that Commission against the King's
will contravened his legal prerogative; those by whom he had been
forced to accept it, and who had revived the recollection of the
statute against Edward II, they declared to be guilty of high treason.
But Parliament itself saw in this sentence not a judgment but an
intolerable outrage. At its next sitting it summoned the judges before
its tribunal, and in its turn declared them to be themselves guilty of
high treason. Chief Justice Tresilian died a shameful death at Tyburn.
The King lived to find yet harsher laws laid upon him: his uncle
Gloucester was more powerful than he was himself.

He was not however disposed to bear this yoke for ever. He first freed
himself from the war with France, which tied his hands; by his
marriage with Charles VI's young daughter he sought to win that king
over as an ally on his own side; at home too he gained himself
friends; when all was prepared, he struck a sudden blow (July 1397),
which no one would have expected from him. He removed his leading
opponents (above all his uncle Gloucester, and Arundel Archbishop of
Canterbury), banished them or threw them into prison: then he
succeeded in getting together a Parliament in which his partisans had
the upper hand. It moreover completely adopted the ideas of the judges
as to the Constitution; it revoked the statutes which had been forced
on the King,[60] and gave effect to the sentence of Nottingham. By
making the King a very considerable grant for his lifetime, it freed
him from the necessity of summoning it anew; he rose at once to a high
pitch of self-confidence: he was believed to have said that the laws
of England consisted in his word of mouth.

In England, just as in France at the same epoch, political opinions
and parties ebbed and flowed in ceaseless antagonism. Richard's
success was only momentary. He too, like so many of his ancestors, had
incurred a grievous suspicion; the crime laid to his charge was that
his uncle, who died in prison, had been murdered there by his command.
Besides his absolute rule was not free from arbitrary acts of many
kinds; among the great nobles each trembled for his own safety; the
clergy, never on good terms with Richard, were impatient at being
deprived of their Primate, who was to them 'the tower in the
protecting bulwark of the Church.' In the capital too men were against
a rule which seemed to put an end to popular influence; it needed only
the return of an ex