This was to lull into security fresh victims, and to obtain that sanction from Lancaster, York, and their sons, which Richard pretended to have had, and which was not true. These princes were at Nottingham, and Richard determined to retort upon them their conduct towards his favourites. He therefore hastened down thither, and as these noblemen were at dinner he suddenly summoned them to the gate, and compelled them to set their seals to a form of arrest which had been prepared for the purpose. They were made to say, "We appeal Thomas Duke of Gloucester, Richard Earl of Arundel, and Thomas Earl of Warwick, as traitors to your majesty and realm," and to call for trial upon them.

ARREST OF THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER. (See p. [472.])

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To secure his measures Richard employed every means to impress the Parliament and public with awe. Great preparations were made for the assembling of a Parliament which was to decide the fate of a prince of the blood, and one so powerful and popular, as well as of some of the chief nobles of the realm. It is said that the sheriffs had been tampered with—a most base and unconstitutional act, and which, resorted to in the assembling of this famous Parliament, opened the way for much subsequent corruption of the kind. A wooden shed of large extent was erected near Westminster Hall, for the reception of so numerous an assembly as was summoned to give the fuller sanction to its decrees, and the lords came with such prodigious retinues, no doubt for their own safety, that they not only occupied all the lodgings of London, but of the towns and villages for ten miles round.

The king came to Westminster, attended by 600 men-at-arms, wearing the royal livery of the hart, and 200 archers, raised in Cheshire. On the second day of the session, Sir John Bussy, the Speaker, and a thorough creature of the king, petitioned that the clergy might appoint proxies, the canons forbidding their presence at any trials of blood, and Lord Thomas Percy was appointed their procurator. The Parliament passed whatever Richard was pleased to dictate to it. It annulled the commission of regency and the statute confirming it, passed in the tenth year of his reign. It abrogated all the acts which attainted the king's ministers—though the Parliament which passed them and the people had sworn to maintain them for ever—and declared that they had been extorted by force. It revoked all pardons granted heretofore to Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick.

This facile assembly first impeached Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, as the aider and abettor of the accused noblemen, for having moved and advised the arrest and execution of Sir Simon Burley and Sir James Berners, contrary to the wishes of the king, and that while chancellor, and bound to support the rights of the Crown. The archbishop rose to defend himself; but Richard, fearful of the effect of his eloquence, desired him to waive awhile his observations, on pretence of requiring more time to consider the matter; but the next day he was declared to be guilty, and banished for life.

The following day, September 21st, the charges were read to the lords against the three nobles. They were that Gloucester and Arundel had compelled the king, under menace of his life, to sign the commission of regency; that at Hornsey Park they had drawn to their party the Earl of Warwick and Sir Thomas Mortimer, and by force had compelled the king to do their will. The Earls of Rutland, Kent, Huntingdon, Somerset, Salisbury, and Nottingham, and the Lords Spenser and Scrope were accused of the same crime; that at Huntingdon they had conspired to depose the king, and shown him the statute of the deposition of Edward II., and had also insisted on the death of Sir Simon Burley, in opposition to the king's will.

The Earl of Arundel pleaded not guilty and former pardons; but he was condemned and executed. Warwick was convicted of high treason; but, on account of his submissive behaviour, his life was spared, and he was banished to the Isle of Man.

On the 24th a mandate was issued by the king and his council in Parliament to the earl marshal to bring his prisoner, the Duke of Gloucester from Calais to the bar of the House. Three days after this an answer was returned by the earl marshal that "he could not produce the said duke before the king and his council in that Parliament, for that, being in his custody in the king's prison at Calais, he there died."