kable events. The duke of Lancaster
returned from Spain; having resigned to his rival all pretensions to the
crown of Castile upon payment of a large sum of money,[**] and having
married his daughter, Philippa, to the king of Portugal. The authority
of this prince served to counterbalance that of the duke of Glocester,
and secured the power of Richard, who paid great court to his eldest
uncle, by whom he had never been offended, and whom he found more
moderate in his temper than the younger. He made a cession to him for
life of the duchy of Guienne,[***] which the inclinations and changeable
humor of the Gascons had restored to the English government; but as they
remonstrated loudly against this deed, it was finally, with the duke's
consent, revoked by Richard.[****]

* Dugdale, vol. ii. p. 170.

** Knyghton, p 2677. Walsing p. 342.

*** Rymer, vol. vii. p. 659.

**** Rymer, vol. vii. p. 687. 298 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

There happened an incident which produced a dissension between Lancaster
and his two brothers. After the death of the Spanish princess, he
espoused Catharine Swineford, daughter of a private knight of Hainault,
by whose alliance York and Glocester thought the dignity of their family
much injured; but the king gratified his uncle by passing in parliament
a charter of legitimation to the children whom that lady had borne him
before marriage, and by creating the eldest earl of Somerset.[*]

The wars, meanwhile, which Richard had inherited with his crown, still
continued; though interrupted by frequent truces, according to the
practice of that age, and conducted with little vigor, by reason of
the weakness of all parties. The French war was scarcely heard of; the
tranquillity of the northern borders was only interrupted by one inroad
of the Scots, which proceeded more from a rivalship between the two
martial families of Piercy and Douglas, than from any national quarrel:
a fierce battle or skirmish was fought at Otterborne,[**] in which young
Piercy, surnamed Hotspur, from his impetuous valor, was taken prisoner,
and Douglas slain; and the victory remained undecided.[***] Some
insurrections of the Irish obliged the king to make an expedition into
that country, which he reduced to obedience; and he recovered, in some
degree, by this enterprise, his character of courage, which had suffered
a little by the inactivity of his reign.

{1396.} At last, the English and French courts began to