licy more successful in Flanders. Under Philip van Arteveldt, the
son of the leader of 1345, the Flemish towns again sought the friendship of
England against France, but at the close of 1382 the towns were defeated
and their leader slain in the great French victory of Rosbecque. An
expedition to Flanders in the following year under the warlike Bishop of
Norwich turned out a mere plunder-raid and ended in utter failure. A short
truce only gave France the leisure to prepare a counter-blow by the
despatch of a small but well-equipped force under John de Vienne to
Scotland in 1385. Thirty thousand Scots joined in the advance of this force
over the border: and though northern England rose with a desperate effort
and an English army penetrated as far as Edinburgh in the hope of bringing
the foe to battle, it was forced to fall back without an encounter.
Meanwhile France dealt a more terrible blow in the reduction of Ghent. The
one remaining market for English commerce was thus closed up, while the
forces which should have been employed in saving Ghent and in the
protection of the English shores against the threat of invasion were
squandered by John of Gaunt in a war which he was carrying on alone the
Spanish frontier in pursuit of the visionary crown which he claimed in his
wife's right. The enterprise showed that the Duke had now abandoned the
hope of directing affairs at home and was seeking a new sphere of activity
abroad. To drive him from the realm had been from the close of the Peasant
Revolt the steady purpose of the councillors who now surrounded the young
king, of his favourite Robert de Vere and his Chancellor Michael de la
Pole, who was raised in 1385 to the Earldom of Suffolk. The Duke's friends
were expelled from office; John of Northampton, the head of his adherents
among the Commons, was thrown into prison; the Duke himself was charged
with treason and threatened with arrest. In 1386 John of Gaunt abandoned
the struggle and sailed for Spain.

[Sidenote: Temper of the Court]

Richard himself took part in these measures against the Duke. He was now
twenty, handsome and golden-haired, with a temper capable of great actions
and sudden bursts of energy but indolent and unequal. The conception of
kingship in which he had been reared made him regard the constitutional
advance which had gone on during the war as an invasion of the rights of
his Crown. He looked on the nomination of the royal Council and the great
off