his royal ring to his triumphant cousin Henry with his own hand,
and said, that if he could have had leave to appoint a successor, that
same Henry was the man of all others whom he would have named. Next day,
the Parliament assembled in Westminster Hall, where Henry sat at the side
of the throne, which was empty and covered with a cloth of gold. The
paper just signed by the King was read to the multitude amid shouts of
joy, which were echoed through all the streets; when some of the noise
had died away, the King was formally deposed. Then Henry arose, and,
making the sign of the cross on his forehead and breast, challenged the
realm of England as his right; the archbishops of Canterbury and York
seated him on the throne.

The multitude shouted again, and the shouts re-echoed throughout all the
streets. No one remembered, now, that Richard the Second had ever been
the most beautiful, the wisest, and the best of princes; and he now made
living (to my thinking) a far more sorry spectacle in the Tower of
London, than Wat Tyler had made, lying dead, among the hoofs of the royal
horses in Smithfield.

The Poll-tax died with Wat. The Smiths to the King and Royal Family,
could make no chains in which the King could hang the people's
recollection of him; so the Poll-tax was never collected.

CHAPTER XX--ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FOURTH, CALLED BOLINGBROKE

During the last reign, the preaching of Wickliffe against the pride and
cunning of the Pope and all his men, had made a great noise in England.
Whether the new King wished to be in favour with the priests, or whether
he hoped, by pretending to be very religious, to cheat Heaven itself into
the belief that he was not a usurper, I don't know. Both suppositions
are likely enough. It is certain that he began his reign by making a
strong show against the followers of Wickliffe, who were called Lollards,
or heretics--although his father, John of Gaunt, had been of that way of
thinking, as he himself had been more than suspected of being. It is no
less certain that he first established in England the detestable and
atrocious custom, brought from abroad, of burning those people as a
punishment for their opinions. It was the importation into England of
one of the practices of what was called the Holy Inquisition: which was
the most _un_holy and the most infamous tribunal that ever disgraced
mankind, and made men more like demons than followers of Our Saviour.

No rea