[157] Upon full consideration, I am much inclined to give credit to this passage of Knyghton, as to the main facts; and perhaps even the speech of Gloucester and the bishop of Ely is more likely to have been made public by them than invented by so jejune an historian. Walsingham indeed says nothing of the matter; but he is so unequally informed and so frequently defective, that we can draw no strong inference from his silence. What most weighs with me is that parliament met on Oct. 1, 1387, and was not dissolved till Nov. 28; a longer period than the business done in it seems to have required; and also that Suffolk, who opened the session as chancellor, is styled "darrein chancellor" in the articles of impeachment against him; so that he must have been removed in the interval, which tallies with Knyghton's story. Besides, it is plain, from the famous questions subsequently put by the king to his judges at Nottingham, that both the right of retiring without a regular dissolution, and the precedent of Edward II., had been discussed in parliament, which does not appear anywhere else than in Knyghton. [158] Rot. Parl. vol. iii. p. 219. [159] Articles had been exhibited by the chancellor before the peers, in the seventh of the king, against Spencer, bishop of Norwich, who had led a considerable army in a disastrous expedition against the Flemings, adherents to the anti-pope Clement in the schism. This crusade had been exceedingly popular, but its ill success had the usual effect. The commons were not parties in this proceeding. Rot. Parl. p 153. [160] Rot. Parl. p. 221. [161] Rot. Parl. p. 281. [162] The judgment against Simon de Burley, one of those who were executed on this occasion, upon impeachment of the commons, was reversed under Henry IV.; a fair presumption of its injustice. Rot. Parl. vol. iii. p. 464. [163] Rot. Parl. 14 R II. p. 279; 15 R. II. p. 286. [164] Rot. Parl. 13 R. II. p. 258. [165] 17 R. II. p. 313. [166] Rymer, t. vii. p. 583, 659. [167] Hume has represented this as if the commons had petitioned for the continuance of sheriffs beyond a year, and grounds upon this mistake part of his defence of Richard II. (Note to vol. ii. p. 270, 4to. edit.) For this he refers to Cotton's Abridgment; whether rightly or not I cannot say, being little acquainted with that inaccurate book, upon which it is unfortunate that Hume relied so much. The passage from Walsingham in the same note is also wholly perverted; as the reader will discover without further observation. An historian must be strangely warped who quotes a passage explicitly complaining of illegal acts in order to infer that those very acts were legal.