right in their own eyes. The other four (of whom we shall hear
again) were Henry Earl of Derby, son of the Duke of Lancaster; Richard
Earl of Arundel, brother of Gloucester's confessor; Thomas Earl of
Nottingham his brother-in-law; and Thomas Earl of Warwick, a weak
waverer, the least guilty of the evil five. The conspirators conferred
upon themselves the grand title of "the Lords Appellants;" and to divert
from themselves and their doings the public mind, they amused that
innocent, unsuspecting creature by a splendid tournament in Smithfield.

Of one fact, as we follow their track, we must never lose sight:--that
behind these visible five, securely hidden, stood the invisible one, Sir
Thomas de Arundel, setting all these puppets in motion according to his
pleasure, and for "the good of the Church;" working on the insufferable
pride of Gloucester, the baffled ambition of Derby, the arrogant
rashness of Arundel, the vain, time-serving nature of Nottingham, and
the weak fears of Warwick. Did he think he was doing God service? Did
he ever care to think of God at all?

The further career of the Lords Appellants must be told as shortly as
possible, but without some account of it much of the remainder of my
story will be unintelligible. They drew a cordon of forty thousand men
round London, capturing the King like a bird taken in a net; granted to
themselves, for their own purposes, twenty thousand pounds out of the
royal revenues; met and utterly routed a little band raised by the Duke
of Ireland with the object of rescuing the sovereign from their power;
impeached those members of the Council who were loyalists and Lollards;
plotted to murder the King and the whole Council, which included near
blood relations of their own; prohibited the possession of any of
Wycliffe's books under severe penalties; murdered three, and banished
two, of the five faithful friends of the King left in the Council. The
Church stood to them above all human ties; and Sir Thomas de Arundel was
ready to say "_Absolvo te_" to every one of them.

This reign of terror is known as the session of the Merciless
Parliament, and it closed with the cruel mockery of a renewal of the
oath of allegiance to the hapless and helpless King. Then Gloucester
proceeded to distribute his rewards. The archbishopric of York was
conferred on Sir Thomas de Arundel, and Gloucester appropriated as his
own share of the rich spoil, the vast estates of the banished Duke