Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/151

 Arundel  That same night Richard urged the archbishop to endeavour to persuade his brother, the Earl of Arundel, to come to him of his own accord, swearing by St. John the Baptist (his usual oath) that no injury should be done to him if he would only come peacefully. The earl at first hesitated, but the archbishop, trusting to the king's oath, induced him to put himself in Richard's power; on which he was apprehended and sent to the Isle of Wight until the meeting of parliament in September. That done, the king, procuring a body of men from the mayor of London, and taking with him also some of the noblemen of his court, paid an unexpected visit to his uncle Gloucester at Fleshy, in Essex, and caused him also to be arrested and sent over to Calais, where he was some little time afterwards murdered.

The archbishop never saw his brother again. He took his place beside the king in the parliament which met in September, and was appointed one of the triers of petitions; but on 20 Sept. 1397 — almost exactly a year after the date of the bull appointing him archbishop, but only seven months since he had begun really to exercise an archbishop's functions — he was impeached by the House of Commons. The charge against him was that he, being then chancellor, had assisted in procuring the commission of regency eleven years before in derogation of the king's authority. He was about to reply, but the king, with a motion of his hand, caused him to be silent and sit down, and made answer to the commons himself that, as the matter touched so high a person, he would take counsel upon the subject apart. Meanwhile he privately encouraged the archbishop to believe that the cloud would soon disperse. But next day the archbishop's brother, the earl, was brought into the House of Peers in the custody of the constable of the Tower, and an appeal of treason was lodged against him. The charges against him likewise had reference to acts done many years before, and he had since obtained the king's pardon, but it was disallowed. For the king had explicitly demanded of the assembled peers whether charters of pardon granted under compulsion might not be revoked, and all but the archbishop himself agreed that they might be. The earl was therefore summarily condemned and executed the same day. On the 24th the earl marshal, who was to have produced his prisoner, the Duke of Gloucester, before the peers, reported that he had died in prison at Calais. On the 25th the commons prayed judgment on the archbishop, when the king related that he had examined him in the presence of some other lords, and that he had confessed his offence. Sentence of banishment was then pronounced against him, six weeks being allowed him from Michaelmas day during which to take his passage from Dover into France.

These occurrences were the beginning of the despotism of Richard's later days. He had obtained a subservient parliament, but he had already lost the hearts of many of his subjects. The Earl of Arundel was looked upon as a martyr. The archbishop, undisturbed by his sentence, seems to have continued at least part of the time allowed him in the vigorous discharge of his functions; and on 14 Oct. issued an order from Lambeth in confirmation of one he had already issued in August defining the rights and duties of two officials in the court of Arches (, iii. 233). At last he left England and fled to Rome, where he sought the intercession of Boniface IX with the king his master. But Richard wrote in strong terms to his holiness of his seditious and intriguing character; and the pope, though he had favoured him at first, consented, at Richard's request, to deprive him of his see by translating him to St. Andrew's, as his predecessor Urban had translated Archbishop Nevill of York.

It is said by one authority that he absolutely refused to go abroad till the king assured him privately that he would soon be recalled, and that no one else should be archbishop while he lived; on which he told the king that before his departure he had something to say to him, and proceeded to deliver a long denunciation of the luxury and avarice of the court (Eulogium, iii. 376-7). To this account we may attach what weight we think proper; but it shows, at all events, the opinion entertained by many of his independence of character. The pope, at the king's request, not only translated him to St. Andrew's, where the authority of Boniface was not respected, but filled up the vacancy in the see of Canterbury by the appointment of Roger Walden, at that time dean of York, who had the temporalities restored to him on 21 Jan. 1398, and kept possession of the see during the brief remainder of Richard's reign.

There is no record — nor is the thing at all probable in itself — that Arundel returned to England, in spite of the decree of banishment, before he came back with Henry of Lancaster in 1399. Yet we are told most minutely by Froissart that just before that occasion he was sent over to Henry in France by the Londoners to represent to him the gross misgovernment of Richard, and to invite him to come and assume the crown;