scullion from
his kitchen. This author also tells us, that the king said to the
commissioners, when they harangued him, that he saw his subjects were
rebellious, and his best way would be to call in the king of France to
his aid. But it is plain that all these speeches were either intended
by Knyghton merely as an ornament to his history, or are false. For (1.)
when the five lords accuse the king's ministers in the next parliament,
and impute to them every rash action of the king, they speak nothing of
these replies, which are so obnoxious, were so recent, and are
pretended to have been so public. (2.) The king, so far from having any
connections at that time with France, was threatened with a dangerous
invasion from that kingdom. This story seems to have been taken from
the reproaches afterwards thrown out against him, and to have been
transferred by the historian to this time, to which they cannot be
applied.]

[Footnote 13: NOTE M, p. 295. We must except the twelfth article, which
accuses Brembre of having cut off the heads of twenty-two prisoners
confined for felony or debt, without warrant or process of law; but as
it is not conceivable what interest Brembre could have to treat these
felons and debtors in such a manner, we may presume that the fact is
either false or misrepresented. It was in these men's power to say any
thing against the persons accused. No defence or apology was admitted;
all was lawless will and pleasure.

They are also accused of designs to murder the lords; but these
accusations either are general, or destroy one another. Sometimes, as in
article fifteenth, they intend to murder them by means of the mayor and
city of London; sometimes, as in article twenty-eighth, by trial and
false inquests; sometimes, as in article twenty-eighth, by means of the
king of France, who was to receive Calais for his pains.]

[Footnote 14: NOTE N, p. 296. In general, the parliament, in those days,
never paid a proper regard to Edward's statute of treasons, though
one of the most advantageous laws for the subject that has ever been
enacted. In the seventeenth of the king, the dukes of Lancaster and
Glocester complain to Richard, that Sir Thomas Talbot, with others of
his adherents conspired the death of the said dukes in divers parts of
Cheshire, as the same was confessed and well known; and praying that the
parliament may judge of the fault. Whereupon the king and the lords in
the parliament judged the same