by Dan Jones
The sight of a king – and a man – brought so low left a deep impression on Usk. ‘Seeing … the troubles of his soul,’ he wrote, ‘and seeing that none of those who had been deputed to wait upon him were in any way bound to him, or used to serving him, but were strangers who had been sent there simply to spy on him, I departed much moved at heart, reflecting to myself on the glories of his former state and on the fickle fortune of the world.’
Usk did not detail which tales of royal misery Richard had recounted. But it is not hard to guess at a few whom he might have mentioned: his hero Edward the Confessor, who had suffered several rebellions, and died in the aftermath of a Northumbrian revolt; King John, the first of the Plantagenets to have his royal prerogative forcibly circumscribed by the will of the barons; Henry III, who was made a prisoner of his own barons; Edward II, Richard’s great-grandfather, whom he had tried to rescue from the ignominy of history by applying to the pope for his canonization in 1395.
Richard recounted the stories in a state of great self-pity. But in his own way, he had been a worse king than all of them combined. Like the Confessor, he had considered his own divinity above the practical necessity of having children to continue his royal line. Like Henry III he had obsessed over holy rituals, while allowing English conquest in France to collapse. Like John, he had tyrannized his people. Like Edward II, he had antagonized the house of Lancaster, stolen land from his nobles, tainted politics with treachery and proven himself incorrigible over the lengthy course of a reign in which he had been offered many chances to reform his ways. More generally, he had listened to the counsel of unworthy advisers and raised low-born men to the ranks of the nobility. He had attacked and plundered his subjects’ property, rather than defending it. He had built himself up as an antagonistic private lord, rather than fulfilling his higher duty to be a source of public lordship. He had believed that kingship was about prestige, instead of leadership. And he had ended up with nothing.
Nine days after Usk dined with the king, on Tuesday 30 September, the lords of England gathered with an assembly of the commons at Westminster Hall. It was a parliament in all but name – although without the king’s authority it could not claim full parliamentary status. An empty throne, draped with gold cloth, stood at one end of the hall. Richard remained in the Tower of London.
Richard Scrope, archbishop of York, stood up and read a statement to the assembly. Richard, he said, had agreed to resign the Crown on the grounds of his own inadequacy. Thomas Arundel, now restored as archbishop of Canterbury, stood and asked if the people would accept this. According to the official record, each lord agreed. Then the commons shouted their assent.
Had Richard really resigned? Certainly it seems that he had no choice. The official record was made to give the impression that he gave up his Crown willingly, saying that he had ‘asserted in his abdication [that] he was worthy to be deposed’. But the Traison et Mort, a loyal source, suggests otherwise. It records a fierce argument between Bolingbroke and Richard, which took place one evening before the ‘parliament’. The latter swore and cursed, and demanded to see his wife, while Bolingbroke refused to release him from the Tower or to do anything else without parliamentary process. According to the Traison et Mort:
The king [was] in great wrath, but he could not help himself, and said to the duke that he did great wrong both to him and to the crown.
The duke replied, ‘We cannot do anything til the parliament meets.’
The king was so enraged by this speech that he could scarcely speak, and paced twenty-three steps down the room without uttering a word; and presently he broke out thus: ‘… you have acknowledged me your king these twenty-two years, how dare you use me so cruelly? I say that you behave to me like false men, and like false traitors to their lord; and this I will prove, and fight four of the best of you, and this is my pledge.’ Saying which, the king threw down his bonnet …
It made no difference. The assembly that met to agree to the king’s deposition moved rapidly through a new and unprecedented legal process. They listened as thirty-three articles of deposition were read out by the bishop of St Asaph. The articles were a litany of Richard’s failings, from the start of his reign to his tyrannical last days. They covered his ‘evil rule’ in the 1380s; his destruction of the Appellants (‘against whom the king was extremely indignant because they wished the king to be under good rule’); his raising of an army against the people under de Vere; his use of the ‘great multitude of malefactors’ from Cheshire against his own subjects; the extortionate selling of pardons; falsification of the parliamentary record; the denial of justice to Bolingbroke; misuse of taxation and loans; a refusal to ‘keep and defend the just laws and customs of the realm’; numerous counts of extortion and deception; removal of the crown jewels to Ireland; breaches of Magna Carta; and a general, withering clause which simply stated that ‘the king was so variable and dissimulating in his words and writings, especially to popes and rulers outside the realm, that no one could trust him’.
After reading the articles, the bishop of St Asaph passed the sentence of deposition. Then Bolingbroke rose from his place in the parliament, crossed himself and claimed the realm as his, saying in English:
‘In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster, challenge this realm of England and the crown with all its members and appurtenances, as I am descended by the right line of the blood coming from the good lord King Henry III, and through that right that God of his grace has sent me, with the help of my kindred and my friends to recover it; the which realm was on the point of being undone for default of governance and undoing of good laws.’
He pulled out Richard II’s signet, showed it to the people of his new kingdom, and took Archbishop Arundel’s hand in his own.
The archbishop of Canterbury led Henry Bolingbroke up towards the golden throne at the front of the hall. He knelt and prayed before it. When he opened his eyes, the archbishops of Canterbury and York took an arm each and seated him on the throne. The great hall of Westminster – the heart of Plantagenet kingship – roared with the acclaim and applause of the lords and commons.
The air in the hall vibrated with the cries and noise of the people of England. The noise rounded upwards, towards the hammer-beam ceiling built by Henry Yevele at such lavish royal expense. It swirled around the decorative white harts that skirted the walls, and rebounded off the statues of the thirteen kings who had ruled England between the Confessor and Richard II. And it reverberated in the ears of the first king of a new dynasty: Henry Bolingbroke, who would become the first king of the house of Lancaster.
A new king had been elected. Or, looked at another way, the Crown of England had been abruptly seized. On 1 October 1399, Richard II was formally and ceremonially stripped of his allegiances and his Crown. Within four months he would be dead, having starved in prison at Pontefract castle. Meanwhile, Henry duke of Lancaster was crowned Henry IV of England on 13 October, the feast day of Edward the Confessor. The choice of date was intended to make a point about Henry’s own royal blood. But it could not conceal the bare facts. After eight generations and 245 years of rule, the unbroken succession of the Plantagenets had ended. Great magnates of the blood royal might now wrestle for the Crown between themselves, as the politics of the day demanded. Richard II, by his folly, his greed, and his terrible, destructive misapprehension of virtually every aspect of kingship bar those that met his hunger for obedience, had cast everything he had inherited onto the bonfire of history.
A new age of English kingship had begun.
Picture Section
Henry I laments the loss of his son and heir William the Aetheling in the White Ship disaster of 1120. Henry’s failure to produce another legitimate male heir resulted in nearly twenty years of civil war in England – known appropriately as ‘The Shipwreck’.
King Henry I mourning, from ‘Chronicle of England’ c.1307–27 by Peter of Langtoft. (© The British Library Board, Royal 20 A. II, f.6v)
Royal writ from Durham. (Reproduced by permission of the Chapter of Durham Cathedral, 2.1.Reg.2)
Henry II in dispute with Thomas Becket. The disastrous failure of the friendship between king and archbishop resulted in the most shocking murder of their age, and the subsequent creation of a cult of national sainthood around Becket.
Henry II and Becket. (akg-images/British Library. Ms. Cotton Claudius D.II, fol.73., 14th century)
Geoffrey Plantagenet, father of Henry II, was described by John of Marmoutier as ‘admirable and likeable … he excelled at arguing … [and was] unusually skilled at warfare’. The best of his descendents shared at least two of these qualities.
Geoffrey Plantagenet, enamelled copper from his tomb. (The Art Archive/Musée de Tessé, Le Mans/Kharbine-Tapabor/Collection CL)
Images like this of Richard the Lionheart left jousting with Saladin during the Third Crusade became a widely repeated symbol of Plantagenet family lore and English history during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In fact, despite their mutual admiration, the two great warriors never met in person.
Richard and Saladin from ‘The Luttrel Psalter’, 1320–40. (The Art Archive/British Museum)
A French chronicle depicts the fall of Acre in 1191, one of Richard I’s most significant victories during the Third Crusade. The city was in Christian hands for precisely 100 years, and Edward I visited in the 1270s.
The Capture of Acre from ‘Chroniques de France ou de St Denis’, c.1325–50. (Scala, Florence/Heritage Images)
Magna Carta was a peace treaty which failed to end civil war between King John and his barons. Nevertheless, the principles of justice and government it evoked would be central to every political crisis of the Plantagenet age.
Lower section of Magna Carta. (The Print Collector/HIP/Topfoto)
Simon de Montfort is hacked to pieces at the battle of Evesham in 1265. De Montfort’s prickly opposition to Henry III has given him the reputation as the father of English parliamentary democracy.
Death of Simon de Montfort from ‘Chronica Roffense’ by Matthew Parris, early 14th century. (The British Library/HIP/Topfoto)
Château Gaillard: the magnificent castle built on the Seine by Richard I to protect the Norman border with France. Supposedly unconquerable, it was taken from John by Philip II Augustus in 1204 during the fall of Normandy.
Chateau Gaillard. (© Eye Ubiquitous/Superstock)
Edward I, a legal reformer and Hammer of the Scots, was the most physically intimidating of the Plantagenet kings. Tall and fierce-tempered, it was said that he once scared a man to death. Here, seemingly in milder mood, he addresses his court. He holds a sword of conquest, while tonsured clerks take note of his utterances.
Edward I at court from Miscellaneous chronicles, c.1280–1300. (akg-images/British Library, Ms. Cotton Vitellius A. XIII, fol.6 v)
Edward I built a ring of expensive fortresses to enforce his conquest of Wales. Conwy was completed in 1287. The castleworks and town fortifications cost around £14,500. In 1399 Richard II met the earl of Northumberland at Conwy to negotiate the relinquishing of the Plantagenet crown to Henry Bolingbroke.
Conwy Castle. (© Buddy Mays/Alamy)
Edward II never grasped the art of kingship. He was mocked and feared in equal measure, and surrounded himself with loathsome favourites, including Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser the Younger. His tomb (pictured) is in Gloucester Abbey, rather than the Plantagenet mausoleum at Westminster.
Tomb effigy detail showing face of Edward II. (© Angelo Hornak/Corbis)
Isabella of France, queen consort of England, was known as the She-Wolf of France. Her father and all three of her brothers were French kings. With her lover Roger Mortimer she helped topple her husband Edward II from the English throne, and then ruled England for three years in the name of her son Edward III.
Isabella of France, Queen Consort of England, from ‘Chroniques’ by Jean Froissart 1337–1400. (Mary Evans Picture Library)
The Wilton Diptych shows Richard II as he saw himself: divinely anointed and protected by the saints, including the Virgin Mary, Edward the Confessor, John the Baptist and St Edmund.
‘The Wilton Diptych’, c.1395–99. (© The National Gallery, London/Scala, Florence)
Medieval naval battles were rare and, when they did occur, chaotic. Nevertheless, the battle of Sluys in June 1340, depicted here, was one of the first English successes in the Hundred Years War.
The Battle of Sluys from ‘Chroniques’ by Jean Froissart, 1337–1400. (White Images/Scala, Florence)
Edward III wearing the blue robes of the Order of the Garter. This band of brothers bound England’s aristocrats together in the cause of war under a code of knightly chivalry, and reduced the political pressure exerted on Edward by the outrageous cost of his campaigns in France.
Edward III in Garter robes from William Bruges’s Garter Book, c.1440–50. (© The British Library Board, Stowe 594, f.7v)
Henry of Grosmont, duke of Lancaster, was Edward III’s greatest friend and – along with the Black Prince – the king’s most trusted general. Here, like Edward, he wears his Garter robes.
Henry of Grosmont from William Bruges’s Garter Book, c.1440–50. (© The British Library Board, Stowe 594 f.8)
Edward III’s third surviving son, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, loomed large in the reign of his nephew Richard II. A divisive character in his life, his death in February 1399 prompted his son Henry Bolingbroke’s invasion of England and the final fall of the Plantagenet Crown.
John of Gaunt, portrait attributed to Lucas Cornelisz. (Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library)
CONCLUSION
At the time of his usurpation, Henry IV was likened by his staunch supporter Archbishop Arundel to Judas Maccabaeus, the popular biblical hero who had led God’s chosen people in rebellion against their oppressors, driven the iniquitous out of Jerusalem and repurified the Temple. It was a pointed analogy: like Henry, Maccabaeus had risen up to lead his people thanks to a blend of personal valour and military genius. He was a king who had earned his status by his righteousness, rather than by birth alone.
The beginning of Henry’s reign brought with it an intense propaganda drive, intended to emphasize the new king’s sanctity as well as his pragmatic suitability for office. Not only was he crowned on St Edward’s Day 1399; Henry was also anointed at his coronation with the vial of holy oil that had supposedly been given to Archbishop Thomas Becket by the Virgin Mary and which had subsequently come into the possession of the new king’s grandfather – Edward III’s great war captain, Henry Grosmont. At the feast that celebrated Henry’s coronation there was a pointed edge to the arrival in Westminster Hall of a knight, Sir Thomas Dymock, who claimed to be the king’s champion and announced to the assembled guests that if anyone disputed Henry’s right to be king of England, then ‘he was ready to prove the contrary with his body, then and there’. No one rose to challenge.
If Henry’s approval as the new king of England seemed indisputable, then Richard of Bordeaux’s death, four months after his deposition, was inevitable. Adam of Usk marvelled at the speed with which the old king had fallen, ‘cast down by the wheel of fortune, to fall miserably in the hands of Duke Henry, amid the silent curses of your people’, and noted that had the king been ‘guided in your affairs by God and by the support of your people, then you would indeed have been deserving of praise’. Indeed, to judge by the ease and speed with which Henry Bolingbroke took the throne, there was as little general mourning for Richard as there had been for Edward II.
Nevertheless, like Edward II, Richard alive presented a focus for plotting by the fallen favourites of the old regime. In December 1399 a plot was hatched by a group of former Ricardians led by the earls of Rutland, Huntingdon, Kent and Salisbury. Th
ey planned to storm Windsor castle on the feast of Epiphany, 6 January 1400 – Richard’s forty-third birthday – disrupting the Twelfth Night celebrations, kidnapping the new king and his son, Prince Harry (who had been created prince of Wales, duke of Aquitaine, Lancaster and Cornwall and earl of Chester), and subsequently setting the old king at his liberty. However, fortune had long deserted Richard and his partisans: the plot was betrayed and easily disrupted. Neither Henry nor the prince was captured, and the rebels scattered across England, attempting unsuccessfully to raise popular rebellion as they went. The earls of Kent and Salisbury were beheaded by angry townsmen in Cirencester, the earl of Huntingdon was beheaded at sunset at Pleshey (on exactly the spot where the earl of Gloucester had been arrested by Richard in 1397), and Sir Thomas Despenser, another conspirator, was killed by the commons at Bristol. Far from a popular rising in favour of the old king, there was spontaneous and widespread rage at the efforts of his former allies to disrupt the English polity once again.