XVII. X C H A P. dissolute manners, had acquired an entire ascendant over him, and governed him with an absolute autho1386. rity. The King set so little bounds to his affection, that he first created his favourite Marquis of Dublin, a title before unknown in England, then Duke of Ireland; and transferred him by patent, which was confirmed in Parliament, the entire sovereignty for life of that island. He gave him in marriage his cousin-german, the daughter of Ingelram de Cousi, Earl of Bedford; but soon after he permitted him to repudiate that lady, though of an unexceptionable character, and to marry a foreigner, a Bohemian, with whom he had become enamoured. These public declarations of attachment turned the attention of the whole court towards the minion: All favours passed through his hands: Access to the King could only be obtained by his mediation: And Richard seemed to take no pleasure in royal authority, but so far as it enabled him to load with favours and titles and dignities this object of his affections. Discon Barons. THE jealousy of power immediately produced an tent of the animosity between the minion and his creatures on the one hand, and the Princes of the blood and chief nobility on the other; and the usual complaints against the insolence of favourites were loudly echoed, and greedily received, in every part of the kingdom. Moubray, Earl of Nottingham, the Mareschal, Fitz-Alan Earl of Arundel, Piercy Earl of Northumberland, Montacute Earl of Salisbury, Beauchamp Earl of Warwic, were all connected with each other, and with the Princes, by friendship or alliance, and still more by their common antipathy to those who had eclipsed them in the King's favour and confidence. No longer kept in awe by the personal character of the Prince, they scorned to submit to his ministers; and the method * Cotton, p. 310, 311. Cox's Hist. of Ireland, p. 129. Walsingham, › Walsingham, p. 328. p. 324. XVII. which they took to redress the grievances complained CHA P. of, well suited the violence of the age, and proves. the desperate extremities to which every opposition 1386. was sure to be instantly carried. MICHAEL DE LA POLE, the present chancellor, and lately created Earl of Suffolk, was the son of an eminent merchant; but had risen by his abilities and valour during the wars of Edward III., had acquired the friendship of that monarch, and was esteemed the person of greatest experience and capacity among those who were attached to the Duke of Ireland and the King's secret council. The Duke of Glocester, who had the House of Commons at his devotion, impelled them to exercise that power, which they seem first to have assumed against Lord Latimer, during the declining years of the late King; and an impeachment against the chancellor was carried up by them to the House of Peers, which was no less at his devotion. The King foresaw the tempest preparing against him and his ministers. After attempting in vain to rouse the Londoners to his defence, he withdrew from parliament, and retired with his court to Eltham. The parliament sent a deputation, inviting him to return, and threatening that, if he persisted in absenting himself, they would immediately dissolve, and leave the nation, though at that time in imminent danger of a French invasion, without any support or supply for its defence. At the same time a member was encouraged to call for the record containing a parliamentary deposition of Edward II.; a plain intimation of the fate which Richard, if he continued refractory, had reason to expect from them. The King, finding himself unable to resist, was content to stipulate that, except finishing the present impeachment against Suffolk, no attack should be made upon any other of his ministers; and on that condition he returned to the parliament." 2 See note [B], at the end of the volume. NOTHING CHAP. 1386. NOTHING can prove more fully the innocence of XVII. Suffolk, than the frivolousness of the crimes which his enemies, in the present plenitude of their power, thought proper to object against him. It was alleged that being chancellor, and obliged by his oath to consult the King's profit, he had purchased lands of the crown below their true value; that he had exchanged with the King a perpetual annuity of 400 marks a-year, which he inherited from his father, and which was assigned upon the customs of the port of Hull, for lands of an equal income; that having obtained for his son the priory of St. Anthony, which was formerly possessed by a Frenchman, an enemy, and a schismatic, and a new prior being at the same time named by the Pope, he had refused to admit this person, whose title was not legal, till he made a composition with his son, and agreed to pay him a hundred pounds a-year from the income of the benefice; that he had purchased from one Tydeman, of Limborch, an old and forfeited annuity of fifty pounds a-year upon the crown, and had engaged the King to admit that bad debt; and that, when created Earl of Suffolk, he had obtained a grant of five hundred pounds a-year, to support the dignity of that title. Even the proof of these articles, frivolous as they are, was found very deficient upon the trial: It appeared that Suffolk had made no purchase from the crown while he was chancellor, and that all his bargains of that kind were made before he was advanced to that dignity. It is almost needless to add, that he was condemned notwithstanding his defence; and that he was deprived of his office. a Cotton, p. 315. Knyghton, p. 2683. It is probable that the Earl of Suffolk was not rich, nor able to support the dignity without the bounty of the crown: For his father, Michael de la Pole, though a great merchant, had been ruined by lending money to the late King. See Cotton, p. 194. We may remark that the Dukes of Glocester and York, though vastly rich, received at the same time, each of them a thousand pounds a-year, to support their dignity. Rymer, vol. vii. p. 481. Cotton, p. 310. Cotton, p. 315. . GLOCESTER d XVII. 1386. GLOCESTER and his associates observed their sti- CHAP. pulation with the King, and attacked no more of his ministers: But they immediately attacked himself and his royal dignity, and framed a commission after the model of those which had been attempted almost in every reign since that of Richard I., and which had always been attended with extreme confusion. By this commission, which was ratified by parliament, a council of fourteen persons was appointed, all of Glocester's faction, except Nevil Archbishop of York: The sovereign power was transferred to these men for a twelvemonth: The King, who had now reached the twenty-first year of his age, was in reality dethroned: The aristocracy was rendered supreme: And though the term of the commission was limited, it was easy to foresee that the intentions of the party were to render it perpetual, and that power would with great difficulty be wrested from those grasping hands to which it was once committed. Richard, however, was obliged to submit: He signed the commission which violence had extorted from him; he took an oath never to infringe it; and though at the end of the session he publicly entered a protest, that the prerogatives of the crown, notwithstanding his late concession, should still be deemed entire and unimpaired, the new commissioners, without regarding this declaration, proceeded to the exercise of their authority. motions. THE King, thus dispossessed of royal power, was 1387. soon sensible of the contempt into which he was Civil comfallen. His favourites and ministers, who were as yet allowed to remain about his person, failed not to aggravate the injury, which, without any demerit on his part, had been offered to him. And his eager temper was of itself sufficiently inclined to seek the means, both of recovering his authority, and of revenging himself on those who had invaded it. As Knyghton, p. 2686. Statutes at large. 10 Rich. II. chap. i. • Cotton, p. 318. VOL. III. C the CHAP. the house of commons appeared now of weight in XVII. the constitution, he secretly tried some expedients 1387. for procuring a favourable election: He sounded f some of the sheriffs, who being at that time both the returning officers and magistrates of great power in the counties, had naturally considerable influence in elections. But as most of them had been appointed by his uncles, either during his minority, or during the course of the present commission, he found them, in general, averse to his enterprise. The sentiments and inclinations of the judges were more favourable to him. He met at Nottingham, Sir Robert Tresilian, chief justice of the King's Bench, Sir Robert Belknappe, chief justice of the Common Pleas, Sir John Carey, chief baron of the Exchequer, Holt, Fulthorpe, and Bourg, inferior justices, and Lockton, serjeant at law; and he proposed to them some queries; which these lawyers, either from the influence of his authority, or of reason, made no scruple of answering in the way he desired. They declared that the late commission was derogatory to the royalty and prerogative of the King; that those who procured it, or advised the King to consent to it, were punishable with death; that those who necessitated and compelled him were guilty of treason; that those were equally criminal who should persevere in maintaining it; that the King has the right of dissolving parliaments at pleasure; that the parliament, while it sits, must first proceed upon the King's business; and that this assembly cannot, without his consent, impeach any of his ministers and judges. Even according to our present strict maxims with regard to law and the royal prerogative, all these determinations, except the two last, appear justifiable And as the great privileges of the Commons, particularly that of impeachment, were hitherto In the preamble to 5 Henry IV. cap. vii. it is implied, that the sheriffs in a manner appointed the members of the house of commons, not only in this parliament, but in many others. Knyghton, p. 2694. Ypod. Neust. p. 541. new, |