Parliament assembled in Westminster Hall, where Henry sat at the
side of the throne, which was empty and covered with a cloth of
gold. The paper just signed by the King was read to the multitude
amid shouts of joy, which were echoed through all the streets; when
some of the noise had died away, the King was formally deposed.
Then Henry arose, and, making the sign of the cross on his forehead
and breast, challenged the realm of England as his right; the
archbishops of Canterbury and York seated him on the throne.
The multitude shouted again, and the shouts re-echoed throughout
all the streets. No one remembered, now, that Richard the Second
had ever been the most beautiful, the wisest, and the best of
princes; and he now made living (to my thinking) a far more sorry
spectacle in the Tower of London, than Wat Tyler had made, lying
dead, among the hoofs of the royal horses in Smithfield.
The Poll-tax died with Wat. The Smiths to the King and Royal
Family, could make no chains in which the King could hang the
people’s recollection of him; so the Poll-tax was never collected.
Page 111
Dickens, Charles – A Child’s History of England
CHAPTER XX – ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FOURTH, CALLED BOLINGBROKE
DURING the last reign, the preaching of Wickliffe against the pride
and cunning of the Pope and all his men, had made a great noise in
England. Whether the new King wished to be in favour with the
priests, or whether he hoped, by pretending to be very religious,
to cheat Heaven itself into the belief that he was not a usurper, I
don’t know. Both suppositions are likely enough. It is certain
that he began his reign by making a strong show against the
followers of Wickliffe, who were called Lollards, or heretics –
although his father, John of Gaunt, had been of that way of
thinking, as he himself had been more than suspected of being. It
is no less certain that he first established in England the
detestable and atrocious custom, brought from abroad, of burning
those people as a punishment for their opinions. It was the
importation into England of one of the practices of what was called
the Holy Inquisition: which was the most UNholy and the most
infamous tribunal that ever disgraced mankind, and made men more
like demons than followers of Our Saviour.
No real right to the crown, as you know, was in this King. Edward
Mortimer, the young Earl of March – who was only eight or nine
years old, and who was descended from the Duke of Clarence, the
elder brother of Henry’s father – was, by succession, the real heir
to the throne. However, the King got his son declared Prince of
Wales; and, obtaining possession of the young Earl of March and his
little brother, kept them in confinement (but not severely) in
Windsor Castle. He then required the Parliament to decide what was
to be done with the deposed King, who was quiet enough, and who
only said that he hoped his cousin Henry would be ‘a good lord’ to
him. The Parliament replied that they would recommend his being
kept in some secret place where the people could not resort, and
where his friends could not be admitted to see him. Henry
accordingly passed this sentence upon him, and it now began to be
pretty clear to the nation that Richard the Second would not live
very long.
It was a noisy Parliament, as it was an unprincipled one, and the
Lords quarrelled so violently among themselves as to which of them
had been loyal and which disloyal, and which consistent and which
inconsistent, that forty gauntlets are said to have been thrown
upon the floor at one time as challenges to as many battles: the
truth being that they were all false and base together, and had
been, at one time with the old King, and at another time with the
new one, and seldom true for any length of time to any one. They
soon began to plot again. A conspiracy was formed to invite the
King to a tournament at Oxford, and then to take him by surprise