The Demon's Brood (27 page)

The king rewarded those who had made his revenge possible. There were five new dukedoms, Bolingbroke becoming Duke of Hereford and Nottingham Duke of Norfolk, while Lancaster's son by Katherine Swynford, John Beaufort, was created Marquess of Dorset. There was some amusement at their elevation, Walsingham recording that people called them ‘dukelings'. (When the crunch came, however, Richard would find he could rely on only three magnates – his half-brother John Holland, Duke of Exeter, his nephew Thomas Holland, Duke of Surrey and John Montague, Earl of Salisbury.)

In January 1398 another parliament at Shrewsbury posthumously pardoned the king's disgraced chancellor, Michael de la Pole, besides granting Richard the customs on wool for life. Later his enemies charged him with packing the Commons by nominating knights of the shire for the sheriffs to return: modern research shows that a large proportion of the 27 sheriffs who took office at the end of 1397 had links with the royal household, while most of the others were retainers of magnates trusted by Richard. They knew they had been selected to bring government under the Crown's control.

‘Not even the greatest in England dared question anything done by the king', recalls Froissart. ‘He kept a paid retinue of 2,000 archers who guarded him day and night, because he did not entirely trust his uncles, let alone the earl of Arundel's kindred.'
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These were the Cheshire men, who wore his livery of the White Hart. A chronicler credits them with telling him, ‘Dickon, sleep secure while we wake and dread nought while we live.'
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Adam of Usk says they were ‘wholly malevolent, roaming round uncontrolled and doing whatever they wanted, molesting, beating up and robbing'.
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Richard believed he was Christ's vicar on earth, above the law, and that his subjects were in duty bound to obey him implicitly, an idea developed by Giles of Rome in the previous century. (A copy of Giles's
De Regimini Principum
had been owned by the king's tutor Simon Burley.) Writing to the Emperor of Byzantium, Manuel Paleologus, in 1398, Richard expressed outrage at the rebelliousness of England's magnates, whom he swore to crush.
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By then he was making sheriffs take new oaths that promised stricter obedience to him, forcing his lords to swear to uphold the recent parliament's acts to the letter. Behind this lay a conviction that he alone could make the laws, that the lives and goods of every man, woman and child in England belonged to him. He thought he was restoring the Crown's authority, incapable of seeing that he was destroying its very foundations.

Richard's views did not make him feel any more secure. At St Albans Walsingham heard a rumour that the king's slumbers were so disturbed by Arundel's ghost that he had the earl's body dug up at night and buried further away from the Tower. There were signs of a growing loss of self-control. When Lady Warwick came to plead for her husband, Richard brandished a sword, yelling that he would have killed her had she been a man – scarcely the behaviour of someone who prided himself on his dignity.

Just before the Shrewsbury parliament, Norfolk told Bolingbroke (Hereford) that the king would never forgive
Radcot Bridge and meant to destroy them as he had the other Appellants. When Bolingbroke said they had been granted pardons, Norfolk replied that Richard's word could not be trusted even if he swore on God's body – the Host. This was Bolingbroke's version, but it might have been the other way round: perhaps Bolingbroke warned Norfolk of Richard's unreliability and then, fearing he might be reported, slandered him to the king.
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Whatever the truth, at the end of February 1398, in the king's presence, Norfolk told Bolingbroke he was a liar, after which a court of chivalry ordered a trial by combat at Coventry in September. When the two dukes appeared on the tournament field for what promised to be the most dramatic duel in English history, Richard stopped it, not daring to risk the prestige Bolingbroke would gain should he win. He banished Bolingbroke for life and Norfolk for ten years, although both were allowed to transfer large sums of money abroad. Norfolk, once the king's boon companion, died at Venice shortly after. However, Bolingbroke received such a warm welcome from the French court on installing himself in the Hôtel de Clisson at Paris that it drew a formal protest from Richard's envoys.

‘Time honoured Gaunt' (not yet sixty) died in February 1399. The king turned his death into a disaster by refusing to let Bolingbroke inherit his father's duchy of Lancaster, which was confiscated, altering his term of banishment to one for life – without an allowance.

Think what you will, we seize into our hands.

His plate, his goods, his money and his lands.

(
King Richard II
, Act II, scene i)

Richard made a mortal enemy, who had to regain his inheritance or die a beggar. Such flagrant injustice caused every magnate in England to fear his own estates might be confiscated in the
event of royal displeasure – not even King John had dared to flout the common law like this. Ignoring the general outrage, Richard granted former Lancastrian estates to his favourites, but kept a substantial portion for himself.

By now he had acquired very large sums of money, not only Lancastrian and Appellant revenues, but over £130,000 from his wife's dowry.
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It made him over-confident, and in May 1399 he took another expedition to Ireland, leaving his ineffectual uncle York as regent. Writing only five years later, Froissart claims that law and order broke down while he was away. Courts were suspended, while gangs of brigands roamed the roads and plundered farms. Rich men took refuge in London. Everyone grumbled that if things went on like this they would starve, and blamed the king for letting it happen. ‘All he worries about is enjoying himself – he doesn't care what happens to anybody else so long as he gets his own way.'
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Disguised as a pilgrim monk, the ex-Archbishop Arundel went to Henry of Bolingbroke at Paris, urging him to go home and recover his inheritance. Supporters sent ships. Landing in Yorkshire at the end of June with Arundel and 300 men, Bolingbroke rode south. After taking an oath on the Host at Doncaster that he sought only to recover his inheritance, he was joined by the northern lords and Archbishop Scrope of York, and then by the Duke of York. Retainers from the Lancastrian estates rallied to him, making a formidable army. Instead of going to London, the rebels first captured Bristol, where they expected Richard would land on his way home from Ireland, then marched to Chester.

After the Duke of York came over to his side, Henry behaved as though he had replaced the duke as ‘Keeper of the Realm', executing the regime's key henchmen. These were the Earl of Wiltshire, who was Richard's treasurer, with two members of the
royal council, Sir John Bussy and Sir Henry Green, popularly considered to be the ‘chief aiders and abettors of his malevolence'.
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Froissart thought that Londoners played a key role. Henry had become their hero, a royal prince who was untarnished by pro-French policies. Since the king's heir presumptive, the Earl of March, was only eight and not a male Plantagenet, it was easy to see Bolingbroke as a likely alternative – they knew that Edward III had wanted Lancaster or his sons to inherit the throne if Richard died without issue. The mayor was overjoyed when he received news of Henry's landing, telling the City's notables they must help him. According to Froissart, more than 500 Londoners, who by now referred to their sovereign as ‘Richard of Bordeaux' instead of ‘King Richard' and drank to his damnation, rode off to enrol in Bolingbroke's army.
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Many other Englishmen thought like the Londoners, but Henry, a subtle politician who kept even his friend Archbishop Arundel in the dark, concealed his plans until he had Richard safely in his hands. Shrewd folk guessed what he had in mind, however. Among them was a Welsh protégé of Arundel called Adam of Usk, a lawyer at the Court of Arches, who left London to join Bolingbroke despite his sympathy with March's claim.

Delayed by lack of a fleet, Richard landed in Wales on 24 July, to find England had gone over to Henry. His troops deserted him, even his Cheshire archers, while his enemies had occupied Chester, the one city that might have supported him. He took refuge at Conwy Castle in north Wales, hoping the Earl of Salisbury, whom he sent ahead, could raise a Welsh army. When he reached Conwy, however, he found that Salisbury had rallied fewer than a hundred Welshmen.

The king might have found refuge at Dublin or Bordeaux, but was sure he could outwit his enemies, confiding to a French visitor that one day he would skin them alive. Under this delusion he let himself be lured out of Conwy by Archbishop Arundel and the Earl of Northumberland, who swore on the Host he should keep the throne if he restored the duchy of Lancaster
to Henry. But as soon as he emerged Richard was seized and brought to Henry at Chester. His household abandoned him. When his favourite greyhound licked his rival's face, he muttered it was a bad omen.

The king was taken to London, trying unsuccessfully to escape en route – being caught climbing out of a window. When he arrived in the City (at night, by his own request, to avoid being jeered at by the Londoners) he was put in the Tower under guard. In contrast Henry received an ecstatic welcome, partly because he announced he would abolish taxes and ‘live of his own' on Crown revenues. A delegation led by Henry came to the Tower where they read out a list of charges. Panic-stricken, the king blamed four household knights for the deaths of Gloucester and Arundel and for suggesting Calais should be surrendered to the French. The four were arrested, tried in an adjoining room by the mayor and then, each tied to a horse's tail, dragged to Cheapside where their heads were hacked off on a fishmonger's slab.

‘King Richard was in terrible anguish, knowing he was trapped and in danger from the Londoners', Froissart tells us. ‘He thought every man in England was against him . . . he began to cry.'
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His frightened followers told him to give the Crown to Henry. Adam of Usk, who served on the committee for deposing the king, went to see him dine at the Tower. Here he heard Richard, possibly the worse for drink, lamenting, ‘My God, this is a false, treacherous country, toppling, destroying and killing so many kings, rulers, great men. It never stops being torn apart by quarrels, strife and hatred.' Then he named the men he had in mind, describing what happened to them. ‘I took my leave deeply moved', says Adam, ‘recalling his former splendour'.
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After arguing that kingship was inalienable, Richard yielded on 29 September – his opponents having made clear that otherwise
he would be killed. Entering the hall at the Tower in royal regalia, he took off his crown. ‘Henry, good cousin and duke of Lancaster', he said in a loud voice. ‘I give and deliver to you the crown with which I was crowned king of England and all rights belonging to it.'
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Next day, the king's resignation was read out before parliament, in Westminster Hall. Thirty-three articles of deposition were then recited, the first indicting him for his evil rule, after which Henry made the sign of the cross and, in English, claimed the throne. ‘In the name of God, I, Henry of Lancaster, challenge this realm and the crown with all its dependencies and possessions, by right line of blood from King Henry III.'
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He produced the ex-monarch's ring as proof of his approval. One after another, the peers gave assent. Finally, Arundel took Henry by the hand and led him to the throne, whereupon the assembly acclaimed Henry IV.

On 21 October a committee of fifty lords spiritual and temporal condemned their former sovereign to perpetual imprisonment, in ‘safe and secret ward'. Eight days later, records Adam of Usk, ‘The lord Richard, late king, after his deposition was carried away on the Thames in the silence of dark midnight, weeping and loudly bewailing he had ever been born. At which a certain knight who was there told him, “You may remember how you treated the earl of Arundel in just the same way, always with the utmost cruelty.”'
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Henry ‘had never dreamed of taking the crown and would not have done so if Richard of Bordeaux had behaved in a proper and friendly way towards him', comments Froissart. ‘Even then, it was the Londoners who made him king, to put right the cruel injustice done to him and his children.'
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But it is also true that many other Englishmen besides Londoners wanted Henry of Bolingbroke to become their king.

Richard II's inability to rule according to the laws and customs he had sworn to defend meant that even without Bolingbroke his regime would have imploded. The man who claimed to represent Edward the Confessor, quartering what was thought to be his coat of arms, destroyed himself by ignoring the ‘laws of King Edward' – governing without consent. The demon was in Richard, and it destroyed him.