Shakespeare's Kings (29 page)

immediate
condemnation,
at
which
the
Appellants
all
flung
down
their gloves.
The
trial
was
over.
Gaunt
pronounced
the
customary
sentence of
the
gallows,
for
which
the
King
immediately
substituted
the
more honourable
one
of
the
block.
Arundel
was
led
off
to
Tower
Hill
where, in
the
presence
of
Kent,
Somerset
and
his
own
son-in-law
Nottingham, his
head
was
severed
from
his
shoulders.

Parliament
now
turned
its
attention
to
Gloucester,
but
was
informed that
the
Duke
was
already
dead.
Significa
ntly
,
the
precise
circumstances of
his
death
were
not
discussed;
few
of
those
present
can
have
been
in any
doubt
that
he
had
been
murdered
at
Calais
by
the
King's
command. It
remained
important,
however,
that
he
should
be
formally
branded
a traitor,
to
allow
the
confiscation
of
his
property;
so
he
too
was
found guilty
of
treason
—
had
he
not
appeared
fully
armed
at
Haringey
in 1387?
-
his
estates
being
forfeited
to
the
Crown.
There
remained
only Warwick.
'Like
a
wretched
old
woman,'
writes
Adam
of
Usk
scornfully, 'he
made
confession
of
all,
wailing
and
weeping
and
whining,
traitor that
he
was,
and
submitting
himself
in
all
things
to
the
King's
grace.' He
too
was
condemned
to
the
scaffold;
but
—
possibly
because
he
gave useful
incriminating
evidence
against
Gloucester
-
Richard
commuted his
sentence
to
one
of
perpetual
banishment
on
the
Isle
of
Man.
¹

With
his
enemies
now
safely
eliminated,
the
King
could
properly reward
those
who
had
remained
loyal.
No
less
than
five
received dukedoms:
to
Bolingbroke
-
despite
his
previous
record
-
went
that of
Hereford;
to
Mowbray,
Norfolk;
to
John
Holland,
Exeter;
to
Thomas Holland,
Surrey;
to
Rutland,
Albemarle
-
or,
as
Shakespeare
calls
him, Aumerle.
For
the
Crown
Richard
annexed
the
county
of
Cheshire,
²
together
with
some
of
the
former
Arundel
property
next
to
it
in
the Welsh
marches.
All
this
was
approved
by
the
Parliament,
which
on
30 September
took
a
solemn
oath
to
uphold
all
its
acts
in
perpetuity.
It was
then
adjourned
till
27
January
1398,
when,
the
King
announced,

it
would
meet
at
Shrewsbury,
a
city
convenie
ntly
close
to
the
Cheshire border.

He
would
have
been
better
advised
to
dissolve
it
altogether.
He
had achieved
his
primary
object
where
his
enemies
were
concerned,
at
the cost
of
far
less
bloodshed
than
had
been
seen
in
1388;
and
although
his treatment
of
Arundel
had
caused
something
of
an
outcry,
there
had been
curiously
little
reaction
to
the
death
of
Gloucester.
Had
he
been content
to
leave
the
matter
there,
he
might
yet
have
succeeded
in holding
the
kingdom
together.
But
his
revenge
was
not
yet
complete, and
it
was
his
determination
to
carry
it
through
to
the
end
that
was
to prove
his
undoing.
We
can
discount
Walsingham's
stories
of
his
being tormented
by
the
ghost
of
Arundel,
whose
body
he
is
said
to
have
had exhumed
lest
the
Earl
be
venerated
as
a
martyr;
in
such
a
case
he
is hardly
likely
to
have
agreed
to
a
four-month
adjournment.
Richard was
not
afraid;
he
was,
on
the
contrary,
over-confident—and
dangerously vindictive.

The
Shrewsbury
session
did
not
take
long.
It
began
with
a
formal request,
by
seven
of
the
former
eight
Appellants,
for
the
repeal
of
all the
acts
and
judgements
of
the
Merciless
Parliament,
'done
without authority
and
against
the
will
and
liberty
of
the
King
and
the
right
of his
Crown*.
The
earldom
of
Suffolk
was
then
restored
to
the
de
la
Pole family,
and
fresh
oaths
were
sworn
on
the
lines
of
those
taken
at Westminster
the
previous
September
to
maintain
the
acts
of
the
present Parliament,
with
any
future
attempts
to
reverse
them
being
considered acts
of
treason.
Trouble
came
only
on
the
third
day
of
the
session.
It had
already
been
noted
that
one
of
the
Appellants,
Thomas
Mowbray, now
Duke
of
Norfolk,
was
absent;
and
on
30
January
Henry
Bolingbroke,
Duke
of
Hereford,
reported
to
the
full
assembly,
at
the
King's command,
a
recent
conversation
with
him
during
which,
as
Holinshed puts
it,
he
had
uttered
'certaine
words
.
.
.
sounding
highlie
to
the King's
dishonor'.
Since
Mowbray
left
no
account
of
the
affair
we
are forced
to
rely
on
the
parliamentary
record
of
Henry's
version,
according to
which,
as
the
two
were
riding
together
from
Brentford
to
London the
month
before,
Mowbray
remarked
that
they
were
both
about
to be
undone
because
of
what
had
happened
at
Radcot
Bridge;
and
when Bolingbroke
pointed
out
that
they
had
both
been
pardoned,
he
assured him
that,
pardon
or
no
pardon,
the
King
intended
to
deal
with
the
two of
them
just
as
he
had
dealt
with
the
others.
He
went
on
to
tell
Henry
that
there
was
a
plot,
hatched
by
a
group
of
lords
close
to
the
King,
to kill
them
both
at
Windsor
after
the
Parliament,
together
with
Henry's father,
John
of
Gaunt,
the
Dukes
of
Exeter
and
Albemarle
and
the Marquess
of
Dorset.
They
must
conseque
ntly
either
concoct
a
counterplot
or
flee
the
country
while
there
was
still
time.