The paths that had joined for a moment parted again, and Guenllian and Beatrice passed out of the sight of Roger and Lawrence. The life which they led at Woking was very quiet—so quiet that Roger at least began to feel restless, and to complain to Lawrence, that every thing stagnated around him. But before six months were over, the second political convulsion of the century had begun. Gloucester only awaited the removal of his brother Lancaster, who was the barricade against his ambitious designs, to draw the bow which he was holding ready. The Duke of Lancaster sailed from Plymouth on the ninth of July. By Michaelmas, Gloucester was in London, gathering his conspirators around him. The one with whom he first took counsel was his nephew, Edward, afterwards Earl of Rutland, eldest son of the Duke of York. This man seems to have delighted in dissimulation and treachery, not as means to an end, but for their own sakes. He cared not whom he joined, so long as he could afterwards betray them; and he was ready to agree to anything, if it only involved a plot. Love, kinship, gratitude, even interest, were no barriers in his way. This man had been one of the dearest friends of the young King—the friendship being on the King’s side, and only the outward profession of it on Rutland’s: but no sooner did Gloucester lay his plans before Rutland, than the latter sacrificed his friend to the pleasure of a conspiracy. There were four of the Privy Councillors of whom Gloucester had resolved to get rid. These were the Archbishop of York, the Duke of Ireland, the Earl of Suffolk, and Sir Simon Burley. The first and last were professed Lollards: the second, and perhaps the third, almost certainly held those doctrines, though less openly than the other two. There is an old proverb that "If you want to hang a dog, it is easy enough to find a rope:" and the conspirators found no difficulty in fixing on charges calculated to render the four councillors impopular. The Archbishop, who was a Neville of Raby, and the Duke, who was ninth Earl of Oxford, could not be accused of humble origin; but the Earl of Suffolk was open to this impeachment, and they made the most of it, by contemptuously addressing him as "Michael," even in full Parliament. Sir Simon Burley had been the King’s tutor, and an old friend of the Black Prince, who had great confidence in him; it might have been supposed difficult to find the rope in his case. But who ever knew a Romish priest short of an excuse to disparage the character of a heretic, by whatever name he might be called? Behind the conspirators himself unseen, but quietly pulling the strings which moved all these puppets at his pleasure, stood Sir Thomas de Arundel, Bishop of Ely, and brother of the Earl, who was at once the instigator, the assistant, and the absolver of them all.