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= Richard_II_ =
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Introduction
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Richard II (6 January 1367 - ), also known as Richard of Bordeaux, was
King of England from 1377 until he was deposed in 1399. He was the son
of Edward, Prince of Wales (later known as the Black Prince), and
Joan, Countess of Kent. Richard's father died in 1376, leaving Richard
as heir apparent to his grandfather, King Edward III; upon the
latter's death, the 10-year-old Richard succeeded to the throne.
During Richard's first years as king, government was in the hands of a
series of regency councils, influenced by Richard's uncles John of
Gaunt and Thomas of Woodstock. England at that time faced various
problems, most notably the Hundred Years' War. A major challenge of
the reign was the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, and the young king played
a central part in the successful suppression of this crisis. Less
warlike than either his father or grandfather, he sought to bring an
end to the Hundred Years' War. A firm believer in the royal
prerogative, Richard restrained the power of the aristocracy and
relied on a private retinue for military protection instead. In
contrast to his grandfather, Richard cultivated a refined atmosphere
centred on art and culture at court, in which the king was an elevated
figure.
The King's dependence on a small number of courtiers caused discontent
among the nobility, and in 1387 control of government was taken over
by a group of aristocrats known as the Lords Appellant. By 1389
Richard had regained control, and for the next eight years governed in
relative harmony with his former opponents. In 1397, he took his
revenge on the Appellants, many of whom were executed or exiled. The
next two years have been described by historians as Richard's
"tyranny". In 1399, after John of Gaunt died, the King disinherited
Gaunt's son Henry Bolingbroke, who had previously been exiled. Henry
invaded England in June 1399 with a small force that quickly grew in
numbers. Meeting little resistance, he deposed Richard and had himself
crowned king. Richard is thought to have been starved to death in
captivity, although questions remain regarding his final fate.
Richard's posthumous reputation has been shaped to a large extent by
William Shakespeare, whose play 'Richard II' portrayed Richard's
misrule and his deposition as responsible for the 15th-century Wars of
the Roses. Modern historians do not accept this interpretation, while
not exonerating Richard from responsibility for his own deposition.
While probably not insane, as many historians of the 19th and 20th
centuries believed him to be, he may have had a personality disorder,
particularly manifesting itself towards the end of his reign. Most
authorities agree that his policies were not unrealistic or even
entirely unprecedented, but that the way in which he carried them out
was unacceptable to the political establishment, leading to his
downfall.
Early life
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Richard of Bordeaux was the younger son of Edward, Prince of Wales,
and Joan, Countess of Kent. Edward, eldest son of Edward III and heir
apparent to the throne of England, had distinguished himself as a
military commander in the early phases of the Hundred Years' War,
particularly in the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. After further military
adventures, however, he contracted dysentery in Spain in 1370. He
never fully recovered and had to return to England the next year.
Richard was born at the Archbishop's Palace of Bordeaux, in the
English principality of Aquitaine, on 6 January 1367. According to
contemporary sources, three kings, "the King of Castile, the King of
Navarre and the King of Portugal", were present at his birth. This
anecdote, and the fact that his birth fell on the feast of Epiphany,
was later used in the religious imagery of the Wilton Diptych, where
Richard is one of three kings paying homage to the Virgin and Child.
Richard's elder brother, Edward of Angoulême, died near his sixth
birthday in 1370. The Prince of Wales finally succumbed to his long
illness in June 1376. The Commons in the English Parliament genuinely
feared that Richard's uncle, John of Gaunt, would usurp the throne.
For this reason, Richard was quickly invested with the princedom of
Wales and his father's other titles.
On 21 June 1377, King Edward III, who was for some years frail and
decrepit, died after a 50-year reign. This resulted in the 10-year-old
Richard succeeding to the throne. He was crowned on 16 July at
Westminster Abbey. Again, fears of John of Gaunt's ambitions
influenced political decisions, and a regency led by the King's uncles
was avoided. Instead, the King was nominally to exercise kingship with
the help of a series of "continual councils", from which Gaunt was
excluded.
Gaunt, together with his younger brother Thomas of Woodstock, Earl of
Buckingham, still held great informal influence over the business of
government, but the King's councillors and friends, particularly Sir
Simon de Burley and Robert de Vere, 9th Earl of Oxford, increasingly
gained control of royal affairs.
In a matter of three years, these councillors earned the mistrust of
the Commons to the point that the councils were discontinued in 1380.
Contributing to discontent was an increasingly heavy burden of
taxation levied through three poll taxes between 1377 and 1381 that
were spent on unsuccessful military expeditions on the continent. By
1381, there was a deep-felt resentment against the governing classes
in the lower levels of English society.
Peasants' Revolt
==================
Whereas the poll tax of 1381 was the spark of the Peasants' Revolt,
the root of the conflict lay in tensions between peasants and
landowners precipitated by the economic and demographic consequences
of the Black Death and subsequent outbreaks of the plague. The
rebellion started in Kent and Essex in late May, and on 12 June, bands
of peasants gathered at Blackheath near London under the leaders Wat
Tyler, John Ball, and Jack Straw. John of Gaunt's Savoy Palace was
burnt down. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury, who was also
Lord Chancellor, and Lord High Treasurer Robert Hales were both killed
by the rebels, who were demanding the complete abolition of serfdom.
The King, sheltered within the Tower of London with his councillors,
agreed that the Crown did not have the forces to disperse the rebels
and that the only feasible option was to negotiate.
It is unclear how much Richard, who was still only fourteen years old,
was involved in these deliberations, although historians have
suggested that he was among the proponents of negotiations. The King
set out by the River Thames on 13 June, but the large number of people
thronging the banks at Greenwich made it impossible for him to land,
forcing him to return to the Tower. The next day, Friday, 14 June, he
set out by horse and met the rebels at Mile End. He agreed to the
rebels' demands, but this move only emboldened them; they continued
their looting and killings. Richard met Wat Tyler again the next day
at Smithfield and reiterated that the demands would be met, but the
rebel leader was not convinced of the King's sincerity. The King's men
grew restive, an altercation broke out, and William Walworth, the Lord
Mayor of London, pulled Tyler down from his horse and killed him. The
situation became tense once the rebels realised what had happened, but
the King acted with calm resolve and, saying "I am your captain,
follow me!", he led the mob away from the scene. Walworth meanwhile
gathered a force to surround the peasant army, but the King granted
clemency and allowed the rebels to disperse and return to their homes.
The King soon revoked the charters of freedom and pardon that he had
granted, and as disturbances continued in other parts of the country,
he personally went into Essex to suppress the rebellion. On 28 June at
Billericay, he defeated the last rebels in a small skirmish and
effectively ended the Peasants' Revolt. In the following days rebel
leaders, such as John Ball, were hunted down and executed. Despite his
young age, Richard had shown great courage and determination in his
handling of the rebellion. It is likely, though, that the events
impressed upon him the dangers of disobedience and threats to royal
authority, and helped shape the absolutist attitudes to kingship that
would later prove fatal to his reign.
Coming of age
===============
It is only with the Peasants' Revolt that Richard starts to emerge
clearly in the annals. One of his first significant acts after the
rebellion was to marry Anne of Bohemia, daughter of Charles IV, Holy
Roman Emperor, on 20 January 1382. It had diplomatic significance; in
the division of Europe caused by the Western Schism, Bohemia and the
Holy Roman Empire were seen as potential allies against France in the
ongoing Hundred Years' War. Nonetheless, the marriage was not popular
in England. Despite great sums of money awarded to the Empire, the
political alliance never resulted in any military victories.
Furthermore, the marriage was childless. Anne died from the plague in
1394, greatly mourned by her husband.
Michael de la Pole had been instrumental in the marriage negotiations;
he had the King's confidence and gradually became more involved at
court and in government as Richard came of age. De la Pole came from
an upstart merchant family. When Richard made him chancellor in 1383,
and created him Earl of Suffolk two years later, this antagonised the
more established nobility. Another member of the close circle around
the King was Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who in this period
emerged as the King's favourite. Richard's close friendship to de Vere
was also disagreeable to the political establishment. This displeasure
was exacerbated by the earl's elevation to the new title of Duke of
Ireland in 1386. The chronicler Thomas Walsingham suggested the
relationship between the King and de Vere was of a homosexual nature,
due to a resentment Walsingham had toward the King.
Tensions came to a head over the approach to the war in France. While
the court party preferred negotiations, Gaunt and Buckingham urged a
large-scale campaign to protect English possessions. Instead, a
so-called crusade led by Henry le Despenser, Bishop of Norwich, was
dispatched, which failed miserably. Faced with this setback on the
continent, Richard turned his attention instead towards France's ally,
the Kingdom of Scotland. In 1385, the King himself led a punitive
expedition to the north, but the effort came to nothing, and the army
had to return without ever engaging the Scots in battle. Meanwhile,
only an uprising in Ghent prevented a French invasion of southern
England. The relationship between Richard and his uncle Gaunt
deteriorated further with military failure, and Gaunt left England to
pursue his claim to the throne of Castile in 1386 amid rumours of a
plot against his person. With Gaunt gone, the unofficial leadership of
the growing dissent against the King and his courtiers passed to
Buckinghamwho had by now been created Duke of Gloucesterand Richard
Fitzalan, 4th Earl of Arundel.
First crisis of 1386–1388
===========================
The threat of a French invasion did not subside, but instead grew
stronger into 1386. At the parliament of October that year, Michael de
la Polein his capacity of chancellorrequested taxation of an
unprecedented level for the defence of the realm. Rather than
consenting, the parliament responded by refusing to consider any
request until the chancellor was removed. The parliament (later known
as the Wonderful Parliament) was presumably working with the support
of Gloucester and Arundel. The King famously responded that he would
not dismiss as much as a scullion from his kitchen at parliament's
request. Only when threatened with deposition was Richard forced to
give in and let de la Pole go. A commission was set up to review and
control royal finances for a year.
Richard was deeply perturbed by this affront to his royal prerogative,
and from February to November 1387 went on a "gyration" (tour) of the
country to muster support for his cause. By installing de Vere as
Justice of Chester, he began the work of creating a loyal military
power base in Cheshire. He also secured a legal ruling from Chief
Justice Robert Tresilian that parliament's conduct had been unlawful
and treasonable.
On his return to London, the King was confronted by Gloucester,
Arundel and Thomas de Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick, who brought an
appeal of treason against de la Pole, de Vere, Tresilian, and two
other loyalists: the mayor of London, Nicholas Brembre, and Alexander
Neville, the Archbishop of York. Richard stalled the negotiations to
gain time, as he was expecting de Vere to arrive from Cheshire with
military reinforcements. The three peers then joined forces with
Gaunt's son Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, and Thomas de Mowbray,
Earl of Nottinghamthe group known to history as the Lords Appellant.
On 20 December 1387 they intercepted de Vere at Radcot Bridge, where
he and his forces were routed and he was obliged to flee the country.
Richard now had no choice but to comply with the appellants' demands;
Brembre and Tresilian were condemned and executed, while de Vere and
de la Polewho had by now also left the countrywere sentenced to death
'in absentia' at the Merciless Parliament in February 1388. The
appellants had now succeeded completely in breaking up the circle of
favourites around the King.
A fragile peace
=================
Richard gradually re-established royal authority in the months after
the deliberations of the Merciless Parliament. The aggressive foreign
policy of the Lords Appellant failed when their efforts to build a
wide, anti-French coalition came to nothing, and the north of England
fell victim to a Scottish incursion. Richard was now over twenty-one
years old and could with confidence claim the right to govern in his
own name. Furthermore, John of Gaunt returned to England in 1389 and
settled his differences with the King, after which the old statesman
acted as a moderating influence on English politics. Richard assumed
full control of the government on 3 May 1389, claiming that the
difficulties of the past years had been due solely to bad councillors.
He outlined a foreign policy that reversed the actions of the
appellants by seeking peace and reconciliation with France, and
promised to lessen the burden of taxation on the people significantly.
Richard ruled peacefully for the next eight years, having reconciled
with his former adversaries. Still, later events would show that he
had not forgotten the indignities he perceived. In particular, the
execution of his former teacher Sir Simon de Burley was an insult not
easily forgotten.
With national stability secured, Richard began negotiating a permanent
peace with France. A proposal put forward in 1393 would have greatly
expanded the territory of Aquitaine possessed by the English Crown.
However, the plan failed because it included a requirement that the
English king pay homage to the King of France--a condition that proved
unacceptable to the English public. Instead, in 1396, a truce was
agreed to, which was to last 28 years. As part of the truce, Richard
agreed to marry Isabella of Valois, daughter of Charles VI of France,
when she came of age. There were some misgivings about the betrothal,
in particular, because the princess was then only six years old and
thus would not be able to produce an heir to the throne of England for
many years.
Although Richard sought peace with France, he took a different
approach to the situation in Ireland. The English lordships in Ireland
were in danger of being overrun by the Gaelic Irish kingdoms, and the
Anglo-Irish lords were pleading for the King to intervene. In the
autumn of 1394, Richard left for Ireland, where he remained until May
1395. His army of more than 8,000 men was the largest force brought to
the island during the late Middle Ages. The invasion was a success,
and a number of Irish chieftains submitted to English overlordship. It
was one of the most successful achievements of Richard's reign, and
strengthened his support at home, although the consolidation of the
English position in Ireland proved to be short-lived.
Second crisis of 1397–1399
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The period that historians refer to as the "tyranny" of Richard II
began towards the end of the 1390s. The King had Gloucester, Arundel
and Warwick arrested in July 1397. The timing of these arrests and
Richard's motivation are not entirely clear. Although one chronicle
suggested that a plot was being planned against the King, there is no
evidence that this was the case. It is more likely that Richard had
simply come to feel strong enough to safely retaliate against these
three men for their role in events of 1386-1388 and eliminate them as
threats to his power.
Arundel was the first of the three to be brought to trial, at the
parliament of September 1397. After a heated quarrel with the King, he
was condemned and executed. Gloucester was being held prisoner by the
Earl of Nottingham at Calais while awaiting his trial. As the time for
the trial drew near, Nottingham brought news that Gloucester was dead.
It is thought likely that the King had ordered him to be killed to
avoid the disgrace of executing a prince of the blood.
Warwick was also condemned to death, but his life was spared and his
sentence reduced to life imprisonment. Arundel's brother Thomas
Arundel, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was exiled for life. Richard
then took his persecution of adversaries to the localities. While
recruiting retainers for himself in various counties, he prosecuted
local men who had been loyal to the appellants. The fines levied on
these men brought great revenues to the crown, although contemporary
chroniclers raised questions about the legality of the proceedings.
These actions were made possible primarily through the collusion of
John of Gaunt, but with the support of a large group of other
magnates, many of whom were rewarded with new titles, and were
disparagingly referred to as Richard's "duketti". These included the
former Lords Appellant
* Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, who was made Duke of Hereford, and
* Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, who was created Duke of
Norfolk.
Also among them were
* John Holland, the King's half-brother, promoted from Earl of
Huntingdon to Duke of Exeter
* Thomas Holland, the King's nephew, promoted from Earl of Kent to
Duke of Surrey
* Edward of Norwich, Earl of Rutland, the King's cousin, who received
Gloucester's French title of Duke of Aumale
* Gaunt's son John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset, who was made
Marquess of Somerset and Marquess of Dorset
* John Montacute, 3rd Earl of Salisbury
* Lord Thomas le Despenser, who became Earl of Gloucester.
With the forfeited lands of the convicted appellants, the King could
reward these men with lands suited to their new ranks.
A threat to Richard's authority still existed, however, in the form of
the House of Lancaster, represented by John of Gaunt and his son Henry
Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford. The House of Lancaster not only
possessed greater wealth than any other family in England, they were
of royal descent and, as such, likely candidates to succeed the
childless Richard.
Discord broke out in the inner circles of court in December 1397, when
Bolingbroke and Mowbray became embroiled in a quarrel. According to
Bolingbroke, Mowbray had claimed that the two, as former Lords
Appellant, were next in line for royal retribution. Mowbray vehemently
denied these charges, as such a claim would have amounted to treason.
A parliamentary committee decided that the two should settle the
matter by battle, but at the last moment Richard exiled the two dukes
instead: Mowbray for life, Bolingbroke for ten years.
In 1398 Richard summoned the Parliament of Shrewsbury, often called
the Revenge Parliament and understood to have met in the Abbey of that
town, which declared all the acts of the Merciless Parliament to be
null and void, and announced that no restraint could legally be put on
the King. It delegated all parliamentary power to a committee of
twelve lords and six commoners chosen from the King's friends, making
Richard an absolute ruler unbound by the necessity of gathering a
Parliament again.
On 3 February 1399, Gaunt died. Rather than allowing Bolingbroke to
succeed, Richard extended the term of his exile to life and
expropriated his properties. The King felt safe from Bolingbroke, who
was residing in Paris, since the French had little interest in any
challenge to Richard and his peace policy. Richard left the country in
May for another expedition in Ireland.
Court culture
===============
In the last years of Richard's reign, and particularly in the months
after the suppression of the appellants in 1397, the King enjoyed a
virtual monopoly on power in the country, a relatively uncommon
situation in medieval England. In this period a particular court
culture was allowed to emerge, one that differed sharply from that of
earlier times. A new form of address developed; where the King
previously had been addressed simply as "highness", now "royal
majesty", or "high majesty" were often used. It was said that on
solemn festivals Richard would sit on his throne in the royal hall for
hours without speaking, and anyone on whom his eyes fell had to bow
his knees to the King. The inspiration for this new sumptuousness and
emphasis on dignity came from the courts on the continent, not only
the French and Bohemian courts that had been the homes of Richard's
two wives, but also the court that his father had maintained while
residing in Aquitaine.
Richard's approach to kingship was rooted in his strong belief in the
royal prerogative, the inspiration of which can be found in his early
youth, when his authority was challenged first by the Peasants'
Revolts and then by the Lords Appellant. Richard rejected the approach
his grandfather Edward III had taken to the nobility. Edward's court
had been a martial one, based on the interdependence between the king
and his most trusted noblemen as military captains. In Richard's view,
this put a dangerous amount of power in the hands of the baronage. To
avoid dependence on the nobility for military recruitment, he pursued
a policy of peace towards France. At the same time, he developed his
own private military retinue, larger than that of any English king
before him, and gave them livery badges with his White Hart. He was
then free to develop a courtly atmosphere in which the king was a
distant, venerated figure, and art and culture, rather than warfare,
were at the centre.
Patronage and the arts
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As part of Richard's programme of asserting his authority, he also
tried to cultivate the royal image. Unlike any other English king
before him, he had himself portrayed in panel paintings of elevated
majesty, of which two survive: an over life-size Westminster Abbey
portrait (c. 1390), and the Wilton Diptych (1394-1399), a portable
work probably intended to accompany Richard on his Irish campaign. It
is one of the few surviving English examples of the courtly
International Gothic style of painting that was developed in the
courts of the Continent, especially Prague and Paris. Richard's
expenditure on jewellery, rich textiles and metalwork was far higher
than on paintings, but as with his illuminated manuscripts, there are
hardly any surviving works that can be connected with him, except for
a crown, "one of the finest achievements of the Gothic goldsmith",
that probably belonged to his wife Anne.
Among Richard's grandest projects in the field of architecture was
Westminster Hall, which was extensively rebuilt during his reign,
perhaps spurred on by the completion in 1391 of John of Gaunt's
magnificent hall at Kenilworth Castle. Fifteen life-size statues of
kings were placed in niches on the walls, and the hammer-beam roof by
the royal carpenter Hugh Herland, "the greatest creation of medieval
timber architecture", allowed the original three Romanesque aisles to
be replaced with a single huge open space, with a dais at the end for
Richard to sit in solitary state. The rebuilding had been begun by
Henry III in 1245, but had by Richard's time been dormant for over a
century.
The court's patronage of literature is especially important because
this was the period in which the English language took shape as a
literary language. There is little evidence to tie Richard directly to
the patronage of poetry, but it was nevertheless within his court that
this culture was allowed to thrive. The greatest poet of the age,
Geoffrey Chaucer, served the King as a diplomat, a customs official
and a clerk of The King's Works while producing some of his best-known
work. Chaucer was also in the service of John of Gaunt, and wrote 'The
Book of the Duchess' as a eulogy to Gaunt's wife Blanche. Chaucer's
colleague and friend John Gower wrote his 'Confessio Amantis' on a
direct commission from Richard, although he later grew disenchanted
with the King.
Richard was interested in occult topics such as geomancy, which he
viewed as a greater discipline that included philosophy, science, and
alchemic elements and commissioned a book on, and sponsored writing
and discussion of them in his court.
Deposition
============
In June 1399, Louis I, Duke of Orléans, gained control of the court of
the insane Charles VI of France. The policy of rapprochement with the
English crown did not suit Louis's political ambitions, and for this
reason he found it opportune to allow Bolingbroke to leave for
England. With a small group of followers, Bolingbroke landed at
Ravenspurn in Yorkshire towards the end of June 1399. Insisting that
his only object was to regain his own patrimony, Bolingbroke received
the support of both of the preeminent northern magnates, Henry Percy,
Earl of Northumberland and Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland. The
King had taken most of his household knights and the loyal members of
his nobility with him to Ireland, so Bolingbroke experienced little
resistance as he moved south. The Keeper of the Realm, Edmund, Duke of
York, had little choice but to side with Bolingbroke. Meanwhile,
Richard was delayed in his return from Ireland and did not land in
Wales until 24 July. He made his way to Conwy, where on 12 August he
met with Northumberland for negotiations. On 19 August, Richard
surrendered to Bolingbroke at Flint Castle, promising to abdicate if
his life were spared. Both men then made their way to Chester Castle
where Richard was held in the crypt of the Agricola Tower. On the
journey to London, the indignant king had to ride all the way behind
Bolingbroke. On arrival, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London on 1
September.
It was now argued that Richard, through his tyranny and misgovernment,
had rendered himself unworthy of being king. According to the normal
law of primogeniture, the heir to the throne at this point would have
been Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, great-grandson of Edward III's
second son to reach adulthood, Lionel, Duke of Clarence through
Lionel's daughter Philippa. Bolingbroke's father, John of Gaunt, was
Edward's next eldest son. However, in 1376 Edward had entailed the
succession to heirs male, bypassing Philippa and her descendants in
favour of his next eldest son, John of Gaunt, and thence his son Henry
Bolingbroke. Richard's own view of the question during his reign is
uncertain, but his assignment in 1397 of the highest place in the
order of precedence to Bolingbroke suggests endorsement of his status
as heir presumptive.
According to the official record, read by the Archbishop of Canterbury
during an assembly of lords and commons at Westminster Hall on Tuesday
30 September, Richard gave up his crown willingly and ratified his
deposition citing as a reason his own unworthiness as a monarch. In
contrast, the 'Traison et Mort Chronicle' suggests otherwise. It
describes a meeting between Richard and Henry that took place one day
before the parliament's session. The King succumbed to blind rage,
ordered his own release from the Tower, called his cousin a traitor,
demanded to see his wife, and swore revenge, throwing down his bonnet,
while Henry refused to do anything without parliamentary approval.
When parliament met to discuss Richard's fate, John Trevor, Bishop of
St Asaph, read thirty-three articles of deposition that were
unanimously accepted by lords and commons. On 1 October 1399, Richard
II was formally deposed. On 13 October, the feast day of Edward the
Confessor, Henry was crowned king.
Death
=======
Henry had agreed to let Richard live after his abdication. This
changed when it was revealed that the earls of Huntingdon, Kent, and
Salisbury, and Lord Despenser, and possibly also the Earl of
Rutlandall now demoted from the ranks they had been given by
Richardwere planning to murder the new king and restore Richard in the
Epiphany Rising. Although averted, the plot highlighted the danger of
allowing Richard to live. He is thought to have starved to death in
captivity in Pontefract Castle on or around 14 February 1400, although
there is some question over the date and manner of his death. His body
was taken south from Pontefract and displayed in St Paul's Cathedral
on 17 February before burial in King's Langley Priory on 6 March.
Rumours that Richard was still alive persisted, but never gained much
credence in England; in Scotland, however, a man identified as Richard
came into the hands of Regent Albany, lodged in Stirling Castle, and
serving as the notionaland perhaps reluctantfigurehead of various
anti-Lancastrian and Lollard intrigues in England. Henry IV's
government dismissed him as an impostor, and several sources from both
sides of the border suggest the man had a mental illness, one also
describing him as a "beggar" by the time of his death in 1419, but he
was buried as a king in Blackfriars, Stirling, the local Dominican
friary. Meanwhile, Henry Vin an effort both to atone for his father's
act of murder and to silence the rumours of Richard's survivalhad
decided to have the body at King's Langley reinterred in Westminster
Abbey on 4 December 1413. Here Richard himself had prepared an
elaborate tomb, where the remains of his wife Anne were already
entombed.
Character and assessment
======================================================================
Contemporary writers, even those less sympathetic to the King, agreed
that Richard was a "most beautiful king", though with an unmanly "face
which was white, rounded and feminine." He was athletic and tall; when
his tomb was opened in 1871, he was found to be six feet (1.82 m)
tall. He was also intelligent and well read, and when agitated he had
a tendency to stammer. While the Westminster Abbey portrait probably
shows a good similarity of the King, the Wilton Diptych portrays him
as significantly younger than he was at the time; it must be assumed
that he had a beard by this point. Religiously, he was orthodox, and
particularly towards the end of his reign he became a strong opponent
of the Lollard heresy. He was particularly devoted to the cult of
Edward the Confessor, and around 1395 he had his own coat of arms
impaled with the mythical arms of the Confessor. Though not a warrior
king like his grandfather, Richard nevertheless enjoyed tournaments,
as well as hunting.
The popular view of Richard has more than anything been influenced by
Shakespeare's play about the King, 'Richard II'. Shakespeare's Richard
was a cruel, vindictive, and irresponsible king, who attained a
semblance of greatness only after his fall from power. Writing a work
of fiction, Shakespeare took many liberties and made great omissions,
basing his play on works by writers such as Edward Hall and Samuel
Daniel, who in turn based their writings on contemporary chroniclers
such as Thomas Walsingham. Hall and Daniel were part of Tudor
historiography, which was highly unsympathetic to Richard. The Tudor
orthodoxy, reinforced by Shakespeare, saw a continuity in civil
discord starting with Richard's misrule that did not end until Henry
VII's accession in 1485. The idea that Richard was to blame for the
later-15th century Wars of the Roses was prevalent as late as the 19th
century, but came to be challenged in the 20th. Some recent historians
prefer to look at the Wars of the Roses in isolation from the reign of
Richard II.
Richard's mental state has been a major issue of historical debate
since the first academic historians started treating the subject in
the 19th century. One of the first modern historians to deal with
Richard II as a king and as a person was Bishop Stubbs. Stubbs argued
that towards the end of his reign, Richard's mind "was losing its
balance altogether." Historian Anthony Steel, who wrote a full-scale
biography of the King in 1941, took a psychiatric approach to the
issue, and concluded that Richard had schizophrenia. This was
challenged by V. H. Galbraith, who argued that there was no historical
basis for such a diagnosis, a line that has also been followed by
later historians of the period, such as Anthony Goodman and Anthony
Tuck. Nigel Saul, who wrote an academic biography of Richard II in
1997 concedes thateven though there is no basis for assuming the King
had a mental illnesshe showed clear signs of a narcissistic
personality, and towards the end of his reign "Richard's grasp on
reality was becoming weaker."
One of the primary historiographical questions surrounding Richard
concerns his political agenda and the reasons for its failure. His
kingship was thought to contain elements of the early modern absolute
monarchy as exemplified by the Tudor dynasty. More recently, Richard's
concept of kingship has been seen by some as not so different from
that of his antecedents, and that it was exactly by staying within the
framework of traditional monarchy that he was able to achieve as much
as he did. Yet his actions were too extreme and too abrupt. For one,
the absence of war was meant to reduce the burden of taxation, and so
help Richard's popularity with the Commons in parliament. However,
this promise was never fulfilled, as the cost of the royal retinue,
the opulence of court and Richard's lavish patronage of his favourites
proved as expensive as war had been, without offering commensurate
benefits. As for his policy of military retaining, this was later
emulated by Edward IV and Henry VII, but Richard II's exclusive
reliance on the county of Cheshire hurt his support from the rest of
the country. Simon Walker writes: "What he sought was, in contemporary
terms, neither unjustified nor unattainable; it was the manner of his
seeking that betrayed him."
Family tree
======================================================================
{{Tree chart|border=1| | | | |Edmund| | | | | | | | | |Edward|
|Edmund=Edmund of Woodstock
|Edward=Edward of Windsor Edward III
|boxstyle_Edward=border:2px solid #f00; border-radius:0.5em
}}
{{Tree chart|border=1|John| |Thomas| |Richard| |Philippa| |Henry|
|Edward
|Richard=Richard of Bordeaux Richard II
|boxstyle_Richard=border:2px solid #f00; border-radius:0.5em
|John=John Holland
|Thomas=Thomas Holland
|Philippa=Philippa of Clarence
|Henry=Henry Bolingbroke Henry IV
|boxstyle_Henry=border:2px solid #f00; border-radius:0.5em
|Edward=Edward of Norwich
}}
{{Tree chart|border=1| | | | |Thomas| |Eleanor|y|Roger| |Henry|
|Thomas=Thomas Holland
|Eleanor=Alianore Holland
|Roger=Roger Mortimer
|Henry=Henry of Monmouth Henry V
|boxstyle_Henry=border:2px solid #f00; border-radius:0.5em
}}
See also
======================================================================
* Cultural depictions of Richard II of England
* List of earls in the reign of Richard II of England
External links
======================================================================
* [
https://www.royal.uk/richard-ii Richard II] at the official website
of the British monarchy
*
*
*
*
[
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/richard_ii_king.shtml
Richard II] at BBC History
*
|-
License
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Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_II_
