thanked him with tears of joy. Derby and Nottingham also obtained declarations that they had acted loyally in 1387. On the ground that those of the king's blood ought to be enhanced in dignity and estate above others, Richard advanced them to be dukes of Hereford and Norfolk, and made Rutland, Kent, and Huntingdon dukes of Albemarle, Surrey, and Exeter; ‘Duketti’ the people derisively called them. Somerset became marquis of Dorset, lords Despencer, Neville, and Thomas Percy earls of Gloucester, Westmoreland, and Worcester, and William le Scrope earl of Wiltshire. Richard divided the bulk of the forfeited estates among them, but annexed Arundel's lordships in the Welsh marches to his adjoining earldom of Chester, which he raised to the dignity of a principality (Ormerod, i. 707). He now, if not before, impaled the arms attributed to one of his patron saints, Edward the Confessor, with those of England, and empowered Nottingham, Exeter, and Surrey to impale them with their own.
The completion of the coup d'état was held over to a second session to be held in the safer neighbourhood of Shrewsbury. Before they dispersed, lords and commons had to swear on the shrine of St. Edward to uphold all that had been done. The oath was to be taken in future by all newly appointed prelates and newly admitted heirs. But London still seethed with excitement. Miracles were worked at Arundel's tomb, until Richard ordered it to be paved over. Men believed that he was haunted by the earl's injured shade, and dare not go to sleep without a guard of three hundred Cheshire men. Norfolk now took alarm, and informed Hereford that he had reason to believe that Richard, despite his oaths, would never rest content until he had undone them for their share in Radcotbridge. Hereford betrayed him to the king, and secured himself, as he thought, by a full pardon for the past. He thus provoked a deadly quarrel with Norfolk, whose fears proved only too well grounded. At Shrewsbury Richard had Wales and Cheshire at his back; the answers of the judges in 1387 were approved, the acts of the Merciless parliament annulled, and restitution ordered to the heirs of its victims. The amnesty granted to those who had sided against him in these years was clogged with disquieting conditions and reservations. The cowed estates parted with a great slice of parliament's power of the purse by confirming to Richard for life the wool subsidy hitherto only granted to him for terms of years, but they probably stopped short of ‘delegating all parliamentary power’ to a committee of eighteen of his creatures. In appointing this committee to deal with unanswered petitions, they were only acting on a recommendation of the commons in 1388, and the absence of any wider reference from two of the three original copies of the roll of this parliament raises a strong presumption in favour of the charge of interpolation afterwards brought against Richard. His object was doubtless to give a colour of parliamentary authority to his subsequent extraordinary proceedings against the two remaining appellants (Rot. Parl. iii. 256, 372). Popular opinion credited him with intending to dispense with parliament for the future, but he does not seem to have thought this practicable yet (Beckington, i. 286). Papal letters were obtained invoking the censures of the church on all who should seek to reverse what the ‘Great parliament’ had done, and Richard wrote exultantly to Manuel Palæologus that he had crushed the enemies of his prerogative ‘nedum ad corticem sed ad radicem’ (ib.)
It was decided that Hereford and Norfolk should settle their quarrel in single combat, ultimately fixed to take place on Gosford Green, near Coventry, on 16 Sept. On that day they appeared in the lists there in the presence of a vast assembly from all parts of England. But before they had joined issue, Richard, rising up from his ‘scaffold,’ took the battle into his own hands. The assemblage heard in a tumult of incredulous astonishment that, in virtue of the authority delegated by the late parliament, the king banished Hereford for ten years, and with more equanimity that the unpopular Norfolk was to go into exile for a ‘hundred wynter.’ The only reason vouchsafed for Hereford's banishment was the danger of conflict between his and Norfolk's followers. Various surmises were made by mystified contemporaries to explain this unexpected issue, but there can be no doubt that Richard, whether or not provoked by Norfolk's recalcitrance, had resolved to rid himself of the last of the old appellants. Norfolk was so strongly suspected of being his agent in Gloucester's murder that had he gone down before Hereford's more practised lance popular feeling would have hailed it as a personal defeat for the king. Nor could he then have got rid of Hereford with any colour of plausibility. Everything possible was done to give the latter's banishment the appearance of a temporary and honourable exile.
In little more than a month both had quitted the realm, and Richard's revenge seemed complete. He listened complacently to the flatterers who assured him that he was the happiest of conquerors to have taken so signal a vengeance upon his enemies without
