Page:The Queens of England.djvu/169

 ANNE OF BOHEMIA. 143 upwards, which they call cr.ack.owes, resembling the devil's clawes, which were fastened to the knees with chaines of gold and silver." There is no doubt but that Anne made use of her influence over the king to save the life of Wickliffe under the persecu- tions with which he was pursued ; and that the cause of the reformed religion was favored alike by her and by her mother- in-law Joanna, Princess of Wales, whose power over the yield- ing though impetuous nature of her son was so well employed in 1386, when civil war threatened to embroil the country, owing to a quarrel between the king and his uncle, the haughty and arrogant John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who was informed that Richard intended to have him arrested and tried on some capital points before Sir Robert Trevilian, a man entirely in the monarch's interest. That there was some truth in the report is certain ; and that those about the king were most anxious to promote the arrest is not less positive. "Neverthelesse, the hopes of wicked men, delighting in their countrie's miseries and civill combustions, were made voide by the great diligence of the king's mother, the Princesse Joan, who spared not her continuall paines and expenses, in travailing betweene the king and the duke (albeit she was exceeding tender of complexion, and scarce able to beare her own bodie's weight through corpulency), till they were fully reconciled."* The result of her interference was doubly happy, occurring, as it did, at a moment when England was threatened with in- vasion by Charles the Sixth of France, who, as Speed quaintly says, was "a yong and foolish prince, who, having in his treasury, left to him by his prudent father, eighteene millions of crownes .... and being, moreover, set on fire with an inconsiderate love of glory, rather than upon any sound advice (though some impute the counsell to the said admirall. John de Vienne), would needs undertake the conquest of our countrey. These newes stirred all the limbes and humours there- of, though the event (God not favoring the enterprise) was but like that of the mountaine, which, after long travaile, brought forth a ridiculous mouse. Neverthelesse it had beene a most desperate season for a civill warre to have broken forth in England." An event which occurred during Richard's campaign in
 * Speed-