Shakespeare's Kings

by John Julius Norwich

  It should be emphasized that neither Mowbray, de Vere - despite his post as hereditary Chamberlain of England - nor any other of the King's favourites wielded any real authority. This, at the time of which we are speaking, was principally in the hands of the Chancellor, Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk; but there was another very real power behind the throne in the person of the Vice-Chamberlain, Richard's old guardian and tutor Sir Simon Burley, now one of the richest men in the kingdom. Burley's influence on the King was exercised not only directly but also through Joan of Kent and, after her death, through the young Queen, whom he had personally brought from Bohemia; both these ladies trusted him absolutely, and Richard himself treated him with a respect that he showed towards no other member of his government.

  And what, it may be asked, of John of Gaunt himself? The Duke of Lancaster remained a powerful figure — in the nature of things he could hardly have been anything else. His diplomatic mission to Scotland had kept him out of the way during the Peasants' Revolt, and its notable if modest success1 had served in some degree at least to diminish his chronic unpopularity; the attacks on his property during the insurrection had also gained him a certain amount of sympathy among the people. He was, however, once again looking towards Spain, where the recent death of Don Enrique of Trastamara - who in 1368 had succeeded John's father-in-law Pedro the Cruel on the throne of Castile2 - had revived all his old hopes of claiming the crown for himself. Accordingly, when Parliament reassembledin the spring of 1382, he appeared before the Commons to seek a guarantee for a loan of £60,000 to equip the necessary army. When this proposal was rejected he put forward another: that the King himself should lead an expeditionary force to France to teach young Charles VI a lesson. Once such a force was in Gascony, as he well knew; there would be little difficulty in taking it across the frontier into Castile. Again, Parliament was unenthusiastic. One more opportunity arose the following October, when the Bishop of Hereford suggested two alternative ways of dealing with England's enemies abroad: either the proposed Spanish expedition - which could now be dignified with the title of crusade, the new Castilian King, Juan I, having given his support to Clement VII as Pope - or another crusade

  1. He had succeeded in negotiating a form of truce with Scotland, lasting to 2

  February 1383.

  2. See pp. 44-5.

  against the Clementists in France and Flanders, to be led by Henry Despenser, Bishop of Norwich.

  For a moment it looked as though Gaunt was to have his way after all; unfortunately for him, it was at this very moment that a French army invaded Flanders, invested Ypres and Bruges-where it impounded all the goods of the local English merchants — and brought the wool trade, one of the principal sources of royal revenue, to a virtual standstill. Once again a French invasion of England seemed a strong possibility. John of Gaunt and the Castilian schismatics were forgotten; all eyes turned to the Bishop of Norwich. From the outset, Despenser had determined that his would be a real crusade, fighting under the auspices of the Church and financed by contributions from the faithful. It was launched in an atmosphere of almost hysterical enthusiasm: Pope Urban had declared a plenary indulgence for everyone who contributed, and it seemed that all the ladies in the land were flinging their gold, silver and jewels into the Bishop's coffers.

  Henry Despenser was a brave man and, having served in Italy under the papal banner, was not without military experience; he had, however, never commanded an army in the field and was totally unfit for the task with which he had been entrusted. Ignoring a last-minute attempt by the King to recall him, he embarked at Sandwich on 16 May 1383, landed at Calais and pressed forward into Flanders, where he joined up with the Flemish forces early in June. At this point his most sensible course would have been to march on Bruges, a relatively easy target; instead, he decided to besiege Ypres - a project which, since his army possessed virtually no siege equipment, was doomed from the start. Many of his more recent recruits, untrained and interested only in plunder, quickly tired of the siege and deserted; and when at the beginning of August word reached him that Philip of Burgundy was on the march with a large army, he gave the signal to retreat. His crusade had achieved precisely nothing except the discredit of the Church, in whose name vast numbers of marauding thugs had pillaged and plundered their way through a friendly country. No one was surprised when, that same autumn, Chancellor de la Pole announced the impeachment of the Bishop and his captains. Despenser was deprived of his temporal possessions, though they were returned to him two years later; the captains — several of whom had accepted bribes from the French, but who had actually fought a courageous rearguard action to cover his precipitate retreat - were sentenced to unexpectedly short terms of imprisonment. All, perhaps, were luckier than they deserved.

  To John of Gaunt, the failure of the Bishop of Norwich's crusade and the consequent humiliation of all those involved must have caused more than a touch of Schadenfreude. He had never given up his plans for an expedition to Castile; indeed, the death of King Ferdinand of Portugal in October 1383- which had resulted in Portugal's abandoning the Clementist cause - had left the hated King Juan more isolated than ever. But after the recent debacle there was clearly no chance of a further grant from Parliament and Gaunt was obliged to bide his time, occupying himself with the quiet diplomacy at which he excelled, first in Flanders where he concluded a truce with Charles VI, and later once again in Scotland.

  It was just as well that he absented himself from London, for his relations with his nephew were now rapidly deteriorating. The principal cause of the trouble seems to have been Richard's favourite Robert de Vere, who lost no opportunity of reminding the King that he was now seventeen, an age at which many sovereigns had shaken off their tutelage, and that it was time to rule on his own account. There was a particularly unfortunate incident at Salisbury, where Parliament met in April 1384 and a Carmelite friar named John Latimer, after saying mass for the King, informed him that Gaunt was plotting to have him murdered. Richard believed him and accused his uncle to his face, but after hearing Gaunt's dignified and convincing denial finally agreed to put Latimer under arrest pending a full inquiry. All would probably have been forgotten had not a group of knights — which included the King's half-brother John Holland — decided to take the law into their own hands. Falling upon Latimer and his escort on their way to his place of imprisonment, they seized him and, in the course of interrogating him, tortured him to death.

  Such, at least, is the accepted version of the story. It may well be, however, that Latimer was killed not that the truth should be discovered, but that it should be concealed: that the unfounded charge - for such it unquestionably was - against Gaunt had been fabricated by de Vere and his cronies in a deliberate attempt to get rid of him. If so, and if the luckless friar had revealed from whom he had heard the story, its originators would have been in serious trouble. Even with Latimer out of the way, the incident was long remembered. Richard did not readily forgive his quick-tempered uncle Thomas of Woodstock, Gaunt's youngest brother, with whom his relations had heretofore been cordial, for having burst into the royal chamber in a fury when he heard the news, swearing that he would kill anyone - the King himself not excepted - who dared to impute treason to the Duke of Lancaster.

  By the time Parliament met again in the autumn of 1384, its members were growing seriously concerned. With every day that passed Richard seemed more headstrong, less inclined to listen to the advice of anyone but his own closed circle of friends and sycophants. After the Peasants' Revolt and the catastrophe of the Norwich crusade, England's reputation abroad was lower than it had ever been; but he was blind to public opinion, domestic and foreign alike. While enjoying to the full the privileges of kingship he appeared utterly oblivious of its responsibilities, continuing to spend money like water and resorting to tantrums at the first breath of criticism. Clearly, he must be given something to do; would it not be best, after all, to yield to the continual pressure of John of Gaunt and to send the
King, at the head of an army, to France? After some discussion a subsidy was granted and, although Richard himself remained unenthusiastic, preparations were begun. Before they had progressed very far, however, the situation in Scotland caused a rapid change of plan.

  If England's relations with her wild and unruly neighbour were better than they had been for many years, credit must go above all to the efforts of John of Gaunt. These were not entirely altruistic - the more settled the situation on the border, the easier it would be for him to launch his long-delayed Spanish expedition - but they had demanded considerable diplomatic skill and had involved him in several acrimonious disputes with the Percys, the Nevills and other powerful magnates of the region. On the expiry of the most recent truce in February 13831 he had travelled north yet again and had actually concluded an agreement with Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, by the terms of which the latter assumed responsibility for the safety of the northern shires in return for a generous subsidy from the King. For Gaunt, this was a remarkable achievement; unfortunately it failed to recommend itself to the French, whose traditional friendship with Scotland - 'the auld

  See p. 75 n.

  alliance' - had long been a vital element in their struggle with England. Early in 1384 Charles VI had already sent a small detachment of troops to strengthen Scottish resolve, and in the spring of the following year these were followed by a much larger company under the command of France's foremost admiral, Jean de Vienne. For some time, too, reports had been reaching London of a third French force - a full-scale army this time — which was gathering at Sluys. If, as seemed likely, Charles VI was preparing a two-pronged pincer attack, with England being invaded simultaneously from north and south, decisive action could no longer be delayed.

  And so, in the summer of 1385, the great expedition that was being prepared for France was suddenly redirected against the Scots. It would have done better to have stayed at home. The fiasco - almost on a par with that of the Norwich crusade - was not entirely the King's fault. He could not, for example, be held responsible for the drunken brawl near York, in which his half-brother John Holland — who had been heavily implicated in the Latimer affair the year before'— killed the heir of the Earl of Stafford; indeed he swore to deal with Holland as a common murderer, and the bitterness between the two is said to have caused the death of their mother Joan of Kent a few weeks later. Nor, having advanced as far as Edinburgh, could he be blamed for his failure to engage the French army; Jean de Vienne, learning of his approach, had moved his men back across the border to the neighbourhood of Carlisle whence, after amusing themselves for a week or two by laying waste the few and primitive villages of Cumberland, they returned to France. But by this time the King too had had enough of Scotland and the Scots; having no desire to sample a Scottish winter, he wanted to go home. He delayed his departure long enough to confer on his two youngest uncles, Edmund of Langley and Thomas of Woodstock, the dukedoms1 respectively of York and Gloucester, and on his faithful Chancellor Michael de la Pole the earldom of Suffolk; then, without

  Until the reign of Edward III the only Duke in England was the King himself, one of whose tides was Duke of Aquitaine. In 1337, however, Edward conferred the Duchy of Cornwall on his eldest son, the Black Prince, and in 1351 he granted that of Lancaster to his second cousin Henry of Grosmont, Earl of Derby, the most faithful (and successful) of his captains, whose daughter Blanche was to be the wife of John of Gaunt. Gaunt was himself to be made a Duke, with his brother Lionel, in 1362. There were no others.

  its having loosed a single arrow, he marched the great army back to London, where it was disbanded.

  For John of Gaunt, who had accompanied his nephew on the campaign - indeed, his own Lancastrian army had accounted for as much as two-thirds of the entire force — but to whose advice the King had pointedly refused to listen, the Scottish expedition only confirmed what he had long suspected: that there was no longer any place for him in England. If he had a future at all it was in the Iberian peninsula where, from his point of view, the situation had continued to improve. With the help of a small English party of volunteers - mainly archers - the Portuguese had succeeded in freeing themselves once and for all from Castilian domination. They asked nothing better than the overthrow of the Clementist King Juan, and had assured Gaunt that they would do everything in their power to achieve it; if he came to claim his rightful crown he would find them brave and faithful allies. Once again Gaunt appeared before Parliament, accompanied now by envoys from Portugal; and this time he found the assembly sympathetic. True, there were other enemies closer at hand: the French were continuing to mass at the Channel ports, and at the present rate it looked as though invasion could not be long delayed. On the other hand a swift and successful campaign beyond the Pyrenees would radically alter the balance of power in western Europe; Charles VI would be obliged to give up his invasion plans and come quickly to terms. On 8 March 1386 Richard in full council recognized his uncle as King of Castile, and on 9 July Gaunt sailed with his army from Plymouth. It need hardly be said that his mistress Katherine Swynford and their four illegitimate children remained behind, as did his eldest son Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, whom he had charged to watch over his personal interests while he was away; with him, on the other hand, went his Spanish wife Constance and their three daughters, Philippa, Elizabeth and Catherine. Elizabeth had recently married Sir John Holland, constable of the army and the King's half-brother, now back in favour after the fracas at York; as for Philippa and Catherine, if anyone questioned the wisdom of taking two young unmarried girls on a distant campaign, their father's reasons were soon made clear enough.

  It seems extraordinary, in retrospect, that the Duke of Lancaster should have been allowed to leave the country with a sizeable army at precisely the moment that a huge French army was gathering at Sluys for an invasion from across the Channel. As the summer took its course all the coastal towns of the south-east were put on the alert, with orders to repair their walls as necessary and to keep a close watch for anything untoward at sea. But September came and went without any attempt at a landing, and by the time Parliament met at Westminster on i October it was clear that none could be expected that year and that, in the words of one recent historian, 'the luxury of a domestic crisis might safely be enjoyed'.1 Tension, nevertheless, was running high, and tempers were correspondingly short — particularly after the Chancellor * Michael de la Pole, now Earl of Suffolk, had demanded yet another huge subsidy for the defence of the realm. High taxation is always unpopular; a scapegoat had to be found somewhere, and Suffolk was held responsible for all England's misfortunes. Lords and Commons together sent a delegation to the King in his Palace of Eltham2 calling for the Chancellor's dismissal, together with that of the Treasurer, John Fordham, Bishop of Durham. The message may have been a trifle peremptory, but the delegates were certainly not prepared for the King's reply. At Parliament's request, he told them, he would not remove a scullion from his kitchen.

  It was a characteristically foolish reaction: Richard had antagonized the estates unnecessarily, while in no way deflecting them from their purpose. They could hardly have expected him to obey their subsequent summons to appear before them in person, but eventually a compromise was reached, the King agreeing to receive a deputation of forty knights at Eltham to hear their complaints. He would certainly have found the forty easier to deal with than the two who finally came in their stead: his uncle the Duke of Gloucester, and the latter's close friend and associate Thomas Arundel, Bishop of Ely, brother of the hated Earl Richard. Such men were not to be intimidated; and Gloucester in particular - now thirty-one and twelve years older than the King - had no intention of allowing himself to be pushed aside by the arrogant and

  A. Steel, Richard II, p. 120.

  The old moated palace of Eltham still stands, a mile or two south-east of Greenwich. Although a royal residence since the days of Edward III, it was largely rebuilt by Edward IV in the 1470s; from this period dates the Great Ha
ll with its tremendous hammerbeam roof. Of the building Richard knew, little or nothing now remains.

  effeminate young striplings with whom his nephew chose to surround himself. His anger had been further increased a day or two previously when Richard had, in his eyes, cheapened his own recently acquired title by making Robert de Vere Duke of Ireland - dukedoms, as the King very well knew, being normally reserved for princes of the blood. Making it clear from the outset that he spoke not just for himself but on behalf of Lords and Commons alike, Gloucester reminded the King that he was legally obliged to summon Parliament once a year and to be present himself at its deliberations; if he were not, it would be invalid and its members could disperse after forty days. Richard at first tried to bluster. Accusing his uncle of plotting a rebellion, he threatened to call his kinsman, the King of France, to his aid - to which Gloucester merely pointed out that if he were to do so, Charles would seize the opportunity to destroy not the King's enemies, but the King himself. If Richard wished to keep his crown, he must mend his ways. Not only must he dismiss Suffolk and Fordham; he must drastically reduce taxation, rid his court of his vain, vapid and insanely extravagant henchmen and govern as a responsible monarch should. If he did not, Parliament had a remedy in its own hands, sanctified 'by ancient statute and recent precedent'.