Twice towards the end of the century Richard, now the French treaty was arranged, found time to visit Ireland and claim the homage of the chiefs of the Irish clans, and it was while he was in Ireland, on the second of these expeditions, that his enemy, Henry, Earl of Bolingbroke, whom he had banished, came back to England and was joined by great forces in the country which had by now become disgusted with Richard's tyranny. For though Richard had shown extraordinary courage and manly wisdom as a boy, his later acts raise a doubt whether he was quite sane. In the last year of the century, 1399, Henry came to the throne as Henry IV. [Sidenote: Henry IV] It was a troublous succession. There was discontent and active rebellion of both lords and commons in England itself. Wales rose in arms against the king and was followed by Scotland. France threatened to renew the war. Gradually the king gained the victory over each of these various forces opposed to him. Wales and Scotland were subdued by arms. Against Scotland he had the help of the great Earl of Northumberland and his son famous in story as "Hotspur." Very shortly afterwards the power of Northumberland was brought into opposition to the king, but was overthrown in that battle which settled the Welsh trouble and, as Shakespeare relates to us, gave Henry, the king's son--soon to be Henry V.--the chance of distinguishing himself by killing "Hotspur" in single combat, and thus proving that he was made for better things than to be the boon companion of the drunken old knight Falstaff. But with his own commons Henry IV. was able to make terms only by giving up a serious piece of what had been the royal privilege before. He agreed that the taxes raised to meet the expenses of the war should be received and paid out again by a committee appointed by the Parliament, and no longer by an {198} official appointed by the king. The difference was of much importance for the liberties of the English subject. As for the threat of war from France, that threat died away for the moment in consequence of an event which had a large effect on the course of the story during most of the fifteenth century. This event was the rise of the Duke of Burgundy to a power almost as great as that of the King of France himself, the Duke's feudal overlord.