[51] The actual number appointed was eleven--namely, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Dukes of York and Gloucester, the Bishops of Winchester and Exeter, the Abbot of Waltham, the Earl of Arundel, John de Cobham, Richard le Scrope, and John Devereux. RICHARD APPEALS TO THE JUDGES (AUGUST, 1387). SOURCE.--Henry Knighton's _Chronicle_ (Rolls Series), ii. 236. At the same time the King came to Shrewsbury, where, by the Royal command, certain of the justices of the kingdom had gathered. Then the aforesaid seducers of the King, Alexander, Archbishop of York, Robert Vere, Duke of Ireland, Michael de la Pole, Robert Tresilian, and others, asked them [the justices] whether it would be lawful for the King to oppose and resist the ordinances made in the last Parliament concerning the King and kingdom by the princes and commons of the realm with the consent of the King, which consent, they said, had been obtained by force. They answered that the King was able to annul and alter such ordinances at pleasure for the bettering of affairs since he was above law. DEFEAT OF THE KING'S FRIENDS (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 1387). SOURCE.--_Chronicle of Adam of Usk_ (translated and edited by Sir E. Maunde Thompson, 1904), 143-145. Then the King passed with his mother[52] to Westminster Hall, and there, seated on his throne of state, by her mediation, made his peace with his twelve guardians;[53] yet he did it falsely and with deceit. Soon afterwards the Earl of Oxford[54] went with royal letters into the county of Chester, and led back with him a great armed power of the men of those parts for the destruction of the twelve. But the Duke of Gloucester and the Earls of Derby, Arundel, Nottingham, and Warwick were forewarned thereof, and arrayed in a glorious host before the men of Chester could reach the King, they routed the earl's army on the eve of St. Thomas the Apostle [December 20] at Radcot Bridge in Oxfordshire. And the earl himself they drove in flight beyond hope of return; for he died beyond seas.... At that time, I, the writer of this chronicle, was at Oxford an "extraordinary" in canon law, and I saw the host of the five lords march through the city on their way to London from the battlefield; whereof the Earls of Warwick and Derby led the van, the Duke of Gloucester the main body, and the Earls of Arundel and Nottingham the rear. The Mayor of London, hearing of their coming, sent forth to them the keys of the city, and thereafter those same five lords did, on the feast of St. John the Evangelist [December 27], blockade the Tower of London till it yielded: then straightway they placed the King, who was therein, under new governance, and delivered his fawning councillors into divers prisons until the next following Parliament. FOOTNOTES: [52] She died in 1385: hence the chronicler must be in error. [53] Namely, the eleven. [54] Robert de Vere. THE MERCILESS PARLIAMENT (FEBRUARY, 1388).