Bordeaux, and before Roger Mortimer.  Alarmed at the blow thus levelled against their chief remaining champion, the knights courageously held to their position.  “The king,” said they, “though old is still healthy, and may outlive us all.  Moreover he has an heir in the ten-year-old prince Richard.  While these are alive there is no need to discuss the question of the succession.”  They completed the drawing up of the long list of petitions, whose grudging and partial acceptance by the crown made the roll of the parliament of 1376 memorable as asserting principles, if not as vindicating practical ends.  They forced Lancaster to agree to a council of twelve peers nominated in parliament to act as a standing committee of advisers, without which the king might do nothing of any importance.  After this revival of the methods of the Mad Parliament and the lords ordainers, the Good Parliament separated on July 6.  It had sat longer than any previous parliament of which there is record.  It had persevered to the end in the teeth of discouragements of all kinds, and, even after his brother’s death, Duke John dared not lift up his hand against it so long as the session continued.

When the estates separated Lancaster threw off the mask.  The king, sunk in extreme dotage, was entirely in the hands of his unscrupulous son.  The old man was kept quiet by the return of Alice Perrers to court.  She had sworn on the rood never to see the king again, but the prelates were “like dumb dogs unable to bark” against her; and no effort was made to prosecute her for perjury.  Latimer and Lyons returned from their luxurious imprisonment in the Tower to their places at court.  The duke roundly declared that the late parliament was no parliament at all.  No statute was based upon its petitions, the council of twelve was rudely dissolved, and Sir Peter de la Mare was imprisoned in Nottingham castle.  William of Wykeham was deprived of his temporalities, and the rumour spread that his disgrace was due to his possession of a state secret, revealed to him by the dying queen Philippa, that John of Gaunt was no true son of the royal pair but a changeling.  So timid was the disgraced bishop that he vied with the weak primate in his subserviency to Alice.  The Earl of March, who was marshal of England, was ordered to inspect the fortresses beyond sea, whereupon, fearing a plot to assassinate him, he resigned his office, “preferring,” says a friend, “to lose his marshal’s staff rather than his life”.  The powerful north-country lord, Henry Percy, who had hitherto acted with the opposition, was bribed by the office of marshal to join the Lancastrian party.