The Rest Is History - 415. The Murder of Richard II (Part 3)

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

“For within the hollow crown that rounds the hollow temple of a king...” Richard II, son of the dashing Black Prince and grandson of Edward III, became King of England at only ten years old. By the age of fifteen he had overcome one of the most terrifying threats to the English Crown up to that point: the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. In the ensuing years, Richard’s rule became increasingly autocratic. This, coupled with the threat of foreign invasion and his dangerous proclivity for favourites, increasingly alienated Richard’s subjects, with rebel lords eventually taking up arms against the king. As the storm-clouds of civil war loomed large, King Richard II clung to his hollow crown…. Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the events that resulted in Richard’s deposition and mysterious death, and what his reign tells us the English monarchy in the 15th century. *The Rest Is History LIVE in 2024* Tom and Dominic are back onstage this summer, at Hampton Court Palace in London!  Buy your tickets here: therestishistory.com Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. My lord of Hereford here, whom you call king, is a foul traitor to proud Hereford's king. And if you crown him, let me prophesy, the blood of English shall manure the ground, and future ages groan for this foul act. Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels, and in this seat of peace tumultuous wars shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound. Disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny shall here inhabit, and this land be called the field of

Golgotha and dead men's skulls. Oh, if you raise this house against this house, it will the woefulest division prove that ever fell upon this cursed earth. Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so, lest child, child's children cry against you. Woe. So that is the Bishop of Carlisle, William Shakespeare's Richard II.

And that moment, Tom, comes at the fateful moment, doesn't it? The climax of Shakespeare's great play. A play that is not one of the most performed in the Shakespearean canon, but it has some of the finest writing, some of the most beautiful passages. I thought you did wonderful justice to it.

Well, that is kind. I especially loved the catch in your throat in the final few lines. Well, that's what a great actor... As you contemplate England turning to civil war. Very, very moving, Dominic. It's not complicated, Tom. It's just acting. I know it is. So that's the moment on the 1st of October, 1399, when Richard II was deposed. He was kicked out and replaced by Henry Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV. And in Shakespeare's history plays, Tom, his great cycle goes all the way through to Richard III.

Everything starts with that moment. That is the trigger for the Wars of the Roses, for the high drama of the 15th century, for the kind of usurpations and depositions and battles and murders of princes in the tower and all those kinds of things. And it's a great moment. It comes in the midpoint of the Hundred Years' War. So you've done a mighty series on that. And this is often seen as a kind of turning point, certainly in English medieval history. And the question is, was it? Well, that's what we're going to explore today, Dominic, because we have done two episodes on the Great Revolt, the Peasants' Revolt of 1381,

but there are more tumultuous episodes in the reign of Richard II. And we've given a massive spoiler alert as to what the most dramatic of all is, the deposition of Richard II. But as you say, the question is, how did Richard II come to be deposed? And how significant is it for the history of the 15th century, which we'll follow through? So Tom, just to recap for those people who are coming to the show after a big break or something, we're at the midpoint of the Hundred Years' War. Edward III, who was Richard II's predecessor, had had this absolutely glorious reign, lots of victors, Cressy, Poitier, and so on. But the English had been effectively forced back. This is now halftime. They're kind of not licking their wounds exactly. Well, they are a bit, I think. Right. Okay. They're in the dressing room and

they've been hacked around. Right. And people are kind of trying to patch things up. But from the point of view of Richard II, the previous two episodes we did, the problem has been domestic and specifically the Peasants' Revolt, the Great Revolt, as it's called, in 1381. And let's just look at how that might have affected Richard. So he had stood on the Tower of London and he had seen London burning. And I think it's probably not over-psychologising to think that this must have imbued in him a kind of visceral dread of civic disorder. I think he's also only a young boy at this point, he's 14 years old, and it must have given him a feeling of impotence that policy is still basically being decided for him by the people who effectively have the reins of government in their

hands. And yet the paradox is it gives him a massive sense of agency at the same time though, doesn't it? Absolutely, because as we described in the previous episode, Richard is aware that as king he has an incredible charisma, that the people love him. They may hate his ministers, but they love him. And this, of course, is also, I think, part of the swirl of influences that the Peasants' Revolt has on him. So basically the Peasants' Revolt bigs him up in his own mind. It does. And it goes with the grain of the effect of his upbringing. He's not actually the only son of the Black Prince. So there'd been an elder brother, but he died in infancy. The Black Prince, he'd had this glittering court in Bordeaux. He'd then come back to die in Kennington,

near what today is the Kennington Oval. And Richard, I think, growing up would have absolutely lived with the consciousness of what a tremendous dash his father had displayed as a great lord in his court. And I think that it provides Richard through his childhood up to the Peasants' Revolt and then in the years that follow with a sense that he must uphold his dignity and that it's incredibly important to put on a good show. Because more than their predecessors, Edward III and the Black Prince had been all about spectacle and glamour and chivalry and stuff. Is that right? Absolutely. Yes. And of course, achievement. And there's a slight problem for Richard that he hasn't really achieved

anything. And so I think that that's why perhaps he puts an extra premium on the dignity that he hasn't won it, but he has been given it by God as he sees it. So in Shakespeare's play, there's this famous couplet, not all the waters in the rough rude sea can wash the balm off from an anointed king. And the fact that Richard is anointed and that he has succeeded to the throne by right is incredibly important to him. And in the previous episode, we talked about how Edward the Confessor is Richard's great patron. Richard has been crowned and anointed in Westminster Abbey, the shrine built by Edward the Confessor. And Richard feels that this has set him aside from other mortals, that he, in a sense, is separate from his subjects.

And the key detail, I mean, it's kind of announced by the Archbishop of Canterbury shortly after Richard had been crowned, that he's king not by election nor by any such path, but by lawful right of succession. So that's the key. But why does that make him different from previous monarchs of whom the same could be said? It absolutely doesn't. But why does that make him different from previous monarchs of whom the same could be said? It absolutely doesn't. But for Richard, Edward III had demonstrated what a great king he was through military achievement. Richard is a boy, and as he's growing up, therefore he needs to emphasize why he has the right to take over the reins of power. And this right is basically because God wants him to be king. He is the rightful heir to his grandfather. You also have this devotion to kind of display and show, which is also a crucial part of Richard's character. So, I mean, he's not in any way wussy. He's very kind of

strong, loves hunting, in that sense, very much his father's son. But I think he has a slight kind of metrosexual quality. Well, he's often played that way in Shakespeare's playwrights. So the classic one that people may have seen is the TV version with David Tennant. Tennant has kind of very, very long hair and he's very fey and a bit camp. And that's how people normally think of Richard II, right? Well. They get him mixed up with Edward II and they say, oh, he's a bit camp and foppish. I mean, it's not entirely inaccurate.

So the Monk of Evesham reports that Richard does have kind of long blonde hair, a very pale complexion, and says that his features are feminine. And a lot of the paintings he's given quite kind of feminine features. So that must have been Richard's own commission. So that's not the same as Roman historians saying of emperors, oh, they bleach their hair and they shave their legs with shells or whatever, those kinds of things. This isn't propaganda dissing him. No, quite the contrary. I think it's Richard kind of portraying himself. Essentially, I mean, he's a dedicated follower of fashion. He's very, very stylish. He loves his clothes. I mean, he rather despises the French king,

Charles VI. They go and have a summit in 1396 and the French king wears the same robe three days in succession. And Richard regards this with absolute contempt. So he's kind of endlessly, you know, one day he's wearing a magnificent gown of white velvet and red sleeves and the next an outfit of blue velvet decorated with gold. His table is the best in Europe, most extravagant, lots of spices, lots of kind of ducks inside, turkeys inside, whatever. Turduckens. Turduckens, all that kind of thing. He's also the first English king to use a fork. Oh, that's poor.

And supposedly to use a handkerchief. I don't approve of either of those innovations. Right. So you as a rugged son of the Shires might regard this with a measure of contempt, but Richard is doing it for political reasons. So it's, you know, again, it's just setting himself aside. It's about making people appreciate that he is someone distinctive. So that's what it's all about. But you can imagine that this must make him a bit of a nightmare to handle as he's growing up. Right. So he's a bit of a diva, basically. Bit of a diva, a bit of a diva, very, very self-conscious very very stylish probably an awkward teenager to have around yeah and i think even more so when um on the 6th of january 1383 he celebrates his 16th birthday

comes of age and he's now the same age as the black prince was when he won his spurs at cressy tom i don't want to say what everybody's thinking but you're rich the second and i'm henry bollingbrook i mean i'm just putting that out there i think that this is a parallel that we may reprise so richard still has lots of uncles on the scene specifically two so john gaunt who we mentioned very very unpopular with the rebels in london who trashed his palace yeah but he remains by miles the richest and most powerful figure in england and he's suspected of aspiring to the throne. This is unfair, actually. He's very, very loyal to his nephew, his much-loved brother's son. And also we have on the scene Thomas of Woodstock,

who had been, you remember in the previous episode, he'd been dashing off to Brittany periodically and not doing very well and then coming back. And he has now been elevated to a dukedom, the Duke of Gloucester. So these are the two guys who feel that basically they should be running the country. The problem is Richard is very much the kind of king who has favorites. So this is something that Edward II, Edward III's father, had been notorious for his favorites. Yeah. And it had ended up kind of bringing him down. Richard, he's got a gang of friends who he favors very, very strongly.

So among them, there is a guy called Michael de la Pole, who is from a family of wool merchants from Hull. Glamorous. Very, very, not the kind of person who John of Gaunt necessarily might approve of. But Richard loves him and he sends him off on all kinds of diplomatic missions. And it's Michael de la Pole who finds him a very glamorous bride in the form of Anne of Bohemia, she's called. So she's the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor.

He's brought over. They marry. Very happy marriage, although they don't have children. And as a reward for this, Michael de la Pole is first appointed chancellor. And then in 1385, Richard makes him the Earl of Suffolk. So this is a guy who is on the make. Are they the same age? He's a little bit older. No, he's older. And also older is a guy called Simon Burley. He was

Richard's tutor, a very good friend of the Black Prince, had been involved again in the marriage negotiations and is seen by everyone as being incredibly common. So all the nobles regard him as beyond vulgar. So Michael de la la pole and simon burley are older but there is one guy in particular who is richard's age whom he adores his best friend who is a guy called robert de vere the earl of oxford and robert de vere i mean that's a very very epicene favorite kind of name right and there are people who suggest that richard and de vere are lovers i mean they may have been, we don't know, but actually De Vere is a massive womanizer. So there's a big scandal where he runs off with his wife's lady-in-waiting, which is- That's not good.

Yeah. Very, very poor behavior. And Richard lavishes him with all kinds of titles. So he's the first guy to be made a Marquess in English history. He's made the Marquess of Dublin. Marquess of Dublin. And why Marquess? Is this because it's a fancy title and it's a little bit different? A little bit posh, a little bit foreign. And then in 1386, he gets made the Duke of Ireland, which is... The Duke of Ireland? I didn't know such a title existed. Yeah. So that's nice for our Irish listeners. And so you can imagine that this is really,

really pissing off all the great magnates. So the royal uncles, but also leading noblemen. So you've got the Earl of Warwick, you've got the Earl of Arundel, their cross about this. And this obviously matters because Richard II, as king, he can go on about his anointing and how he's appointed by God and all this kind of stuff, but he cannot rule without the backing of the magnates. And I think he's, you know, Edward III, he had been a lad and the Magnets are basically lads and it had been brilliant. So you compared me to Richard II. I mean, it's a bit like when we were on our tour of Australia, you and Theo and Dom chatting about the Champions League quarterfinals in whatever, 2007. And I'm sitting there. So basically, Richard II is not hanging out with

the magnates talking about the Champions League. He's sitting there with his fork and his handkerchief. Thinking about Christianity, talking about the history of Christianity, all that kind of stuff. And so this means that tensions are created and tensions are further created by the fact that the Hundred Years' War, which is still rumbling on, it isn't going well. Richard II isn't a very good war leader. The French are massing a huge army on the Channel. Richard goes off to try and defeat the Scots. That doesn't go well either. And the result is that basically, the number of people whom Richard can rely on is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking the whole time. And this crisis is then accelerated by two developments in 1386.

Just before you get onto those two developments, Tom, a quick question for you, an obvious question. Everything you were describing about Richard II is kind of medieval politics 101. Yeah. You know, manage your magnates, be nice to the big power brokers, all that stuff. And he has an example in his own family of Edward II. Yeah, he does. Just two kings earlier, who'd made a terrible horlicks of this and ended up supposedly having an encounter with the red hot poker, although that probably

didn't happen. Why on earth does he not learn the lesson from that? I mean, it's not that long ago. Because I think he doesn't know how else to rule. He's trying to rule as best he can. And the fact that he starts to make some of the same mistakes that his great grandfather had made is kind of irrelevant to him. He's not looking back to make some of the same mistakes that his great-grandfather had made is kind of irrelevant to him. He's not looking back to the example of Edward II. He's trying to do the best that he can. And the fact that he is replaying some of these mistakes, it just points to certain structural deficiencies, I think, in royal government in the 14th century.

So it's a structural issue as much as it is a temperamental one, do you think? I think it's a structural issue if you are not a successful war leader and if you lack the kind of easy charm that Edward III had had. Yeah. Okay. I think being a lad is a kind of requirement for being a successful medieval king. And that's why, basically, in 1386, two things happen that really accentuate the crisis. The first is that John of Gaunt leaves England, turned out to be for three years. He's gone off to Spain to try and make himself the King of Castile.

So this is a kind of, as you do. And this is a problem for Richard because John of Gaunt, he's the greatest man in the kingdom and had been very supportive of his nephew. And now he's gone, there is a kind of void at the center there is also an absolutely massive invasion scare so you have 30 000 men massed on the french coast a contemporary chronicler compares it to the greek army which had destroyed troy which is you know not the kind of detail that you want yeah you know this is up there with the spanish armada and napoleon in 1805 as one of the great invasion scares i mean we don't remember it because in the event it doesn't happen, but at the time it causes massive panic. And so

Michael de la Pole, who is chancellor, he's the guy who's charged with raising the money that would enable England to see this threat off. And so he summons parliament. Parliament is furious because parliament is getting fed up with being summoned and asked for money. And the MPs demand that Richard sacks de la Pole. And Richard has a hissy fit about this and famously says that he would not dismiss so much as a kitchen scullion from office at the request of mere commoners. Wow. Okay. And this is when Gloucester and the Earl of Arundel, they go to Richard and they specifically remind him of the fate of Edward II. They say, listen, you are skirting with danger here.

And Richard is sufficiently alarmed at this that he agrees to dismiss de la Pole. So it's a victory for parliament and it's a victory for the Duke of Gloucester. For the big magnates, the big landowners, yeah. And further humiliations are heaped on Richard. So de la Pole is impeached. So he's charged by Parliament on charges of negligence and of embezzlement. But everyone knows that it's really Richard himself who is being attacked. And Parliament sets up a council that has powers to kind of go through all the royal accounts to check that money hasn't been

embezzled. And this kind of parliamentary commission by November 1386 is basically in charge of the entire government. And it's an incredible humiliation. So that's almost like political land grab by parliament, by the commons and the lords working together, Tom, I guess. Yes. And so this is very popular. And so this parliament is called the wonderful parliament. We've talked about how parliaments in Richard's reign have brilliant names, but Richard obviously doesn't regard it as wonderful at all. I mean, he thinks it's awful. And 1387, he's trying to think, how can I claw the situation back? The problem for him is that he doesn't have access to the levers of government anymore.

And also the Earl of Arundel, who's one of the magnates who's kind of moved against him, in March 1387, he wins a spectacular victory at sea over the French, which destroys the invasion threat and basically means that England will be free from invasion threats for decades. So it's a great victory. So it looks as though Richard doesn't really have any levers to pull at all. So what he does instead of remaining in London and fighting his corner there is he goes out into the country and he kind of tries to build power bases out in the shires. And one place where he particularly tries to build a power base is Cheshire.

And he also pursues a kind of legal route, which is to summon the leading judges in the country. And he's basically asking them, as king, can I do whatever I like? And they say yes, presumably, do they? And they basically say, yes, you can. You can do what you like. Is that because they are royal appointees and they are therefore loyal to him rather than to parliament? No, I think they're looking at the law. I think the king can basically do what he likes.

Their ruling is that the king can, if he wants, dissolve parliament whenever he wants, and that the lords and the commons do not have the right to put forward motions and articles that can overrule his. And they are stating what is constitutional propriety. And so Richard thinks, okay, brilliant. And so this is then fed back to the great magnates and it's obviously the threat of civil war is brewing. So on the 14th of November, there is a meeting between Richard's councillors and the three leading magnates in the country, which is the Duke of Gloucester, the Earl of Arundel and the Earl of Warren. So this is 1387, Tom?

1387. The autumn of 1387. Yeah. And these three magnates, they bring an appeal, which is namely a prosecution, against Richard's favourites. So including de la Pole and also including de Vere, Richard's great friend. And the targeting of the favourites is basically a way of hitting at Richard. You can't hit the king, so you target the favourites. It is. Yeah yeah so they come to be called the lord's appellant the lords who are bringing

an appeal a prosecution against the king's favorites and three days later they repeat this appeal before richard himself richard kind of plays for time because he knows that up in cheshire devere is raising an army all right devere the guy who he was accused of sleeping with. Yeah. His great pal. The lad who's been running off with his wife's lady-in-waiting. Yeah. So Richard is waiting for De Vere to come to the rescue. But meanwhile, the three lords appellant have been joined by two further lords appellant. And these are contemporaries, again, of Richard. So one of them is a guy called Thomas Mowbray, who's the Earl of Nottingham, who had been a good friend of richard's but has now switched side and the fifth dominic is richard's cousin henry bollingbroke so named after the castle in which he was born

yeah he also becomes one so there are now five lords appellant his own cousin tom his own cousin and henry bollingbroke is the son of john of Gaunt. Yeah. The most powerful man in the world or whatever he's regarded as. Yeah. But he's off in Spain. So I think if John of Gaunt had been in England, he would absolutely have stamped his foot down. But Henry Bolingbroke has kind of agency. And so he can see the way the wind is blowing. And so he joins the other Lord's appellant. And Henry Bolingbroke is at the head of the army that marches from London into Oxfordshire to meet de Vere's army, which is marching down from Cheshire. And they meet at a place called Radcot Bridge, and de Vere is trounced. And he flees abroad, and the Lord's appellant are absolutely triumphant. And Richard is now completely screwed.

So he retreats to the tower, as he had done in 1381 in the Great Revolt. And Richard is now completely screwed. So he retreats to the tower as he had done in 1381 in the Great Revolt. And basically he's forced into total surrender. And all kinds of rumors circulate that the Duke of Gloucester had wanted to make himself king. And that for two days, actually, this had been seriously proposed. So Nigel Saul, who's written the definitive biography of Richard II, he says subsequently, I mean, everyone has a kind of a stake in denying that this had happened. But he said in the circumstances, there can be little doubt that for a period of some two or three days, Richard ceased to rule. Okay, Tom, I know we've got to go to a break in a second. But just before

we do that, if this was happening in Constantinople or something, Richard would have been blinded and sent off to a monastery and he absolutely would have been deposed. Somebody would have replaced him. Why doesn't somebody replace him at this point? He's made a horlicks of things. It's impossible to work with. Sure, he's an anointed king, but we've heard that a million times and people do get deposed. No, no, it really matters. It really matters. People really seriously believe it. I mean, it's not just Richard who's hyping it up. It is profoundly believed. It's a sacrament. So to go against God's anointed is to go against God. But people do sometimes get deposed though. It's very, very difficult to do. Very, very difficult, as we will see.

Okay. And so this is why Richard is not deposed. But of course, they can attack his favourites. So in February 1388, a new parliament is summoned, and this is called the Merciless Parliament. Great name. And that's because they show no mercy to Richard's favourites. So de Vere and de la Pole, who have both escaped to France, they are sentenced to death in their absence. Others of Richard's favourites who have not fled are captured and put to death. And among them is Richard's tutor, Sir Simon Burley. Oh, yeah.

The friend of the Black Prince, the guy who everyone had laughed at for being common. And Richard is so upset about this that he goes to his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, with his queen, and the pair of them fall on their knees and beg for Simon Burley to be spared. And Gloucester refuses point blank. No, he's got to go. He's got to go. And so, you know, it looks as if it's all over for Richard, basically. I mean, he may still be king in name, but his authority seems completely shot to pieces. Yeah.

He's been totally humiliated, Tom. How can he possibly come back from this? Well, we'll find out, won't we? We'll go to a break right now, but we will leave on this cliffhanger. Can Richard turn this around? Spoiler alert, he can. And then there's another twist. So we'll see you after the break.

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club.

If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Things are looking very bleak for Richard II. His tutor has been executed. Richard fell on bended knee, but it availed him naught.

So, Tom. That's exactly right. It did avail him naught. So, take us back into the story. What happens next? Well, basically, Richard, to begin with, has no choice but to suck it up. I mean, for him, it's a shot like the Great Revolt. And as in the Great Revolt, it confirms him in his essential character traits, one of which is the less power he has,

the more he insists on his dignity as an anointed king. And the more he kind of goes for the kind of the metrosexual option. You know, more show, better clothes, more, more ducks in turkeys, all that kind of thing. Yeah. Because he has no power. He has no power. And he's trying too hard, basically. But I think he has also learned a lesson, which is that he has to play the long game. So basically what he does is to just sit back and wait for the Lord's appellant to screw things up. Because I suppose Richard, by this point, he's had a sense of how challenging it is to rule England. Because the essential problem that England is trying to fight a war that it can't really afford, it hasn't gone away. And so this is a challenge that will face the Lord's appellant.

And so it proves. So Arundelel who'd won this great naval victory he leads a chevauchee into france and it's a complete damp squib doesn't work so that's loads of money that's been blown so just on the war we talked about this as half time in the hundred years war but campaigning is still kind of going on yeah it's a bit of a stalemate and it's a bit of a sultry is it there are no big battles no big battles no right but there's a bit of a stalemate and it's a bit desultory, is it? There are no big battles. No big battles, no. Right. But there's a need to keep England in kind of state of arm preparation.

And there remains an expectation that great victories should be won in France. Yeah. The three elder lords appellant are from the generation that had won victories in France. And so this is why people are willing to back them on the expectation that they will go and get victories in France. And then they don't. And so that starts to shred their prestige. And what Richard also does rather cleverly is to bribe Mowbray and Bolingbroke, the younger ones, by giving them kind of fancy jobs. So anyone who has played Kingmaker, the board game about the Wars of the Roses, will remember the Warden of the Northern Marches,

which is a tremendous post you can get. So Mowbray gets appointed Warden of the Northern Marches. He goes off to lead English forces against the Scots. Bolingbroke, likewise, is given new posts, new honours. And the result of this is that by spring 1389, the alliance between the elder generation of Lords Appellant and the two younger ones has kind of broken up and Richard feels that he can seize control back. And so on the 3rd of May, he announces publicly that he is, you know, the boy is back in town and he dismisses all his ministers the next day. And actually Dominic, among his ministers, he dismisses is William of Wickham, who we talked about in the public schools episode. The real Harry Potter episodes. The founder of Winchester.

Richard is now basically in control. He's taken the reins of power back into his hands. He pursues various kinds of policies. In the field of foreign affairs, the French war is grumbling on. Richard really wants to try and end it. He can't because there's the same problem that he is Duke of Aquitaine. As Duke of Aquitaine, does he pay homage to the French King or not? Richard says, no. The French King says, yes. And so they can't square that circle,

but they do agree a truce. And this is to run for 28 years, signed in Paris in 1396. And so that kind of frees Richard up to concentrate on domestic affairs. And by domestic affairs, Richard includes Ireland. So you remember he appointed his favourite, the Marquess and then the Duke of Ireland. So Ireland is still very much there. And Richard is the first English king since John, and indeed will be the last English king until William III to go to Ireland. He goes there twice. His stated aim in doing so is to establish good government and just rule over our faithful lieges. That's very nice for the Irish to have Richard going over and taking over.

I think a bit like when the English got thrown out of Normandy back in the 12th century and Edward I decided that he was going to rush around conquering Wales and hammering the Scots. I think, again, this is a slight element of displacement activity. Right. This is compensation. Yeah. But if Richard can't throw his weight around in France, then he'll go and do it in Ireland. Yeah. Does it work? Kind of. The presence of a king with a fair number of people, I mean, it does enable Richard to stabilize Ireland from an English point of view. I mean, let's say from the Irish point of view, but yeah. And at the same time, back in England, Richard is massively cranking up this whole, you know, I'm the chosen one of God,

lots more clothes, lots of portraits of him. People may have seen the famous painting of him with his patron saints kind of kneeling before the Virgin and the infant Christ. It's in the National Gallery in London. So that's the Wilton Diptych, Tom. Yes. A very famous painting. I once went to a lecture by Maurice Keane. Great medieval historian about the Wilton Diptych.

Yes, of course. Very interesting. Great book on chivalry. Yeah, people can look it up. It's a tremendous painting, actually. And it kind of captures that slightly gilded, spectacular, the sort of desperation to be noticed. This sort of guilt obsession that I equate with Richard II, which I also equate actually with men with long hair.

But that's by the by. But it's not just show because Richard is also very effectively making sure that he can raise money in the teeth of protests from Parliament. He's absolutely determined to become financially self-sufficient because he's realized you know that this is the royal achilles heel and so he's having endless rows with parliament he's basically ignoring them he's extorting huge loans from kind of the wealthy capitalists in london and essentially you know he's now employing ministers who are overtly browbeating parliamentary opposition. So in 1397, his chancellor, he has an address where he tells the commons that their duty is complete obedience, that the king governs and their role is simply to enable the king

to govern. And this is sufficiently intimidating that the commons do vote Richard two huge grants. And Richard is now, you know, I mean, he's got a lot more money than, say, his regime This is sufficiently intimidating that the Commons do vote Richard two huge grants. He's got a lot more money than, say, his regime had had earlier when he was a child. But of course, it comes at cost because he's alienated London, he's alienated Parliament, there's popular discontent as there had been in 1381, the year of the Great Revolt. And even with all this money that he's screwing out richard is still overspending because you know those robes right yeah they don't come cheap and it probably reminds you dominic and

i'm sure we'll remind listeners of charles the first who likewise has a kind of personal rule alienates london alienates parliament is kind of coming up with all kinds of wheezes and schemes to screw money out and it's the same problem. And loves art. And loves art. Yeah. It's a problem with artistic kings. What's fascinating about it is it's a structural problem with the English monarchy, but I suppose

with so many European monarchies that lasts for centuries. I mean, that's the extraordinary thing. Well, I think it's heightened for the English one because of what's happened over the reign of Edward III, that parliament has seized control of the right to grant money to the king. And so this has now been institutionalized by all those kind of parliaments with various groovy names. The merciless parliament. Yeah. So Richard is basically the first king to wrestle with a problem that will haunt his successors throughout the 15th, 16th, and of course, into the 17th century. How can a king raise money without having his power eroded by parliament? And of course, by magnates, because the magnates are still very much on the scene.

The Lord's appellant are still, Richard hasn't been able to deal with them. He wants to. Richard is very much the kind of man who, when he gets insulted or humiliated, he wants to have his vengeance. But he kind of holds his hand because he's learned to play the long game. Also, John of Gaunt has come back from his abortive venture to make himself King of Spain. This is good news for Richard because Gaunt is a very loyal servant of him. It stabilizes the regime. But I think it means that Richard doesn't rush into dealing with the Lord's appellant. But by 1397, he decides that he is ready to make his move. And on the 10th of July in that year, very abruptly, completely without warning, taking everyone by surprise, he orders the arrest of Gloucester, of Arundel, and Warwick.

So the three leading more elderly magnates. So not Bolingbroke and not Mowbray. And on the 15th of July, he goes to parliament and he tells the commons that these three great lords have been arrested, and I quote, for the great number of extortions, oppressions and grievances committed against the king and people and for other offenses against the king's majesty. And that, of course, is turning on its head the charges that the lord's appellant had brought against his favourites. So very, very sweet vengeance. And they're very rapidly dispatched. So Arundel is executed. His brother, who is the Archbishop

of Canterbury, is sent off into exile. Warwick is brought before the court and, to everyone's contempt, breaks down. And it's said he sobbed and whined like a wretched old woman oh no so he's sentenced to life imprisonment and gloucester dies in very mysterious circumstances so he is arrested he's sent to calais and there it is reported that he's died you know he died of a cold or something although his valet later reports that he'd been suffocated beneath the mattress beneath a mattress that requires multiple people to hold the mattress down, surely. It's complicated. Right. So, you know, you talked about how this is setting up kind of echoes that will reverberate throughout the 15th century. Of course, he's not the first

member of a royal family to be suffocated by bed linen. So the princes in the tower will suffer a similar fate. Oh, right. You think they were suffocated beneath bed linen? Beneath pillows, wasn't it, supposedly? Yeah, that's the claim. Philip Langley would not be happy with you, Tom. But I think that Gloucester is basically got rid of because Richard doesn't want the embarrassment of his own uncle being brought to trial. So he takes all their lands. This is great. He distributes them among his followers. He also uses the money to raise basically a private army. So lots of archers, lots of men at arms.

And this is something new. No king has ever done this before. You can imagine that watching this, Mowbray and Bolingbroke are very nervous. So they're the two younger men, the two younger men. But they had sort of become reconciled to the king. He had bought them off with offices and titles and things. So why should they be so nervous if they're back on his side? Because they know that he's a very vengeful man. Yeah. And having seen what he's done to the three other lords appellant, they are nervous that the

axe is hovering. And so both of them start accusing the other of plotting against the king. And isn't this, Tom, a key thing, the vengefulness? I mean, we haven't massively brought that out in Richard's character. I mean, you can't massively brought that out in Richard's character. I mean, you can be showy and flamboyant and you can be a bit prickly and proud and all those kinds of things, but it's not the key to him that he is so spiteful. He's a vengeful man who will not forgive and forget and compromise. And that's what's going to be his undoing. Right.

And Mowbray is a childhood friend of his and Bolingbroke is his cousin. So they know him very, very well on a personal level. And so this is why each one accuses the other of plotting against Richard to try and get in Richard's good books. It's a quarrel that over the winter of 1397 to 1398 comes out into the open. It goes to court. It proves impossible for Parliament to decide between them. And so it's decreed that they should settle it by fighting each other. Trial by combat. Massive excitement. Trial by combat. Oh, that's very Hollywood.

And so this is the big sporting event of the year. Everyone is looking forward to it. They're counting down the months. They're counting down the weeks. They're counting down the days. The great day arrives. Mowbray and Bolingbroke come, they get on their armor, they're ready to fight. And then Richard says, stop, you're not going to fight. And this is the moment at which Shakespeare's play Richard II begins. So we are now into Shakespeare's matter of England with our narrative. And he orders Mowbray and Bolingbroke to retire to their respective pavilions. A couple of hours pass, and then Richard announces his judgment that Mowbray is exiled for life and Bolingbroke is exiled for 10 years. So both of them have no choice but to leave. Huge disappointment across England that they've been denied this great spectacle. Disappointment, not relief? No. Everyone had been looking forward to a-

Clash of the Titans. Clash of the Titans, exactly exactly and then in the new year so we're now into 1399 john of gaunt dies and he had just allowed his son to be exiled he's very old by this point okay and not really in a position to oppose richard which is why richard had moved when he did against you know all the lord's appellant yeah so with the death of john of gaunt there is now an awkward question because should bolingbroke who who is John of Gaunt's son and heir, and therefore Duke of Lancaster, should he be allowed to come back to England to claim his lands? Which are presumably enormous, right? I mean, John of Gaunt is the great magnate. Yeah. And Richard says, no. He says, you're exiled for life. And this means

effectively that Richard is clearly eyeing up the lands of the Dukedom of Lancaster and everything that pertains to that, which would give him a kind of overweening financial security and degree of authority over the rest of the kingdom. So he's effectively kind of verging on an absolute monarchy by this point. And if that works for Richard, he's done. That's going to leave him completely sorted out for the rest of his reign and indeed for his successes as well. Yes. So it's a key moment in the history of the monarchy because it would have provided scope for a much more

iron-fisted kingship than Richard had been able to exercise. Now, the risk for Richard, of course, is that is Bolingbroke going to take this lying down or the Duke of Lancaster, as we should now call him. And just can you tell us, Tom, about what Bolingbroke is like? Because Bolingbroke is Richard's age-ish, isn't he? Richard is about 30 at this point. He's a hard man and he's ambitious. And as it turns out, he is not willing to allow this kind of humiliation and permanent term of exile to stand. Late June 1399, he gets together a very, very small squadron of ships. He's got a force of men at arms, various Lancastrian banner men who've come to join him in France. He's got the exiled Arundel, the former Archbishop of Canterbury.

They sail into the North Sea and they land at Ravenspur on the Humber Estuary. And the reason that they land there is because this is where Bolingbroke's lands are. And so he is saying at this point, I've only come back to claim my duchy. And with that understanding, the leading magnate in the North, who is a guy called Henry Percy, who has been made the first Earl of Northumberland. And the Percys, of course, will become a massive, massive force in Northern politics. The Percys agree not to oppose him. Do they believe him? They really believe him that he's just after his own? Well, unclear. And this is something that will be a topic of much debate in Henry IV's reign. Meanwhile, Richard is in Ireland on the second of his two trips there. This is a problem because he can't get enough shipping to get all his troops back.

He's stuck there and the delay is fatal because support for him hemorrhages away. Large numbers of magnates who are fed up with Richard's personal rule and the threat of tyranny that they identify with him start to swing behind Bolingbroke. And by the end of July, Henry has effectively secured control of pretty much the whole of England. And on the 29th of July, this is symbolized by the fact that three of Richard's most hated councillors are brought into Market Square in Oxford and publicly executed. And everyone cheers and goes hurrah and tosses their caps in the air and says, hooray for Bolingbroke.

Which suggests there's a lot of latent opposition to Richard, presumably because of high taxes. High taxes and because of the sense that he's establishing a tyranny. So people don't like that. Meanwhile, Richard has finally managed to rustle up enough ships. He's landed in Wales, which is not a good place really to try and strike at London from. And he has no support. And so by August, he's recognizing, ah, it's all over. So he meets in Conway Castle with Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland, who by now has absolutely swung behind Bolingbroke. And he negotiates his surrender. And on the 19th of August, Richard has moved to Flint Castle, just along the coast in Wales, where he surrenders to Henry Bolingbroke, his cousin.

And Henry speaks to Richard and he says, My lord, I have come sooner than you sent for me, and I shall tell you why. It is said that you have governed your people too harshly and that they are discontented. If it is pleasing to the Lord, I shall help you to govern them better. And Richard replies to Henry, if it pleases you, fair cousin, then it pleases us well. Oh, those words must have stuck in his craw. He is saying that through gritted teeth, absolutely gritted teeth. And of course,

he knows that Richard is lying. He knows that his cousin is bitter and vengeful and too dangerous, basically, to allow to live. So Henry's in so deep. But the interesting thing is that this is always presented or often presented as Henry being ambitious, being conn Richard III, that the deadly nature of medieval politics of, dare I say, the Game of Thrones, means that if Henry didn't strike now against Richard, he might as well just slit his wrists. He's doomed, right? Yeah, because that's the lesson of the Lord's Appellant. If you're going to strike at Richard, you've got to finish him off, because otherwise he'll be back at you. You don't want to be Ned Stark, right?

Right. So I think that this is, it's basically, it's self-defense rather than ambition that prompts Henry to aspire to the crown. But of course, the reason why Richard is still latently very, very powerful is that he is an anointed king. No one can dispute that. He rules by right. And so this is a huge problem for Henry.

How is he going to claim the throne? So on the 1st of September, the pair of them finally reached London. Richard is sent to the tower. So the tower again and again is kind of punctuation point in his life. He'd been there during the Peasants' Revolt. He'd been taken there by the Lord's Appellant at the great moment of crisis. And now he's back there And he's a prisoner. Henry summons Parliament. And on the 10th of September, he stops using Richard's regnal year to date his proclamations. And so this is essentially saying Richard is going to be deposed. But how do you justify it? Because the problem is, it's not just getting rid of Richard. It's the fact that Richard's next heir isn't Henry Bolingbroke. It's a guy called Edmund, who's the Earl of March,

who is descended from Edward III's third son, Lionel, so ahead of John of Gaunt, but via the female line. People who listened to our episode on the Hundred Years' War, the very first one, may remember that this is how the French stopped Edward III succeeding to the French throne. They say that the French crown can't pass down the female line. And so this is basically what Henry does now. It's very, very ironic that the English, having gone to war on the basis that Edward III was a legitimate heir to the French throne by right of female descent, now they're saying, actually, it's illegitimate. And so this is how Henry is able to claim the throne. But obviously it's very, very legally dubious. And Richard

knows this. And so he keeps insisting, I'm the rightful king. I mean, he is the rightful king. But finally, on the 29th of September, he's visited by Henry and Richard recognizes that he has no choice. He takes the crown off his head, puts it on the ground, and he resigns his right to God. That's madness though, Tom. The moment you take the crown off and say, that's it, I'm done, you're dead. Well, he's effectively nothing. He goes back to being Richard of Bordeaux. He was a fool to do that because it was obvious at that point he'd have to be killed.

Do you not think? I mean, who knows what menaces Richard faced? He probably knows he's going to be killed anyway. So the 30th of September, Parliament approves Richard's deposition. And on the 13th of October, which is the feast day of Edward the Confessor, so Richard's great patron, Henry is crowned in Westminster Abbey. And there's all kinds of attempts to burnish this coronation. People who listen to our coronation episodes may remember Henry IV is the first to wear what's called the Imperial Crown, a crown where metal struts go over the head. There's also a special oil that is supposed to have been given by the Virgin to Thomas Becket.

That definitely happened. Basically, they're pulling out all stops. It's a real problem. Henry is plainly an illegitimate king, and so there are people who can never accept him as king. Henry is aware of this, is aware that Richard basically can't be allowed to hang around on the scene. First of all, he's sent to the castle of Leeds in Kent, and then he's sent to the great Lancastrian stronghold of Pontefract in the north, which is absolutely secure.

In January 1400, there is a Ricardian uprising. It's not very good. It's crushed. And Henry now knows he has no choice. And so the following month, Richard is killed. So there are two versions of this in Shakespeare's play. He's hacked to death by a group of guards led by a guy called Sir Piers of Exton. But it seems from contemporary sources, it's likely that he was just starved to death so

that no one would have responsibility for killing an anointed king. And a remarkable thing to me, looking at this story, is how closely it anticipates the position in 1483. I mean, this is the story of the princess and the tower. Yeah. You know, it's one of the reasons I think it's pretty obvious, to me anyway, that they were killed by Richard III. Yeah. Is that that is an action replay of the same story. The powerful guy, the relative, who's in an impossible position.

And basically, if he doesn't take the crown himself, he'll be killed. But then that raises the issue of what you do with the person you've deposed. And basically, you have to get rid of them. Otherwise, there'll be a focus for rebellions. And that's why Shakespeare's great suite of history plays that goes from Richard II to Richard III do form this incredible unity. Although they're written at very different periods in Shakespeare's life, the deposition of Richard II and Richard III's coup d'etat in the Richard III play, they do bookend this extraordinary narrative. Henry Bolingbroke, unlike Richard III, does not try and disguise what has happened. So Richard II's body is brought in state from Pontefract down to London,

stops along the way. Henry wants everyone to know that Richard is dead so that there won't be kind of pretenders popping up left, right, and center. And there's a requiem mass held in Westminster. And then the body is sent off to a Dominican friary in Hertfordshire. And because Richard, he was a great patron of architecture, as you could imagine, with his metrosexual tastes, he built himself an absolutely sumptuous tomb, but he doesn't end up buried in it. And all kinds of moralists marvel on this, you know, fortune ordered it otherwise, all this kind of thing. Although to be fair to Henry V, who I've often dissed, he does put Richard in the tomb that he prepared in Westminster Abbey. That's typical of Henry V. What a great man.

Yeah. So, I mean, Richard is clearly a massive failure. I mean, there's no other way of judging him but as a failure. But I do think that he's fascinating because the problems that he faces and the solutions that he attempts do look forward to the problems that face kings throughout the 15th century and the Tudors and the Stuarts. And I think that, I mean, Shakespeare is not wrong that the deposition does kind of generate a crisis of authority, certainly for the Lancastrian monarchy. Yeah. It does undermine the legitimacy of Henry IV, of his son, Henry V, and of his son, Henry VI. And that will, in the long term, lead to the instability that will result in the Wars of

the Roses. Yeah. So I think that it's not a completely mad position, the one articulated. From that point onwards, Tom, am I right in thinking there's a cloud in the English sky and that cloud is the storm cloud of civil war? The storm cloud of civil war. I think you're right. That is beautifully and poetically put, but I don't think that we can end this episode

with your poetry. What? When we have Shakespeare's poetry to hand, Dominic. Really? Oh, that's shocking. Would you like me to read it? Would you enjoy that? I would love you to read because this is Richard II contemplating his deposition, and it's one of the great passages in the whole of Shakespeare. And it's one of the great pieces of commentary on kingship, full stop. And fortunately, we have a great performer to do it justice to. We do. But Dominic, just before you give us some Shakespeare, just to mention there will be more

poetry in our next episode, which will be on Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales, which was written in Richard II's reign and will be the final part of our four-part swing through the rule of Richard II. And if you want that immediately, you can of course access it by joining the Restless History Club. Otherwise, this will be going out on Thursday. Now, Dominic, Shakespeare, take it away. Okay, here we go.

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings. How some have been deposed, some slain in war, some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, some slain in war, some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed, all murdered. For within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king keeps death his court. And there the antic sits, scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, allowing him a breath, a little scene to monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks, infusing him with self and vain conceit, as if this flesh, which walls about our life, were brass impregnable, and humored thus, comes at the last, and with a little pin bores through his castle

wall, and farewell king. Goodbye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.