How this rebellion was quelled is no part of our subject, but the
troubles of King Richard were by no means ended. In 1387 he had again
to fly to the Tower for security against his uncle Gloucester and
the other disaffected barons. His weakness and imbecility, and the
corruptness of his ministers, had exasperated the nation against him,
and Gloucester seized the regal authority and placed it in the hands
of commissioners. The King summoned a Parliament at Nottingham which
supported him; the nobles retorted by marching on London with forty
thousand men. There was much anxiety and some fighting, but Archbishop
Courtenay mediated with great patience and wisdom. Richard had gone to
the Tower and was in fact besieged, and in the great Council Chamber
there Courtenay arranged a meeting between the nobles and the King,
with the result that the mutual differences were for the time adjusted.
But the King had not in the least regained the confidence either of
the nobles or of the commonalty. In fact the prominent members of the
Parliament which had declared in his favour were arrested. Some were
fined, others banished, others confined in the Tower. Of these latter
Sir Robert Tresylian, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; Brembre, Mayor
of London; Sir John Salisbury, Sir John Beauchamp and Sir James Berners
were put to death at Tyburn. One of the victims calls for special
mention. Sir Simon Burley had distinguished himself under the Black
Prince in the French war. Edward had such a high opinion of him that he
bequeathed the education of his son Richard to him. He seems to have
justified the choice in the early days of the young King, and it was he
who arranged his marriage with Anne of Bohemia, thereby incurring the
enmity of the Lancastrian party. Although he had warned the King of his
folly in the early days of his reign, he supported him in Parliament in
his struggle against the barons, and in consequence he was sentenced on
May 5, 1388, to be hanged, drawn and quartered, but this was commuted
to beheading. We have seen that Archbishop Sudbury was executed on
Tower Hill, but that was by mob violence. Burley was now condemned by
law to die on the same spot. It was the first legal execution on the
place which was for many years to come the regular place of execution.
[Illustration: ASSAULT ON A FORTRESS.
_From a MS. of Boccaccio de Casibus Virorum
et Foeminarum Illustrium.
British Museum_, 35,321.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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