s might have
been defied had not Richard set an able and unscrupulous leader at its
head. Leave had been given to Henry of Lancaster to receive his father's
inheritance on the death of John of Gaunt, in February 1399. But an
ordinance of the Continual Committee annulled this permission and Richard
seized the Lancastrian estates. Archbishop Arundel at once saw the chance
of dealing blow for blow. He hastened to Paris and pressed the Duke to
return to England, telling him how all men there looked for it, "especially
the Londoners, who loved him a hundred times more than they did the king."
For a while Henry remained buried in thought, "leaning on a window
overlooking a garden"; but Arundel's pressure at last prevailed, he made
his way secretly to Britanny, and with fifteen knights set sail from
Vannes.

[Sidenote: Ireland and the Pale]

What had really decided him was the opportunity offered by Richard's
absence from the realm. From the opening of his reign the king's attention
had been constantly drawn to his dependent lordship of Ireland. More than
two hundred years had passed away since the troubles which followed the
murder of Archbishop Thomas forced Henry the Second to leave his work of
conquest unfinished, and the opportunity for a complete reduction of the
island which had been lost then had never returned. When Henry quitted
Ireland indeed Leinster was wholly in English hands, Connaught bowed to a
nominal acknowledgement of the English overlordship, and for a while the
work of conquest seemed to go steadily on. John de Courcy penetrated into
Ulster and established himself at Downpatrick; and Henry planned the
establishment of his youngest son, John, as Lord of Ireland. But the levity
of the young prince, who mocked the rude dresses of the native chieftains
and plucked them in insult by the beard, soon forced his father to recall
him; and in the continental struggle which soon opened on the Angevin
kings, as in the constitutional struggle within England itself which
followed it, all serious purpose of completing the conquest of Ireland was
forgotten. Nothing indeed but the feuds and weakness of the Irish tribes
enabled the adventurers to hold the districts of Drogheda, Dublin, Wexford,
Waterford, and Cork, which formed what was thenceforth known as "the
English Pale." In all the history of Ireland no event has proved more
disastrous than this half-finished conquest. Had the Irish driven their
invaders into the