In the autumn of 1399 the English people deposed their king. They were old hands at this; not for the first, nor for the last, time, the English shocked their neighbours by the way they treated the Lord's anointed. It was because they were such experienced deposers that the English political class knew the correct formalities; how to construct the process so that it would have the maximum durability, and be least open to challenge. The moral is: if you want to know how to get rid of your ruler, ask an Englishman. So we should pay particular attention to the well-documented procedure of deposition. The ‘Manner of King Richard's Renunciation’ tells us that on 28 September 1399 ‘the following people were … sent to King Richard who was then in the Tower of London: the archbishop of York and the bishop of Hereford for bishops’, then two earls, two barons, two knights, finally ‘Master Thomas Stow and Master John Burbach, doctors’, along with the notaries who would record the proceedings. The next evening another representative group went to the Tower: the duke of Lancaster, two earls, ‘a large number of other barons, knights and esquires’, with the two archbishops, one bishop, ‘the abbot of Westminster, the prior of Christchurch Canterbury, and various other spiritual clerks’. The act of renunciation was witnessed by the same additions of the abbot of Westminster and the prior of Christchurch Canterbury. The conclusion to be drawn from this account is that for such an important event the whole community of the realm had to be involved, and that included bishops, heads of religious houses, and members of the lower clergy – in this case Burbach and Stow.

It is a point we do well to remember when discussing the politics of this period, and the working of parliament in particular, and it serves as sufficient reason for examining the clerical element in parliament during Henry IV's reign. The results of such enquiry are uneven, for there is abundant material about some aspects of the quest, but the sources are silent about others. Nevertheless, even posing the questions is a valuable exercise, reminding us of the distinctiveness of the late-medieval political scene, for in the early fifteenth century parliament operated within a religious framework; in a modest way it still does.