ting until they themselves appointed a council to
manage in the king's name.

When Richard heard of this plan, he declared that he would never
submit to it.

"I am the King of England," said he, "and I will govern my realm by
means of such officers as I choose to appoint myself. I will not have
others to appoint them for me."

The ideas which the kings of those days entertained in respect to the
province of Parliament was that it was to vote the necessary taxes to
supply the king's necessities, and also to mature the details of all
laws for the regulation of the ordinary business and the social
relations of life, but that the government, strictly so called--that
is, all that relates to the appointment and payment of executive
officers, the making of peace or war, the building and equipment of
fleets, and the command of armies, was exclusively the king's
prerogative, and that for the exercise of his prerogative in these
particulars the sovereign was responsible, not to his subjects, but to
God alone, from whom he claimed to have received his crown.

The people of England, as represented by Parliament, have never
consented to this view of the subject. They have always maintained
that their kings are, in some sense, responsible to the people of the
realm, and they have often deposed kings, and punished them in other
ways.

Accordingly, when Richard declared that he would not submit to the
appointment of a council by Parliament, the Commons reminded him of
the fact that his great-grandfather, Edward the Second, had been
deposed in consequence of having unreasonably and obstinately resisted
the will of his people, and they hinted to him that it would be well
for him to beware lest he should incur the same fate. Some of the
lords, too, told him that the excitement was so great in the country
on account of the mismanagement of public affairs, and the corruptions
and malpractice of the favorites, that if he refused to allow the
council to be appointed, there was danger that he would lose his head.

So Richard was obliged to submit, and the council was appointed.
Richard was in a great rage, and he secretly determined to lay his
plans for recovering the power into his own hands as soon as possible,
and punishing the council, and all who were concerned in appointing
them, for their audacity in presuming to encroach in such a manner
upon his sovereign rights as king.

The council that was appointed consisted of eleven bis