left London for a prolonged period on what contemporaries called his "gyration" around the country. His priority was to consolidate and expand his support in the regions, mostly in the Midlands where loyalty to the Crown was particularly strong. Richard ignored his Parliament-imposed council and, while he was out of London, held councils of his own. Since the royal commission was unable to follow him everywhere, this had the effect of removing the royal household from their oversight. By August 1387, Richard was in Shrewsbury, where he summoned the royal justices. Presenting to them a number of "Questions for the Judges", Richard intended establishing once and for all the parameters and extents of the liberties and prerogatives of the Crown. Moreover, he wanted an explicit condemnation that those responsible for the weakening of his power should be regarded as traitors with a ruling that, therefore, they should die as traitors. Michael de la Pole was personally involved in both drawing up the questions for the judges and subsequently attesting to them. Most importantly, he intended to establish whether the law passed imposing a council upon him was "derogatory...to the lord King." Richard clearly intended, despite the constraints Parliament had set on his authority, to regain political pre-eminence. The judges gave him the answers he required, although the role that Chief Justice Robert Tresilian played in the proceedings is unclear. According to one contemporary, de la Pole personally threatened Tresilian with execution if he refused to seal the document. On the other hand, argues Saul, Tresilian's subsequent loyalty to the King suggests it was Tresilian who drafted the questions to his judges. Saul describes him as "a thinker of some originality", who deliberately turned what had up until then been solely a political controversy in Parliament into a legal dispute to be resolved in court. The King's campaign received further encouragement when Archbishop Neville resigned from the parliamentary council and re-pledged his allegiance to Richard, and by August 1387, de la Pole had returned to his position as the King's closest adviser, entering London with the King on his return to the capital in November that year. Later conflict The Wonderful Parliament has been described as setting "the political stage for the rest of Richard's reign". As the first outright conflict between the King and his magnates, Richard, looking back in 1397, personally saw it as more damaging to him than