[Sidenote:  Temper of the Court]

Richard himself took part in these measures against the Duke.  He was now twenty, handsome and golden-haired, with a temper capable of great actions and sudden bursts of energy but indolent and unequal.  The conception of kingship in which he had been reared made him regard the constitutional advance which had gone on during the war as an invasion of the rights of his Crown.  He looked on the nomination of the royal Council and the great officers of state by the two Houses or the supervision of the royal expenditure by the Commons as Infringements on the prerogative which only the pressure of the war and the weakness of a minority had forced the Crown to bow to.  The judgement of his councillors was one with that of the king.  Vere was no mere royal favourite; he was a great noble and of ancient lineage.  Michael de la Pole was a man of large fortune and an old servant of the Crown; he had taken part in the war for thirty years, and had been admiral and captain of Calais.  But neither were men to counsel the young king wisely in his effort to obtain independence at once of Parliament and of the great nobles.  His first aim had been to break the pressure of the royal house itself, and in his encounter with John of Gaunt he had proved successful.  But the departure of the Duke of Lancaster only called to the front his brother and his son.  Thomas of Woodstock, the Duke of Gloucester, had inherited much of the lands and the influence of the old house of Bohun.  Round Henry, Earl of Derby, the son of John of Gaunt by Blanche of Lancaster, the old Lancastrian party of constitutional opposition was once more forming itself.  The favour shown to the followers of Wyclif at the Court threw on the side of this new opposition the bulk of the bishops and Churchmen.  Richard himself showed no sympathy with the Lollards, but the action of her Bohemian servants shows the tendencies of his queen.  Three members of the royal Council were patrons of the Lollards, and the Earl of Salisbury, a favourite with the king, was their avowed head.  The Commons displayed no hostility to the Lollards nor any zeal for the Church; but the lukewarm prosecution of the war, the profuse expenditure of the Court, and above all the manifest will of the king to free himself from Parliamentary control, estranged the Lower House.  Richard’s haughty words told their own tale.  When the Parliament of 1385 called for an enquiry every year into the royal household, the king replied he would enquire when he pleased.  When it prayed to know the names of the officers of state, he answered that he would change them at his will.

[Sidenote:  The Lords Appellant]