The first thing to know about Thomas Fovent’s pamphlet is that the title is not his own. Historia siue narracio de modo et forma mirabilis parliamenti apud Westmonasterium anno domini millesimo CCCLXXXVJ was added by a rubricator or scribe to the Bodleian Library manuscript of the pamphlet soon after it was completed, for the title is in a late fourteenth century hand. Though richly descriptive, the title is misleading, for Fovent’s subject is not the parliament of 1386 but another parliament altogether, the so-called Merciless Parliament of 1388. The rubricator however seems to have taken this title from the prefatory section of the pamphlet describing the outcome of the Wonderful Parliament of 1386.

No more than eight lines of Fovent’s text recount the proceedings of this parliament in which Michael de la Pole, the chancellor of England, was impeached for what Fovent describes as usurpations and extortions, though the actual charges brought against the chancellor fall under the rubric of fiscal corruption or dereliction of duty. The next twenty lines of the text are concerned with the establishment of a commission by ‘ordinance and statute’ with wide-ranging powers to oversee the business of government for the term of one year. Fovent here includes the language of the statute stipulating that offences against the commission were punishable in the first instance by forfeiture and in the second instance by penalty of life and limb. This commission is much more important to Fovent’s narrative than the impeachment of Michael de la Pole, for his recurring characterization of it as the instrument of parliament’s authority to oversee the task of government reform further suggests that he crafted his pamphlet to advocate the reformist agenda, and not simply to mirror the politics of partisanship.

While Fovent writes very little about the impeachment of de la Pole, historians have long regarded the Wonderful Parliament as the first significant political defeat suffered by Richard II, sparking the bitter feud between the Ricardian faction and the Appellants that would come to shape the ruinous course of the king’s reign. This view is partly influenced by the colourful account in Knighton’s Chronicle of the notorious showdown that took place at Eltham between Richard on the one side, and his uncle, the duke of Gloucester, and Thomas Arundel, bishop of Ely, on the other.