Soon afterwards the Earl of Oxford[54] went with royal letters into the county of Chester, and led back with him a great armed power of the men of those parts for the destruction of the twelve. But the Duke of Gloucester and the Earls of Derby, Arundel, Nottingham, and Warwick were forewarned thereof, and arrayed in a glorious host before the men of Chester could reach the King, they routed the earl's army on the eve of St. Thomas the Apostle [December 20] at Radcot Bridge in Oxfordshire. And the earl himself they drove in flight beyond hope of return; for he died beyond seas....
At that time, I, the writer of this chronicle, was at Oxford an "extraordinary" in canon law, and I saw the host of the five lords march through the city on their way to London from the battlefield; whereof the Earls of Warwick and Derby led the van, the Duke of Gloucester the main body, and the Earls of Arundel and Nottingham the rear.
The Mayor of London, hearing of their coming, sent forth to them the keys of the city, and thereafter those same five lords did, on the feast of St. John the Evangelist [December 27], blockade the Tower of London till it yielded: then straightway they placed the King, who was therein, under new governance, and delivered his fawning councillors into divers prisons until the next following Parliament.
FOOTNOTES:
[52] She died in 1385: hence the chronicler must be in error.
[53] Namely, the eleven.
[54] Robert de Vere.
THE MERCILESS PARLIAMENT (February, 1388).
Source.—William Caxton, The Polychronicon (published 1482), ii., fols. 396b, 397.
In the eleventh year of his reign was the arising of certain lords in England in destruction of rebels, etc., that is to say Sir Thomas Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, Sir Richard, Earl of Arundell, Sir Richard, Earl of Warwick, Sir Harry of Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, and Sir Thomas Mowbray, Earl Marshall. These five lords understood the mischief and government of the King's Council, wherefore they, that were that time of the King's Council, fled out of the land, that is to say, Master Alexander Nevill, Archbishop of York, Sir Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk and Chancellor of England, and the Marquis of Dublin, Sir Robert de Vere. These three lords came never again into England, for they died beyond the sea. These five lords abovesaid made a Parliament at Westminster and there they took Sir Robert Tresilian, justice, Sir Nicholas Brember, knight and citizen of London, Sir John Salisbury, knight, and Uske Serjeant, with other more which were judged to death and were drawn to Tyburn and there hanged. Also in the same Parliament, Sir Simon Burley, Knight of the Garter, Sir John Beauchamp, knight, steward of the King's house, and Sir John Berneis were beheaded at Tower Hill. Also Richard Belknap, John Holt, John Cary, William Burgh, Robert Frilthorp, and John Lockton, justices, were exiled into Ireland, there for to dwell all their lifetime.