Amidst these external preoccupations, the Duke of Gloucester had seized the reins of government; and, when the young king threatened to dissolve a Parliament devoted to his uncle, the Commons brought forward the Act which had deposed Edward II. A council of barons for a while governed the kingdom, under the presidency of Gloucester. Blood flowed everywhere; the duke avenged himself upon the favorites of the king, who were as odious to him as to the English people. He had impeached them before the Parliament: the innocent were involved in the ruin of the guilty. {349} Gloucester did not even spare Sir Simon Burley, formerly the tutor of the king, the friend of Edward III. and the Black Prince, and who had conducted the negotiations for the marriage of Richard. The queen in vain threw herself at his feet asking for mercy; in vain did Henry Bolingbroke, who had seconded his uncle in all his undertakings, claim as a right the pardon of the condemned man: Burley was executed, and Bolingbroke became definitively at variance with Gloucester. The disorder which prevailed in England did not prevent constant hostilities upon the frontiers of Scotland; it was on August 15th, 1388, that there took place at Otterbourn, the famous battle celebrated in the ballads under the name of Chevy Chase, between the Earl of Douglas and Lord Henry Percy, the Hotspur of Shakespeare. Douglas was slain, but the English ended by being repulsed from the battle-field. Hotspur and his brother were prisoners. The king was beginning to weary of the yoke which he had so long borne. He was subject to gleams of resolution and courage, which soon disappeared in a long spell of indolence, and which took by surprise those who calculated upon his habitual apathy. A council was being held in the month of May, 1389; the king suddenly addressed the Duke of Gloucester. "How old do you suppose I am, uncle?" he asked. "Your highness is in your twenty-second year," replied the duke, much surprised. "Then," replied the king, "I am at an age when I should govern my own affairs. Nobody in my kingdom has been so long held under tutelage. I thank you for your services, my lord, but I no longer require them." And he immediately caused the great seal and the keys of the treasury to be given up to himself, compelling the Duke of Gloucester to leave the council, and announcing publicly to the nation that he had henceforth assumed the direction of the government. But his fleeting energy had already abandoned him. The Duke of York and Henry Bolingbroke were his masters, instead of the Duke of Gloucester. {350}