History of Europe

England 1388:when the "impeachment" affected dukes and marquises

Entry taken from the book The Plantagenets

These days a lot is being read and heard about the possibility that the President of the United States Donald Trump will be subjected to an impeachment process known as the impeachment . He would be the third highest US president to go through this process. The previous two, Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton, ended up leaving the process unscathed, while Ricahard Nixon resigned before his dismissal was formalized.

Like so many other institutions and legal figures in the US, its origin goes back to medieval England, where it could not only be applied to the highest representative of the country, but to any civil servant. The first impeachment case it occurred in 1376 and affected Lord Mortimer. But only twelve years later the second process was much more significant and famous.

The young King Richard II ruled the country at the time. He had ascended the throne when he was barely ten years old, on the death of his grandfather Edward III and because the natural heir to the crown, Edward the Black Prince, father of Richard II, had died a year earlier. At only fourteen years old, the new king had to put all the meat on the grill to keep his throne, in the rebellion known as The Peasant's Revolt, which I discussed in a blog post.

These events showed that at the age of fourteen the king had reached maturity and was in a position to lead the country without depending on regents, as he had been doing previously, Richard then surrounded himself of a court of the faithful in which peers of his own age intermingled, such as John Beauchamp, Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford (and nephew of his guardian Sir Aubrey de Vere) or John Salisbury, with veterans who had served his grandfather and his father as Sir Simon Burley and Michael de la Pole. Meanwhile, the influence of his father's brothers John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, Edmund Langley, Earl of Cambridge and Richard appointed Duke of York, and Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, waned.

Richard II granted new charges to his nobles; De la Pole was made Duke of Suffolk and De Vere received the newly created title of Marquess of Dublin, which meant that in one fell swoop he was placed above the rest of the country's nobles. Afterward, the king took command of an army of fourteen thousand men that headed for Scotland. But the Scots avoided the open battle and burned all the orchards so that the huge English army could not be supplied. Richard II arrived in Edinburgh only to realize that his men were starving and he had to turn around without having achieved anything.

In 1386, amid worrying rumors of an invasion of the country from France, a tumultuous session of Parliament was held. This institution had been evolving since the first call that received that name (in 1236, in the time of Enrique III). As time progressed, Parliament had increased its powers during the reigns of Edward I, Edward II (whom Parliament was about to depose, had he not been forced to abdicate) and Edward III. The collaboration of Parliament was increasingly necessary to pass laws, collect taxes or start wars. But until 1376, whenever Parliament felt that a royal official did not deserve such a position, it was by forcefully convincing the king to depose him.

But in that session of 1386 the Commons refused to speak of any proposal for new campaign taxes on the Continent until a number of royal officials were removed from office as incompetent and negligent . The king reacted furiously by refusing even to meet with the parliamentarians. Faced with an attempt at mediation by the Duke of Gloucester and the Earl of Arundel, Richard II even threatened to ask the King of France for help against the rebels in his own country. It was necessary to remind him of what happened with Edward II for him to accept the reforms proposed by Parliament, which involved the removal of some of his main allies and the submission of all government decisions to the criteria of a council of nine members, which left the king as a figure almost as decorative as when he came to power at the age of ten.

Richard II spent the months following the 1386 parliament traveling the country with his loyalists De la Pole and De Vere, trying to devise a strategy to regain effective power. He entrusted several judges with a legal opinion that sought to substantiate the nullity of what was agreed in Parliament and the consideration as treason of the actions of the main promoters of the agreements reached. This was a very dangerous course of action. The crime of treason was used lightly during the reign of Edward II and caused many executions, so Edward III had limited the definition of this crime in 1351 to attacks or conspiracies against the life of the king and his family and advisers. .

But, on his return to London in December 1387, what Richard II found was a demand from Parliament embodied in five noblemen who became known as The Lords Apellant. These five noblemen were Thomas of Woodstock (the King's uncle and Duke of Gloucester), the Earls of Arundel and Warwick, Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, and Henry Bolingbroke (son of John of Gaunt and the King's cousin).

Parliament took the decision to expel and remove from office its most loyal advisers, especially De la Pole and De Vere. He had made the mistake of divorcing his wife, Edward III's granddaughter, to marry a lady-in-waiting to the queen. It was the final blow to be in the crosshairs of the Lords Apellant, since two of them (Thomas de Woodstock and Enrique Bolingbroke) were also descendants of the aforementioned king. In fact, Henry Bolingbroke was with Richard in the Tower of London when the popular rebellion broke out in 1381 and narrowly escaped assassination.

Richard tried to oppose this situation militarily, but neither the county sheriffs nor the citizens of London were willing to provide him with men, as they were with Parliament. And when he asked de Vere for armed help, he found himself betrayed by his own men on his way to London and intercepted by an army under Bolingbroke. He had to flee to France alone and at great risk to his life.

In February 1388, Richard watched helplessly as a session of Parliament, known as "the ruthless parliament", began the process of impeachment, declared traitors and sentenced to death five of his most loyal advisers. De la Pole and de Vere had fled to France, but two of those convicted were executed (one of them had distinguished himself as the judge who sentenced many of the leaders of The Peasant's Revolt to death). Over the following months, The Apellant continued to represent Parliament and win Parliament's approval of the death sentences of members of the King's household, royal advisers and even his old tutor and father's comrade-in-arms Sir Simon Burley. They were all executed in the usual brutal manner, including Burley, despite the fact that both the king and the queen (on her knees) begged for his life to be spared.

With The Apellant's bloodlust sated and the King tied hand and foot by Parliament, the following years were somewhat tranquil for England.

After 1388 Richard seemed to accept the situation of the kingdom. He brought his uncle John of Ghent back to his side and, with his mediation, agreed on the policy of appointing positions and collecting taxes with Parliament without major upheavals until 1396. This in turn led to an improvement in the state of the English economy during those years, as well as a flowering of architecture, painting and literature in the country. In 1394 Richard led a successful expedition to Ireland (the most important by an English king since John the Landless) and a twenty-eight-year truce was reached with France, which included the engagement of King Charles VI's daughter (Elizabeth, aged seven). ) with Ricardo, accompanied by a more than generous dowry.

But while putting a brave face on bad weather and facing some personal losses such as those of his first wife and that of his beloved Richard de Vere, Ricardo was developing more and more inside his desire for revenge against those who had made his reign little less than symbolic... but that's another story.

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Dan Jones. Plantagenets, The Kings Who Made England . Ed. William Collins, London. 1st edition (2103)
Peter Ackroyd. A History of England Volume I (Foundations) .Ed. Mcmillan, London. 1st edition (2011)
Roy Strong. The Story of Britain .Ed. Pimlico, London. 1st edition (1998)
Simon Schama. A History of Britain .BBC Worldwide Limited, London. 1st edition, fourth printing (2000)
Derek Wilson. The Plantagenets, The Kings That Made Britain . Quercus Edition Ltd., London. Ebook edition (2014)