Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/23

 The Privy Council of the lime of Ricliard II 13 was declared a member of the council for cases at law only.' He served to the end of the reign. - Master Ralph de Selby, a baron of the exchequer and doctor of laws, besides his salary of forty marks for his office in the ex- chequer, in the seventeenth year was granted a fee of fifty marks a year.^ This fee, which was once declared renewed,* he received through the twenty-second year.' Other knights of the council were John Bussy, Henry Greene, William Bagot, and John Rus- sel. It was once declared that for the arrangement of certain fines none should be present in the council but the chancellor, the treas- urer, the keeper of the privy seal, Bussy, Greene, and Bagot.'^ For promoting the king's schemes in the second Parliament of 1397 these men have been given a special notoriety.' They appear among the councillors trying cases in chancery, and were in attendance finally when Richard's council came to its tragic close. On the invasion of the duke of Lancaster in 1399, the duke of York, then guardian of the realm, hastily called together the chancellor (the bishop of Chichester), the treasurer (William le Scrope), the earl of Wiltshire, and the knights Bussy, Bagot, Greene, and Russel. Fleeing from their enemies, Scrope, Greene, and Bussy were forthwith captured at Bristol and hanged.* Bagot lived to be apprehended in the next Parliament as an evil counsellor.'' The accusation therefore made against Richard on his deposition, that he had selected for his council according to his pleasure favorites and others who would not resist him,'" was certainly well founded. One other cause of offense was the proneness of the council to supersede the courts of common law, removing cases from their jurisdiction, trying cases between suitors, and issuing summary writs of privy seal. The records of the council contain a few in- stances of such procedure." That there were many cases of the kind is suggested in one of the first petitions of the commons in the next reign, when they asked that all purely personal actions, to which the king was not a party, be tried by the common law ■ Ihid., 76. 2 Issue Roll (Pells). 22 Ric. II., Easter, m. 12. 3 Calendar of Patent Rolls, 17 Ric. II., 328. 5 Issue Roll (Pells), 22 Ric. II., Easter, m. 12. s Nicolas, Proceedings, I. 76. ' Stubbs, op. cit., II. 519. 8 Walsingham. op. cit.. II. 232 : " Annales Ricardi Secundi ", in Trokelowe, 243. 9 " Annales Henrici Quarti " (ibid.). 303. 1° Rot. Pari., III. 399. "Nicolas, Proceedings, I. 76-78; Select Cases in Chancery (Selden Society), No. 34.
 * Nicolas, Proceedings, I. 75.