The Lords Appellant were a group of nobles in the reign of King Richard II, who, in 1388,[1] sought to impeach five of the King's favourites in order to restrain what was seen as tyrannical and capricious rule. The word appellant — still used in modern English by attorneys — simply means '[one who is] appealing'. It is the older (Norman) French form of the present participle of the verbappeler, the equivalent of the English 'to appeal'. The group was called the Lords Appellant because its members invoked a procedure under law to start prosecution of the King's unpopular favourites known as 'an appeal': the favourites were charged in a document called an "appeal of treason", a device borrowed from civil law which led to some procedural complications.[2]
They achieved their goals, first establishing a Commission to govern England for one year from 19 November 1386.[3] In 1387, the Lords Appellant launched an armed rebellion against King Richard and defeated an army under Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford at the skirmish of Radcot Bridge, outside Oxford.[4] They maintained Richard as a figurehead with little real power.
In 1389, Richard's uncle, John of Gaunt, returned from Spain and Richard was able to rebuild his power gradually until 1397, when he reasserted his authority and destroyed the principal three among the Lords Appellant.[citation needed][specify] However, in 1399 Richard was deposed by Gaunt's son, Henry of Bolingbroke, partly as a result of the royal confiscation of Gaunt's estate on his death. Bolingbroke succeeded him as Henry IV.
Richard never forgave the Lords Appellant. His uncle Gloucester was murdered in captivity in Calais; it was (and remains) widely believed[weasel words] that he was killed on Richard's orders. The Earl of Arundel was beheaded. Warwick lost his title and his lands and was imprisoned on the Isle of Man until Richard was overthrown by Henry Bolingbroke. The behaviour of the two junior Lords Appellant, Bolingbroke and Mowbray, probably influenced Richard's decision in 1398 to exile them both, and to revoke the permission he had given them to sue for any inheritance which fell due, as it did in relation to Mowbray's grandmother and, more significantly, of Bolingbroke's father, John of Gaunt.
