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.