Richard II. Jacob Abbott
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in respect to the appointment of the archbishops, and bishops, and other ecclesiastics in England, and in respect to the government and control of the monasteries, and the abbeys, and to the appropriation and expenditure of the revenues of the Church, which sometimes interfered very seriously with the views and designs of the king. Hence there arose continual disputes and quarrels. The Pope never came himself to England, but he often sent a grand embassador, called a legate, who traveled with great pomp and parade, and with many attendants, and assumed in all his doings a most lofty and superior air. In the contests in which these legates were engaged with the kings, the legates almost always came off conquerors through the immense influence which the Pope exercised over the consciences and religious fears of the mass of the people.
The Pope's legate and the students at Oxford.
Sometimes the visits of the legates and their proceedings among the people led to open broils. At one time, for instance, the legate was at Oxford, where the great University, now so renowned throughout the world, already existed. He was lodged at an abbey there, and some of the scholars of the University wishing to pay their respects to him, as they said, went in a body to the gates of the abbey and demanded admission; but the porter kept them back and refused to let them in. Upon this a great noise and tumult arose, the students pressing against the gates to get in, and the porter, assisted by the legate's men, whom he called to his assistance, resisting them.
In the course of the fray one or two of the students succeeded in forcing their way in as far as to the kitchen of the abbey, and there one of them called upon a cook to help them. But the cook, instead of helping them, dipped out a ladle full of hot broth from a kettle and threw it into the student's face. Whereupon the other students cried out, as the ancient chronicler relates it, "What meane we to suffer this villanie," and, taking an arrow, he set it in his bow, having caught up these weapons in the beginning of the fray, and let it fly at the cook, and killed him on the spot.
Great riot made by the students.
This, of course, greatly increased the excitement. More students came in, and so great was the tumult and confusion that the legate was in terror for his life, and he fled and concealed himself in the belfry of the abbey. After lying in this place of concealment for some time, until the tumult was in some measure appeased, he crept out secretly, fled across the Thames, and then, mounting a horse, made the best of his way to London.
He made complaint to the king of the indignity which he had endured, and the king immediately sent a troop of armed men, with an earl at the head of them, to rescue the remainder of the legate's men that were still imprisoned in the abbey, and also to seize all the students that had been concerned in the riot and bring them to London. The earl proceeded to execute his commission. He apprehended thirty of the students, and, taking them to a neighboring castle, he shut them up there as prisoners.
The end of the affair.
In the end, besides punishing the individual students who had made this disturbance, the regents and masters of the University were compelled to come to London, and there to go barefooted through the principal street to a church where the legate was, and humbly to supplicate his forgiveness for the indignity which he had suffered. And so, with great difficulty, they obtained their pardon.
Plan to assassinate the king.
The students in those days, as students are apt to be in all countries and in all ages, were a very impulsive, and, in some respects, a lawless set. Whenever they deemed themselves injured, they pursued the object of their hostility in the most reckless and relentless manner. At one time a member of the University became so excited against the king on account of some injury, real or imaginary, which he had suffered, that he resolved to kill him. So he feigned himself mad, and in this guise he loitered many days about the palace of Woodstock, where the king was then residing, until at length he became well acquainted with all the localities. Then, watching his opportunity, he climbed by night through a window into a bedchamber where he thought the king was lying. He crept up to the bedside, and, throwing back the clothes, he stabbed several times into the bed with a dagger. He, however, stabbed nothing but the bed itself, and the pillow, for the king that night, as it happened, lay in another chamber.
Margaret, the servant-girl.
Execution of Marish.
As the student was making his escape, he was spied by one of the chambermaids named Margaret Biset. Margaret immediately made a great outcry, and the other servants, coming up, seized the student and carried him off to prison. He was afterward tried, and was convicted of treason in having made an attempt upon the king's life, and was hanged. Before his death he said that he had been employed to kill the king by another man, a certain William de Marish, who was a noted and prominent man of those days. This William de Marish was afterward taken and brought to trial, but he solemnly denied that he had ever instigated the student to commit the crime. He was, however, condemned and executed, and, according to the custom in those days in the case of persons convicted of treason, his body was subjected after his death to extreme indignities, and then was divided into four quarters, one of which was sent to each of the four principal cities of the kingdom, and publicly exhibited in them as a warning to all men of the dreadful consequences of attempting such a crime.
Ideas of the sacredness of the person of a king.
Great pains were taken in those days to instill into the minds of all men the idea that to kill a king was the worst crime that a human being could commit. One of the writers of the time said that in wounding and killing a prince a man was guilty of homicide, parricide, Christicide, and even of deicide, all in one; that is, that in the person of a king slain by the hand of the murderer the criminal strikes not only at a man, but at his own father, and at Christ his Savior, and God.
A great many strange and superstitious notions were entertained by the people in respect to kings. These superstitions were encouraged, even by the scholars and historians of those times, who might be supposed to know better. But it was so much for their interest to write what should be agreeable to the king and to his court, that they were by no means scrupulous in respect to the tales which they told, provided they were likely to be pleasing to those in authority, and to strengthen the powers and prestige of the reigning families.
The neighboring countries with which the kings of England were most frequently at war in those days were Scotland, Wales, and France. These wars arose, not from any causes connected with the substantial interests of the people of England, but from the grasping ambition of the kings, who wished to increase the extent of their territories, and thus add to their revenues and to their power. Sometimes their wars arose from private and personal quarrels, and in these cases thousands of lives were often sacrificed, and great sums of money expended to revenge slights or personal injuries of comparatively little consequence.
Origin of the wars with Leolin, Prince of Wales.
For instance, one of the wars with Wales broke out in this manner. Leolin, who was then the reigning Prince of Wales, sent to France, and requested the King of France that he might have in marriage a certain lady named Lady Eleanor, who was then residing in the French king's court. The motive of Leolin in making this proposal was not that he bore any love for the Lady Eleanor, for very likely he had never seen her; but she was the daughter of an English earl named Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who was an enemy of the King of England, and, having been banished from the country, had taken refuge in France. Leolin thought that by proposing and carrying into effect this marriage, he would at once gratify the King of France and spite the King of England.
Leolin's bride intercepted at sea.
The King of France at once assented to the proposed marriage, but the King of England was extremely angry, and he determined to prevent the marriage if he could. He accordingly gave the necessary orders, and the little fleet which was sent from France to convey Eleanor to Wales was intercepted off the Scilly Islands on the way, and the whole bridal party were taken prisoners and sent to London.
As soon as Leolin heard this, he, of course, was greatly enraged, and he immediately set off with an armed troop, and made a foray upon the English frontiers, killing all the people that lived near the border, plundering their property, and burning up all the towns and