The Merciless Parliament does not come to an end with Thomas Usk’s severed head set on London’s Newgate and neither does the Historia, though Fovent’s London narrative now draws to a close. Those persons who have yet to stand trial have little connection with London politics, and Fovent’s enthusiasm seems to wane as they are brought before parliament. First to be dispensed with are the men who met with Richard at Nottingham in August of 1387 to answer the king’s infamous questions to the judges. Fovent condenses the narrative of the proceedings against the judges (Robert Belknap, John Holt, Roger Fulthorp and William Burgh, tried together with John Lokton, sergeantat- law, and John Cary, chief baron of the exchequer), for he neglects to tell us that they first made their appearance on 2 March (before the impeachment trials of Usk and Blake), on which day the Commons demanded their immediate conviction. We learn only from the parliament roll that the judges argued before the Commons that their answers to Richard’s questions had been obtained by coercion, and they insisted that they had been threatened at various points by Neville, de Vere, de la Pole and Tresilian. (Later in the proceedings Thomas Rushook, bishop of Chichester and the king’s confessor, is also accused of participating in the coercion, and the articles of impeachment specifically charge him with intimidating the judges at Nottingham.) This disclosure seems to have given Lords in parliament reason for pause, for judgment in the case was postponed to allow for a thorough examination and further discussion of the matter.

Fovent only writes of the sentencing that took place four days later when, on 6 March, the judges are condemned for ‘their council and judgment as previously noted against all the commissioners and their followers during that evil hour at Nottingham’. But our pamphleteer has not lost his taste for controversy and the naked display of emotion, for he tells us that the clergy protested to the king regarding ‘the scandalousness of the death of judges’ (de scandelosa morte justicarii). Other churchmen and government officials soon joined the clergy in their protest, and ‘with a heavy heart and light foot, appeared in parliament presenting a tearful complaint’.