Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/438

424 if placed side by side, have bridged the whole Channel. The nobility and gentlemen of France seemed every one burning with desire to avenge the injuries and defeats they had so often suffered from the English. The news of this stupendous armament spread dismay through the country; troops were assembled, beacons erected, and the Earl of Arundel appointed high admiral, with orders to destroy the ships of the enemy the moment they landed, and leave the inhabitants to lay waste the country before them, and then deal with them at leisure. But the fate of this armada was the same which has providentially attended all yet directed against the British isles. It was dispersed by a terrible tempest; the army was disbanded; and the Earl of Arundel, executing his commission with great vigour, took 160 vessels, laden chiefly with wine, relieved the garrison of Brest, and then, proceeding to the port of Sluys, destroyed all the ships there, and laid waste the country round to the distance of ten leagues.

After this brilliant issue of the threatened danger, the nation was all gaiety and rejoicing. But the factious Gloucester resolved that his royal nephew should not rejoice long. He collected his partisans, and determined to drive the king's favourites from office. They contended that the people wore so fleeced by the tax-gatherers, that the land-owners could not collect their rents, and that the ministers and their officers embezzled the public moneys. The first on whom they meant to open their charge was the chancellor, De la Pole, the new Earl of Suffolk. The chancellor opened the Parliament, which met at Westminster, in October, 1386, with a bold announcement: the king, he said, was resolved to punish the French for their menaced invasion, by passing over at the head of a suitable armament, and carrying the war into France. He requested them to take into consideration the necessary supplies for so great and national an enterprise. But the Lords and Commons met this by a joint petition for the dismissal of the ministers and members of council, and especially of the chancellor. The king, greatly enraged, at first contemplated—that which was long after so fatally done by Charles I.—seizing the leaders of the opposition; but, finding that he should not be supported in this out of doors, he retired to his palace at Eltham, and then, giving way, drove to town, dismissed the obnoxious ministers, and made the Bishop of Hereford treasurer. But this concession, so far from appeasing Gloucester and his adherents, only made them feel surer of their real object. They impeached the chancellor; and, though they could prove little against him, they caused him to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure, and fined. So long as the Parliament sat, Suffolk suffered his sentence; but as soon as it was dissolved the king liberated him.

This impeachment by the Commons is a most memorable event: it is a striking proof of the wonderful manner in which the power of that body had grown in a few years. This was the second instance of the kind, the former occurring just at the close of the last reign. But now the prosecution was directed in a more determined and unanimous manner, and against an officer not only of high rank, but high in the monarch's favour. We have no longer the Commons of England humbly crouching, as it were, before the imperious barons, and scarcely daring to consider the benches they occupied at the lower end of the general Parliament as their own, but evidently feeling their real dignity and power; no longer confining themselves to voting away their own money, or meekly offering a petition of grievances, but exercising the daring functions of the public tribune, and calling to account the monarch through his ministers.

Emboldened by this second success, the opposition proposed to establish a permanent council, like those in the reigns of John, Henry III., and Edward II., with authority to reform the Government. The king indignantly declared that he would never consent, but would dissolve the Parliament. But again the Commons coolly presented to him the statute by which Edward II. had been deposed, and at this significant hint the awe-struck king gave way, and signed a commission, appointing a council of fourteen persons—prelates and peers—including the three great officers of state, all of Gloucester's faction, except Neville, Archbishop of York. They were empowered to inquire into everything in the household, the ministry, the courts of law, and the condition of the people. Gloucester was at the head, and the king, now nearly twenty-one years of age, was virtually deposed. The whole sovereign prerogative lay in the council, and for twelve months—the term assigned to this junto—Richard was nothing.

It was not to be expected that a young monarch of Richard's quick feelings could tamely acquiesce in such a tyrannic tutelage as this. His favourites did their part in stimulating him to resistance. At the close of the session of Parliament he entered a protest against this invasion of the royal prerogative, and began to seek the means to break up this irksome circle of control. He sounded the sheriffs of the counties, but they had been appointed by his uncles, and he found them in their interest. He therefore set out on a sort of royal progress, and used every endeavour to make himself popular with his subjects. Wherever he came he marked his arrival by some act of grace. The gentlemen of the county and the burghers of the principal towns were invited to his court, and were received with the utmost affability. This won greatly upon them, and there was a general avowal of a determination to stand by him and the royal authority. He went to York, to Chester, to Shrewsbury, and thence to Nottingham. At the two latter places he held councils of the judges, and took their opinion on the conditions which the Parliament had forced upon him. At the first of these councils attended Sir Robert Bealknap, the chief justice; Sir John Holt and Sir William Burgh, justices of the King's Bench; and Sir John Gary, chief baron of the Exchequer. The same persons attended also the second council at Nottingham, with the exception of the chief baron, and the addition of Sir Robert Fulthorpe, justice of the King's Bench; Sir Robert Tresilian, lord chief justice; and John Lokton, the king's sergeant-at-law.

Here the judges, who in those days were not independent of the crown as they are at present, proved as subservient to the king as Parliament had shown itself subservient to the aristocratic faction; declared that the commission was wholly subversive of the constitution; that those who introduced the measure, or induced the king to consent to it, were liable to capital punishment; that all who compelled him to observe it, or prevented