Comic History of England

The following year Edward marched into Scotland, where he captured Baliol and sent him to France, where he died, in boundless obscurity, in 1297. Baliol was succeeded by the brave William Wallace, who won a great battle at Stirling, but was afterwards defeated entirely at Falkirk, and in 1305 was executed in London by request.

But the Scotch called to their aid Robert Bruce, the grandson of Baliol's competitor, and he was solemnly crowned at the Abbey of Scone.

During a successful campaign against these people Edward fell sick, and died in 1307. He left orders for the Scottish war to be continued till that restless and courageous people were subdued.

[Illustration: THE FRENCH KING ENTERS INTO A SECRET ALLIANCE WITH BALIOL.]

Edward was called the English Justinian; yet those acts for which he is most famous were reluctantly done because of the demands made by a determined people.

During his reign gunpowder was discovered by Roger Bacon, whereby Guy Fawkes was made possible. Without him England would still be a slumbering fog-bank upon the shores of Time.

[Illustration: ROGER BACON DISCOVERS GUNPOWDER.]

Young Edward was not much of a monarch. He forgot to fight the Scots, and soon Robert Bruce had won back the fortresses taken by the English, and Edward II., under the influence of an attractive trifler named Gaveston, dawdled away his days and frittered away his nights. Finally the nobles, who disliked Gaveston, captured him and put him in Warwick Castle, and in 1312 the royal favorite was horrified to find near him a large pool of blood, and on a further search discovered his own head lying in the gutter of the court. Turning sick at the gory sight, he buried his face in his handkerchief and expired.

The nobles were forgiven afterwards by the king, who now turned his attention to the victorious Scots.

Stirling Castle and the Fortress of Berwick alone remained to the English, and Robert Bruce was besieging the latter.

The English, numbering one hundred thousand, at Bannockburn fought against thirty thousand Scots. Bruce surprised the cavalry with deep pits, and before the English could recover from this, an approaching reinforcement for the Scotch was seen coming over the hill. This consisted of "supes," with banners and bagpipes; and though they were really teamsters in disguise, their hostile appearance and the depressing music of the bagpipes so shocked the English that they did not stop running until they reached Berwick. The king came around to Berwick from Dunbar by steamer, thus saving his life, and obtaining much-needed rest on board the boat.3

Edward found himself now on the verge of open war with Ireland and Wales, and the population of the Isle of Wight and another person, whose name is not given, threatened to declare war. The English nobles, too, were insubordinate, and the king, who had fallen under the influence of a man named Spencer and his father, was required by the best society, headed by Lancaster, to exile both of these wicked advisers.

Afterwards the king attacked Lancaster with his army, and having captured him, had him executed in 1322.

[Illustration: UNFORTUNATE KING WAS TREATED WITH REVOLTING CRUELTY.]

The Spencers now returned, and the queen began to cut up strangely and create talk. She formed the acquaintance of Roger Mortimer, who consented to act as her paramour. They organized a scheme to throw off the Spencers and dethrone Edward the Thinkless, her husband, in 1325.

Any one who has tried to be king even for a few weeks under the above circumstances must agree with the historian that it is no moonlight frolic.

Edward fled to Wales, but in 1326 was requested to come home and remain in jail there, instead of causing a scandal by staying away and spending his money in Wales. He was confined in Kenilworth Castle, while his son was ostensibly king, though his wife and Mortimer really managed the kingdom and behaved in a scandalous way, Mortimer wearing the king's clothes, shaving with his razor, and winding the clock every night as though he owned the place.4 This was in 1327.

In September the poor king was put to death by co-respondent Mortimer in a painful and sickening manner, after having been most inhumanly treated in Berkeley Castle, whither he had been removed.

Thus ends the sad history of a monarch who might have succeeded in a minor position on a hen farm, but who made a beastly fluke in the king business.

The assurance of Mortimer in treating the king as he did is a blot upon the fair page of history in high life. Let us turn over a new leaf.

[Illustration: ON A HEN FARM.]

CHAPTER XIV.

IRRITABILITY OF THE FRENCH: INTERMINABLE DISSENSION, ASSISTED BY THE PLAGUE, CONTINUES REDUCING THE POPULATION

It is a little odd, but it is true, that Edward III. was crowned at fourteen and married at fifteen years of age. Princes in those days were affianced as soon as they were weighed, and married before they got their eyes open, though even yet there are many people who do not get their eyes opened until after marriage. Edward married Philippa, daughter of the Count of Hainault, to whom he had been engaged while teething.

In 1328 Mortimer mixed up matters with the Scots, by which he relinquished his claim to Scotch homage. Being still the gentleman friend of Isabella, the regent, he had great influence. He assumed, on the ratification of the above treaty by Parliament, the title of Earl of March.

The young prince rose to the occasion, and directed several of his nobles to forcibly drag the Earl of March from the apartments of the guilty pair, and in 1330 he became the Earl of Double-Quick March—a sort of forced March—towards the gibbet, where he was last seen trying to stand on the English climate. The queen was kept in close confinement during the rest of her life, and the morning papers of that time contained nothing of a social nature regarding her doings.

[Illustration: IN 1330 MORTIMER BECAME THE EARL OF DOUBLE-QUICK MARCH.]

The Scots, under David Bruce, were defeated at Halidon Hill in 1333, and Bruce fled to France. Thus again under a vassal of the English king, Edward Baliol by name, the Scotch crooked the reluctant hinges of the knee.

Edward now claimed to be a more direct heir through Queen Isabella than Philip, the cousin of Charles IV., who occupied the throne, so he proceeded to vindicate himself against King Philip in the usual way. He destroyed the French fleet in 1340, defeated Philip, though with inferior numbers, at Crécy, and demonstrated for the first time that cannon could be used with injurious results on the enemy.

[Illustration: EDWARD DEMONSTRATED AT THE BATTLE OF CRÉCY THAT CANNON COULD BE USED WITH VIGOROUS RESULTS.]

In 1346 the Black Prince, as Edward was called, on account of the color of the Russia iron used in making his mackintosh, may be said to have commenced his brilliant military career. He captured Calais,—the key to France,—and made it a flourishing English city and a market for wool, leather, tin, and lead. It so continued for two hundred years.

The Scotch considered this a good time to regain their independence, and David Bruce took charge of the enterprise, but was defeated at Neville's Cross, in 1346, and taken prisoner.

Philippa here distinguished herself during the absence of the king, by encouraging the troops and making a telling equestrian speech to them before the battle. After the capture of Bruce, too, she repaired to Calais, where she prevented the king's disgraceful execution of six respectable citizens who had been sent to surrender the city.

[Illustration: A CLOSE CALL FOR THE SIX CITIZENS OF CALAIS.]

During a truce between the English and French, England was visited by the Black Death, a plague that came from Asia and bade fair to depopulate the country. London lost fifty thousand people, and at times there were hardly enough people left to bury the dead or till the fields. This contagion occurred in 1349, and even attacked the domestic animals.

[Illustration: NO MONARCH OF SPIRIT CARES TO HAVE HIS THRONE PULLED FROM UNDER HIM JUST AS HE IS ABOUT TO OCCUPY IT.]

John having succeeded Philip in France, in 1350 Edward made another effort to recover the French throne; but no monarch of spirit cares to have his throne pulled from beneath him just as he is about to occupy it, and so, when the Black Prince began to burn and plunder southern France, his father made a similar excursion from Calais, in 1355.

The next year the Black Prince sent twelve thousand men into the heart of France, where they met an army of sixty thousand, and the English general offered all his conquests cheerfully to John for the privilege of returning to England; but John overstepped himself by demanding an unconditional surrender, and a battle followed in which the French were whipped out of their boots and the king captured. We should learn from this to know when we have enough.

This battle was memorable because the English loss was mostly confined to the common soldiery, while among the French it was peculiarly fatal to the nobility. Two dukes, nineteen counts, five thousand men-at-arms, and eight thousand infantry were killed, and a bobtail flush royal was found to have been bagged as prisoners.

For four years John was a prisoner, but well treated. He was then allowed to resume his renovated throne; but failing to keep good his promises to the English, he came back to London by request, and died there in 1364.

The war continued under Charles, the new French monarch; and though Edward was an able and courteous foe, in 1370 he became so irritated because of the revolt of Limoges, notwithstanding his former kindness to its people, that he caused three thousand of her citizens to be put to the sword.

The Black Prince fought no more, but after six years of illness died, in 1376, with a good record for courage and statecraft. His father, the king, survived him only a year, expiring in the sixty-fifth year of his age, 1377.

English literature was encouraged during his reign, and John Wickliffe, Gower, Chaucer, and other men whose genius greatly outstripped their orthography were seen to flourish some.

[Illustration: A STRIKING ILLUSTRATION OF WAT TYLER'S CONTROVERSY WITH THE TAX RECEIVER.]

Edward III. was succeeded by his grandson, Richard, and war with France was maintained, though Charles the Wise held his own, with the aid of the Scotch under Robert II., the first of the Stuarts.

A heavy war-tax was levied per capita at the rate of three groats on male and female above the age of fifteen, and those who know the value of a groat will admit that it was too much. A damsel named Tyler, daughter of Wat the Tyler, was so badly treated by the assessor that her father struck the officer dead with his hammer, in 1381, and placed himself at the head of a revolt, numbering one hundred thousand people, who collected on Blackheath. Jack Straw and Rev. John Ball also aided in the convention. The latter objected to the gentlemen on general principles, claiming that Adam was no gentleman, and that Eve had still less claim in that direction.5

In this outbreak, and during the same year, the rebels broke into the city of London, burned the palaces, plundered the warehouses, and killed off the gentlemen wherever an alibi could not be established, winding up with the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

During a conference with Tyler, the king was so rudely addressed by Wat, that Walworth, mayor of London, struck the rebel with his sword, and others despatched him before he knew exactly Wat was Wat.

Richard, to quiet this storm, acceded to the rebel demands until he could get his forces together, when he ignored his promises in a right royal manner in the same year. One of these concessions was the abolition of slavery and the novel use of wages for farm work. By his failure to keep this promise, serfdom continued in England four hundred years afterwards.

Richard now became unpopular, and showed signs of worthlessness. He banished his cousin Henry, and dispossessed him of his estates. This, of course, irritated Henry, who entered England while the king was in Ireland, and his forces were soon joined by sixty thousand malecontents.

Poor Richard wandered away to Wales, where he was in constant danger of falling off, and after living on chestnuts knocked from the high trees by means of his sceptre, he returned disgusted and took up his quarters in the Tower, where he died of starvation in 1400.

Nothing can be more pathetic than the picture of a king crying for bread, yet willing to compromise on tarts. A friendless king sitting on the hard stone floor of the Tower, after years spent on board of an elastic throne with rockers under it, would move even the hardened historian to tears. (A brief intermission is here offered for unavailing tears.)

[Illustration: A FRIENDLESS KING SITTING ON THE HARD STONE FLOOR OF THE TOWER.]

CHAPTER XV.

MORE SANGUINARY TRIUMPHS: ONWARD MARCH OF CIVILIZATION GRAPHICALLY DELINEATED WITH THE HISTORIAN'S USUAL COMPLETENESS

The Plantagenet period saw the establishment of the House of Commons, and cut off the power of the king to levy taxes without the consent of Parliament. It also exchanged the judicial rough-and-tumble on horseback for the trial by jury. Serfdom continued, and a good horse would bring more in market than a man.

Agriculture was still in its infancy, and the farmer refused to adopt a new and attractive plough because it did not permit the ploughman to walk near enough to his team, that he might twist the tail of the patient bullock.

The costumes of the period seem odd, as we look back upon them, for the men wore pointed shoes with toes tied to the girdle, and trousers and coat each of different colors: for instance, sometimes one sleeve was black and the other white, while the ladies wore tall hats, sometimes two feet high, and long trains. They also carried two swords in the girdle, doubtless to protect them from the nobility.

[Illustration: SLAVES WERE BOUGHT AND SOLD AT THE FAIRS.]

Each house of any size had a "pleasance," and the "herberie," or physic garden, which was the pioneer of the pie-plant bed, was connected with the monasteries.

[Illustration: ASTROLOGY WAS THE FAVORITE STUDY OF THOSE TIMES.]

Roger Bacon was thrown into prison for having too good an education. Scientists in those days always ran the risk of being surprised, and more than one discoverer wound up by discovering himself in jail.

Astrology was a favorite amusement, especially among the young people.

Henry IV., son of John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III., became king in 1399, though Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, and great-grandson of Lionel, the third son of Edward III., was the rightful heir. This boy was detained in Windsor Castle by Henry's orders.

[Illustration: HENRY PROTECTS THE CHURCH FROM HERESY.]

Henry succeeded in catching a heretic, in 1401, and burned him at the stake. This was the first person put to death in England for his religious belief, and the occasion was the origin of the epitaph, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

Conspiracies were quite common in those days, one of them being organized by Harry Percy, called "Hotspur" because of his irritability. The ballad of Chevy Chase was founded upon his exploits at the battle of Otterburn, in 1388. The Percys favored Mortimer, and so united with the Welsh and Scots.

A large fight occurred at Shrewsbury in 1403. The rebels were defeated and Percy slain. Northumberland was pardoned, and tried it again, assisted by the Archbishop of York, two years later. The archbishop was executed in 1405. Northumberland made another effort, but was defeated and slain.

In 1413 Henry died, leaving behind him the record of a fraudulent sovereign who was parsimonious, sour, and superstitious, without virtue or religion.

He was succeeded by his successor, which was customary at that time. Henry V. was his son, a youth who was wild and reckless. He had been in jail for insulting the chief-justice, as a result of a drunken frolic and fine. He was real wild and bad, and had no more respect for his ancestry than a chicken born in an incubator. Yet he reformed on taking the throne.

[Illustration: HENRY V. HAD ON ONE OCCASION BEEN COMMITTED TO PRISON.]

Henry now went over to France with a view to securing the throne, but did not get it, as it was occupied at the time. So he returned; but at Agincourt was surprised by the French army, four times as large as his own, and with a loss of forty only, he slew ten thousand of the French and captured fourteen thousand. What the French were doing while this slaughter was going on the modern historian has great difficulty in figuring out. This battle occurred in 1415, and two years after Henry returned to France, hoping to do equally well. He made a treaty at Troyes with the celebrated idiot Charles VI., and promised to marry his daughter Catherine, who was to succeed Charles upon his death, and try to do better. Henry became Regent of France by this ruse, but died in 1422, and left his son Henry, less than a year old. The king's death was a sad blow to England, for he was an improvement on the general run of kings. Henry V. left a brother, the Duke of Bedford, who became Protector and Regent of France; but when Charles the Imbecile died, his son, Charles VII., rose to the occasion, and a war of some years began. After some time, Bedford invaded southern France and besieged Orléans.

[Illustration: HENRY, PROCLAIMED REGENT OF FRANCE, ENTERED PARIS IN TRIUMPH.]

Joan of Arc had been told of a prophecy to the effect that France could only be delivered from the English by a virgin, and so she, though only a peasant girl, yet full of a strange, eager heroism which was almost inspiration, applied to the king for a commission.

[Illustration: JOAN OF ARC INDUCES THE KING TO BELIEVE THE TRUTH OF HER MISSION.]

Inspired by her perfect faith and godlike heroism, the French fought like tigers, and, in 1429, the besiegers went home. She induced the king to be crowned in due form at Rheims, and asked for an honorable discharge; but she was detained, and the English, who afterwards captured her, burned her to death at Rouen, in 1431, on the charge of sorcery. Those who did this afterwards regretted it and felt mortified. Her death did the invaders no good; but above her ashes, and moistened by her tears,—if such a feat were possible,—liberty arose once more, and, in 1437, Charles was permitted to enter Paris and enjoy the town for the first time in twenty years. In 1444 a truce of six years was established.

Henry was a disappointment, and, as Bedford was dead, the Duke of Gloucester, the king's uncle, and Cardinal Beaufort, his guardian, had, up to his majority, been the powers behind the throne.

Henry married Margaret of Anjou, a very beautiful and able lady, who possessed the qualities so lacking in the king. They were married in 1445, and, if living, this would be the four hundred and fifty-first anniversary of their wedding. It is, anyway. (1896.)

The provinces of Maine and Anjou were given by the king in return for Margaret. Henry continued to show more and more signs of fatty degeneration of the cerebrator, and Gloucester, who had opposed the marriage, was found dead in his prison bed, whither he had been sent at Margaret's request. The Duke of York, the queen's favorite, succeeded him, and Somerset, another favorite, succeeded York. In 1451 it was found that the English had lost all their French possessions except Calais.

Things went from bad to worse, and, in 1450, Jack Cade headed an outbreak; but he was slain, and the king showing renewed signs of intellectual fag, Richard, Duke of York, was talked of as the people's choice on account of his descent from Edward III. He was for a few days Protector, but the queen was too strongly opposed to him, and he resigned.

[Illustration: RICHARD AND HIS ADHERENTS RAISING AN ARMY FOR THE REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES.]

He then raised an army, and in a battle at St. Albans, in 1455, defeated the royalists, capturing the king. This was the opening of the War of the Roses,—so called because as badges the Lancastrians wore a red rose and the Yorkists a white rose. This war lasted over thirty years, and killed off the nobility like sheep. They were, it is said, virtually annihilated, and thus a better class of nobility was substituted.

The king was restored; but in 1460 there occurred the battle of Northampton, in which he was defeated and again taken prisoner by the Earl of Warwick.

[Illustration: BY REQUEST OF MARGARET, HIS HEAD WAS REMOVED FROM HIS BODY TO THE GATES OF YORK.]

Margaret was a woman of great spirit, and when the Duke of York was given the throne she went to Scotland, and in the battle of Wakefield her army defeated and captured the duke. At her request he was beheaded, and his head, ornamented with a paper crown, placed on the gates of York, as shown in the rather life-like—or death-like—etching on the preceding page.

The queen was for a time successful, and her army earned a slight reputation for cruelty also; but Edward, son of the late Duke of York, embittered somewhat by the flippant death of his father, was soon victorious over the Lancastrians, and, in 1461, was crowned King of England at a good salary, with the use of a large palace and a good well of water and barn.

CHAPTER XVI.

UNPLEASANT CAPRICES OF ROYALTY: INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING AS A SUBSIDIARY AID IN THE PROGRESS OF EMANCIPATION

Henry VI. left no royal record worth remembering save the establishment of Eton and King's Colleges. Edward IV., who began his reign in 1461, was bold and active. Queen Margaret's army of sixty thousand men which attacked him was defeated and half her forces slaughtered, no quarter being given.

His title was now confirmed, and Margaret fled to Scotland. Three years later she attempted again to secure the throne through the aid of Louis XI., but failed. Henry, who had been in concealment, was now confined in the Tower, as shown in the engraving on the following page.

[Illustration: HENRY VI. IMPRESSED IN THE TOWER.]

Edward's marriage was not satisfactory, and, as he bestowed all the offices on his wife's relatives, Warwick deserted him and espoused the cause of Queen Margaret.

He had no trouble in raising an army and compelling Edward to flee. Henry was taken from the Tower and crowned, his rights having been recognized by Parliament. Warwick and his son-in-law, the Duke of Clarence, brother to Edward IV., were made regents, therefore, in 1471. Before the year was out, however, the tables were again turned, and Henry found himself once more in his old quarters in the Tower. Warwick was soon defeated and slain, and on the same day Margaret and her son Edward landed in England. She and Edward were defeated and taken prisoners at Tewkesbury, and the young prince cruelly put to death by the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, brothers of Edward IV. Margaret was placed in the Tower, and a day or two after Henry died mysteriously there, it is presumed at the hands of Gloucester, who was socially an unpleasant man to meet after dark.

Margaret died in France, in 1482, and the Lancastrians gave up all hope. Edward, feeling again secure, at the instigation of his younger brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, caused Clarence, the other brother, to be put to death, and then began to give his entire attention to vice, never allowing his reign to get into his rum or interfere with it.

He was a very handsome man, but died, in 1483, of what the historian calls a distemper. Some say he died of heart-failure while sleeping off an attack of coma. Anyway, he turned up his comatose, as one might say, and passed on from a spirituous life to a spiritual one, such as it may be. He was a counterfeit sovereign.

In 1474 the first book was printed in England, and more attention was then paid to spelling. William Caxton printed this book,—a work on chess. The form of the types came from Germany, and was used till James I. introduced the Roman type. James I. took a great interest in plain and ornamental job printing, and while trying to pick a calling card out of the jaws of a crude job-press in the early years of his reign, contributed a royal thumb to this restless emblem of progress and civilization. (See next page.)

[Illustration: JAMES I. CONTRIBUTING HIS MITE TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF KNOWLEDGE.]