Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/185

 Unhappily—for our sympathy with Wyclif cannot constrain us to sympathy with his arrogant patron, at any rate against the Parliament of 1376—the Prince of Wales died on the 8th of June, leaving a boy of eleven as heir-apparent to the Crown. The House of Commons did not allow itself to be demoralised by the sudden removal of its main supporter near the throne, nor did the "King's friends" venture to undo the work of the popular Prince whilst he was yet fresh in his grave. The session ran its average course, and Parliament was not dismissed for thirty-one days. The Commons requested that the young Prince should be brought in evidence before them—a constitutional act, yet doubtless intended as a hint for the Duke of Lancaster. They held on their way, and completed the petitions on which they had been engaged, to the number of one hundred and forty; and then, probably with much misgiving, the knights and burgesses went home.

Parliament had not long been dispersed when John of Gaunt resumed his old place in the Council, and dismissed under a royal warrant the Committee of Lords above mentioned. The banished courtiers were recalled, including Lord Latimer and Alice Perrers; Sir Peter de la Mare was thrown into prison; the Bishop of Winchester was deprived of his temporalities, and the acts of the Good Parliament were declared null and void. In due time a new Parliament was summoned, and Lancaster so worked upon the sheriffs, who had the nomination of the knights, as well as great influence over the freeholders, that scarcely a single member of the packed House