*** Rymer, vol. i. p. 795. Brady's Appeals, No. 211, 212. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 63.
All the officers of the crown and of the household were named by him, and the whole authority, as well as arms of the state, was lodged in his hands: he instituted in the counties a new kind of magistracy, endowed with new and arbitrary powers, that of conservators of the peace;[*] his avarice appeared bare-faced, and might induce us to question the greatness of his ambition, at least the largeness of his mind, if we had not reason to think that he intended to employ his acquisitions as the instruments for attaining further power and grandeur. He seized the estates of no less than eighteen barons as his share of the spoil gained in the battle of Lewes: he engrossed to himself the ransom of all the prisoners; and told his barons, with a wanton insolence, that it was sufficient for them that he had saved them by that victory from the forfeitures and attainders which hung over them:[**] he even treated the earl of Glocester in the same injurious manner, and applied to his own use the ransom of the king of the Romans, who in the field of battle had yielded himself prisoner to that nobleman. Henry, his eldest son, made a monopoly of all the wool in the kingdom, the only valuable commodity for foreign markets which it at that time produced.[***] The inhabitants of the cinque ports, during the present dissolution of government, betook themselves to the most licentious piracy, preyed on the ships of all nations, threw the mariners into the sea, and by these practices, soon banished all merchants from the English coasts and harbors. Every foreign commodity rose to an exorbitant price, and woollen cloth, which the English had not then the art of dyeing, was worn by them white, and without receiving the last hand of the manufacturer. In answer to the complaints which arose on this occasion, Leicester replied that the kingdom could well enough subsist within itself, and needed no intercourse with foreigners. And it was found that he even combined with the pirates of the cinque ports, and received as his share the third of their prizes.[****]
No further mention was made of the reference to the king of France, so essential an article in the agreement of Lewes; and Leicester summoned a parliament, composed altogether of his own partisans, in order to rivet, by their authority, that power which he had acquired by so much violence, and which he used with so much tyranny and injustice. An ordinance was there passed, to which the king's consent had been previously extorted, that every act of royal power should be exercised by a council of nine persons, who were to be chosen and removed by the majority of three, Leicester himself, the earl of Glocester, and the bishop of Chichester.[*] By this intricate plan of government, the sceptre was really put into Leicester's hands; as he had the entire direction of the bishop of Chichester, and thereby commanded all the resolutions of the council of three, who could appoint or discard at pleasure every member of the supreme council.