appellants
appellants. Richard II's political opponents of 1387–8 are known as the appellants, for it was by means of the legal process of appeal that they proceeded in Parliament against the king's ministers and friends. The king had been humiliated in Parliament in 1386, when his chancellor Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, was impeached. Richard's attempts to restore royal authority in the next year led to a short civil war, in which his favourite Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, was defeated at Radcot Bridge. In the ‘Merciless Parliament’ of February 1388, Richard's five chief opponents, the earls of Gloucester, Arundel, Warwick, Derby, and Nottingham, appealed Suffolk, de Vere, the archbishop of York, Robert Tresilian (the chief justice), and Nicholas Brembre of London, accusing them of treason. The appeal was a long-established process in common law, but had not been employed in this way previously in Parliament. Legal argument was dismissed, and judicial combat rejected; the process permitted no right of reply. Tresilian and Brembre were promptly executed; the archbishop of York was translated to St Andrews, while Suffolk and de Vere both died in exile. In 1397 Richard II revenged himself on the appellants, engineering an appeal against Gloucester, Warwick, and Arundel.
Michael Prestwich
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appellants