parliament, or "afterwards by the lords and
knights having power committed to them by the same." They declared it
high treason to disobey their ordinances. They annulled the patents of
the dukes of Hereford and Norfolk, and adjudged Henry Bowet, the
former's chaplain, who had advised him to petition for his inheritance,
to the penalties of treason.[175] And thus, having obtained a revenue
for life, and the power of parliament being notoriously usurped by a
knot of his creatures, the king was little likely to meet his people
again, and became as truly absolute as his ambition could require.

[Sidenote: Quarrel of the dukes of Hereford and Norfolk.]

[Sidenote: Necessity for deposing Richard II.]

It had been necessary for this purpose to subjugate the ancient
nobility. For the English constitution gave them such paramount rights
that it was impossible either to make them surrender their country's
freedom, or to destroy it without their consent. But several of the
chief men had fallen or were involved with the party of Gloucester. Two
who, having once belonged to it, had lately plunged into the depths of
infamy to ruin their former friends; were still perfectly obnoxious to
the king, who never forgave their original sin. These two, Henry of
Bolingbroke, earl of Derby, and Mowbray, earl of Nottingham, now dukes
of Hereford and Norfolk, the most powerful of the remaining nobility,
were, by a singular conjuncture, thrown, as it were, at the king's feet.
Of the political mysteries which this reign affords, none is more
inexplicable than the quarrel of these peers. In the parliament at
Shrewsbury, in 1398, Hereford was called upon by the king to relate what
had passed between the duke of Norfolk and himself in slander of his
majesty. He detailed a pretty long and not improbable conversation, in
which Norfolk had asserted the king's intention of destroying them both
for their old offence in impeaching his ministers. Norfolk had only to
deny the charge and throw his gauntlet at the accuser. It was referred
to the eighteen commissioners who sat after the dissolution, and a trial
by combat was awarded. But when this, after many delays, was about to
take place at Coventry, Richard interfered and settled the dispute by
condemning Hereford to banishment for ten years and Norfolk for life.
This strange determination, which treated both as guilty where only one
could be so, seems to admit no other solution than the king's desire to