Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 3.djvu/358

328 it met. One of the monarch's first acts on reaching Antwerp was to address an order to the great ecclesiastics, revoking the power he had confided to them to treat of peace with Philip of Valois as king of France. Meanwhile his son, the Black Prince, effectually urged the parliament to supply the necessary aids for carrying on the campaign abroad. This, with a few regulations for victualling the royal castles of Scotland, and some acts of minor consequence, brought the session to a close at the end of about ten days.

The last parliament at Northampton was summoned for the 5th of November, in the fourth year of Richard II. Most of the great officers of state assembled at the appointed time, by order of the council, in a chamber of St. Andrew's priory, where they heard read the great charter of English liberties, but after waiting in vain for some time the arrival of the other representatives, who were deterred from attending in consequence of the heavy rain and floods, it was agreed to adjourn the parliament until the following Thursday, the members being permitted to retire in the meanwhile to their hostels for their ease. The roads had been rendered so impassable by the bad weather that it was with considerable difficulty the king reached his manor of Moulton, where he was lodged, in the immediate neighbourhood to the town.

Richard II., now in his fifteenth year, met the parliament in person on the 8th of November. It was not a very numerous convention, as several of the nobility were still detained on business in the marches of Scotland. The chancellor, (Simon de Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury,) on the part of the king, opened the proceedings by stating the motives that had induced him to call this parliament together, how desirous he felt that the liberties of the Church and the peace of the realm should be maintained and guarded; he next referred to the matter with which he was charged by the king, saying emphatically, "Sirs, it cannot be a thing unknown to you, how that nobleman the earl of Buckingham, with a great number of other great lords, knights, esquires, and other good gentlemen of the realm, whom may God save by His mercy, are now in the service of our lord the king and his realm in the parts of France, upon which enterprise the king has expended as much as you have granted