A Child's History of England.93

At last the good Queen died, and then the King, desiring to take a second wife, proposed to his council that he should marry Isabella, of France, the daughter of Charles the Sixth: who, the French courtiers said (as the English courtiers had said of Richard), was a marvel of beauty and wit, and quite a phenomenon - of seven years old. The council were divided about this marriage, but it took place. It secured peace between England and France for a quarter of a century; but it was strongly opposed to the prejudices of the English people. The Duke of Gloucester, who was anxious to take the occasion of making himself popular, declaimed [抨击] against it loudly, and this at length [at last] decided the King to execute the vengeance he had been nursing [心怀] so long.

to the prejudice of sth: with the result that sb's interests are harmed

He went with a gay [欢快的] company [一群人] to the Duke of Gloucester's house, Pleshey Castle, in Essex, where the Duke, suspecting nothing, came out into the court-yard to receive his royal visitor. While the King conversed [talk] in a friendly manner with the Duchess, the Duke was quietly seized, hurried away, shipped for Calais, and lodged in the castle there. His friends, the Earls of Arundel and Warwick, were taken in the same treacherous manner, and confined to their castles. A few days after, at Nottingham, they were impeached of high treason. The Earl of Arundel was condemned and beheaded, and the Earl of Warwick was banished. Then, a writ [书面命令] was sent by a messenger to the Governor of Calais, requiring him to send the Duke of Gloucester over to be tried. In three days he returned an answer that he could not do that, because the Duke of Gloucester had died in prison. The Duke was declared a traitor, his property was confiscated [没收] to the King, a real or pretended confession he had made in prison to one of the Justices of the Common Pleas [普通法庭的法官] was produced against him, and there was an end of the matter. How the unfortunate duke died, very few cared to know. Whether he really died naturally; whether he killed himself; whether, by the King's order, he was strangled, or smothered between two beds (as a serving-man of the Governor's named Hall, did afterwards declare), cannot be discovered. There is not much doubt that he was killed, somehow or other, by his nephew's orders. Among the most active nobles in these proceedings [a series of activities] were the King's cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, whom the King had made Duke of Hereford to smooth down the old family quarrels, and some others: who had in the family-plotting times done just such acts themselves as they now condemned in the duke. They seem to have been a corrupt set of men; but such men were easily found about the court in such days.

a serving-man of the Governor's named Hall: 总督的一个名叫Hall的手下

The people murmured at all this, and were still very sore [hurt and angry] about the French marriage. The nobles saw how little the King cared for law, and how crafty he was, and began to be somewhat afraid for themselves. The King's life was a life of continued feasting and excess [过量]; his retinue [随员], down to the meanest servants, were dressed in the most costly manner, and caroused [痛饮狂欢] at his tables, it is related, to the number of ten thousand persons every day. He himself, surrounded by a body of ten thousand archers, and enriched by a duty [税] on wool which the Commons had granted him for life, saw no danger of ever being otherwise than powerful and absolute [不受约束的], and was as fierce and haughty [趾高气扬] as a King could be.

the Lords and the Commons: 上议院和下议院
otherwise than: in any other manner/way. e.g. You are not allowed to use the building otherwise than as a private dwelling.
saw no danger of being powerful and absolute in any way, at any time. [不确定对不对]