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.

Richard II and the Lords Appellant

Although the Wonderful Parliament in 1386 tried to curtail the excesses of King Richard II, it was the Merciless Parliament in 1388 that truly forced the king to accept that Magna Carta was no joke and the king did not have supreme authority in the kingdom and was answerable to the parliament. The parliament was requested by a small group called the Lords Appellant, and we should understand their role during this part of Richard's reign before we go on.

The Hundred Years War was still going on in 1386, and England had had two decades of losses. The Wonderful Parliament held Richard's favorites responsible for these military failures and for the egregious taxation used to fund the war. A group of trusted nobles was chosen to take over the management of the kingdom and the king, the Lords Appellant.

The Lords Appellant were:

• Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester; Richard's uncle, who forced him to attend the Wonderful Parliament
• Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel
• Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick
• Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby (another nephew of Woodstock, being John of Gaunt's son)
• Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham

They began their task right after the Wonderful Parliament ended, and the following year (1387) felt it necessary to launch an armed rebellion against Richard because one of his favorites, Robert de Vere, had raised an army for the king. (The illustration shows the Lords Appellant throwing their gauntlets down in front of Richard, but I cannot find an anecdote that explains this Victorian picture.)

In February 1388, the Merciless Parliament met to deal with Richard's favorites, de Vere and Michael de la Pole, Nicholas Brembre (who had been mayor of London several times), Chief Justice Robert Tresilian, and Alexander Neville (Archbishop of York). They were all accused of vice and swaying the king wrongly and lining their own pockets. As a prelate, Neville was only exiled after losing his position and all his estates and possessions, but everyone else was executed.

The executions did not stop there: dozens of members of the royal administration were purged. Finally they came to Simon Burley, who had been the king's father's advisor and was one of the king's regents when he was young. Burley was defended by Edmund Langley, the Duke of York, who was also a son of Edward III and therefore also Richard's uncle. Langley's brother, Thomas of Woodstock, rose to condemn Burley. Richard, who was in attendance of course, spoke up for the first time, and argued with his uncle Woodstock. Woodstock finally told him that he needed to stop defending his friends if he wanted to keep his crown. That made Richard sit back down.

One of the complaints about Richard was that he was a failure at the war with France, and was trying to negotiate a peace. Parliament (and the Lords) preferred military successes over a truce. Although Richard became effectively a puppet under the Lords Appellant, he managed to get revenge on the Lords and Parliament by the Truce of Leulinghem, but that's a story for tomorrow.