of government quickly shaded into what Richard saw as encroachment
on his royal state. By their revolt, parliament was told, the common
people had committed a horrible offence against ‘God, the peace of the
land, and the regality, state, dignity and crown (le Regalie, Estat,
Dignitee, et la Coroune) of the lord king’, and they had coloured it by
saying that ‘they would have no king but Richard’—as if they could do
otherwise. Parliament should know that in order to stop the clamour
the king had been forced to grant liberty to the villeins, but he had
revoked his charters ‘as soon as he was restored to his power and
supreme state (primer estat) of king’. Asked if this repeal pleased them,
the prelates and burgesses said it was well done, adding that such an
enfranchisement could in any case not have been granted without
their assent, since theirs was the greatest interest. In response to the
treasurer’s instruction to go back to their meeting-place in the chapter-
house of Westminster Abbey and consider how to provide for ‘the great
necessity of the king’ in the maintenance ‘of his state and of his house-
hold (de son Estat et de son Hostiel)’, the wars, and other things, the
Commons asked to consult with a delegation of lords on the matters
‘which touched so highly the state of the realm’, and having done so,
they said that the king had been right to grant pardons for wrongs com-
mitted during the troubles as a way of restoring calm.^41
But the Commons further asked that the situation should be dis-
cussed separately by the prelates, the lords temporal, the knights, the
justices, ‘and all other estates’, who should report their advice to the
Commons so that a remedy could be ordained, whereupon the king
insisted that ‘the ancient custom and form of parliament must be
observed’, by which the Commons gave their advice to king and lords
for them to decide and not e contra. The Commons then said that after
diligent consultation with prelates and lords it seemed to them that, if
the governance of the realm was not quickly amended, the realm itself
would be utterly lost and destroyed, and king, lords, and commons with
it, such were the defects in that governing (governaill): around the
person of the king and in his household, on account of the outrageous
number of familiars there; in his courts of chancery, king’s bench,
common pleas, and exchequer; and in the country, where there was no
right or law because of the outrageous multitude of maintainers of
quarrels, who behaved like kings, and of purveyors for the king’s house-
hold, who paid the poor commons nothing for the supplies they
requisitioned. Despite the continual levies for the defence of the realm,
the people were no better defended from enemy raids, and their rioting
was explicable. To save ‘the estate and dignity’ of the lord king and ‘the
The contested state of Richard II 265(^41) RPiii. 98–100; SRii. 20 (v); N. Saul, Richard II(New Haven and London: Yale UP,
1997), 76–9.