The Plantagenets: The Kings That Made Britain

by Wilson, Derek

  In the confusion Walworth was able to ride back into London and raise a contingent of citizens and the Tower garrison to come to the king’s rescue. A few ring-leaders were rounded up but most of the rebels, who may have amounted at one point to between 80,000 and 100,000 men, were allowed to disperse. Eventually, about 150 of them were tried and executed for treason.

  1382–6

  In January 1382 Richard was married to Anne of Bohemia, the 15-year-old daughter of the late Emperor Charles IV. It was a diplomatic marriage, aimed at providing England with a powerful ally against France, but there is no evidence that any real advantage was gained from it. Anne’s large foreign entourage provided another subject for the opponents of the court to grumble about, and they claimed that the queen’s attendants added considerably to the expenses of an already spendthrift king. However, Richard, who, of course, had not seen his bride before her arrival, developed a deep affection for her, and she exercised a calming influence on him.

  Now married and with the success of suppressing the revolt behind him, Richard took firm control of the government and began to assert his own style of kingship, even though he continued to feel overshadowed by his uncles, especially the Duke of Lancaster. The king relied to a great extent on his close friends, particularly Robert de Vere and Michael de la Pole, and he showered gifts and offices on his favourites. In 1383 de la Pole became chancellor and two years later Earl of Suffolk. He was unpopular with many of the nobles for advocating peace with France, for although they did not like paying for war they liked even less the thought of agreeing an ignominious end to hostilities. Two factions had clearly emerged: while the royal uncles led a ‘traditionalist’ party committed to pursuing the old Plantagenet continental claims, Richard’s young friends promoted peace and a sophisticated style of court life modelled on that of France. At the same time de Vere was rocketed to even higher office: he was given the title Marquess of Dublin with vice-regal authority in Ireland. What particularly galled many of the nobles was that the rank of marquess, which took precedence over the rank of earl, was a novelty in England. And then in 1384 and 1385 de Vere and de la Pole even tried to bounce the king into putting Lancaster on trial for treason. The move failed, but Richard signalled his defiance in 1386 by taking another step in the elevation of de Vere. He made his friend Duke of Ireland, thus putting him on a par with Richard’s uncles, the dukes of Lancaster, York and Gloucester.

  Following further cross-border incursions, Richard assumed command of an invasion of Scotland in July 1385. His army scoured the Lowlands as far as Edinburgh but, as so often in the past, was unable to bring the Scots to a pitched battle. Lancaster counselled pressing deeper into the country, but Richard overruled him and returned to London. It was by now clear that Richard was no warrior like his father and grandfather and that he bitterly resented attempts to force him into the same mould as his predecessors. Fortunately, he was able to rid himself of one of his uncles. Lancaster had ambitions to win the crown of Castile, to which he had a claim through his wife, the daughter of the late king, and in July 1386 he set off for Spain with a small army, partly paid for by a loan from Richard. However, this only brought to the fore the king’s second uncle, Thomas of Gloucester, who, with his ally, the Earl of Arundel, maintained opposition to the favourites.

  John of Gaunt’s departure coincided with a new invasion threat from France. Charles VI assembled the largest fleet that had ever been seen in the Channel, and de la Pole went to parliament to demand a massive subsidy to pay for national defence. Worried as they were by the military threat, parliament refused the demand. In fact, they refused to contract any business at all until the chancellor had been removed from office. Richard rejected this attack on his prerogative to choose his own ministers, but Gloucester and Arundel told the king that he would have to negotiate with parliament. This he refused. But his uncle reminded him of the fate of Edward II, in effect threatening to depose Richard if he proved obdurate. De la Pole was impeached by the Commons, tried and condemned to imprisonment, but Richard overruled the sentence and de la Pole remained at court. Internal politics in France meant the feared invasion did not materialize, but that did not ease the constitutional situation. Parliament had set up a commission to enquire into all aspects of government and make recommendations, and it required the king to abide by them.

  1387–8

  Richard distanced himself literally from the work of the parliamentary commission by going on a tour of the country to drum up support and also to obtain from some – well-chosen – judges the opinion that parliament had acted illegally in imposing its will on their anointed king. However, as soon as he returned to the capital in November 1387 he was confronted by a delegation of nobles led by Gloucester and Arundel. They demanded the arrest and trial of de Vere, de la Pole and three other close royal attendants on charges of treason. De Vere had recently offered the king’s family a personal insult by divorcing his wife, a granddaughter of Edward III, in favour of one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting, and Richard’s acquiescence in this action was the final straw that turned his uncles and their friends against him. Their demand was, in effect, a declaration of war.

  De Vere raised an army in Cheshire and marched south to come to Richard’s aid. At Radcot Bridge, Oxfordshire, on 20 December he was met by an army led by John of Gaunt’s son, Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby. De Vere’s men began to desert before battle was even joined, and the duke took flight, plunging into the river, making his way across country and taking ship for the continent. He eventually reached Paris, where he found de la Pole and other court exiles. De la Pole died soon afterwards in 1389, but de Vere next moved to Louvain in the territory of the Duchess of Brabant. There he was accidentally killed during the course of a boar hunt in 1392.

  The royal dukes, Bolingbroke and Arundel, and their allies, the ‘lords appellant’, called a new parliament in February 1388. It is known as the ‘Merciless Parliament’ because it carried out a thoroughgoing purge of all Richard’s most trusted companions and councillors, most of whom were executed. Having achieved this, the lords appellant seemed satisfied and made no attempt to take over the government or impose permanent restrictions on the king. That was a tactical mistake.

  1389–96

  In May 1389 Richard declared that, now he had reached the age of 21, he was assuming sole responsibility for government. He acknowledged that poor counsel had previously created problems and promised that, in future, he would appoint better advisers. He gave every indication of having turned over a new leaf. Lords and Commons believed that they had achieved their objective, and this seemed to be confirmed when John of Gaunt returned in November and was warmly welcomed by the king. Gaunt had been successful in his Castilian venture. He had forced his rivals to recognize his claim to the crown and then resigned it in favour of his daughter, Catherine, who was then betrothed to his rival’s heir. Leaving Spain, he was appointed lieutenant of Guisnes, a fortified town adjacent to Calais, which had been in English hands since 1360. In 1390 he was appointed Duke of Aquitaine and put in charge of peace talks with France.

  Richard had embarked on serious negotiations. After 50 years of hostilities most of his subjects had become accustomed to regarding France as an inevitable enemy, but the argument of ‘no war taxes’ was a powerful one. The sticking point, as ever, was the status of Aquitaine. Richard was prepared to do homage for the duchy to Charles VI, but parliament would not countenance this. Thus little was achieved after years of discussion beyond the extension of the truce between the two countries. Tensions between the king and the lords appellant remained, but they were kept under control. They might, conceivably, have remained so had it not been for a tragedy that struck Richard in 1394 when, in June, his 27-year-old queen died of the plague. Richard was completely overcome with grief. He had the Palace of Sheen, where Anne had died, razed to the ground, and he planned an extremely elaborate and costly funeral at Westminster. The Earl of Arundel arrived late for the service and then as
ked permission to leave. The distraught king, furious at what he considered disrespect for the memory of his beloved queen, snatched a staff from one of the attendants and felled the earl with it, drawing blood. This meant that Anne’s obsequies had to be halted while the clergy carried out a ritual purification of the church. Arundel was sent to the Tower but released after a week, when Richard had calmed down.

  In 1394 Richard took an army of 5,000 men across to Ireland to deal with a revolt against the government there. His campaign was successful, and most of the Irish leaders submitted to him over the following months, but he had to hurry home in May 1395 to deal with complaints by the bishops against Lollards in high places. Several courtiers and members of parliament who were high in the king’s trust and had served in diplomatic or military capacities were known to espouse heretical views and to be protecting Lol-lards from the ecclesiastical authorities. Recently, notices had been nailed to the doors of St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey denouncing the clergy and propounding unorthodox opinions.

  Richard frightened his heretical courtiers into submission and ordered the University of Oxford to expel anyone suspected of Lollardy, but he now began to give signs of his defiance of his critics. In November he had the embalmed body of de Vere brought back from Louvain for interment in his family tomb. He petitioned the pope to canonize Edward II as a holy martyr. In March 1396 the truce with France was extended for another 28 years and to cement the friendship of the two kingdoms Richard agreed to marry Isabella, the seven-year-old daughter of Charles VI. In September he crossed to France and spent several days with his bride’s father in a specially created camp near Calais, where he sought to impress everyone with a sumptuous and expensive display of royal splendour. News of the marriage was not well received by parliament, not least because it would be several years before Isabella could provide an heir to the throne.

  1397–8

  The king was now building up his own body of supporters by handing out titles and grants of land. As royal vassals these new men could be relied on to provide Richard with armed men when required, so having pacified Ireland and made peace with France, the king now felt strong enough to dispose once and for all of all those who encroached upon his prerogative. In January 1397 parliament presented a petition complaining about the extravagance of the court. This time Richard moved swiftly and decisively, ordering the arrest of Thomas Haxey, who had drafted the petition. Haxey was charged with treason and condemned but, as a clergyman, spared capital punishment. But the king’s action had served its purpose of cowing parliament. Over the next few months rumours abounded of plots and counter-plots, supposedly hatched by the king against his noble opponents and vice versa. On 10 July Richard struck. He invited Gloucester, Arundel and their colleague, the Earl of Warwick, to a feast. Gloucester and Arundel were wary enough not to attend, but Warwick arrived and was immediately arrested. At the king’s urgings Arundel’s brother, the Archbishop of Canterbury, persuaded the earl to give himself up, and on the same day Richard rode to Gloucester’s Essex manor and arrested him in person.

  Richard had planned in detail what was to happen to his principal enemies. He feared the reaction of putting his uncle on trial, and so Gloucester was taken to Calais and confined in the castle there. According to Froissart his end came quickly: ‘Just before dinner, when the tables were laid in the castle and the duke was on the point of washing his hands, four men came out of the next room and putting a towel round his neck they strangled him, two of them pulling at each end. They then undressed the body, put it between the sheets, with the head on a pillow, and covered the bed with four coverlets; they then went back to the great hall and let it be known that the duke had had an apoplectic fit.’3

  On 17 September parliament was convened, overawed by a contingent of 2,000 royal archers. On the 20th of the month Arundel was tried, found guilty and bundled through the streets of London to Tower Hill and there beheaded. People crowded to witness Arundel’s end but not to rejoice in the death of a traitor. A great deal of sympathy was felt for him, and he was immediately claimed as a martyr, Londoners flocking to his tomb. It may have been partly as a result of this reaction that Richard commuted Warwick’s sentence (on 28 September) to imprisonment on the Isle of Man.

  The king may have hesitated to shed blood, but he pursued an ever-widening circle of people who had in any way supported his enemies. He resorted to fines and new laws. Thus, for example, the counties of Essex and Hertfordshire, where Gloucester had exercised considerable influence, had to pay £2,000 for their pardon. London and other towns were obliged to accept fresh charters that considerably increased the power of the crown in their affairs. But by thus overplaying his hand, Richard provoked considerable hostility, as a monastic chronicler moralized: ‘What bitter feelings the whole people felt towards him. But he was driven on by his own destiny … Therefore he made very great preparations throughout the whole of Lent [1399], and especially extorting money, demanding horses and wagons, commandeering supplies of corn, meat and fish everywhere for his departure and paying nothing; not taking into account the fact that, “Property acquired by evil means brings no good fortune”. And that the more he accumulated unjustly of the property of his subjects, the more he justifiably incurred their hatred.’4

  But the outcome of events would be decided not by popular disaffection, but by rivalries among the king’s kindred and their allies. Richard had no children by his first wife, and it was certain that he would have none by Isabella for at least five or six years. This raised the probabilities of a disputed succession and, perhaps, eventually another royal minority. John of Gaunt believed that the crown should be passed down through his line, which, in effect, would mean that Henry, Earl of Derby, recently promoted to the dukedom of Hereford would ascend the throne. For Richard’s triumph to be complete he had to neutralize the last of his close relatives, and the chance came, in 1398, when Hereford fell out with Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. Norfolk had been captain of Calais at the time of Gloucester’s death and, from Richard’s point of view, knew too much.

  We have no documentary evidence for the ensuing strange events, but it is obvious that Richard saw a way of killing two birds with one stone. He decreed that the rival dukes should settle their dispute in single combat at Coventry on 16 September. On the day all was ready for the trial of arms before a large crowd when the king stepped down from his gallery and stopped the contest. He then banished both dukes, Hereford for ten years and Norfolk for life. A year later, Norfolk died in Venice.

  1399–1400

  In February 1399 John of Gaunt died, leaving only the Duke of Hereford as an aggravating thorn in Richard’s flesh. Under the terms of his banishment, Hereford was entitled to return to take up his inheritance, but in order to prevent this the king simply changed the rules. He revoked Henry’s licence to return and extended his term of banishment to life. The exiled duke was then at the French court, and Richard was confident that Charles VI would not jeopardize the Anglo-French concord by aiding his brother king’s enemy. In June 1399 he paid another visit to Ireland to deal with matters there.

  The French king, however, was suffering from bouts of insanity and was in the hands of court factions. At this time the Duke of Orleans was effectively in charge, and he gave Hereford permission to launch an invasion from French soil in order to score over his pro-English rivals. Henry landed on the Yorkshire coast in July. His ‘army’ amounted to no more than a few hundred retainers, but it grew rapidly in size. All the magnates who had grievances against the king now had a leader to follow. The Duke of York, who was regent during the king’s absence, threw in his lot with Hereford, and Richard’s most dependable troops were with him in Ireland.

  By the time the king landed in Wales on 11 August everything was already lost. Richard had too many enemies, and within days his own troops were deserting in droves. By 2 September he was lodged in the Tower as Henry’s prisoner.

  Hereford set up a commission to give a show of
legality to the action he had decided to take. Its carefully chosen members agreed that Richard had forfeited his right to rule by virtue of his ‘perjuries, sacrileges, sodomitical acts, dispossession of his subjects, reduction of his people to servitude, lack of reason and incapacity’, and on 29 September Richard, according to the official version of events, bowed to the inevitable and renounced the crown. The next day parliament confirmed his abdication and hailed Hereford as king. A deposed king always posed a threat to those who had deposed him – he would inevitably become a focus for plots and rebellions – and it is unlikely that Richard did not calculate what his end would be. He who regarded Edward II as a martyr to divine kingship may well have steeled himself to the same fate. He was taken from the Tower under disguise, moved to various places of concealment and eventually arrived at Pontefract Castle. There, probably on 14 February 1400, he died. Exactly how he met his end will never be known. His body was taken to St Paul’s Cathedral for funeral and then interred in the royal manor of Kings Langley. It was not destined to remain there long.

  HENRY IV 1399–1413

  The nature of Henry’s acquisition of the crown led inevitably to several challenges on behalf of claimants with a better title, and internal disruption encouraged the Scots and Welsh to wage war against the regime. By the time Henry had established his authority he was dogged by ill health and by the challenge of his popular, charismatic son, Prince Henry. By the turn of the 15th century vernacular English had established itself as a written language favoured by poets as against Latin or court French. The poets Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland provide vivid pictures of the lives of all classes of contemporary men and women.