esteemed the person of greatest
experience and capacity among those who were attached to the duke of
Ireland and the king's secret council. The duke of Glocester, who had
the house of commons at his devotion, impelled them to exercise that
power which they seem first to have assumed against Lord Latimer during
the declining years of the late king; and an impeachment against the
chancellor was carried up by them to the house of peers, which was no
less at his devotion. The king foresaw the tempest preparing against him
and his ministers. After attempting in vain to rouse the Londoners to
his defence, he withdrew from parliament, and retired with his court to
Eltham. The parliament sent a deputation, inviting him to return, and
threatening that, if he persisted in absenting himself, they would
immediately dissolve, and leave the nation, though at that time in
imminent danger of a French invasion, without any support or supply for
its defence. At the same time, a member was encouraged to call for the
record containing the parliamentary deposition of Edward II.; a plain
intimation of the fate which Richard, if he continued refractory, had
reason to expect from them. The king, finding himself unable to resist,
was content to stipulate that, except finishing the present impeachment
against Suffolk, no attack should be made upon any other of his
ministers; and on that condition he returned to the parliament.[*] [12]

Nothing can prove more fully the innocence of Suffolk, than the
frivolousness of the crimes which his enemies, in the present plenitude
of their power, thought proper to object against him.[**] It was
alleged, that being chancellor, and obliged by his oath to consult the
king's profit, he had purchased lands of the crown below their true
value; that he had exchanged with the king a perpetual annuity of four
hundred marks a year, which he inherited from his father, and which was
assigned upon the customs of the port of Hull, for lands of an equal
income; that having obtained for his son the priory of St. Anthony,
which was formerly possessed by a Frenchman, an enemy and a schismatic,
and a new prior being at the same time named by the pope, he had
refused to admit this person, whose title was not legal, till he made a
composition with his son, and agreed to pay him a hundred pounds a
year from the income of the benefice; that he had purchased, from one
Tydeman, of Limborch, an old and forfeited annuity of fifty poun