violence, which commonly attends revolutions, especially in England during those turbulent ages. It is also easy to imagine that a house of commons, elected during this universal ferment, and this triumph of the Lancastrian party, would be extremely attached to that cause, and ready to second every suggestion of their leaders. That order, being as yet of too little weight to stem the torrent, was always carried along with it, and served only to increase the violence, which the public interest required it should endeavour to control. The duke of Lancaster, therefore, sensible that he should be entirely master, began to carry his views to the crown itself; and he deliberated with his partisans concerning the most proper means of effecting his daring purpose. He first extorted a resignation from Richard 73; but as he knew that this deed would plainly appear the result of force and fear, he also purposed, notwithstanding the danger of the precedent to himself and his posterity [28th Sept.], to have him solemnly deposed in parliament, for his pretended tyranny and misconduct. A charge, consisting of thirty-three articles, was accordingly drawn up against him and presented to that assembly 74. If we examine these articles, which are expressed with extreme acrimony against Richard, we shall find that, except some rash speeches which are imputed to him, and of whose reality, as they are said to have passed in private conversation, we may reasonably entertain some doubt; the chief amount of the charge is contained in his violent conduct during the two last years of his reign, and naturally divides itself into two principal heads. The first and most considerable is the revenge which he took 73 Knyghton, p. 2744. Otterbourne, p. 212. 74 Tyrrel, vol. iii. part 2. p. 1008, from the records. Knyghton, p. 2746. Otterbourne, p. 214. 75 Art. 16. 26. on the princes and great barons, who had formerly usurped, and still persevered in controlling and threatening, his authority; the second is the violation of the laws and general privileges of his people. But the former, however irregular in many of its circumstances, was fully supported by authority of parliament, and was but a copy of the violence which the princes and barons themselves, during their former triumph, had exercised against him and his party. The detention of Lancaster's estate was, properly speaking, a revocation, by parliamentary authority, of a grace which the king himself had formerly granted him. The murder of Gloucester (for the secret execution, however merited, of that prince, certainly deserves this appellation) was a private deed, formed not any precedent, and implied not any usurped or arbitrary power of the crown, which could justly give umbrage to the people. It really proceeded from a defect of power in the king, rather than from his ambition; and proves that, instead of being dangerous to the constitution, he possessed not even the authority necessary for the execution of the laws. Concerning the second head of accusation, as it mostly consists of general facts, was framed by Richard's inveterate enemies, and was never allowed to be answered by him or his friends, it is more difficult to form a judgment. The greater part of these grievances, imputed to Richard, seems to be the exertion of arbitrary prerogatives; such as the dispensing power 76, levying purveyance", employing the marshal's court, extorting loans 79, granting protections from lawsuits 80; prerogatives which, though often complained of, had been often exercised by his predecessors, and still continued to be so by his successors. But whether his irregular 78 Art. 27. 76 Art. 13. 17, 18. 77 Art. 22. acts of this kind were more frequent, and injudicious, and violent than usual, or were only laid hold of and exaggerated by the factions to which the weakness of his reign had given birth, we are not able, at this distance, to determine with certainty. There is, however, one circumstance in which his conduct is visibly different from that of his grandfather: he is not accused of having imposed one arbitrary tax, without consent of parliament, during his whole reign 81: scarcely a year passed during the reign of Edward, which was free from complaints with regard to this dangerous exertion of authority. But, perhaps, the ascendant which Edward had acquired over the people, together with his great prudence, enabled him to make a use very advantageous to his, subjects of this and other arbitrary prerogatives, and rendered them a smaller grievance in his hands, than a less absolute authority in those of his grandson. This is a point which it would be rash for us to decide positively on either side; but it is certain, that a charge drawn up by the duke of Lancaster, and assented to by a parliament situated in those circumstances, forms no manner of presumption with regard to the unusual irregularity or violence of the king's conduct in this particular 82. 81 We learn from Cotton, p. 362, that the king, by his chancellor, told the commons, that they were sunderly bound to him, and namely in forbearing to charge them dismes, and fifteens, the which he meant no more to charge them in his own person. These words no more allude to the practice of his predecessors: he had not himself imposed any arbitrary taxes: even the parliament, in the articles of his deposition, though they complain of heavy taxes, affirm not that they were imposed illegally or by arbitrary will. 82 To show how little credit is to be given to this charge against Richard, we may observe, that a law, in the 13 Edw. III. had been enacted against the continuance of sheriffs for more than one year but the inconvenience of changes having afterwards appeared from experience, the commons, in the twentieth of this king, applied by petition, that the sheriffs might be con When the charge against Richard was presented to the parliament, though it was liable almost in every article to objections, it was not canvassed, nor examined, nor disputed in either house, and seemed to be received with universal approbation. One man alone, the bishop of Carlisle, had the courage, amidst this general disloyalty and violence, to appear in defence of his unhappy master, and to plead his cause against all the power of the prevailing party. Though some topics, employed by that virtuous prelate, may seem to favour too much the doctrine of passive obedience, and to make too large a sacrifice of the rights of mankind; he was naturally pushed into that extreme by his abhorrence of the present licentious factions; and such intrepidity as well as disinterestedness of behaviour, proves, that whatever his speculative principles were, his heart was elevated far above the meanness and abject submission of a slave. He represented to the parlia ment that all the abuses of government which could justly be imputed to Richard, instead of amounting to tyranny, were merely the result of error, youth, or misguided counsel, and admitted of a remedy, more easy and salutary than a total subversion of the con tinued; though that petition had not been enacted into a statute, by reason of other disagreeable circumstances which attended it. See Cotton, p. 361. It was certainly a very moderate exercise of the dispensing power in the king to continue the sheriffs after he found that that practice would be acceptable to his subjects, and had been applied for by one house of parliament: yet is this made an article of charge against him by the present parliament. See art. 18. Walsingham, speaking of a period early in Richard's minority, says, But what do acts of parliament signify, when after they are made they take no effect; since the king, by the advice of the privy council, takes upon him to alter, or wholly set aside, all those things which by general consent had been ordained in parliament? If Richard, therefore, exercised the dispensing power, he was warranted by the examples of his uncles and grandfather, and, indeed, of all his predecessors from the time of Henry III. inclusive. stitution. That even had they been much more violent and dangerous than they really were, they had chiefly proceeded from former examples of resistance, which, making the prince sensible of his precarious situation, had obliged him to establish his throne by irregular and arbitrary expedients. That a rebellious disposition in subjects was the principal cause of tyranny in kings: laws could never secure the subject, which did not give security to the sovereign: and if the maxim of inviolable loyalty which formed the basis of the English government, were once rejected, the privileges belonging to the several orders of the state, instead of being fortified by that licentiousness, would thereby lose the surest foundation of their force and stability. That the parliamentary deposition of Edward II. far from making a precedent which could control this maxim, was only an example of successful violence; and it was sufficiently to be lamented, that crimes were so often committed in the world, without establishing principles which might justify and authorize them. That even that precedent, false and dangerous as it was, could never warrant the present excesses, which were so much greater, and which would entail distraction and misery on the nation, to the latest posterity. That the succession, at least, of the crown, was then preserved inviolate: the lineal heir was placed on the throne: and the people had an opportunity by their legal obedience to him, of making atonement for the violence which they had committed against his predecessor. That a descendant of Lionel duke of Clarence, the elder brother of the late duke of Lancaster, had been declared in parliament successor to the crown: he had left posterity: and their title, however it might be overpowered by present force and faction, could never be obliterated from the minds of the people. That if the turbulent disposition alone of the nation had overturned the |