ble blood,
and the future consequences of the quarrel. By the advice and authority
of the parliamentary commissioners, he stopped the duel; and to show his
impartiality, he ordered, by the same authority both the combatants to
leave the kingdom;[*] assigning one country for the place of Norfolk's
exile, which he declared perpetual, another for that of Hereford, which
he limited to ten years.

* Cotton, p. 380. Walsing. p. 356.

Hereford was a man of great prudence and command of temper; and he
behaved himself with so much submission in these delicate circumstances,
that the king, before his departure, promised to shorten the term of his
exile four years; and he also granted him letters patent, by which he
was empowered, in case any inheritance should in the interval accrue to
him, to enter immediately in possession, and to postpone the doing of
homage till his return.

The weakness and fluctuation of Richard's counsels appear nowhere more
evident than in the conduct of this affair. No sooner had Hereford left
the kingdom, than the king's jealousy of the power and riches of that
prince's family revived; and he was sensible that by Glocester's death
he had only removed a counterpoise to the Lancastrian interest which
was now become formidable to his crown and kingdom. Being informed that
Hereford had entered into a treaty of marriage with the daughter of the
duke of Berry, uncle to the French king, he determined to prevent the
finishing of an alliance which would so much extend the interest of his
cousin in foreign countries; and he sent over the earl of Salisbury to
Paris with a commission for that purpose.

{1399.} The death of the duke of Lancaster, which happened soon after,
called upon him to take new resolutions with regard to that opulent
succession. The present duke, in consequence of the king's patent,
desired to be put in possession of the estate and jurisdictions of his
father; but Richard, afraid of strengthening the hands of a man whom
he had already so much offended, applied to the parliamentary
commissioners, and persuaded them that this affair was but an appendage
to that business which the parliament had delegated to them. By their
authority he revoked his letters patent, and retained possession of the
estate of Lancaster; and by the same authority he seized and tried the
duke's attorney, who had procured and insisted on the letters, and he
had him condemned as a traitor for faithfully executing