LEADING DATES

Reign of Richard II., 1377-1399

Accession of Richard II 1377
The peasants' revolt 1381

1. =The First Years of Richard II. 1377--1378.=--"Woe to the land,"
quoted Langland from Ecclesiastes, in the second edition of _Piers the
Plowman_, "when the king is a child." Richard was but ten years of age
when he was raised to the throne. The French plundered the coast, and
the Scots plundered the Borders. In the presence of such dangers
Lancaster and Wykeham forgot their differences, and as Lancaster was
too generally distrusted to allow of his acting as regent, the council
governed in the name of the young king. Lancaster, however, took the
lead, and renewed the war with France with but little result beyond so
great a waste of money as to stir up Parliament to claim a control
over the expenditure of the Crown.

2. =Wycliffe and the Great Schism. 1378--1381.=--In =1378= began the
Great Schism. For nearly half a century from that date there were two
Popes, one at Avignon and one at Rome. Wycliffe had been gradually
losing his reverence for a single Pope, and he had none left for two.
He was now busy with a translation of the Bible into English, and sent
forth a band of "poor priests," to preach the simple gospel which he
found in it. He was thus brought into collision with the pretensions
of the priesthood, and was thereby led to question the doctrines on
which their authority was based. In =1381= he declared his disbelief
in the doctrine of transubstantiation, and thereby denied to priests
that power "of making the body of Christ," which was held to mark them
off from their fellow-men. In any case, so momentous an announcement
would have cost Wycliffe the hearts of large numbers of his
supporters. It was the more fatal to his influence as it was
coincident with social disorders, the blame for which was certain,
rightly or wrongly, to be laid at his door.

[Illustration: Richard II. and his first queen, Anne of Bohemia: from
the gilt-latten effigies on their tomb in Westminster Abbey, made by
Nicholas Broker and Godfrey Prest, coppersmiths of London, in 1395.]

3. =The Poll-taxes. 1379--1381.=--The disastrous war with France made
fresh taxation unavoidable. In =1379= a poll-tax was imposed by
Parliament on a graduated scale, reaching from the 6_l._ 13_s._ 4_d._
required of a duke, to the groat or 4_d._, representing i