The Duke [of Lancaster] spewed out the venom of serpents which was in him and directed the sting of his malice against the Bishop of Winchester, Lord William Wykeham, seeking a knot in a bulrush and an occasion for condemning him in every way and manner that he could. At length, among the many things which, as it is said, he falsely deposed against him, he declared that he had been false to the lord King at the time when he was discharging the office of Chancellor. And although the said Bishop would have been prepared to bring forward sufficient honest witnesses and accounts to prove his innocence,[42] nevertheless, William Skipworth unjustly sitting as justiciar, he [the duke] caused him to be condemned without answer, and the temporalities of his bishopric to be taken from him by royal authority. And, in order that he might gain popular favour, he demanded, in the power of the King, that the same goods should be given to the aid of the son of the [Black] Prince, Richard de Bordeaux, Earl of Chester, who had lately received by gift of the King the principality and name of his father. Moreover, he prohibited the same bishop, in place of the King, from taking it on himself to come within twenty miles of the royal presence. Thus was he avenged against the said bishop. Now the cause of all this malice was, as it is said, that the same Bishop had said that he [John of Gaunt] was not the son of the King or Queen; but in the time when the Queen was delivered at Gaunt, she had given birth not to a boy, but to a girl, whom she had overlaid; and, fearing the royal indignation, she had ordered the son of a certain Flemish woman, born at the same time, to be put in its place; thus she had fostered one to whom she had not given birth, namely, this man, the notorious Duke of Lancaster. These things the Queen, in her last hours, had related to the bishop under seal of confession; and had prayed him steadfastly that, if at any time it should happen that he [John of Gaunt] should either have designs on the kingdom, or if the said kingdom should in any way whatever devolve on him, he, the said bishop, should make known his birth, lest he, a false heir, should inherit the kingdom of England. FOOTNOTES: [42] In Harleian MS. 247, fol. 170_b_, we read of the Council of July, 1377, wherein the lords did "greatly debate upon the suppressing of the Duke of Lancaster and the Lord Latimer by Sir William Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, of sundry trespasses and misprisons by him committed, and charged him with sundry grievous articles and forfeits, which the King himself had certainly understood and by divers evidences were known, as also by the common voice of the people; for he had sundry charges and offices under the King from the xxxv. year of his reign and had by his writings made sundry defaults to the prejudice, hurt and reproach of the King and of his realm, and to the oppression of his people." MASTER JOHN WICLIF (1377).