Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/449

 ] who swore that to his knowledge the duke was taken from the prison to an inn, called the Prince's Inn, and there smothered between two beds by a servant of the king and another of the Earl of Rutland. Though eight persons were named in the paper as being concerned in the transaction, none of these were ever examined, nor was Hall brought before any judge; but, having made this confession, was at once beheaded. It appears sufficiently clear, therefore, that this was an invention of Bolingbroke's to blacken the character of Richard. Froissart says he was strangled in prison by four people with towels; but the mode matters little: the fact of Gloucester's murder cannot admit of a doubt, and whatever it was, the Parliament appears to have troubled itself not at all about it. They declared, both Lords and Commons, that he was a traitor, and confiscated all his property to the crown.

The next day his confession, as delivered to Sir William Rickhill, was read in Parliament. He acknowledged that he had been guilty of procuring the commission of regency; of presenting himself with an armed force before the king in Westminster Hall; of opening the king's letters without permission; of speaking slanderously of him; of employing threats to compel the death of Sir Simon Burley; and of having conspired to depose the king, though only for a few days, after which he meant to replace him on the throne. To this confession was appended the most earnest and humble appeal for mercy. But Gloucester had never shown mercy, and none was shown to him.

In this document, however, Gloucester confesses to nothing recent; the whole of it applies to the transactions of 1386 and 1387; and it is remarkable that it was for these offences that Warwick and Arundel were condemned. So that any recent act of treason really did not enter into these trials.

The rest of the nobles and prelates named in the indictment were then conditionally pardoned, except those who took up arms against the king in his eleventh year, including the Lord Cobham, who was banished to Jersey for life, and Mortimer, who had fled into the wilds of Ireland, and was outlawed.

What is extraordinary is, that several of the very peers who were engaged in these transactions, now declared treasonable, sat in judgment on their more unlucky accomplices. The Duke of York, the Bishop of Winchester, and Sir Richard Scrope, had been members of Gloucester's commission of regency; and Derby and Nottingham were two of the five who appealed the favourites of treason. Some of these were not only winked at, but even promoted when the trial was over. Richard, indeed, in Parliament fully exculpated them, asserting that, though for a time deceived by the pretences of Gloucester, they had abandoned his cause like good and loyal subjects. He then created his cousins, Derby and Rutland, Dukes of Hereford and Albemarle; his two half-brothers, the Earls of Kent and Huntingdon, Dukes of Surrey and Exeter; the Earl of Nottingham, Duke of Norfolk; the Earl of Somerset, Marquis of Dorset; the Lords Despenser, Nevil, Percy, and William Scrope, Earls of Gloucester, Westmoreland, Worcester, end Wiltshire.

On the last day of the session of this servile Parliament the peers took an oath that all the judgments passed in this Parliament should have the full force of statutes for ever; that any one attempting to reverse them should be held to be a traitor; and that the clergy should excommunicate him. The Commons held out their hands in acquiescence with this oath, and Lord Thomas Percy, the proxy of the clergy, swore on their behalf. The Parliament was then prorogued till after the Christmas holidays when it met at Shrewsbury.

Here, again, Richard displayed his anxiety to prevent any future charge against him of unconstitutional proceedings in this Parliament. The guilt of blood was heavy on his soul, and he knew there were those living who, though he had sought to soothe them with titles and honours, trembled it their own insecurity, and might turn round some day with a terrible retaliation. He sought, therefore, to make that secure which his own acts and deed showed was void of all security; for the next monarch who rose might reverse every one of these acts, as he had reversed former ones. Those who now swore to the eternal stability of these judgments had ten years before swore exactly the contrary, and in two more years would swear the contrary again. Anxious, however, to make a rope of sand, to give duration to that which depended on the momentary breath of unprincipled men, he called in the judges to take their opinion of the answers of the judges ten years before at Nottingham; who now declared that that answer was sound and constitutional, and all the statutes of Gloucester's Parliament, which had also been sworn to be indissoluble, were repealed as treasonable. Still not satisfied, Richard asked the judges if there were no other means of securing the authority of the acts of this Parliament, who replied that the authority of Parliament was above all other guarantees. What that guarantee was they had just themselves shown.

But, to bind the Parliament, if possible, Richard desired the three estates of Parliament, the peers, the prelates, and the commons, should swear their former oath on the cross of Canterbury. He asked them if it were not possible to bind their successors, and being told he could not—(it is wonderful that a Parliament which had promised so much, could not also promise that little matter)—he then declared that he would get a bull from the Pope to excommunicate the prince who should attempt to annul any act of this Parliament. And he did in due time procure that bull. But now he had proclamation made out of doors amongst the people, asking it they would consent to this kind of security; and the people with loud acclamations declared they would. Thus the fickle people, equally subservient with the Parliament, gave their sanction to the murder of their late idol Gloucester.

Perhaps no period of our history exhibits a monarch more reckless of the restraints of the constitution than Richard at this epoch; nor a Parliament more servilely disposed to grovel at his feet, and surrender every valuable right. Before closing its sessions, the Commons not only granted him most liberal supplies, but a tax on wool, woolfells and hides, not for the year as previously, but for life, thus rendering him, to a great degree, independent of Parliament; and Richard, again, to provide against any repeal of this munificent grant, published a general pardon, which, however, was to become void the moment any future Parliament attempted to repeal this act