CAMEO
XXI.

of Owain.

Owain's son Gruffydd and his brother Tudor, the first of whom was made prisoner, the last slain, and, being found upon the field, was taken for Wanderings the Prince himself, whom he so much resembled, that a wart over one of Owain's brows was said alone to distinguish them from one another. The report of the death of their leader greatly discouraged the Welsh ; and four days after, a second defeat, in Brecknockshire, so dispersed them that Owain was for a time reduced to lonely and romantic wanderings. Sir Laurence Berkerolles, a knight of Glamorganshire, offered a large price for his head, and sent out his retainers everywhere to search for him. One night a stranger gentleman arrived and asked hospitality. He was received courteously, and entertained for three days; at the end of which he took leave thus: "Owain Glyndwyr, as a true and honest friend, gives his hand to Sir Laurence Berkerolles, with thanks for his kind hospitality, declaring that he will never think of retaliation, and will forget the injuries intended him by his host." Sir Laurence, according to the tradition, was literally struck dumb with surprise, and so remained all the rest of his life! Two caves, one in Merionethshire, the other in Carnarvon, are called Ogov Owain, or Owen's Cave, and are said to have served him as shelter during this part of his life.

The King was setting forth to tread down the last sparks of the rebellion when a fresh disturbance called him to the north.

The old Earl of Northumberland, though once pardoned on renewing his oath of allegiance, was still full of hatred and discontent-above all, at having been deprived of the office of Constable and Warden of the Marches, and to undertake to yield up the castles of Berwick and Jedburgh. Lord Bardolf, another malcontent, easily stirred up the fickle old man to a fourth act of perfidy; and with these was joined Thomas Mowbray, the son of the Duke of Norfolk whose baffled duel with Henry of Lancaster had led to the ruin of Richard II. He had lately been deprived of the hereditary office of Earl Marshal of England; and this threw him into the councils of the opposite party, to which was also added Scrope, archbishop of York, always devoted to the cause of Richard. He was highly esteemed for his learning and piety, and had from the first declared Henry a usurper, and exhorted him to repent of his treason and perjury. Acts of accusation against the King were affixed to the church doors in his See; and the confederates began to rise in arms, but in detached parties, easily overcome. Sir John Falconberg, and three other knights, were defeated by John of Lancaster, the King's third son, assisted by the Earl of Westmoreland. Mowbray and Scrope were at the head of eight thousand men, at Shipton-le-Moor, a few miles from York; and there were invited to a conference with the Prince and Earl, where it is said that Westmoreland pretended to agree to all that the old Archbishop demanded, and persuaded him to disband his followers, after which the two leaders were captured, and carried off as captives-the prelate, unhappily, in a suit of armour. They were brought to the King at the ill-omened Castle of Pontefract, and carried on to the Archbishop's own palace of Bishopthorpe. There the King

CAMEO

XXI.

1405.

commanded the Chief Justice, Sir William Gascoyne, to pass sentence upon them; but that admirable judge refused, saying that he had no jurisdiction over either of them, as they had a right to be tried by Execution of their peers. The King displaced him for the nonce, and substituted Archbishop Scrope. the more obsequious Sir John Fulthorpe, who, without pretence at trial, ordered them both to be beheaded. Scrope exclaimed, "The just and true God knows that I never intended evil against the person of King Henry, and I beg you to pray that my death may not be revenged on him or his friends." They both died with great constancy, and were buried in the cathedral; but the Earl's head was placed on a pike outside those gates of York that bore so many of those doleful fruits of the treason of Henry during the great tragedy of the fifteenth century. The Archbishop was revered as a saint and martyr by the people of the north, and Henry was obliged to restrain the veneration they paid to his shrine. A story was told, that the Archbishop seeing the cornfield where he was to be executed trodden down by the concourse of people, prayed that the poor owner might not suffer loss, whereupon the crop was sixfold more than usual. Many other miracles were said to be performed at his shrine; and the leprosy which began to affect the King was popularly believed to have arisen in his face on the day of the condemnation.

A mandate came from Pope Innocent for the King's excommunication, but Archbishop Arundel suppressed it; and the King is said in return to have sent the Pope the hawberk of the prelate, with the message, "Know whether this be thy son's coat or no:" but the same story is told of William the Conqueror and Archbishop Odo, and of Philippe Auguste and the Bishop of Beauvais, after the battle of Bouvines; so it is probable that it was always told of warlike bishops. Henry, by a sort of Lydford law, next tried to make the peers declare Scrope guilty of treason, but could not get an answer; so probably they really doubted his legal guilt.

Lords Northumberland and Bardolf did not abide the coming of the King, but fled into Scotland, while the King reduced their castles. They wandered about for two years, sometimes with the Duke of Albany, and sometimes with Owain Glyndwyr, who had again rallied his forces and obtained aid from France, so as to besiege Haverfordwest and Pembroke Castle; but French aid never did much good to Britons of any race; the gay knights hated the mountain fare, and neither in 1405 or 1406, when large reinforcements came over, was any important stroke effected-only King Henry made one of his usual "bootless" expeditions. When Owain besieged Coytie Castle, the owner was so much beloved, that both Houses of Parliament petitioned the King to send relief at once. Prince Henry too was making daily progress in the affections of all, and the star of Glyndwyr rapidly waned.

Northumberland grew tired of sharing his wild life, and with Bardolf burst once more into his own estates in the north of England in the spring of 1408. Report says that Sir Thomas Rokeby dealt treacherously with them, and led them to the banks of the Wharfe by giving

CAMEO

XXI.

Final rising of Glyndwyr. 1409.

hopes of joining them. At any rate, he totally routed them at Bramham Moor, where the Earl died on the field, and Bardolf was taken, but with a mortal wound.

The last great outbreak of Owain Glyndwyr was made in 1409, when he ravaged the marches, having in his company his old friend John Trevor, bishop of St. Asaph. He was encouraged in this foray by the absence of Prince Henry, who had recently been recalled to London, as some said, out of jealousy on the King's part. Indeed, the youth's uniform success in a country where his father was as regularly inefficient might perhaps have occasioned annoyance to a man soured and rendered suspicious like Henry IV.

Thenceforth Owain Glyndwyr continued to hold his little court as Prince of Wales in the heights of the mountains of South Wales, fastnesses that no one now attempted to scale. His spirit of enterprise was probably passing away, and though no doubt his adherents committed plenty of small robberies, no attacks were made by them such as to call for armed resistance from Government. This lasted till 1415, when his generous foe, by that time King Henry V. and in the summit of glory, sent Sir Gilbert Talbot to treat with the old chieftain, and offer him and his a free pardon. The offer was not rejected, and treaties began; but while they were yet pending, Owain died at the house of one of his married daughters, in the sixty-third year of his age and the sixteenth of his wild reign as Prince of Wales. He was no rebel, no faith-breaker, for he had never owned any king save Richard II.; but it is impossible to respect him as a patriot without remembering that he made war as a savage; and, though courteous to noble prisoners, allowed terrible cruelties to be exercised upon the meaner sort. Still, in the dark story of the crimes and woes of Yorkists and Lancastrians, he shows to advantage as an honourable man, free from the broken oaths that brought so many to an untimely and fatal end; whilst he was permitted to die, with name untarnished, checked but not ruined, and exchanging pardon with the brave enemy whose first essay in arms had been made against him.

САМЕО

XXII.

Arundel.

IT may be remembered that Thomas Fitzalan de Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, had been exiled by Richard II. at the time of the overthrow of Thomas, duke of Gloucester, and had been wafted home Archbishop by the same wind as brought Henry IV. to the shore of Ravensburg. He crowned Henry, and was ready to give him all his support on condition that Henry allowed him his own way-the only condition on which a usurper can hope to reign. The clergy had for the most part been adverse to King Richard, with the exception of Archbishop Scrope of York and Bishop Merks of Carlisle; but Henry felt himself under the necessity of securing the hearty goodwill of such an influential body, by avowing himself their champion.

The doctrines of Wyclyffe had never been effectually suppressed, and had in Bohemia borne more noted fruit than even in their native country. A very large body of men were devoted followers of John Huss and Jerome of Prague; and in England the Lollards were forming a considerable sect. Some say they were so called from lolly or tares, some from to lull or sing softly, others from Walter Lollard, a German, who was burnt for heresy at Cologne in 1322. However this may be, it would seem that, except for the reading of Wyclyffe's Bible and general distrust of the leading doctrines of Rome, they were not his direct followers. Lollardism probably was used as a term to include every shade of dissent from the established order of things-from the most reasonable perception of superstition to the rankest revolutionary sentiments. Certainly, a petition presented in 1395 went much further than Wyclyffe would have done--even to declaring the priesthood not to be divinely ordained, that outward rites of religion had no warrant in

САМЕО
XXII.

The act for burning heretics.

1401.

Scripture, that men ought not to be put to death by law or in battle, and that such trades as gold-working and armoury were unlawful as occasions of sin. Moreover, there were strong declarations against the wealth and temporal power of the clergy.

Kind-hearted and indolent Richard had taken little notice of these appeals, remembering that his beloved Anne of Bohemia had read the works of Wyclyffe, that his favourite uncle, John of Gaunt, had favoured the reformer as far as he durst, and that all the poetry and satire of his time, with Chaucer at the head, was aimed against the crimes and follies of the existing system. Chaucer's life had ended very soon after Richard's reign; he did not live to see the new mode of dealing with errors of faith which the uncertainties of his position forced upon the newlyelected King.

Hitherto no person had ever been put to death in England for his opinions, though it is held by some lawyers that it was part of the ancient common law that a heretic ought to be burnt. But in 1401 the Clergy and Commons together petitioned the King against these Lollards, and the result was the famous act "de heretico comburendo," under which so many lives were lost from that day till the end of the Tudor reigns. Men had again to be taught the impotence of fire and sword to destroy thought.

The first victim was William Sautre, of whom Fuller says that he was the initial letter of the list "dyed red in its own blood." He had been parish priest of Lynne, and had there, it seems, been accused of errors which he had recanted before the Bishop of Norwich, and had since been presented to the living of St. Osyth's, in London. Here, having probably repented of his abjuration, he rashly petitioned the very Parliament that had just provided death for heretics for leave to dispute upon religion before the Lords and Commons.

He was at once cited before Convocation, and there accused of eight errors, four of which were different forms of his disapproval of worship of the cross, the fifth of angel-worship, the sixth that almsgiving would suffice instead of pilgrimages, the seventh that a priest was more bound to preach than to recite the prayers of the breviary, the eighth that no change took place in the elements in the Holy Communion.

Archbishop Arundel seized on this last point, and pushed him hard upon it, till his disagreement with orthodoxy should be clearly manifest. He was asked if he had not abjured these errors two years before to the Bishop of Norwich. This he denied, either because they were not precisely the same, or because he did not think himself bound to criminate himself. However, he was declared a relapsed heretic, and sentenced to death; but as the Church could put no man to death, and the State had no power over an ecclesiastic, he was first to be degraded from the priesthood, for which purpose Archbishop Arundel and six other bishops assembled in St. Paul's, and placed him before them in full canonical attire, with the chalice and paten in his hands.

These were taken away by the Archbishop, and with them his