Foundation (History of England Vol 1) (46 page)

In the spring of 1383 there had been a botched campaign to relieve Flanders of French control; it had been led by Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich, but the bishop did not prove to be a good commander. In full martial gear he led his troops into battle against the Flemish towns, but his victims were ordinary Flemish citizens. ‘Men, women and children’, according to one report, ‘were hewed together in one vast massacre.’ The bishop may have believed that he was saving their souls. His army was eventually surrounded, and terms were agreed without Despenser ever having attacked the French enemy. It seems likely that the king himself planned an invasion of France in this year, but the prospect of heavy taxation and another popular insurrection deterred him.

Another military failure followed two years later. France and Scotland, old friends in arms, were eager to pursue a joint campaign from the north of England. So in the summer of 1385 Richard II gathered an army to forestall them. He called a feudal summons, the last such summons in English history, and the larger magnates were obliged to respond to the call. The English army met at Newcastle and marched northwards, burning Melrose Abbey and other religious houses on their way to Edinburgh. Once the king arrived in the capital, however, he realized that the Scots had gone; the Scottish soldiers were moving towards the Highlands. Some of
his commanders urged him to pursue them, but he declined to do so. Why march into barren countryside without the chance of finding supplies? So he went home. This was an eminently wise decision. Doing nothing is sometimes the best course. But it did not improve the king’s reputation for valour. He had been given the opportunity of displaying himself as a sovereign of war, the indisputable qualification for a king, but success eluded him.

The debacle only served to increase the young king’s antipathy to war. In the course of his reign he would never again lead his armies against the French or the Scots. There would be no memorable battles, no sieges, no towns or castles conquered. In any case the English treasury could no longer afford the cost of further military adventure.

Further rumours of war were being whispered in the spring and summer of 1386. A French army of 30,000 men was being gathered on the coast of Flanders, and was compared to the Greek army that had overcome ancient Troy. The people of Rye, Sandwich and Dover were commanded to remain within the walls of their towns, and the castles close to the southern coast were strengthened and refurbished. The citizens of London were ordered to stock food supplies that might last for three months. It was reported that some Londoners were leaving the city. Richard himself planned yet another attack upon France, but the Commons refused to supply his coffers. The threat of invasion faded away by the end of the year. The French court, like that of the English, did not have the funds to maintain so large an army for so long. Autumn gave way to winter. The fierce weather of that season was another deterrent. The business of the country could go on unimpeded, in theory, and the English people could enjoy the pleasures of peace.

In October 1386 the parliament met in Westminster Hall, as had become the custom, but Richard had prepared a surprise for its members. The statues of previous monarchs, larger than life-size, adorned the hall; the thirteen kings, from Edward the Confessor to Richard himself, looked down upon the proceedings. It was a signal vision of Richard’s concept of kingship. The power of sovereignty was meant to overawe the lowlier subjects of the realm.

It did not work out like that in practice. The Lords sent several petitions to the king, all designed to curb his use or abuse of power. He was accused of flouting the law, and ignoring the advice of his proper councillors. He was condemned for appointing and rewarding unsuitable advisers; he gave out land and offices without advice, and made free use of pardons for rape and murder in order to raise revenue. It was clear, at least, that he was now strong enough to resist the counsels of the senior members of the realm.

A deputation from the parliament visited the king at the palace of Eltham, since Richard himself had refused to travel to Westminster. They demanded the removal of his chancellor, Michael de la Pole, one of the ‘new men’ whom Richard favoured at the expense of the old nobility. The king raged against the assembled Lords and Commons, accusing them of disloyalty and even of treachery. He told them, in his abrupt and angry manner, that he would not dismiss a servant from his kitchen at the behest of parliament. Rumours of plots and counter-plots were everywhere. Richard was behaving in secret and arbitrary ways, and it was whispered that he wished to behead the most notable of his enemies.

It was time for a more powerful intervention. Thomas of Woodstock, the duke of Gloucester, sought a further interview with Richard at Eltham; he was accompanied by Richard FitzAlan, eleventh earl of Arundel, a powerful and skilful nobleman. These two magnates informed the king that he had been ruling England unwisely and unlawfully. They said that the country had always been governed by the concord between the king and the noble lords; only a sliver of truth can be found in this argument, but they enforced their claim with a barely disguised threat that the king could be deposed. The example of his great-grandfather, Edward II, was laid before him. That unfortunate monarch had been forced to resign in favour of his son before being cruelly murdered. Thomas of Woodstock, one of Richard’s uncles, may even have desired the throne for himself.

Richard took the example of Edward II to heart. Nine years later he would plead with the pope to canonize his predecessor as one of the great royal saints of England. There is no doubt that he always felt a strong sense of identification with his unhappy ancestor. But in the winter of 1386 he was obliged to temporize
with his enemies. He was still only twenty-one years old, and could not have been entirely sure of himself. He could not yet afford to antagonize them. So he yielded to their demands. The king would come to Westminster. He agreed that his household could be investigated and administered by a commission of nobles and bishops. Michael de la Pole was dismissed, and later imprisoned. Thomas Arundel, bishop of Ely and brother of Richard FitzAlan, took his place as chancellor.

The parliament house had never been so powerful as it was in the last months of 1386, but it would be unwise to praise its members too highly. They were not necessarily good patriots fighting against a tyrant. They were just as preoccupied with their own interests as were the king and his household; a poem of the period describes their conduct as confused and uncertain. Some members sat there ‘like a nought in arithmetic that marks a place but has no value in itself’. Some were taking bribes from royal officials or other interested parties, and some were paid dependants who would not say anything without orders. Some stumbled and mumbled; others slept or stammered their way through their speeches, not knowing what they meant to say.

The king chafed under the restrictions imposed upon him by what soon became known as the ‘Wonderful Parliament’. The commission was given its powers for a year; Richard decided to wait and watch, while at the same time mustering his resources. He consulted with the aldermen of London and the sheriffs of the counties, but received only ambiguous encouragement. His exactions had hardened their hearts. Then he called upon the judges. The most senior of them met in the summer of 1387, and determined that the king could change or dismiss the ordinances of parliament at his will. This effectively annulled the power of both Lords and Commons. The judges also declared that those who had attempted to curb the power of the king could be punished as traitors even if they were not technically guilty of treason.

This was most serious for the king’s opponents. The earls could be beheaded, for example, and their lands held forfeit. Throughout the autumn a tense confrontation was continued, the lords refusing to meet the king after he had summoned them. The earl of Northumberland tried to act as a mediator between the two parties,
but it became clear that there was no room for compromise or negotiation. So in November the lords rose up in arms. They called upon their household forces and, at a battle beside the Thames near Radcot on 20 December 1387, they defeated an army sent against them. Then they marched upon London, where Richard was sheltering in the Tower.

It seems likely that the king was deposed for two or three days, effectively stripped of his power, but no clear agreement about the name of his successor could be found. Faced with rival claims, the only real choice was to reinstate the young king suitably chastened and obedient. To be deprived of his throne, even for a few days, was a severe blow to his own regal sense of selfhood. He had in effect been stripped of his identity.

Richard did indeed submit to their demands. The lords took over his household, and dismissed some of the royal servants. Other household officials were arrested. The lords then summoned a parliament to meet on 3 February, where they wished to deal with their other enemies. There is an account of the opening session in which the lords, dressed in gold robes, linked hands and slowly advanced upon the king as he sat upon the throne; then they bowed to him, and filed into their places. It became known as the ‘Merciless Parliament’.

Their first victims were the judges who had pronounced them to be traitors. The Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, Robert Tresilian, was tried and condemned to death while his judicial colleagues were sentenced to exile in Ireland. Tresilian fled for sanctuary to a chapel of Westminster Abbey, but he was dragged out and carried off to Tyburn. The mob carved images of the devil, and of the zodiac, upon his body before his throat was cut and his corpse hung upon the gallows. Seven of the king’s followers were also executed.

Yet the new regime of the lords was not marked by any great success. The Commons had hoped that the removing of the ‘evil’ counsellors from the king’s side would benefit the realm by financial and judicial reform. But the Lords were divided; they pursued their own interests to the detriment of the Commons. The finances of the country did not improve, and factional violence became increasingly common. They also failed in the pursuit of military glory;
a planned invasion of France degenerated into a series of coastal skirmishes. The kingdom could only properly be guided by a king. A gathering of notables was not sufficient.

So Richard struck back. In the winter of 1388 the king offered to act as a mediator between the Lords and the Commons. The great lords were effectively lawless, and were able to escape justice with impunity. They were, to use Langland’s word, ‘wolveskynnes’. With their bands of followers they were acting like local tyrants oppressing the common people. Richard offered to restrain his own use of retainers, and sweetly asked the lords to follow his example. His was a policy of divide and rule. He represented strength and compromise.

In the spring of 1389 the king declared, to his council at Westminster, that he had decided once more to assume full responsibility for the affairs of the nation. There was little disagreement. He said that for twelve years he and his kingdom had been ruled or overruled by others. What had been the result? The people had been burdened by excessive taxation that had benefited no one. He was now twenty-two, and would rule alone.

Richard’s sense of kingship had been threatened and almost destroyed in the last days of 1388; now he projected it more fiercely and defiantly. His nomenclature changed. The petitions of the Commons were addressed to ‘your highness and royal majesty’ rather than, as before, to ‘your rightful and gracious lord’. The royal servants began to describe him as ‘highness’, ‘majesty’ and ‘your high royal presence’. He told one knight out of Warwickshire, Sir William Bagot, that he wished to be remembered as one who had ‘recovered his dignity, regality and honourable estate’ and who had ensured that his prerogative was ‘humbly obeyed . . . as it had been in any other king’s time’.

He believed himself to be the source of all justice and order, the pattern of authority; that is why he was gracious to the Commons as well as to the Lords. They were all equally his subjects. It is a measure of his sense of greatness that his household was three times as large as that of Henry I. In the autumn of 1390 he also began to gather around him a body of followers, known as an ‘affinity’, who adopted as a badge the image of the white hart. He derived it from the coat of arms of his mother. All is of a piece
with his love of pageantry and his taste for magnificent robes. The court became the stage for his splendour. At some banquets, and at the three festal crown-wearings of the year, he would sit in state upon his throne watching everyone but conversing with nobody; he would remain very still, crowned and in full regalia, as if he had become a living statue. ‘And if his eye fell upon anyone,’ a chronicler reveals, ‘that person had to bend his knee to the king.’

His sense of royalty was also an aspect of his piety. God was his only overlord. He frequently visited the shrines of saints, and instituted new cults; he was fascinated by reports and rumours of miracles; he was the patron of the Carthusians, and lavished treasure for the rebuilding of churches and abbeys. There is a panel painting, known as ‘the Wilton Diptych’. On the left panel Richard is depicted kneeling, dressed in a red mantle embroidered in gold, with Edward the Confessor (saint), John the Baptist (saint) and King Edmund (saint and martyr) standing around him. On the right-hand panel is painted an image of the Virgin and Child surrounded by eleven angels. One of the angels holds aloft the flag of St George. So here Richard celebrates the continuity of his reign with his saintly Anglo-Saxon forebears, united in the veneration of peace and national renewal. He compounded his attachment to the memory of Edward the Confessor by impaling his own arms with the arms of the dead king. It might almost seem that Richard even considered himself to be worthy of canonization.