ous danger had not the treachery of
Ralph Neville, the Earl of Westmoreland, who still remained steady to the
Lancastrian cause, secured the arrest of some of its leaders. Scrope and
Lord Nottingham were beheaded, while Northumberland and his partizan Lord
Bardolf fled into Scotland and from thence to Wales. Succours from France
stirred the king to a renewed attack on Glyndwr in November; but with the
same ill-success. Storms and want of food wrecked the English army and
forced it to retreat; a year of rest raised Glyndwr to new strength; and
when the long-promised body of eight thousand Frenchmen joined him in 1407
he ventured even to cross the border and to threaten Worcester. The threat
was a vain one and the Welsh army soon withdrew; but the insult gave fresh
heart to Henry's foes, and in 1408 Northumberland and Bardolf again
appeared in the north. Their overthrow at Bramham Moor put an end to the
danger from the Percies; for Northumberland and Bardolf alike fell on the
field. But Wales remained as defiant as ever. In 1409 a body of Welshmen
poured ravaging into Shropshire; many of the English towns had fallen into
Glyndwr's hands; and some of the Marcher Lords made private truces with
him.

[Sidenote: Oldcastle]

The weakness which was produced by this ill-success in the West as well as
these constant battlings with disaffection within the realm was seen in
the attitude of the Lollards. Lollardry was far from having been crushed
by the Statute of Heresy. The death of the Earl of Salisbury in the first
of the revolts against Henry's throne, though his gory head was welcomed
into London by a procession of abbots and bishops who went out singing
psalms of thanksgiving to meet it, only transferred the leadership of the
party to one of the foremost warriors of the time, Sir John Oldcastle. If
we believe his opponents, and we have no information about him save from
hostile sources, he was of lowly origin, and his rise must have been due
to his own capacity and services to the Crown. In his youth he had
listened to the preaching of Wyclif, and his Lollardry--if we may judge
from its tone in later years--was a violent fanaticism. But this formed no
obstacle to his rise in Richard's reign; his marriage with the heiress of
that house made him Lord Cobham; and the accession of Henry of Lancaster,
to whose cause he seems to have clung in these younger days, brought him
fairly to the front. His skill in arms found recognition