4. The Lords Appellant and the Merciless Parliament. 1387—1388.—In one way the Commissioners of regency satisfied the desire of Englishmen. In 1387 they sent the Earl of Arundel to sea, and Arundel won a splendid victory over a combined fleet of French, Flemings, and Spaniards. Richard, on the other hand, fearing that they would prolong their power when their year of office was ended, consulted upon the legality of the commission with the judges in the presence of Suffolk and others of his principal supporters, amongst whom was the Duke of Ireland. With one voice the judges declared that Parliament might not put the king in tutelage. Richard then made preparations to prevent by force the renewal of the commission, and to punish as traitors those who had originated it. His intention got abroad, and five lords, the Duke of Gloucester, the Earls of Arundel, Nottingham, Warwick, and Derby, the latter being the son of the absent Lancaster, appeared at the head of an overwhelming force against him. The five lords appellant, as they were called, appealed, or accused of treason five of Richard's councillors before a Parliament which met at Westminster in 1388, by flinging down their gloves as a token that they were ready to prove the truth of their charge in single combat. The Duke of Ireland, attempting resistance, was defeated by Derby at Radcot Bridge, and finally escaped to Ireland. The Parliament, called by its admirers the Wonderful, and by its opponents the Merciless Parliament, was entirely subservient to the lords appellant, who, instead of meeting their antagonists in single combat, accused them before the House of Lords. The Duke of Ireland, Suffolk, Chief Justice Tresilian, and Brember, who had been Mayor of London, were condemned to be hanged. The two first-named had escaped to the Continent, but the others were put to death. The fifth councillor, the Archbishop of York, escaped with virtual deprivation by the Pope. Four other knights, amongst them Sir Simon Burley, a veteran soldier and trusted companion of the Black Prince, were also put to death. Richard was allowed nominally to retain the crown, but in reality he was subjected to a council in which Gloucester and his adherents were supreme.
5. Richard's Restoration to Power. 1389.—Richard's entire submission turned the scale in his favour. England had been dissatisfied with him, but it had never loved the rule of the great feudal lords. Gloucester's council was no more popular than had been the Committees named in the Provisions of Oxford in the reign of Henry III., or the Lords Ordainers in the reign of Edward II., and it fell more easily than any government, before or afterwards. Suddenly, on May 3, 1389, Richard asked his uncle in full council how old he was. "Your highness," replied Gloucester, "is in your twenty-second year." "Then," said Richard, "I must be old enough to manage my own affairs, as every heir is at liberty to do when he is twenty-one." No attempt having been made to confute this argument, Richard dismissed the council, and ruled once more in person.
6. Richard's Constitutional Government. 1389—1396.—This sudden blow was followed by seven years of constitutional government. It seemed as if Richard had solved the problem of the relations between Crown and Parliament, which had perplexed so many generations of Englishmen. In 1389 he appointed ministers at his own pleasure, but when Parliament met in 1390 he commanded them to lay down their offices in order that no one should be deterred from bringing charges against them; and it was only upon finding that no one had any complaint to bring against them that he restored them to their posts. Nor did he show any signs of irritation against those by whom he had been outraged. Not only did he forbear to recall Suffolk and his other exiled favourites, but after a little time he admitted Gloucester and his supporters to sit in council alongside of his own adherents.
7. Livery and Maintenance. 1390.—During the fourteenth century the importance of the House of Commons had been steadily growing, and the king on the one hand and the great nobles on the other had been sorely tempted to influence the elections unduly. The means of doing so had come with a change in civil relationships, the natural result of that change in military relationships which had given a new character to the wars of Edward III. (see p. [236]). Just as the king now fought with paid soldiers of every rank instead of fighting with vassals bound by feudal tenure, so the great nobles surrounded themselves with retainers instead of vassals. The vassal had been on terms of social equality with his lord, and was bound to follow him on fixed terms. The retainer was an inferior, who was taken into service and professed himself ready to fight for his lord at all times and in all causes. In return his lord kept open house for his retainers, supplied them with coats, known as liveries, marked with his badge, and undertook to maintain them against all men, either by open force or by supporting them in their quarrels in the law courts; and this maintenance, as it was called, was seldom limited to the mere payment of expenses. The lord, by the help of his retainers, could bully witnesses and jurors, and wrest justice to the profit of the wrongdoer. As yet, indeed, the practice had not attained the proportions which it afterwards assumed, but it was sufficiently developed to draw down upon it in 1390 a statute prohibiting maintenance and the granting of liveries. Such a statute was not merely issued in defence of private persons against intimidation; it also helped to protect the Crown against the violence of the great lords. The growth of the power of the House of Commons was a good thing as long as the House of Commons represented the wishes of the community. It would be a bad thing if it merely represented knots of armed retainers who either voted in their own names according to the orders of their lords, or who frightened away those who came to vote for candidates whom their lords opposed.
8. Richard's Domestic Policy. 1390—1391.—It was therefore well for the community that there should be a strong and wise king capable of making head against the ambition of the lords. For some years Richard showed himself wise. Not only did he seek, by opening the council to his opponents, to win over the lords to take part in the peaceable government of the country instead of disturbing it, but he forwarded legislation which carried out the general wishes of the country. The Statute of Provisors (see p. [258]) was re-enacted and strengthened in 1390, the Statute of Mortmain (see p. [212]) in 1391, and the Statute of Præmunire (see p. [258]) in 1393.