er Neville, Archbishop of York, Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk and Chancellor, Robert Tresilian, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, and Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford – had accroached royal power also featured heavily in the Parliament roll reflecting the proceedings of the Merciless Parliament. What is special about the Guild Petitions, though, was that they made this complaint specific to the City of London.
The allegation of accroaching royal power was usually a royal or baronial accusation, for it had been used several times in the past – for example, during the Parliament in which Piers Gaveston was tried – but the guildsmen adapted it to their context to effectively argue their case against Brembre.
What the guildsmen did was equate the accroachment of royal power with the ruin of good governance and the destruction of rules that benefited the profit of the City of London. In their eyes, Brembre left London bereft of any form of moral conduct or good governance. He was the very opposite of what a good leader looked like.
His bad leadership was referred to across several petitions, such as the Goldsmiths’ Petition, the Cordwainers’ Petition, the Armourers’ Petition, the Saddlers’ Petition, and the Painters’ Petition. They described how Brembre had impinged on life in areas such as Cheapside, where he accroached royal power to himself by coming into the area with a great number of armed men, causing the great fear of all the good men of London (see footnote 1).
The Painters’ Petition and Leathersellers and Whittawyers’ Petition go one step further and emphasised how in doing this Brembre had further accroached royal power to himself by imprisoning many men of the City of London without the judgement of the law (see footnote 2). In fact the Leathersellers and Whittawyers made their complaint even more specific and argued that it was indeed many men belonging to the ‘mestiers’ of the City of London, meaning the men who were a part of London’s guild community, whose rights had been infringed by Brembre abusing royal power.
London’s artisanal guilds also stressed that in accroaching royal power to himself, Brembre had acted without the judgement of the law (see footnote 3). As mayor, Brembre not only made the law but was also supposed to uphold the rule of law and serve as an example. In their petition, however, the guildsmen created an alternative story, one in which Brembre had used royal power to subvert civic life.
The murder of John Constantyn
Throughout their petitions, the guildsmen adopted and adapted the language and arguments used by the Lords Appellant to make their grievances specific to a London context. This was even the case when discussing the horrifying murder of John Constantyn, a cordwainer who was executed in 1384 in Cheapside because he revolted against what he believed to be Brembre’s injustices.
At the time of Constantyn’s murder, Brembre portrayed himself as a mayor who acted to strengthen the governance of London and suppress anyone who dared cause havoc in London, yet we see that in the Saddlers’ Petition and the Cordwainers’ Petition an alternative story is told. For the Saddlers and the Cordwainers, Brembre had only been able to do this and execute Constantyn because of accroaching royal power to himself (see footnote 4).
Even those who had showed loyalty met their ends at Brembre’s hands because of how he had used Richard II’s royal power for his own selfish means. As argued within the Embroiderers’ Petition, even individuals who were ‘so bold as to offer the proof for his loyalty’ were imprisoned and treated with contempt (see footnote 5).
He was a man bereft of any obligation to those who lived in London and, thus, someone who the guildsmen portrayed as a man far removed from having the accepted principles and behaviours of a Mayor of London. He was viewed as having abused his rights and powers as mayor, subverting the traditional power dynamic between mayor and king as a way of enforcing his authority.
A clear act of treason
The guildsmen forged a scenario in which by accroaching the 