 the King was obliged to submit to the fining and
imprisonment of his favourite. It was next proposed that a council
should be appointed to reform the State. At this proposition Richard
threatened to dissolve the Parliament. A member of the Commons thereupon
moved that the statute deposing Edward II should be read, and the King
was warned that death might be the penalty of a continued refusal. He
yielded. The commission was appointed, and Gloucester and his friends,
who formed the great majority, were masters of England. In yielding,
Richard limited the duration of the commission to a year. The King was
now twenty years of age, but he was reduced to as mere a cipher as when
he was a boy of eleven.

In the month of August in the following year, 1387, acting under the
advice of Tresilian, he assembled a council at Nottingham, and
submitted to some of the judges who attended it this question--Whether
the Commission of Government appointed by Parliament, and approved of
under his own seal, were legal or illegal? Tresilian led the rest of
the judges to certify that the commission was illegal, and that all
those who had introduced the measure were liable to capital
punishment; that all who supported it were by that act guilty of high
treason; in short, that both Lords and Commons were traitors.

On the 11th November following the King returned to London, when he
was alarmed by hearing that the Duke of Gloucester, the Earls of
Arundel and Nottingham, the Constable, Admiral, and Marshal of England
were approaching the capital at the head of forty thousand men. The
decision of Tresilian and the judges and of the King had, in fact,
forced them into rebellion, as it was pretty evident that Richard
aimed at taking their lives.

So soon as Richard's cousin, the Earl of Derby, heard of the approach
of Gloucester, he quitted the Court with the Earl of Warwick, went to
Waltham Cross, and there joined him. The members of the Council of
Eleven were there already. On Sunday, the 17th of November, the Duke
entered London with an irr