Richard was now twenty; he had been married some years back to Anne of Bohemia, the daughter of the Emperor Charles IV., and might have expected that all the world would have counted him old enough to administer the kingdom.
Schemes of Thomas, Duke of Gloucester.
But he had reckoned without one man's ambition and jealousy. His youngest uncle, Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, was an unscrupulous and domineering prince, who had hoped to succeed to John of Gaunt's position, and to have the chief part in ruling his nephew's realm. Richard knew him well, and had no intention of employing him. Seeing this, Duke Thomas began to gather a party among the greater nobles, persuading them that the king was putting the rule of England into the hands of mere upstarts and favourites, and that de la Pole and de Vere were no better than Gaveston or the Despensers. Gloucester drew into his designs many of the most important barons; the Earls of Warwick, Arundel, and Nottingham, and Henry of Bolingbroke, the son and heir of John of Gaunt, were the chief plotters. They stirred up the people and Parliament by complaints of the maladministration of the ministers, and used a threatened invasion of the French as a lever against those entrusted with the conduct of the long unhappy war with France. When they had excited public opinion, they had Suffolk impeached in Parliament for maladministration of the revenue. Though almost certainly guiltless, he was condemned and imprisoned. But when Parliament had dispersed, the king took him out of confinement, and restored him to favour, declaring that he had a full right to choose his own ministers.
The "Lords Appellant."
There followed, shortly after, the armed rising of Thomas of Gloucester and his accomplices. Proclaiming that they wished only to free the king from evil councillors, Gloucester, Warwick, Arundel, Nottingham, and the young Henry of Bolingbroke marched on London with a great body of retainers. They called themselves the "Lords Appellant," because they appealed or accused of treason the king's ministers. Richard was taken by surprise at this very unjustifiable raising of civil war. He bade his friends arm, but de Vere, who had raised some levies in Oxfordshire, was beaten by the rebels at Radcot Bridge, and no one else tried to resist. De Vere and de la Pole succeeded in flying to France, where they both died shortly after in exile. But the king and the rest of his friends and ministers fell into the hands of the Lords Appellant.
The Merciless Parliament.
Under the eyes of Gloucester and his accomplices the Merciless Parliament was summoned to London. Awed by the armed men around them, the members declared Suffolk and de Vere outlaws, and condemned to death seven of the king's minor ministers. So Tresilian the Chief Justice, Sir Simon Burley who had been the king's tutor, and five more were hanged (February, 1388). This disgraceful Parliament ended by voting £20,000 as a gift to the Lords Appellant for their services, and then dispersed.
Gloucester and his friends were in office for something more than a year, a period long enough to show the world that they were grasping self-seekers, and not patriots. The only service they did the country was to negociate truces with Scotland and France, which stopped for a time the lingering "Hundred Years' War."
Dismissal of Gloucester.
By 1389 Richard had passed his majority. In a session of the royal council, he suddenly asked his uncle Gloucester how old he was. The duke replied that he was now in his twenty-second year. "Then," said the king, "I am certainly old enough to manage my own affairs." So, formally thanking Gloucester and the rest for their past services, he dismissed them from office. If he had replaced them by his own favourites the civil war would have broken out again, but Richard wisely called in the good bishop William of Wykeham, and other ancient councillors of his grandfather's, against whom no one had a word to say. He made no attempt to punish the Lords Appellant, and acted with such self-restraint and moderation that all the realm was soon full of his praises. Yet all the time he was dissembling, and biding his time for revenge on the men who had murdered his friends in 1388.