CHAPTER 8: THE CRISIS OF KINGS AND NOBLES

1. THE CRISIS OF KINGSHIP

Towards the end of the fourteenth century Richard II was the second king to be killed by
ambitious lords. He had made himself extremely unpopular by his choice of advisers. This was
always a difficult matter, because the king´s advisers became powerful, and those not chosen
lost influence and wealth. Some of Richard´s stronger critics had been the most powerful men
in the kingdom.

Richard was young and proud. He quarrelled with these nobles in 1388 and used his authority
to humble them. He imprisoned his uncle, John of Gaunt, who was the most powerful and
wealthy noble of his time. John of Gaunt died in prison. Other nobles, including John Gaunt´s
son, Henry duke of Lancaster, did not forget or forgive. In 1339, when Richard II was busy
trying to establish royal authority again in Ireland, they rebelled. Henry of Lancaster, who had
left England, returned and raised an army. Richard was deposed.

Henry IV spent the rest of his reign establishing his royal authority. But although he passed the
crown to his son peacefully, ha had sown the seeds of civil war. Half a century later the nobility
would be divided between those who supported his family, the “Lancastrians”, and those who
supported the family of the earl of March, the “Yorkists”.

2. WALES IN REVOLT
Edward I had conquered Wales, and colonised it. he brought English people to enlarge small
towns. Edward’s officers drove many of the Welsh into the hills, and gave their land to English
farmers. Many Welsh were forced to join the English army, not because they wanted to serve
the English but because they had lost their land and needed to live. They fought in Scotland
and in France.

Owain Glyndwr was the first and only Welsh prince to have wide and popular support in every
part of Wales. In fact, it was he descended from two royal families which had ruled in different
parts of Wales before the Normans came.

Owain Glyndwr´s rebellion did not start as a national revolt. At first he joined the revolt of
Norman-Welsh border lords who had always tried to be free of royal control. But after ten
years of wat Owain Glyndwr´s border rebellion had developed into a national war and he was
proclaimed Prince of Wales by his supporters. This war far more popular with the Welsh
people than Edward I´s trick his new-born son at Caernarfon. However, Glyndwr was not
strong enough to defeat the English armies sent against him. He continued to fight a successful
guerrilla war which made the control of Wales an extremely expensive problem for the English.
Glyndwr lost almost all his support as Welsh people realised that however hard they fought
they would never be free of English. Owain Glyndwr was never captured. And he created a
feeling of national identity.
 3. THE SRTUGGLE IN FRANCE
By the end of the fourteenth century, the long war with France, known as the Hundred Years
War, had already been going on for over fifty years.

When Henry IV died, he passed on to this son Henry V a kingdom that was peaceful and
united. Henry V was a brave and intelligent man and like Richard I, he became one of England’s
favourite kings.

Since the situation was peaceful at home Henry IV felt able to begin fighting the French again.
His French war was as popular as Edward III’s had been. Henry had a great advantage because
the king of France was mad, and his nobles were quarrelsome.

Henry managed to capture most of Normandy and the nearby areas. By the treaty of Troyes,
Henry was recognised as heir to the mad king, and he married Katherine of Valous, the king’s
daughter. But Henry V never became king of France because he died a few moth before the
French king. His nine-month-old baby son, Henry VI, inherited the thrones of England and
France.

At first Henry V´s brother, John duke of Bedford, continued to enlarge the area under English
control. But soon the French began to fight back. Foreign invasion had created for the first
time strong French national feeling. The English army was twice defeated by the French, who
were inspired by a mysterious peasant girl called Joan of Arc, who claimed to hear heavenly
voices. Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians, and given to the English. The English gave
her to the Church in Rouen which burnt her as a witch in 1431.

With the loss of Gascony, the Hundred Year War was over. England had lost everything except
the port of Calais.

4. THE WARS OF THE ROSES

England had lost a war and was ruled by a mentally ill king who had bad at choosing advisers. It
was perhaps natural that the nobles began to ask questions about who should be ruling the
country. They remembered that Henry´s grandfather Henry of Lancaster had taken the throne
when Richard II was deposed.

There were not more than sixty noble families controlling England at this time. most of them
were related to each other through marriage. Some of the nobles were extremely powerful.
Many of them continued to keep their own private armies and used them to frighten local
people into obeying them.

The discontented nobility were divided between those who remained loyal to Henry VI, the
“Lancastrians”, and those who supported the duke of York, the “Yorkists”. The duke of York
was the heir of the earl of March. After his death in the battle, his son Edward took up the
struggle and won the throne.

Edward IV put Henry into the Tower of London but nine years later a new Lancastrian army
rescued Henry and chased Edward out of the country. Edward returned to England and
defeated the Lancastrians. At last Edward IV was safe on the throne. Henry VI died in the
Tower of London soon after, almost certainly murdered.

The war between York and Lancaster would probably have stopped ten if Edward´s son had
been old enough to rule, and I Edward´s brother, Richard of Gloucester, had not been so
ambitious. But when Edward IV died, his own two sons, the twelve-year-old Edward V and his
younger brother, were put in the Tower by Richard of Gloucester. Richard took the Crown and
became King Richard III. A month later two princes were murderer. William Shakespeare´s play
Richard III written a century later, accuses Richard of murder and almost everyone believed it.

Richard III was not popular. Lancastrians and Yorkists both disliked him. A challenger with a
very distant claim to royal blood through John of Gaunt landed in England with Breton soldiers
to claim the throne. Many discontented lords, both Lancastrians and Yorkists, joined him. His
name was Henry Tudor, duke of Richmond, and he was half Welsh. Half of Richard´s army
changed sides. And the battle quickly ended in his defeat and death. Henry Tudor was crowned
king immediately, on the battlefield.

The War of the Roses nearly destroyed the English idea of kingship. After there had been little
respect for anything except the power to take the Crown.

For the first time there had been no purpose in taking prisoners, because no one was
interested in payment of ransom. Everyone was interested in destroying the opposing nobility.
Those captured in battle were usually killed immediately. By the time of the battle of
Bosworth, the old nobility had nearly destroyed itself. Almost half the lords of the sixty noble
families had died in the wars. It was this fact which made it possible for the Tudors to build a
new nation state.

5. SCOTLAND
Scotland experienced many of the disasters that affected England at this time. The Scots did
not escape the Black Death or the other plagues, and they also suffered from repeated wars.

Scotland paid heavily for its “Auld Alliance” With France. Because it supported France during
the Hundred Years War, the English repeatedly invaded the Scottish Lowlands, from which
most of the Scots king´s wealth came, England renewed its claim to overlordship of Scotland,
and Edward IV´s army occupied Edinburgh.

As in England, the nobles kept private armies, instead of using serfs for military service as they
had done earlier. This new system fitted well with the Celtic tribal loyalties of the Highlands.
The Gaelic word for such tribes, “clan”, means “children”, in other words members of one
family. But from the fourteenth century, a “clan” began to mean groups of people occupying
an area of land and following a particular chief. Not all the members of a clan were related to
each other. Some group joined a clan for protection, or because they were forced to choose
between doing so or leaving the area. The most powerful of the Highland clans by the fifteenth
century was Clan Donald. The clan chiefs were almost completely independent.

Scotland had developed as a nation in a number of ways. The Scots demanded that a
parliament should meet once a year, and kings often gathered together leading citizens to
discuss matters of government. Towns grew in importance, mainly because of the wool trade
which grew thanks to the help of Flemish settlers. There was a large export trade in wool,
leather and fish, mostly to the Netherlands.
Scotland´s alliance with France brought some benefits. At a time when much of the farmland
was repeatedly destroyed by English armies, many Scotsmen found work as soldiers for the
French king. The connection with France helped develop education in Scotland. Universities
were founded in Scotland at St Andrews, Glasgow and at Aberdeen. Scotland could rightly
claim to be equal with England in learning. Bu the end of the fifteenth century it was obvious
that Scotland was a separate country of England. Nobody, believed in the English king´s claim
to be overlord of Scotland.