Great discontent had arisen meanwhile in the country at the lavish expenditure of the king, without any apparent result in victories abroad, such as had been gained in the glorious days of his predecessor. A cry for reform and retrenchment was raised, and found a champion in the person of the Duke of Gloucester, the youngest of the king’s uncles. At his instigation, the parliament which assembled on the 1st October, 1386, demanded the dismissal of the king’s ministers, and read him a lesson on constitutional government which ended in a threat of deposition unless the king should mend his ways. Richard was at the time only twenty-one years of age. In the impetuosity of his youth he is recorded as having contemplated a dastardly attempt upon the life of his uncle, whom he had grown to hate as the cause of all his difficulties. A plan was laid, which is said to have received Brembre’s approbation, for beguiling the duke into the city by an invitation to supper, and then and there making away with him, but the duke was forewarned. The chronicler who records Brembre’s complicity in this nefarious design against Gloucester’s life also relates that Exton, who was mayor, refused to have anything to do with it.(683) (M364) (M365) (M366) Before the end of the session, parliament had appointed a commission, with Gloucester at its head, to regulate the government of the country and the king’s household. This very naturally excited the wrath of the hot-headed king, who immediately set to work to form a party in opposition to the duke. In August of the next year (1387) he obtained a declaration from five of the justices to the effect that the commission was illegal. On the 28th October he sent the Archbishop of York and the Earl of Suffolk into the city to learn whether he could depend upon the support of the citizens. The answer could not have been regarded as unfavourable, for, on the 10th November, the king paid a personal visit to the city and was received with great ceremony.(684) On the following day (11 Nov.) orders were given to the aldermen of the City to assemble the men of their several wards, to see that they were suitably armed according to their rank and estate, and to make a return of the same in due course.(685) (M367) On the 14th Gloucester formally charged the king’s five counsellors—the Archbishop of York, the Duke of Ireland, the Earl of Suffolk, Chief Justice Tressilian and Nicholas Brembre, "the false London knight," with treason.(686) The king retaliated by causing proclamation to be made to the effect that he had taken these same individuals under his own protection, and that no one should harm them save at his own peril. This protection was extended also to the king’s uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, and the Earls of Arundel and Warwick, the impeaching parties. (M368)