The Plantagenets: History of a Dynasty
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The end-game to this struggle was far from clear. A return to rule by continual council may have been envisioned, but given the king’s documented capacity for dissimulation followed by long-deferred vengeance, it cannot have been considered safe to have Bolingbroke ‘rule’ England while Richard still ‘reigned’.
There is an indication that the decision to depose Richard had been taken 3 weeks before parliament opened on 30 September, as reference to the king’s regnal year is omitted from documents issued by ‘royal’ clerks after 10 September.
In some ways, defeating Richard militarily had been the easy part for Bolingbroke. In searching for a precedent for the removal of a king, the events of the reign of Edward II must have come to mind. That reign had been a constant undercurrent for most of Richard’s reign in any case. But the deposition of 1326–1327 was viewed officially, and had been since early in the reign of Edward III, as an abdication. Despite any pressure that might be brought to bear, it was highly unlikely that Richard would abdicate in public. Resignation was more feasible. But even here there were problems, for unlike the situation in 1327, in 1399 the question of Richard’s heir remained uncertain. Moreover, resignation being voluntary, potentially the act could subsequently be rescinded. So it was deposition after all. But the deposition of Richard II was not modelled on the case of Edward II. Rather, the Lancastrian advisors turned to the example of the deposition of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II at the Council of Lyons in 1245. But again, there were difficulties, as there was no desire to involve the pope or a church council in English constitutional practice.
According to the official Lancastrian version of events, the ‘Record and Process’, on Michaelmas 1399 a delegation was sent to meet with the king at the Tower to seek his renunciation. There, the earl of Northumberland swore that Richard had pledged his willingness to renounce the throne of his own free will before himself and Archbishop Arundel while at Conway. After some discussion, Richard is reported to have agreed to the terms of the renunciation ‘with a cheerful countenance’, and then signed the declaration with his own hand. Indeed, he is said to have added his wish that Henry should succeed him, which he further signified by placing his signet ring on his cousin’s finger. Very little, if any, of this account should be taken at face value. Almost certainly, Richard refused to renounce his throne. The Dieulacres chronicle may come closest to the truth when it states that he ‘placed [the crown] on the ground and resigned his right to God’. To whom else could an anointed king turn?
On 30 September 1399, in Westminster Hall, the renunciation was read out before parliament and then accepted. The articles of deposition are long and detailed, but their essence is captured in the first article, which states that ‘the king is indicted on account of his evil rule’. The bishop of St Asaph pronounced the sentence of deposition. Henry Bolingbroke now rose and addressed the assembly, and asserted his right, by descent, to the throne. The lords, spiritual and temporal, one by one gave their assent. A date for the coronation of Henry IV was quickly established – 13 October, the feast of St Edward the Confessor. Perhaps Henry Bolingbroke was trying to associate himself with his namesake, King Henry III, but the irony of such a choice of date cannot have been lost on Richard or the wider contemporary audience.
But what about Richard II? As had been the case in 1327, the presence of a former king was an extremely awkward reminder of the usurpation that had taken place. Initially, there was talk in the commons of trying Richard, along with his former henchmen, but on 21 October, the Lords announced a resolution that Richard should be ‘kept in safe and secret ward’. A week later, Henry IV announced a sentence of perpetual imprisonment against his cousin and erstwhile sovereign. On 29 October, Richard was transported down river to Gravesend, beginning a northward journey into the heart of Lancastrian power, finally being confined at Pontefract. Again, the irony of the association with Thomas of Lancaster and Edward II is difficult to overlook.
A plot to seize King Henry and his sons at Epiphany 1400, Richard’s thirty-third birthday, was exposed and came to nothing. Indeed, less than nothing. The earls of Huntingdon, Kent and Salisbury, along with Sir Thomas Despenser, were unable to keep their conspiracy secret, and they were themselves seized by townspeople in various parts of the country – Bristol, Cirencester and Pleshy – and summarily executed. Most likely, this abortive rising sealed Richard’s fate. By mid-January, rumours of Richard’s death were widespread; by month’s end, they had reached Paris. Perhaps even Henry was not entirely sure of the situation. A discussion in the king’s council on 8 February 1400 concluded that, if Richard were still alive, he should be kept under the tightest possible security, whereas if he were indeed dead, then his body should be publicly displayed. Within 10 days, the answer – to the prayer obliquely raised in Henry’s council – was known: Richard was dead and his corpse, face exposed, was en route from Pontefract to London. The body was displayed to public view in St Paul’s for 2 days before burial, not with Anne in the purpose-built double tomb in Westminster, but in the Dominican friary in Langley, ironically the resting place of another Lancastrian victim, Piers Gaveston. There, Richard would remain, very likely in the tomb in which Edmund, duke of York, and his wife were later interred, for 13 years until Henry V provided for his re-interment in the Plantagenet mausoleum in Westminster Abbey.
Perhaps a final word can be said about both Richard and the Plantagenets through a consideration of Richard’s Westminster tomb. The figures are decorated not only with the initials ‘A’ and ‘R’, but also with various heraldic devices. The queen is portrayed with knots and chained and collared ostriches as befits her Bohemian ancestry, whereas Richard’s robes are adorned with his emblem of the White Hart, and also with the sunburst. Less regal, but in the end more poignant for this last Plantagenet ruler, the king’s tomb is also decorated with the broom pod, the planta genesta from which the family had derived its name some two and a half centuries earlier. Richard II would be the last Plantagenet king laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, and it is still his portrait, seated in majesty, that greets every pilgrim who enters this everlasting shrine to the Plantagenet dynasty.
CONCLUSION
What did the idea of ‘dynasty’ mean to the Plantagenet kings of England? At a basic level, it pointed to a sense of lineage; an awareness of ancestry and the past were powerful forces at all levels of medieval society, but particularly among the aristocracy and royal family. This awareness of ancestry was physically manifested and reinforced in numerous ways: the accounts of chroniclers; the elaboration of genealogies; the decoration of royal residences, along with the construction of memorials; and the ritual celebration of important dates. The Plantagenets engaged in all of these activities through patronage or direct participation, celebrating and proclaiming the legitimacy and permanence of their dynasty.
England was unique in the early medieval period in having produced a single royal dynasty, the West Saxon house of Alfred. These kings of Wessex who became the kings of England did not have to compete with rival princely houses as was so often the case on the continent, particularly in France. The Normans and Angevins sought to associate themselves with the house of Wessex through marriages in order to legitimate their rule, but this was no longer the case for the Plantagenets, who sought their brides abroad. Still, from Henry III to Richard II, all of the Plantagenet kings venerated the last ‘English’ king, Edward the Confessor, and his shrine at Westminster was transformed into the quintessential Plantagenet shrine, linking the English past, present and future under their rule.
The Plantagenet sense of dynasty can be seen in a number of manifestations, but nowhere more than in the development of Westminster Abbey as a dynastic church. Neither the Normans nor the Angevins had developed such a dynastic centre. Although they were crowned at Westminster, they were all buried elsewhere, in various personally selected locations ranging from Caen to Fontevrault and Rouen in France, and from Winchester to Faversham to Reading and Worcester in Engla
nd. There is very little evidence of any sense of dynasty in these burials. The individual is commemorated, not the ruling family. This was dramatically changed by the Plantagenets. Henry III, Edward I, Edward III and Richard II all lie in the semi-circle surrounding the magnificent tomb of Edward the Confessor that was dedicated late in the reign of Henry III. The placement of the tombs alone establishes the Plantagenet sense of dynasty in this royal mausoleum, but one can go considerably further in discussing the decoration of these public memorials.
Henry III was buried before the high altar in the original resting place of Edward the Confessor. His gilt bronze effigy shows Henry wearing his crown and coronation robes, his headrest adorned with English leopards. Although Edward I was interred in a plain marble tomb, he arranged splendid memorials for both his wife, Eleanor of Castile, and his brother, Edmund of Lancaster.
Eleanor’s tomb is decorated with heraldic shields representing England, Leon, Castile and Ponthieu, celebrating the union of her ancestry with the Plantagenet dynasty. Edmund’s tomb, to the north of the high altar, similarly conveys the dynastic awareness of the Plantagenets. There are ten niches each on the north and south side of his tomb, which once contained sculptural figures depicting Edmund himself, his brother Edward I and father Henry III, as well as other members of the royal family and members of the house of Lacy, into which his son Thomas had recently married. This theme is further developed and extended in the tombs of Edward III and Philippa, both of which also contained ‘weepers’ mourning the dead. In this case, the 32 figures that were represented in the niches on Philippa’s tomb represented her ancestors, siblings, children and the spouses of her children. Likewise, the king’s tomb depicted each of his 12 children and no-one else. This is a statement of dynasty.
The ultimate test of any dynasty is longevity: the ability to produce male heirs and transmit the succession from father to son without challenge is of paramount importance. The rival Capetian house of France had needed two centuries to establish itself on the throne. From Hugh Capet to Philip II, every Capetian king of France crowned his own son and heir as king during his own lifetime. Only in the thirteenth century did Philip II feel confident enough to allow his son Louis VIII to remain uncrowned. In England, the situation was very different.
Henry III came to the throne as a boy of 9 years old in 1216, with the rules of succession not having been thoroughly established. Under both the Norman and Angevin kings, the crown had passed from brother to brother as often as from father to son, nor was it always clear that the eldest son stood as heir to the throne. Although Henry III’s claim to the throne was not challenged from within the royal family, he did for a time face the all-too-real threat of being supplanted by a Capetian claimant in the person of the future Louis VIII. Nonetheless, after a long and tumultuous reign in which the authority of the king to rule was severely challenged, the right of the Plantagenet dynasty to rule was confirmed.
Not only would Henry be succeeded by his son, Edward I, without incident, but Edward I felt so secure in his succession that he could take 2 years in returning from his Crusade before finally arriving in England in 1274. Edward II likewise succeeded his father without controversy, having been publicly presented to the people of England as his father’s heir as early as 1297. Despite his overthrow by Queen Isabella in 1326/1327, Edward II passed his crown on to his eldest son, Edward III. Perhaps based on his own difficult youth, Edward III drew up a will, which was only recently rediscovered by historians, in which he limited the succession to the male line. By now, however, the sense of succession from father to son was so well established by the Plantagenets that, when Edward III died in 1377, the throne went without question to his 10-year-old grandson Richard, as son and heir of Edward of Woodstock, eldest son of the late king. The end of the Plantagenet dynasty came only with Richard II’s failure to produce an heir of his body. Had Richard produced a son and heir, it is difficult to imagine the successful usurpation of the throne by Henry IV.
What then is the legacy of this dynasty that ruled England for nearly all of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries? First of all, the Plantagenet dynasty should be seen as the first English, or perhaps more accurately British, dynasty of the late middle ages. Despite the imperial dreams of Henry III and Richard II, the Plantagenet dynasty found itself increasingly more English. If Henry still thought of himself as French in cultural terms, nonetheless the resources available to him, both economic and human, were derived from his English holdings. His failure to recognize the changing nature of his kingdom was an important reason for the challenge to his authority led by Simon de Montfort, which had such far-reaching consequences. Edward I seems to have better understood his position, and while he did continue to involve himself in continental affairs, particularly in defending English rule in Gascony, his legacy is clearly British. His impact on the development of the common law, divergent from a continental civil law tradition, is of great significance, but it is his military legacy that remains most familiar. The conquest of Wales and his repeated attempts to establish English rule in Scotland point to a British vision that could not have been conceived by his father. Edward II, for all his other shortcomings, held onto this vision of English hegemony in the British Isles, despite such catastrophic setbacks as Bannockburn. He refused to recognize the legitimacy of Robert Bruce and continued to plan Scottish campaigns throughout his reign. Edward III, it is true, revived English claims to the ancestral Plantagenet holdings in France, but at the same time his reign saw the development of an increasingly conscious English identity, expressed in the use of the English language in both official government documents and the growing vernacular literature of the day. Richard II, although born in Bordeaux and associated with French cultural models and an international aesthetic, was nonetheless British. His only personal military campaigns were to Scotland and Ireland, and if the most recent interpretation of the Wilton Diptych is correct, he is depicted offering Britain to the Virgin as her dowry. This is a magnificent assertion of the divine right of the Plantagenet dynasty to rule, but to rule the British Isles.
Another crucial legacy of the Plantagenet era is the development of parliament. Neither the name nor the institution had existed in 1216 when Henry III came to the throne: the first use of the term parliamentum appears in 1236, but the new representative body became a permanent part of the English political landscape by the end of the reign. The Provisions of Oxford in 1258 called for a radical reordering of government, much of whose business was to be conducted – and personnel appointed – in parliament. If the king was successful in avoiding the most restrictive elements of the provisions, the centrality of parliament as an institution became increasingly clear. In 1265, when Simon de Montfort summoned burgesses and knights of the shire to attend parliament in London, this was a novelty designed to shore up his support. After 1327, however, an assembly not containing these representatives would no longer be considered a true parliament. During the later years of the thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth century, parliament took on increasingly significant functions not only as a court of law, but also as a legislative body, and most importantly as the only legitimate source of grants of taxation. By the end of the reign of Edward III, the commons had found their voice, literally, in the person of the Speaker of the House of Commons. The office was first held during the Good Parliament of 1376 by Sir Peter de la Mare, who led a spirited attack on the king’s favourites and officials. In the reign of Richard II, the most dramatic events were all played out in parliament, with the Wonderful Parliament of 1386, the Merciless Parliament of 1388 and the Revenge Parliament of 1397. By the turn of the fifteenth century, parliament had become inseparable from the governance of England, and this is perhaps the greatest aspect of the Plantagenet legacy, not only for England, but for the world.
NOTES
Notes to Introduction
1 The duchy of Aquitaine is frequently referred to as Gascony in medieval English sources, and as Guyen
ne in French sources. Although there are technical differences between the three terms, they were used interchangeably in medieval sources, and will be considered synonymous throughout this book.
Notes to Chapter 1: Henry III (1216–1272)
1 L‘Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal, in English Historical Documents, Volume II, 1042–189, eds D. C. Douglas and G. W. Greenaway (London, 1953), p. 84.
2 F. M. Powicke, The Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1953), p. 61.
3 At the Painted Chamber at Westminster, the inscription was in French and read ‘Ke ne dune ke ne tine ne prent ke desire, ’ ‘He who does not give what he holds, does not receive what he desires.’