pockets and stirring up rebellions in various parts of the country by their illegal exactions. The boy king of France, however, was of a different stamp from Richard. He gained the victory of Roosebeke over Philip van Artevelde in his fourteenth year (with the help, of course, of his marshals) and in quick order seated himself firmly in the saddle. He had one burning desire in his youthful head—to wipe out the stain of the defeats inflicted by the English on his grandfather and great-grandfather in the first half of the Hundred Years War. A mere victory was not going to satisfy him. He wanted to destroy the English as a nation by killing every man and burning the cities and towns to the ground. Like Joshua when he set about the conquest of Canaan, young King Charles wanted no trace left of this hated breed. This seemed mere youthful bravado at first. The English met his threats with confident smiles. But when he began to assemble great armies and fleets along the Channel, things took on a different complexion.