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While the Duke of Lancaster was absent, the restless Duke of Gloucester became more assuming and imperious towards the king than Lancaster had ever been. He fomented the jealousies of the nobles, insisted on remodelling the government, and reduced the king to a mere automaton. At the same time the French, also taking advantage of the great duke's absence, contemplated a formidable invasion of the island. Their preparations were on the most extensive scale, both in men and ships. The army is said to have exceeded 100,000 men; and their vessels in the port of Sluys, it was vaunted, could, if placed side by side, have bridged the whole Channel. The nobility and gentlemen of France seemed every one burning with desire to avenge the injuries and defeats they had so often suffered from the English. The news of this stupendous armament spread dismay through the country; troops were assembled, beacons erected, and the Earl of Arundel was appointed high admiral, with orders to destroy the ships of the enemy the moment they landed, and leave the inhabitants to lay waste the country before them, and then deal with them at leisure. But the fate of this armada was the same as that which has regularly attended all yet directed against the British isles. It was dispersed by a terrible tempest; the army was disbanded; and the Earl of Arundel, executing his commission with great vigour, took 160 vessels, laden chiefly with wine, relieved the garrison of Brest, and then, proceeding to the port of Sluys, destroyed all the ships there, and laid waste the country round to the distance of ten leagues.

JOHN OF GAUNT, DUKE OF LANCASTER.

(From a painting on glass in All Souls' College, Oxford.)

After this brilliant issue of the threatened danger, the nation was all gaiety and rejoicing. But the factious Gloucester resolved that his royal nephew should not rejoice long. He collected his partisans, and determined to drive the king's favourites from office. They contended that the people were so fleeced by the tax-gatherers, that the landowners could not collect their rents, and that the ministers and their officers embezzled the public moneys. The first on whom they meant to open their charge was the chancellor, De la Pole, the new Earl of Suffolk. The chancellor opened the Parliament which met at Westminster, in October, 1386, with a bold announcement; the king, he said, was resolved to punish the French for their menaced invasion, by passing over at the head of a suitable armament, and carrying the war into France. He requested them to take into consideration the necessary supplies for so great a national enterprise. But the Lords and Commons met this by a joint petition for the dismissal of the ministers and members of council, and especially of the chancellor. The king, much enraged, at first contemplated—what was long afterwards so fatally done by Charles I.—seizing the leaders of the opposition, but, finding that he should not be supported in this out of doors, he retired to his palace at Eltham, and, then, giving way, drove to town, dismissed the obnoxious ministers, and made the Bishop of Hereford treasurer. But this concession, so far from appeasing Gloucester and his adherents, only made them feel surer of their real object. They impeached the chancellor, and, though they could prove little against him, they caused him to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure, and fined. So long as the Parliament sat, Suffolk suffered his sentence; but as soon as it was dissolved the king liberated him.

Emboldened by this second success, the opposition proposed to establish a committee, with authority to reform the Government. The king indignantly declared that he would never consent, but would dissolve the Parliament. But again the Commons coolly presented to him the statute by which Edward II. had been deposed, and at this significant hint the king gave way, and signed a commission, appointing a council of fourteen persons—prelates and peers—including the three great officers of state, all of Gloucester's faction, except Neville, Archbishop of York. They were empowered to inquire into everything in the household, the ministry, the courts of law, and the condition of the people. Gloucester was at the head, and the king, now nearly twenty-one years of age, was virtually deposed. The whole sovereign prerogative lay in the council, and for twelve months—the term assigned to this junto—Richard was nothing.

It was not to be expected that a young monarch of Richard's quick feelings could tamely acquiesce in such a tyrannic tutelage as this. His favourites did their part in stimulating him to resistance. At the close of the session of Parliament he entered a protest against this invasion of the royal prerogative, and began to seek the means to break up this irksome circle of control. He sounded the sheriffs of the counties, but they had been appointed by his uncles, and he found them in their interest. He therefore set out on a sort of royal progress, and used every endeavour to make himself popular with his subjects. Wherever he came he marked his arrival by some act of grace. The gentlemen of the county and the burghers of the principal towns were invited to his court, and were received with the utmost affability. This won greatly upon them, and there was a general avowal of a determination to stand by him and the royal authority. He went to York, to Chester, to Shrewsbury, and thence to Nottingham. At the two latter places he held councils of the judges, and took their opinion on the conditions which the Parliament had forced upon him. Here the judges, who in those days were not independent of the Crown as they are at present, proved as subservient to the king as Parliament had shown itself subservient to the aristocratic faction; declared that the commission was wholly subversive of the constitution; that those who introduced the measure, or induced the king to consent to it, were liable to capital punishment; that all who compelled him to observe it, or prevented his exercise of his rights, were traitors; that the king, and not the Lords and Commons, had the power to determine the order in which questions should be debated in Parliament; that it was for the king to dissolve Parliament at pleasure. Still more: that the Lords and Commons had no power to impeach the king's ministers, officers, or justices; that those who introduced and passed the statute of deposition of Edward II. were traitors; and that the judgment against the Earl of Suffolk was unconstitutional and invalid altogether.

This sweeping judgment, which annihilated the power of Parliament, and made the Crown all but independent, was signed and sealed by the judges, in the presence of the Archbishops of York and Dublin, the Bishops of Durham, Chichester, and Bangor, the Duke of Ireland, the Earl of Suffolk, and two other counsellors.

Armed with this potent instrument, Richard prepared to take vengeance on his dictators. He determined to arrest the chief of his opponents, and send them to be judged before the very men who had thus prejudged them. Thomas Usk was appointed sub-sheriff of Middlesex; a bill of indictment was prepared; Sir Nicholas Brember, who had been three times Mayor of London, undertook to influence the city, and even swore in different companies "to stand to the death for the king." The commission was to expire on the 19th of November, and on the 10th Richard entered London amidst the acclamations of the people. The mayor and principal citizens wore the royal livery of white and crimson, and a vast crowd attended him to St. Paul's, and thence to his palace of Westminster.