Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/440

 426 Simon lived a long and distinguished life. He belonged to the court and camp of Edward III.; had been appointed by the Black Prince as the most suitable guardian for Richard; had attended the young king from his infancy; and negotiated his marriage with the good Queen Anne. Richard, who loved and revered him as a father, pleaded for him with his ruthless uncle in vain. For three weeks he refused to sign any warrant for his execution, and it was carried out at last without his assent. The queen was on her knees for three hours before Gloucester, imploring him, but in vain, to spare the good Sir Simon; and even the Earl of Derby added his earnest entreaty, and proceeded to actual quarrel with his uncle to prevent this atrocity, but without moving the stern tyrant from his purpose.



Gloucester did not suffer the Parliament to dissolve without an order for the expulsion of the Bohemians who attended the queen, or without passing acts to incapacitate the king from reversing the attainders which they had issued. This strange Parliament at once declared that its judgments should never he reversed, nor any of its statutes ever repealed. Yet it declared that it had pronounced things treason which had never been so held before, and therefore no judge should ever make its example a precedent. It gave to the appellants £20,000 in remuneration for their services, and granted to them and their friends a full indemnity, besides a general pardon to the opposite party, with the exception of eighteen persons named. Richard, stunned, as it were, by this stern and sanguinary demonstration on the part of his great and haughty relatives, remained for about twelve months passive, and in a manner extinguished in his own kingdom. But we may rest satisfied that he never for a moment in his own mind intended that this state of things should last a day longer than he could help, or that they who now carried measures against him with a high hand and a combined power, should escape their due punishment. He felt that the "sons of Zeruiah were too strong for him;" that his arbitrary uncles and cousins had artfully raised the public will against him, and it were vain to oppose. Gloucester had done his bloody work; and it only required time to make the nation feel repugnance to the agency of so much cruelty. His administration did not by its splendour conceal the hideousness of the acts on which his power was based. Arundel, indeed, did some brave deeds at sea; but the only brilliant deed on land was the battle