PROCEEDINGS OF BOLINBROKE FROM HIS INTERVIEW WITH ARCHBISHOP ARUNDEL, IN PARIS, TO HIS MAKING KING RICHARD HIS PRISONER. -- CONDUCT OF RICHARD FROM THE NEWS OF BOLINBROKE'S LANDING. -- TREACHERY OF NORTHUMBERLAND. -- RICHARD TAKEN BY BOLINBROKE TO LONDON. 1398-1399. Whether Henry of Monmouth met his father and the cavalcade at Chester, or joined them on their road to London, or followed them thither; whether he witnessed on the way the humiliation and melancholy of his friend, and the triumphant exaltation of his father, or not; every step taken by either of those two chieftains through the eventful weeks which intervened between King Richard making the youth a knight in the wilds of Ireland, and King Henry creating him Prince of Wales in the face of the nation at Westminster, bears immediately upon his destinies. And the whole complicated tissue of circumstances then in progress is so inseparably connected with him both individually and as the future monarch of England, that a brief review of the proceedings as well of the falling as of the rising antagonist seems (p. 053) indispensable in this place. * * * * * Henry Bolinbroke (having now, by the death of John of Gaunt,[57] succeeded to the dukedom of Lancaster,) found himself, during his exile, far from being the only victim of Richard's rash despotism; nor the only one determined to try, if necessary, and when occasion should offer, by strength of hand to recover their lost country, together with their property and their homes. Indeed, others proved to have (p. 054) been far more forward in that bold measure than himself. Whilst he was in Paris[58], he received by the hands of Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, an invitation to return, and set up his standard in their native land. Arundel,[59] himself one of Richard's victims, had been banished two years before the Duke, by a sentence which confiscated[60] all his property. He made his way, we are told, to Valenciennes in the disguise of a pilgrim, and, proceeding to Paris, obtained an interview with Henry; whom he found at first less sanguine perhaps, and less (p. 055) ready for so desperate an undertaking, than he expected. The Duke for some time remained, apparently, absorbed in deep thought, as he leaned on a window overlooking a garden; and at length replied that he would consult his friends. Their advice, seconding the appeal of the Archbishop, prevailed upon Henry to prepare for the hazardous enterprise; in which success might indeed be rewarded with the crown of England, over and above the recovery of his own vast possessions, but in which defeat must lead inevitably to ruin. He left Paris for Brittany; and sailing from one of its ports with three ships, having in his company only fifteen lances or knights, he made for the English coast.[61] About the 4th of July he came to shore at the spot where of old time had (p. 056) stood the decayed town of Ravenspur.