Richard II of England

Based on Wikipedia: Richard II of England

The Boy King Who Faced Down a Mob

Picture a fourteen-year-old boy on horseback, surrounded by thousands of armed peasants who have just murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury and burned some of London's grandest buildings to the ground. Their leader lies dead in the mud, cut down moments ago by the Lord Mayor. The crowd realizes what has happened. They raise their weapons.

The boy does not flee. Instead, he spurs his horse forward and shouts: "I am your captain, follow me!"

And they do. The mob disperses. The rebellion ends.

This was Richard II of England, and that moment in June 1381 would prove to be both his finest hour and a terrible lesson. The young king learned that day just how dangerous his subjects could be when pushed too far—and also how completely they would submit to royal authority when confronted with enough confidence. Both lessons would shape his reign, and ultimately destroy it.

A Prince Born Under Strange Stars

Richard came into the world on January 6th, 1367, in Bordeaux—then an English possession in southwestern France. The date mattered. January 6th is the Feast of the Epiphany, the Christian celebration of the three kings who visited the infant Jesus. According to contemporary accounts, three actual kings were present at Richard's birth: the kings of Castile, Navarre, and Portugal. Whether true or embellished, this coincidence would later be woven into the religious imagery surrounding Richard's reign, most famously in the Wilton Diptych, a stunning portable altarpiece that shows Richard as one of three kings paying homage to the Virgin Mary.

His father was Edward, Prince of Wales—known to history as the Black Prince, though no one called him that during his lifetime. The nickname probably came from the color of his armor. Whatever you called him, he was the most celebrated warrior of his age, the hero of the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, where he captured the King of France himself.

But by the time Richard was born, his father was already dying.

The Black Prince had contracted dysentery during a military campaign in Spain in 1370, and he never recovered. He returned to England a broken man, wasting away while his young son watched. Richard's elder brother Edward had already died, making Richard heir to both his father's titles and his grandfather's throne. When the Black Prince finally succumbed in June 1376, the nine-year-old Richard became heir apparent to King Edward III.

Grandfather followed father within a year. On June 21st, 1377, Edward III died after fifty years on the throne, and the ten-year-old Richard became King of England.

The Uncles and the Councils

A child cannot rule a kingdom. The question was: who would rule it for him?

The obvious answer was John of Gaunt, Richard's uncle and the most powerful nobleman in England. But "obvious" and "popular" are different things. Parliament feared that Gaunt would simply seize the throne for himself. To prevent this, they created a series of "continual councils" to govern in the young king's name—councils from which Gaunt was pointedly excluded.

This was a polite fiction. Gaunt, along with his younger brother Thomas of Woodstock, still wielded enormous informal influence. But the real power increasingly flowed to the king's personal advisors and friends, particularly Sir Simon de Burley, Richard's former tutor, and Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford.

Within three years, these advisors had earned Parliament's deep mistrust. The councils were discontinued in 1380. This might have been manageable if England had been at peace and prosperous.

It was neither.

The Hundred Years' War and the Price of Failure

England had been fighting France, on and off, since 1337—a conflict we now call the Hundred Years' War, though the people living through it simply called it the war. By Richard's reign, the glorious victories of his father and grandfather were fading memories. English forces were losing ground on the continent, and the war was becoming ruinously expensive.

Parliament's solution was the poll tax—a flat tax levied on every adult in the kingdom, regardless of their ability to pay. Three poll taxes were imposed between 1377 and 1381, each more burdensome than the last. The money disappeared into unsuccessful military expeditions across the Channel. The people saw nothing for their sacrifice.

By 1381, resentment had reached a breaking point.

The Peasants Rise

The poll tax was the spark. The fuel had been accumulating for decades.

The Black Death had swept through England in 1348-1349, killing perhaps a third of the population. This catastrophe had, paradoxically, improved life for the survivors. With labor suddenly scarce, peasants could demand higher wages. Landlords, desperate for workers, had to compete for their services.

The nobility did not take this lying down. Parliament passed laws freezing wages at pre-plague levels and restricting peasants' freedom to move in search of better opportunities. The result was a generation of simmering anger—peasants who remembered when life was getting better, now forced back into something close to the old serfdom.

In late May 1381, the uprising began in Kent and Essex. By June 12th, thousands of peasants had gathered at Blackheath, just outside London, under leaders named Wat Tyler, John Ball, and Jack Straw. They burned John of Gaunt's magnificent Savoy Palace. They beheaded the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord High Treasurer. They demanded the complete abolition of serfdom.

The fourteen-year-old king sheltered in the Tower of London with his advisors. They assessed the situation and reached a grim conclusion: the Crown did not have the forces to disperse the rebels. The only option was to negotiate.

The King Steps Forward

Richard attempted to meet the rebels on June 13th, traveling down the Thames by boat. But the crowds thronging the riverbanks at Greenwich made it impossible to land, and he was forced to return to the Tower.

The next day, he tried again—this time on horseback. At Mile End, he met the rebel leaders and agreed to their demands. But this only emboldened them. The looting and killing continued.

On June 15th, Richard met Wat Tyler again at Smithfield. He reiterated that the demands would be met. Tyler was not convinced of the king's sincerity. Tensions rose. An altercation broke out. William Walworth, the Lord Mayor of London, pulled Tyler from his horse and killed him.

This was the moment that could have ended in massacre.

The rebels saw their leader fall. They raised their weapons. Richard rode forward into the gap.

"I am your captain, follow me!"

He led them away from the scene while Walworth gathered forces to surround them. Then, rather than ordering a slaughter, Richard granted clemency. The rebels dispersed and went home.

Over the following days, Richard personally rode into Essex to suppress the remaining disturbances. On June 28th, he defeated the last rebels in a small skirmish at Billericay. The Peasants' Revolt was over.

The king quickly revoked the charters of freedom he had granted. The rebel leaders were hunted down and executed. John Ball was among those put to death.

Richard had shown extraordinary courage for a boy of fourteen. But what lessons did he draw from the experience? Almost certainly the wrong ones. He had seen how dangerous his subjects could become—and also how completely they would submit to confident authority. He had learned that promises made under duress need not be kept. He had discovered that royal power, when wielded decisively, could overcome any challenge.

These beliefs would define his reign. They would also end it.

The Young King's Court

Richard was unlike his father and grandfather in almost every way. They had been warriors who earned their reputations on the battlefield. Richard was an aesthete who cultivated a refined court centered on art and culture. He promoted the use of the handkerchief—considered somewhat effeminate by the martial nobility—and developed elaborate ceremonies that placed the king at the center of an almost sacred ritual.

He was also, by all accounts, strikingly handsome, with fair skin and reddish-gold hair. The Wilton Diptych shows him with delicate features and an otherworldly serenity.

Richard's first significant act after suppressing the Peasants' Revolt was to marry. His bride was Anne of Bohemia, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. The marriage had diplomatic significance—Bohemia and the Empire were potential allies against France—but it never delivered any military benefits despite the enormous sums England paid for the alliance.

The marriage was childless. When Anne died of plague in 1394, Richard was devastated. He ordered the palace where she died to be demolished.

But in the years before Anne's death, Richard gathered around him a small circle of favorites who would prove extremely controversial. Michael de la Pole, who had helped negotiate the royal marriage, rose to become chancellor and was created Earl of Suffolk—remarkable for a man from a merchant family rather than ancient nobility. Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, became the king's closest companion and was elevated to the unprecedented title of Duke of Ireland in 1386.

The established nobility were not pleased. Some whispered that Richard's relationship with de Vere was more than friendship.

The Lords Appellant

Tensions exploded over the war with France. Richard and his courtiers preferred negotiation. The older nobles—particularly his uncle Gloucester and the Earl of Arundel—demanded aggressive military action. A crusade-style expedition led by the Bishop of Norwich failed miserably. Richard led a campaign against Scotland that accomplished nothing. Meanwhile, the French were massing for an invasion of England itself.

In October 1386, Parliament turned on the king. Michael de la Pole, as chancellor, requested unprecedented levels of taxation for national defense. Parliament refused to even consider the request until de la Pole was removed from office.

Richard's response became famous: he declared that he would not dismiss so much as a scullion from his kitchen at Parliament's request.

Parliament's counter-response was more famous still: they threatened to depose him.

Richard backed down. De la Pole was removed. A commission was established to control royal finances. The king was humiliated.

But Richard did not forget. He spent the next year touring the country, building support for his cause, establishing a loyal military base in Cheshire. He obtained a legal ruling from his Chief Justice that Parliament's conduct had been unlawful and treasonable.

When he returned to London in late 1387, he was confronted by five powerful lords who had united against him: Gloucester, Arundel, Warwick, and two younger nobles—Henry Bolingbroke (son of John of Gaunt) and Thomas Mowbray. They accused Richard's favorites of treason.

These five became known as the Lords Appellant—"appellant" referring to their formal legal appeal against the king's advisors.

Richard stalled for time, expecting Robert de Vere to arrive from Cheshire with reinforcements. But the Lords Appellant intercepted de Vere at Radcot Bridge and routed his forces. De Vere fled the country. Richard was powerless.

What followed was the Merciless Parliament of February 1388. The Appellants executed several of Richard's closest advisors. De la Pole and de Vere, having escaped abroad, were sentenced to death in their absence. Sir Simon de Burley, Richard's beloved former tutor, was beheaded despite Queen Anne's personal pleas for mercy.

The circle around the king had been completely destroyed.

The Long Game

Richard was now in his early twenties. He had been humiliated, his friends killed or exiled, his authority stripped away. What would he do?

He waited.

The Lords Appellant proved no more successful at governing than Richard's favorites had been. Their aggressive foreign policy collapsed when their hoped-for European coalition failed to materialize. Scotland raided the north of England with impunity. John of Gaunt returned from Spain, reconciled with his nephew, and helped stabilize the political situation.

On May 3rd, 1389, Richard announced that he was taking full control of the government. He claimed, with perhaps a hint of sarcasm, that all the difficulties of the past years had been solely due to bad councillors. He promised a new approach: peace with France, lower taxes.

For the next eight years, Richard ruled in apparent harmony with his former adversaries. He cultivated alliances, negotiated a truce with France, and married again—this time to the French princess Isabella, who was only six years old at the time of the marriage in 1396.

But Richard had not forgotten. He had especially not forgotten the execution of Simon de Burley.

The Revenge

In 1397, Richard struck.

Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick—three of the original Lords Appellant—were arrested. Arundel was executed. Gloucester died in custody at Calais, almost certainly murdered on Richard's orders. Warwick was exiled. The remaining two Appellants, Bolingbroke and Mowbray, had by now reconciled with the king, but Richard ensured they would not threaten him again: when the two men quarreled with each other, Richard exiled them both.

With his enemies eliminated, Richard's behavior became increasingly autocratic. The final two years of his reign have been described by historians as his "tyranny." He demanded huge loans from wealthy subjects. He forced entire counties to purchase collective pardons for imaginary offenses. He created a personal army of Cheshire archers who enforced his will.

The political establishment watched with growing alarm.

The Fall

In February 1399, John of Gaunt died. He had been the richest man in England, and his vast estates should have passed to his son—Henry Bolingbroke, now Duke of Lancaster, currently in exile.

Richard made a catastrophic decision. He extended Bolingbroke's exile from ten years to life and confiscated the entire Lancastrian inheritance for the Crown.

This was a mistake that transcended the personal grievance with Bolingbroke. Every noble in England suddenly had to wonder: if the king could simply take the Lancaster estates, whose property was safe? Richard had violated the fundamental rules of inheritance that the entire aristocracy depended upon.

In June 1399, while Richard was away in Ireland dealing with an uprising, Bolingbroke invaded England with a small force.

It grew rapidly. Lords and their retainers flocked to Bolingbroke's banner. By the time Richard returned from Ireland, he found himself abandoned. His own forces melted away. He was captured, forced to abdicate, and imprisoned.

Henry Bolingbroke was crowned King Henry IV on October 13th, 1399—the first king of the House of Lancaster.

Richard lived only a few more months. He died at Pontefract Castle around February 14th, 1400. The official account claimed he starved himself to death in grief. The more likely truth is that he was deliberately starved by his captors, or perhaps murdered outright. He was thirty-three years old.

The Afterlife of a King

Richard II's posthumous reputation was shaped largely by William Shakespeare, whose play "Richard II"—written almost two centuries after the events it depicts—portrayed Richard as a poetic, ineffectual king whose misrule set in motion the bloody Wars of the Roses. In Shakespeare's telling, Richard's deposition was a kind of original sin that haunted England for generations.

Modern historians see things differently. They do not accept Shakespeare's neat narrative of cause and effect, though they also do not exonerate Richard from responsibility for his own downfall.

Was Richard mad? Nineteenth and early twentieth-century historians often thought so, but contemporary scholars are skeptical. Richard may have had what we would now call a personality disorder, particularly in the final years of his reign—but his policies were not inherently unrealistic or unprecedented. Other medieval kings had sought to strengthen royal power against the nobility. Others had relied on favorites. Others had pursued peace with France.

Richard's problem was not his goals but his methods. He carried out reasonable policies in ways that the political establishment found unacceptable. He never learned to work with the nobility rather than against them. He bore grudges for years and then took revenge in ways that terrified potential allies as much as proven enemies. He violated fundamental principles—like the laws of inheritance—that everyone depended upon.

And perhaps, beneath it all, he never recovered from that day at Smithfield when he was fourteen years old. He had faced down a mob with nothing but royal authority and nerve. They had bowed before him. Why shouldn't everyone else do the same?

The lesson of the Peasants' Revolt, it turned out, applied to peasants. The nobility played by different rules. Richard learned this too late, in a prison cell at Pontefract, waiting for a death that would not be long in coming.