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 fact to be open and high treason; and hereupon they award two writs, the one to the sheriff of York, and the other to the sheriffs of Derby, to take the body of the said Sir Thomas, returnable in the king's bench in the month of Easter then ensuing.

And open proclamation was made in Westminster Hall, that upon the sheriffs return, and at the next coming in of the said Sir Thomas, the said Thomas should be convicted of treason, and incur the loss and pain of the same; and all such as should receive him after the proclamation should incur the same loss and pain.