caster could have to encounter in his father's favour and good opinion was William of Wykeham. His maxim was not to remove even an abuse that appeared useful. John of Gaunt was of a very opposite temper. He was in the vigour of his youth, and burned with ambition and a desire to signalise himself. By means of the representation of the two estates in parliament, an easy and decent fall was contrived for the king's favourite. The whole transaction appeared the less invidious, as John of Gaunt was at this time employed on the continent. In the close of the year 1371, the new-titled King of Castile, with his brother the Earl of Cambridge, and their brides, came over to England ; and he left the command of Aquitane during his absence in the hands of the Captal of Buche, the ablest and most renowned of the soldiers now living who had served under Edward III. The captal of Buche was, however, surprised in an excursion with a small party of soldiers, and made prisoner of war; and the towns of Aquitane now fell rapidly into the hands of the French army. The last campaign of this eventful and disastrous war was in the year 1373. The King of Castile now marched through France. He saw how desperate the state of the English affairs in that country had become, and felt that there was no other remedy in his power. At the head of thirty thousand men, he commenced his expedition from Calais, and directed his march through Artois, Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy, the Lyonnois, Auvergne, and Limousin, concluding this extensive course, which occupied a period of between three and four months, at Bourdeaux. The King of Castile, at home, was considered as the friend of Wickliffe. The views of Wickliffe were of a spiritual sort; he opposed the established church, not because he had less, but because he had more, of the religious sentiment, than the majority of its stoutest champions. The views of John of Gaunt, appear to have been of a political nature. He saw how much the encroachments of the church of Rome had trenched upon the integrity of the English government, and he deemed it an object worthy of his efforts to repel and put an end to these encroachments. He had, in 1376, been for about ten years the first minister of his father, and had conducted the affairs of his country with little apparent opposition during the whole of that time. He had led the armies of England; he had negotiated for her in her discussions with her great neighbour and rival; and he had meditated profound plans for her religious emancipation and the improvement of her ecclesiastical constitution. He had taken into his familiarity the most eminent geniuses the island then had to boast, and had embellished his court with the services of Wickliffe and Chaucer. Edward III. was now in the sixty-sixth year of his age, and his infirmities were greater than are frequently incident to that period. He had nearly withdrawn himself from all knowledge of public affairs, and studied only his ease. The Black Prince had an only child, afterward Richard II., nine years of age. The individual nearest to the throne after him, was Philippa, only daughter of Lionel Duke of Clarence. This lady had been married soon after the death of her father, to Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, and had borne him several sons, now infants, the eldest of whom was afterward declared by Richard II. successor to the crown. The King of Castile, as the prince next of blood to the throne, who was of full age, was looked to as the natural guardian of the realm in case of the death of Edward III. and the Black Prince; but this circumstance excited the prudent and considerate to mark his proceedings with a jealous and envious eye. These circumstances were eagerly improved, and his opponents did not neglect the obvious argument, of the necessity of securing the eventual succession of the minor prince, against the projects of an uncle, whose talents were considerable, and whose influence in the government of his country was great and of long standing. A plot was prepared, previously to the meeting of parliament on the twenty-eighth of April, when John of Gaunt was absent at Bruges. The commons proceeded to attack individuals who were trusted with the conduct of public affairs, for the purpose of bringing odium upon the general system of administration. They next adopted a measure, in which was conspicuously blended the rigorous severity of puritanism. The King of Castile lived at this time in open adultery. He had married the daughter of Peter the Cruel from ambitious views, and it was, perhaps, the principal false step in his life. Some years after espousing the Spanish princess, he cast the eyes of affection upon the sister of Chaucer's wife. In the life-time of the Duchess Blanche, she had attended upon that princess, and was afterward intrusted with the education of her daughters. This lady had since been married to Sir Hugh Swinford, and the son and heir of Sir Hugh appears to have been born in the year 1368, and the lady became a widow four years afterward. An unfortunate coincidence existed between the situation of the King of Castile and of his father. There was a lady, said to have been of exquisite beauty, named Alice Perrers, who had attended upon the person of Queen Philippa, in the same manner as Catherine Swinford had attended upon the Duchess Blanche. At least two years before the death of the queen, we have strong presumptive evidence that Edward III. indulged an amorous familiarity with this lady. The favour which Alice Perrers enjoyed from her royal lover was of the most conspicuous sort. Scarcely a year passed during the last ten years of Edward III., in which she did not receive some signal mark of the bounty of the crown. In the year 1374, in a tournament, which was held in Cheapside, she ap peared mounted upon a white palfrey, in splendid attire, as mistress of the solemnity, being distinguished by the appellation of the Lady of the Sun. This lady was one of the victims of party-rage selected by the Good Parliament. Among their votes hostile to the government one runs thus: The king ordaineth that henceforth no woman shall for maintenance or lucre present any matter in any of the king's courts, and particularly Alice Perrers, on pain of forfeiting all she has, and being banished the realm for ever. The parliament completed its encroachments by appointing a committee of nine counsellors, without whose consent nothing of importance in the public concerns should be transacted. It was during this period of commotion and disaster, in which his name was treacherously employed to insult his father and undermine the government, that the Black Prince expired. · A short time after his death, the commons petitioned that the young prince his son, now heir apparent to the crown, might be sent to them, and appear in open parliament. Whatever was the immediate success of the proceedings of this parliament, the ultimate consequences were singularly unfavourable to the King of Castile. Hitherto his career, on the whole, had been fortunate; from this time his lot was cast among troubles, obstinate contention, and eternal animosity. The King of Castile, who was now at Bourdeaux, heard with astonishment of the violence and insolences that were practising in his native country, and went on board certain vessels prepared for the purpose, with Lord Percy and other nobles his followers, on the eight of July. What were the measures adopted by the King of Castile on his arrival, or in what manner the committee of government endeavoured to defend themselves, history has not informed us. Edward III. received his beloved son with open arms; the newly constituted committee was superseded without ceremony; John of Gaunt was declared the associate of his father in the government; and Lord Latimer, and the rest who had been prosecuted by the late house of commons, together with Alice Perrers, were recalled to court. The convocation of the clergy met on the third of February, 1377, one week subsequently to the opening of the parliament. Immediately afterward, Wickliffe was cited to answer before his superiors, to certain articles which were charged against him as innovation and heresy. The day fixed for the hearing was the nineteenth of February; the place, St. Paul's. The King of Castile resolved, accompanied by the earl marshal and other friends, to repair with Wickliffe to the scene of trial. Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, presided; and Courteney, of the see of London, took the lead in this prosecution. This prelate had not expected such illustrious visitors, and was irritated. High words arose on both sides, and the sitting was abruptly dispersed. An order was soon after promulgated by its authority, enjoining silence upon Wickliffe in future, relative to the articles in question; but this proposition was whollydisregarded. Immediately on the death of his illustrious father, the King of Castile resolved upon that system of conduct which he uniformly pursued for the rest of his life. His first object was to place his nephew securely upon the throne, and to remove, as far as possible, those circumstances which might throw difficulty in the way of his youthful government. The King of Castile next undertook the business of the royal coronation. It was celebrated on the twenty-fifth day from the demise of the crown ; and, notwithstanding this expedition, it has been remarked as perhaps the most magnificent which occurs in our history. A council being summoned for the purpose, John of Gaunt made his appearance before them, and claimed, as Earl of Leicester, to officiate as seneschal, or high steward of England, at the approaching solemnity; as Duke of Lancaster, to bear in procession, by himself or his deputy, the principal sword, called Curtana; and as Earl of Lincoln, to carve the meat at the king's table. The business of the coronation however was no sooner finished, than he appeared before the king in council, and demanded leave to retire to his castle of Kenelworth, declaring his resolution to have no share in the future government. The truce between England and France expired on the first of May, 1377. The new reign therefore commenced in a state of war. The great object of contention between the two countries appears to have been Calais. The regency thought this an occasion of sufficient emergency to call for the interference of the King of Castile. Whatever aspersions were propagated against him in a civil capacity, all men looked up to him as the most eminent military commander their country had to boast. He was accordingly appointed the king's lieutenant and captain general for the dominions of France, with full powers of superintendence, as well relative to civil administration, as to the military expeditions which might be fitted out against that country. But it was in vain that he withdrew from all rivalship in the cabinet; this by no means tamed the violence of his enemies. The ecclesiastical members of this cabal feared and hated him for his patronage of Wickliffe; and the whole party were impresssd with the feeling that, if he once became popular, their power would be to the last degree precarious. These misrepresentations went on in uninterrupted progress, till they not only interfered with his public usefulness, but involved him in the most serious evils and dangers, both as to property and life. In 1381, the evils which had been nursed and ripened in the nation, ever since the epoch of the Good Parliament, broke out into a tremendous flame. The signal was an insult committed by one of the collectors of the poll-tax, upon the daughter of a tyler, of the town of Dartford in Kent. The law prescribed a certain age, supposed to be the age of puberty, as the period at which the tax should begin to be assessible; and a dispute having arisen between the tax-gatherer and the father, the former had recourse to a very indecent expedient for ascertaining the girl's years. The mechanic felt like a parent; and, with the tool with which he happened to be working at his trade, deprived the offender of exist ence. Immediately the people of the vicinity, already ripe for revolt, flew to arms; the flame spread with rapidity from village to village, and from county to county; and in a few days one hundred thousand men were assembled on Blackheath. The insurgents immediately entered the metropolis, burned down the Temple and the Hospital of the knights of St. John of Jerusalem, set open all the prisons, and possessed themselves of the tower of London. Their principal scenes of summary execution were the western extremity of Cheapside, and Tower Hill, and every man connected in any way with the practice of the law was particularly the object of their proscription, Two of their victims, mangled and heheaded on Tower Hill, were Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, lord chancellor, and Sir Robert Hales, lord treasurer of the realm. A third immolated in the same butchery, was a Franciscan Friar, whose name appears to have been William Appledore, a man consummately skilled in natural philosophy, and a particular favourite of John of Gaunt. Having overtaken the Dowager Princess of Wales on her road from Canterbury, they forced upon her their brutal kisses, to evince that all dis tinctions of rank were at an end. Litster, a dyer of Norwich, who commanded another innumerable band from that quarter, and styled himself king of the commons, found amusement in compelling the men of rank he encountered, to carve his dishes, and others, to be his cup-bearers. But the decisive scene of this extraordinary contention was acted in Smithfield. Hither Richard repaired, attended by a considerable body of nobles and knights, to meet Wat Tyler and the main body of the insurgents. The king's party and that of the rebels were drawn up in martial array facing each other. Messengers passed and repassed, negotiating the disputes which arose between the contending authorities. Three several charters were successively dispatched from the king to the head of the populace, and were all pronounced inadmissible. Tyler, however, assuming an air of anger at his repeated disappointments, declared his resolution to confer with the king in person; and, ordering his party to halt, and putting spurs to his horse, he rode into the midst of the band of nobles and knights who surrounded the king. Having come so near, that his horse's head touched the crupper of the king's |