The Merciless Parliament, Part 1

A few years back I offered a brief look at the Lords Appellant, the group put in charge of England because of the excesses in the administration of the king, Richard II. Richard tried to overthrow the Lords Appellant, but they forced Richard to call a parliament session that became known as the Merciless Parliament.

Assembled from 3 February to 4 June in 1388, the goal was to deal with corruption and incompetence. England had been losing territory to France for the past 20 years as part of the Hundred Years War. A parliament two years earlier (called the Wonderful Parliament) had put the blame for losses squarely on Richard's advisors. It was the Wonderful Parliament that had removed Richard from his administrative authority and created the Lords Appellant.

The five Lords Appellant and the Parliament named five advisors of the king who "had to go." They were Michael de la Pole (who had negotiated Richard's marriage to Anne of Bohemia and been made chancellor), Nicholas Brembre, Robert de Vere (Earl of Oxford whom Richard had made Duke of Ireland), Alexander Neville (Archbishop of York), and Chief Justice Robert Tresilian.

They ever all declared a corrupting influence on the still-young king, for  "living in vice, deluding the said king ... embracing the mammon of iniquity for themselves." They were all convicted and sentenced to death without trial. They were not even present when sentence was passed.

Brembre was in London, but fled to Wales when he heard the verdicts. He was arrested and taken to the Tower. As a bishop, Neville could not be executed by a secular court, but he was impoverished and exiled. Tresilian was found hiding in Westminster and dragged into court by a mob. He was right away stripped, hanged, and had his throat cut. De Vere fled to Belgium, and died in 1392 after being injured in a boar hunt (he was 30 years old).

Brembre was brought before the parliament for trial, but was not allowed to hear the charges, and so pled "guilty of nothing." In a treason trial, the king was allowed to speak, but when Richard tried to speak on behalf of his friend, the Lords Appellant (and 300 other members of parliament) threw down their gauntlets (see illustration), threatening armed rebellion against Richard.

Twelve noblemen were put in charge of deterring Brembre's guilt, but except that he was friendly with the king they could find no reason for the death penalty. The Lords Appellant, wanting blood, spoke to the guild leaders of London to find cause, but that turned up nothing useful. (Maybe they should have asked Brembre's new "friend," Thomas Usk, who was good at turning state's evidence.) They finally called London's current mayor, the goldsmith Sir Nicholas Twyford, who had lost the mayoral election to Brembre earlier when Brembre had armed men chase Twyford's supporters out of the London Guildhall. Through a series of leading questions, the Lords drew from Twyford and London's aldermen details that they used to hang him for treason.

The five advisors were not sufficient to appease the Merciless Parliament, however. The net widened. I'll explain tomorrow.