[Sidenote: =Murder of Richard.=] Henry had grasped the crown, but he knew that his position was insecure. He had only a Parliamentary title, and what one Parliament had done another could undo. The late king had many faithful partisans, and was not misliked by the nation at large. Therefore the unscrupulous usurper determined to make away with him. Richard was sent to Pontefract Castle, and never seen again; undoubtedly he was murdered, but no one save Henry and his confidants knew how the deed was done. The details of the dark act have never come to light. CHAPTER XV. HENRY IV. 1399-1413. [Sidenote: =Position and title of Henry.=] Henry of Bolingbroke had small comfort all his days on the throne which he had usurped. He was only the king of a faction, the nominee of the party which had once supported the Lords Appellant; if one half of the baronage was friendly to him for that reason, the other half was always estranged from him. It might almost be said that the "Wars of the Roses," the strife of the two great factions who adhered the one to the house of Lancaster and the other to the house of March, began on Henry's accession. Richard's deposition had been the work, not of the whole nation, but of Henry's friends, the Percies of Northumberland, the Nevilles of Westmoreland, the Arundels--son and brother to the Arundel whom Richard had beheaded in 1397--and the Staffords[24] who represented the line of Thomas, Duke of Gloucester. The Parliament had acquiesced in Henry's usurpation rather because it had been discontented with Richard's arbitrary rule, than because it had any very great liking for his cousin. Perhaps the more far-sighted of its members had concluded that the accession of a king whose only title rested on election would be favourable to the development of constitutional liberties, since Henry would--at least for a time--be very much dependent on the good-will of the body which had chosen him, and which might some day choose another ruler if he proved unpliable. [Sidenote: =Rebellion of the Hollands.=]