at length decided the King to execute the
vengeance he had been nursing so long.

He went with a gay company to the Duke
of Gloucester's house, Pleshey Castle, in Essex,
where the Duke, suspecting nothing, came
out into the court-yard to receive his royal
visitor. While the King conversed in a
friendly manner with the Duchess, the Duke
was quietly seized, hurried away, shipped
for Calais, and lodged in the castle there.
His friends, the Earls of Arundel and
Warwick, were taken in the same treacherous
manner, and confined to their castles. A few
days after, at Nottingham, they were impeached
of high treason. The Earl of Arundel was
condemned and beheaded, and the Earl of
Warwick was banished. Then, a writ was
sent by a messenger to the Governor of
Calais, requiring him to send the Duke of
Gloucester over to be tried. In three days he
returned an answer that he could not do that,
because the Duke of Gloucester had died in
prison. The duke was declared a traitor, his
property was confiscated to the King, a real or
pretended confession he had made in prison
to one of the Justices of the Common Pleas
was produced against him, and there was
an end of the matter. How the unfortunate
duke died, very few cared to know. Whether
he really died naturally; whether he killed
himself; whether, by the King's order, he
was strangled, or smothered between two
beds (as a serving-man of the Governor's,
named Hall, did afterwards declare), cannot
be discovered. There is not much doubt that
he was killed, somehow or other, by his
nephew's orders. Among the most active
nobles in these proceedings were the King's
cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, whom the King
had made Duke of Hereford to smooth down
the old family quarrels, and some others:
who had in the family-plotting times done
just such acts themselves as they now
condemned in the duke. They seem to have
been a corrupt set of men; but such men
were easily found about the court in such
days.

The people murmured at all this, and were
still very sore about the French marriage.
The nobles saw how little the King cared for
law, and how crafty he was, and began to be
somewhat afraid for themselves. The King's
life was a life of continued feasting and excess;
his retinue, down to the meanest servants, were
dressed in the most costly manner, and
caroused at his tables, it is related, to the
number of ten thousand persons every day.
He himself, surrounded by a body of ten
thousand archers, and enriched by a duty
on wool which the Commons had granted
to him for life, saw no danger of ever
being otherwise than powerful and absolute,
and was as fierce and haughty as a
King could be. He had two of his old
enemies left, in the persons of the Dukes
of Hereford and Norfolk. Sparing these no
more than the others, he tampered with the
Duke of Hereford until he got him to declare
before the Council that the Duke of Norfolk
had lately held some treasonable talk with
him, as he was riding near Brentford; and
that he had told him, among other things,
that he could not believe the King's oath—
which nobody could, I should think. For this
treachery he obtained a pardon, and the Duke
of Norfolk was summoned to appear and
defend himself. As he denied the charge and
said his accuser was a liar and a traitor, both
noblemen, according to the manner of those
times, were held in custody, and the truth
was ordered to be decided by wager of battle
at Coventry. This wager of battle meant
that whosoever won the combat was to be
considered in the right; which nonsense meant
in effect, that no strong man could ever be
wrong. A great holiday was made; a great
crowd assembled, with much parade and show;
and the two combatants were about to rush at
each other with their lances, when the King,
sitting in a pavilion to see fair, threw down
the truncheon he carried in his hand, and
forbad the battle. The Duke of Hereford
was to be banished for ten years, and the
Duke of Norfolk was to be banished for life.
So said the King. The Duke of Hereford
went to France, and went no farther. The
Duke of Norfolk made a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land, and afterwards died at Venice of
a broken heart.

Faster and fiercer, after this, the King went
on in his career. The Duke of Lancaster,
who was the father of the Duke of Hereford,
died soon after the departure of his son; and,
the King, although he had solemnly granted
to that son leave to inherit his father's
property, if it should come to him during his
banishment, immediately seized it all, like a
robber. The judges were so afraid of him,
that they disgraced themselves by declaring
this theft to be just and lawful. His avarice
knew no bounds. He outlawed seventeen
counties at once, on a frivolous pretence,
merely to raise money by way of fines for
misconduct. In short, he did as many
dishonest things as he could; and cared so
little for the discontent of his subjects—
though even the spaniel favorites began to
whisper to him that there was such a thing
as discontent afloat — that he took that time,
of all others, for leaving England and making
an expedition against the Irish.

He was scarcely gone, leaving the DUKE of
YORK Regent in his absence, when his cousin,
Henry of Hereford, came over from France
to claim the rights of which he had been so
monstrously deprived. He was immediately
joined by the two great Earls of Northumberland
and Westmoreland; and his uncle the
Regent, finding the King's cause unpopular,
and the disinclination of the army to act
against Henry, very strong, withdrew with
the royal forces towards Bristol. Henry,
at the head of an army, came from
Yorkshire (where he had landed) to London and