ad long been the head.
The dread of war was increased by a pledge which Henry was said to have
given at his coronation that he would not only head an army in its march
into France but that he would march further into France than ever his
grandfather had done. The French Court retorted by refusing to acknowledge
Henry as king, while the truce concluded with Richard came at his death
legally to an end. In spite of this defiance however Burgundy remained
true to the interests of Flanders, and Henry clung to a truce which gave
him time to establish his throne. But the influence of the baronial party
in England made peace hard to keep; the Duke of Orleans urged on France to
war; and the hatred of the two peoples broke through the policy of the two
governments. Count Waleran of St. Pol, who had married Richard's
half-sister, put out to sea with a fleet which swept the east coast and
entered the Channel. Pirates from Britanny and Navarre soon swarmed in the
narrow seas, and their ravages were paid back by those of pirates from the
Cinque Ports. A more formidable trouble broke out in the north. The enmity
of France roused as of old the enmity of Scotland; the Scotch king Robert
the Third refused to acknowledge Henry, and Scotch freebooters cruised
along the northern coast.

[Sidenote: Richard's death]

Attack from without woke attack from within the realm. Henry had shown
little taste for bloodshed in his conduct of the revolution. Save those of
the royal councillors whom he found at Bristol no one had been put to
death. Though a deputation of lords with Archbishop Arundel at its head
pressed him to take Richard's life, he steadily refused, and kept him a
prisoner at Pomfret. The judgements against Gloucester, Warwick, and
Arundel were reversed, but the lords who had appealed the Duke were only
punished by the loss of the dignities which they had received as their
reward. Richard's brother and nephew by the half-blood, the Dukes of
Exeter and Surrey, became again Earls of Huntingdon and Kent. York's son,
the Duke of Albemarle, sank once more into Earl of Rutland. Beaufort, Earl
of Somerset, lost his new Marquisate of Dorset; Spenser lost his Earldom
of Gloucester. But in spite of a stormy scene among the lords in
Parliament Henry refused to exact further punishment; and his real temper
was seen in a statute which forbade all such appeals and left treason to
be dealt with by ordinary process of law. But the times were too roug