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 young 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 were all declared a corrupting influence on the 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 determining 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.

Thomas Usk, Civil Servant & Poet

We know little of Thomas Usk's early life except that he was born in London. The name Usk appears in several records, but we cannot link the various folk with that surname together. He became a civil servant and left us some writings. He produced a poem called "The Testament of Love" (the illustration here is from one manuscript). He also wrote a certain amount of biographical detail, from which we know more about his later life.

He admits to having Lollard leanings as a young man, and the populist/Wycliffite leanings of John Northampton were attractive to him. He subsequently hitched his wagon to the rising star of Northampton who became mayor of London in 1381, and was instrumental in implementing Northampton's plans. He even says he supplied money to some of the people in this circle of reformers.

When fortunes change in 1383 with Northampton's defeat by Nicholas Brembre, however, Usk's public identity as a member of the reform crowd made life in England unsafe. He fled to the continent, but had to appeal to his former confederates for money to be able to live abroad. He found that the camaraderie he was experiencing while in England was a one-way street, and the road didn't go in his direction. He had to return to England for lack of funds.

In August 1384, back in England now, he was arrested as an accomplice to the seditious group headed by Northampton and taken to Newgate prison. He was released when he promised to tell everything he knew about the workings of Northampton's administration.

Northampton was brought before the king and council and discovered that the chief witness against him was Usk. Enraged, Northampton denied everything and challenged Usk to single combat. (Northampton had been known to have a temper, and long before becoming mayor he had been involved in public altercations, one of which even led to his imprisonment for. time.)

King Richard II was outraged by this behavior and sentenced Northampton to be hanged. We are told that the intercession of the queen, Anne of Bohemia, turned the sentence to life in prison. This was 18 August. Usk received a pardon from the king on 24 September.

Usk wrote that his new alliances did not seem to trust him, despite his recanting of Lollardy and new loyalty to Brembre. He survived, however, and was named under-sheriff of London in October 1387. Unfortunately, that was not the happy ending he might have hoped for.

Richard had to deal with a rebellion by his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, one of whose principal advisors was Nicholas Brembre. Usk had once again hitched his wagon to the wrong star. He was arrested along with Brembre and others.

This brings us to something that has been mentioned but not described, the Merciless Parliament of 1388. Tomorrow we'll examine that event and the final fate of Thomas Usk.

Criminal Northampton

After the populist mayor of London John Northampton was defeated in the election of 1383 by Nicholas Brembre, Brembre worked to overturn all of Northampton's efforts to help the common people. When Northampton led a large group to protest the return to the status quo, he was arrested and imprisoned in Brembre's house.

The charge was sedition, for speaking against the established order. Northampton and two confederates, John More and Richard Norbury, were tried and found guilty. One of Northampton's servants during his term as mayor, Thomas Usk, turned informant on Northampton.

Northampton appealed to John of Gaunt, but received no support. A death sentence for the three men was commuted to 10 years in prison. To prevent any kind of collusion between them, they were sent to separate facilities, all at least 100 leagues (1 league = 3 miles) outside of London. Northampton wound up at Tintagel.

Northampton only served a couple years: he was pardoned by Richard II (Richard had supported Northampton when running for his first term as mayor, but did not support him against Brembre), but not allowed to return to London.

Then came the Merciless Parliament in 1388, which (among other things) led to the execution of Brembre and Thomas Usk. In 1395 Northampton's London citizenship was restored. The end of his life was comfortable: at his death he left property worth £5000. He was a benefactor of the Charterhouse monastery, a Carthusian establishment. He died in 1398 and was buried in the church of the Hospital of St Mary de Elsyngspital in London.

Who was Thomas Usk, the man who informed on Northampton? He was a minor civil servant, but also a poet, writing a work that was once assumed to have been by Chaucer. I'll tell you more about this minor poet tomorrow.

Nicholas Brembre

Proving that "what goes around comes around"—although we should probably just allude to the medieval concept of the Wheel of Fortune—one-time Nicholas Brembre, who had persecuted former mayor John Northampton, would himself be persecuted by the Merciless Parliament, mentioned here.

Brembre started as a member of the Grocers' Company, one of the Great Twelve Liveries in London, and made a lot of money in the wool trade. Like many other important and active male citizens, he was an alderman, a sheriff, and became mayor (for four terms). 

His origins are unknown, but he married the daughter of a wealthy vintner, and became the guardian of his father-in-law's youngest daughter upon the elder man's death. Brembre owned property in London, including "two large houses and several blocks of shops, four cellars, eleven chambers, two stables, a wharf, and a crane" [source] His many connections to other important guild members and his dominance in the wool trade made him very wealthy and very important to the city. The Comptroller of Customs at the time was Geoffrey Chaucer, who would have overseen Brembre's accounts.

His first term as mayor was in 1377. John of Gaunt had proposed a bill that the mayor of London be replaced with someone appointed by the king. This caused great unrest in London, and riots. The mayor, Adam Staple, was deposed, and the city put Brembre forward as a candidate that Gaunt might approve. That turned into Brembre's first term as mayor. He was succeeded by William Walworth in 1381, but Walworth was succeeded by Northampton.

Brembre defeated John Northampton for mayor in 1383.

Northampton had challenged the established order and made helping the common people his goal. At a time when the merchant guilds were some of the most powerful political as well as economic influences, Northampton broke up their monopolies, which made the guild leaders (like Brembre) his enemies.

Brembre's return to the office meant overturning Northampton's reforms and restoring monopolies. Northampton led a large protest against the changes brought about by Brembre, an assembly of about 500 people marching through the city. Brembre and his people confronted them, and Northampton was told to accompany Brembre. Northampton refused, and was arrested for sedition and imprisoned in Brembre's house.

Northampton's friend John Constantine organized a general strike: several shops closed in protest of Brembre's policies. Brembre had Constantine executed for insurrection. (The illustration is Brembre's petition to the Crown in April 1384 to have his decision about Constantine's fate ratified.)

As for Northampton, we'll follow up on his fate next time with a third installment on the man who tried to help his fellow man against the power of the wealthy.

Mayor Northampton

Despite his past as a troublemaker being involved in public brawls, even being imprisoned in the Tower for a time because of one in 1371, John Northampton became an Alderman for the Cordwainer Ward in 1375 to 1377, and was a member of Common in 1376 during the Good Parliament, helping to impeach Richard Lyons. In 1376 he also became one of the two annually elected sheriffs of London.

Then he became Mayor of London in 1381 for two years. He was a populist at a time when the common people felt they were being neglected and taken advantage of by the ruling class and the wealthy. John's term was distinguished by attempts to help the citizens. He opposed monopolies in the selling of fish, bread, ale, wine, and poultry, allowing tradesmen from outside the city to compete with London merchants.

He also made a decision directly affecting currency. He had £80 minted as 76,000 farthings. A farthing was a quarter of a penny (discontinued in 1961). He insisted that bread be sold in measures that allowed a person to buy an amount of bread for a single farthing. This was a huge boon to those at the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Tradesmen were ordered to accept farthings as payment.

He also made ordinances against fraud and deceit in business; see recent posts here and here for examples of his administration punishing fraud and unfair business practices. He also made laws against prostitution.

Unfortunately, populist policies are difficult to maintain in a monarchy, even after the enormous movement in 1381 that we call the Peasants' Revolt. In the mayoral election of 1383, John Northampton was replaced by Nicholas Brembre, who was an ally of King Richard II, the boy king who had survived and suppressed the Peasants' Revolt.

Brembre had Northampton arrested for sedition, that is, speaking out against the established order of things. Northampton was accused of provoking an insurrection.

Before we go on and see Northampton's fate, I want to talk about Brembre, who was a very influential figure in London. See you next time.

(In lieu of any available pictures of John Northampton, the illustration is of one of the most famous mayors of London, Dick Whittington.)

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.