Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/183

 The dishonest were brought to book; some were dismissed, others were made to disgorge, and others again sought to insure half the fruits of their embezzlements by returning the other half. Amongst the dismissed servants of the Crown was William Lyons, who had known how to provide large sums of money both for the King and for himself. When the new ministers attacked him, he had the insolence to send to the palace a bag of' gold by way of a bribe. "Keep it," Edward advised those who were present, "he owes us this and much more; he only offers us our own!" Another and a larger bribe was sent in a barrel from the city; but the men into whose hands it came would not have the course of justice interfered with, and they sent the barrel back. The doting King, seeing that his ministers and Parliament were in earnest, and knowing that Alice Perrers had incurred the hatred of his people, sent them a humbly worded petition on her—behalf a petition recalling the abject submissiveness of his unfortunate father, Edward II., when the toils were closing around him, and reminding one of the phenomenal humility of his elder grandson, Richard II. The bishops humoured their monarch so far as to let his mistress depart unharmed, after swearing that she would never come back to Court.

John of Gaunt began by showing fight. The nominated knights, whose uppermost thought may have been one of resentment for Lancaster's failure in the field, and for the tame treaty which he had negotiated at Bruges, united with the popularly elected burgesses in requiring an account of expenditure