Note: All thoughts and opinions put forward in this article are mine and mine alone.
Within the ‘Manner of King Richard’s Renunciation’ there are a summary of reasons for Richard II deposition. These include “the things he had done which were contrary to the crown…the vengeful sentences given against the lords and other points.” Although those who wrote the deposition articles of 1399 do not explicitly label Richard as a tyrant, it is fair to suggest that throughout his reign, and particularly the final years of his reign, Richard was behaving like a tyrant would. The chronicler Thomas Walsingham makes a clear reference to describing Richard as a tyrant, however he formed this conclusion from observing the methods used by the crown and its commissioners to extract money from its people whereas the deposition article could be referring to Bolingbroke’s increase in exile from 10 years to permanently in 1399.
The treatment of the Lord’s Appellants could be said to be an act of tyranny as one of the reasons why Richard was deposed was that he was vengeful against the lords. In particular, the treatment of Gloucester can be seen as tyrannical as when Gloucester was ordered to stand trial, it was reported that he was already dead. It is generally accepted that Gloucester had been murdered in the custody of the Earl of Nottingham in Calais, on Richards orders, which clearly breaks the law set down in Article 39 of the Magna Carta “no free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go or send against him except by the judgement of his peers or by the law of the land”. This states that everyone will be tried by his peers before any actions is taken against him and Richard had just disregarded this completely by most likely having his uncle murdered. One explanation for this could be that Richard could not afford for Gloucester to stand trial. The king and the duke clearly had issues in previous years, particularly disagreeing over foreign policy concerning Richard’s pursuit of peace with France. Additionally John of Gaunt, whom Richard benefited greatly from his support with him being one of the most powerful magnates in the country, was Gloucester’s brother, so therefore Gaunt may have been less likely to condemn his brother than Arundel, with whom he had a disagreement with in 1394.
This is clearly a breach of royal power, however the execution of Arundel was technically legal by law, but yet it is another case of Richard acting like a tyrant and this can be seen in the discussion that took place in the summer of 1387. He called a meeting with his Judges to enquire into his legal rights as king and if the committee established by the Appellants was indeed legal. The judges response to that question is not surprising as they declared that the commission established in the last parliament infringed on royal prerogative as it was contrary to the kings will and the king alone had authority to determine the business of parliament. The idea of royal prerogative was absolutely crucial to Richards’s ideology of Kingship and he firmly believed that the king was the supreme lawgiver and he should be able to make or change laws at will. However under this committee, Richard did not have the power to do that, so effectively the appellants were ruling the country.
The judges could not declare that the council were traitors because the 1352 statute of treason did not include accroachment. The legal definition of treason only included plotting or imaging the death of the king and other members of his family and various acts of violence against members of the king’s family and chancellor, treasurer or judges whilst they were carrying out their duties. The council had done none of this so in legal terms, they had not committed treason but the judges were arguing that this is how a traitor would behave and therefore they should be punished like traitors. It was on these terms that Richard had Arundel executed for treason and he did this by convening parliament on the 17th September 1397 and re-asking his judges the same questions he had asked them 10 years previously. There response was witnessed by parliament, who in turn agreed that Arundel and the others had acted like traitors and therefore must be punished like traitors.
The theatrical spectacle way that Richard condemned the three leading appellants gives us a lot of insight into his arrogance and his narcissistic nature and why he may be considered to be acting like a tyrant. For Richard, only himself and his feelings were real, everyone else lacked interest. His only sense of security was his own self made image of perfection which involved his subjects obeying him unquestionably and removing all kinds of alternative political factions from the court. In order to achieve the respect he craved from his subjects, Richard attempted to justify himself as almost god-like status through various artworks and other means, an example being the Wilton Diptych, a personal altarpiece of the king which depicted Richard being presented to the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus, who are surrounded by angels all wearing Richard’s personal coat of arms, the white hart, showing their support for him. Having this with him while on his travels around the kingdom must have reminded and convinced the king of his extra-ordinary closeness with god. During his coronation in 1377 and again in 1392, Richards use of symbolism in his celebration in London reflects the importance he placed on his god given right to be king, Angels seated on the pipes with wine flowing freely as if at the Eucharist and one of the angels sat on a throne surrounded by three circles of angels symbolizing the orders in attendance of the almighty.
It was not just artwork that Richard used to portray his magnified status, he insisted that people referred to him as ‘your majesty’ creating a distance between himself and his subjects and the illusion of an all powerful and almost mythical leader. Richard’s court was lavish and vast with costumes, furnishings and displays at the court and Richard’s public ceremonies acquiring memorable grandeur and spectacle. However this was not unusual for the time, most courts in Europe were expanding and all courts were influencing each other, but Richard’s court and in particularly his royal household came into conflict with parliament a various points throughout his reign.
As Richard became King in his own right at the age of ten in 1377, he had always had control over his own personal royal household, while the council looked after the business of running the kingdom. However the royal household became series of concerns for the commons and in the November Parliament of 1381 and the October Parliament 1385, committees were established to investigate the Kings handing of finances for the household and the number he kept in his company. A regular complaint from parliament was that there were too many servants, bishops and ladies in the household and these must be reduced to curb spending There was limited money in the royal treasury in the late 1370’s/early 1380’s. The war with France was not going well with not much success between 1377 to 1383. The English tactics to launch Chévauchees and attempting the capture fortresses along the coast were not reaping benefits and Gaunt’s attempt to capture St Marlo along with Arundel’s attempt to take Harfluer and Nantes in the winter of 1379/1380 ended in defeat. The cost of these expeditions in addition to the defence of Aquitaine came to £467,000 from 1376 to 1381. Taxes within the kingdom had reached an all time high, naval operations had become a drain on resources and the country had little to show for it. In addition, Scotland refused to pay the ransom money of five thousand pounds per year as that was owed to Edward III. With Edward III now dead, the Scots owed nothing to Richard. Due to all of this the Gloucester parliament decided in 1378 that they had no responsibility in financing the war with France and they should only be taxed in defence of the kingdom. The size of Richards’s household caused a concern for parliament when it was struggling to finance the war effort.
For Richard this was a huge infringement on the royal prerogative because to him, the royal household was a private household which was separate from government affairs and therefore parliament had no right to interfere. Unfortunately for Richard he desperately needed money to pay his household debts which had risen significantly. Total expenditure for the royal house hold had risen sharply, in 1393 Richard was paying £26,000 and by 1396 it had risen to £36,000. By 1398 Richard was spending eleven thousand more than what he was earning on the royal household, particularly due to his recruitment of retainers in the late 1390’s. Richard had to appeal to his subjects to help finance him so he had his chancellor appeal to parliament to help and assist the king with his own finances, regardless of whether it was war, peace or truce time. This is yet another example of Richard manipulating and finding grey areas within the law to enable his will.
When it came to finances in the late 1390’s, Richard’s behaviour to obtaining can be seen as acting like a tyrant as it is implied in two relevant deposition articles, particularly through the act of fining people to pay for pardons from the King, Richard calculatingly created an atmosphere of fear, mistrust and oppression within the court especially.
The deposition article accuses Richard of making Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick pay for their pardons when they were arrested in 1397, even though Richard promised they would not have to. Contemporary sources claim that during Arundel’s trial he denied all charges against him and claimed the sanction of his pardon only to be told it had been revoked. To increase the fear within Westminster on the day of the arrest of the three leading appellants, Richard also surrounded the building with approximately two hundred Cheshire archers, all posed to fire. Additionally all those who had a letter of pardon from the king were required to pay for a second time and this was extended to not just members of the court but also people who were of association of the appellants in 1387/1388. For example Thomas Fitz Nicole paid one hundred pounds and a further fifty pounds through his association with the earl of Arundel and Richard Crowe had to pay thirteen pounds, six shillings and eight pennies because he was later retained by the earl of Arundel. The need to sue for charters of pardon happened before the arrest and condemnation of the three magnates. In Westminster at parliament in September 1397, the king declared a general pardon to all those who had sided with the appellants committee ten years previously, but stated that fifty people had to pay for the pardon individually. However Richard did not state who these fifty people were, thus creating an intense atmosphere of distrust among the court. Additionally in February 1399, a writ was sent to the sheriffs in the land suggesting that, not only was the making of an individual to pay for the charter of pardon continued but that the general pardon itself was only temporary and would expire later that year. This would make the need to seek individual charters more urgent, thus creating more fear and more insecurity, which is likely to have been Richards aim. Although this brings in money financially, more importantly for Richard it showed him the people whom he perceived to be his enemies really were. In making people come forward and have to individually pay for their pardons they were, in Richard’s eyes at least admitting their guilt.
In Richard’s quest for ‘peace’ within the realm, it became a very authoritarian and absolutist. Sheriffs were required to take new and more strict oaths when assuming office which included them to swear they would obey all orders issued by the court to perform or stop a specific act from taking place and that they would imprison anyone who spoke ill of the king. In addition to sheriffs, on the 8th February 1398, Richard send orders to at least two bishops, more than likely others too, that they were to obtain oaths from all the ecclesiastical people in their dioceses and return a schedule which had the names and seals of all the people who had taken the oath. This was to ensure that the spiritual and temporal lieges were upholding the acts of Westminster/Shrewsbury parliament. In addition, councils were instructed to keep an eye on letters coming in and out of the country. Although Richard demanded his subjects unwavering support, loyalty and love, he clearly did not trust them at all.
What really isolated Richard, especially at the time when he needed the most support was his unusual and almost obsessive strive in retaining. By September 1398 Richard had seven hundred and sixty Cheshire men in his pay and at the core of these men were the three hundred and eleven archers that acted as the king’s personal bodyguard. The reserve of this bodyguard (one hundred and one archers) also became retainers for life. This was an unprecedented build up of royal power in one county. In addition to this between 1389 to 1398, a total of eighty two knights were retained for life in Richards bodyguard and he had a higher than average proportion of recruits from the northern and western counties as well as the welsh marchers where royal power was weaker. The royal affinity came to act as a network which defended royal rights within the counties and supported royal rights. However what really alienated Richard from the other nobles was the practice of retaining their own knights such as Sir Simon Felbrigg and Sir William Arundel who both had links with Gloucester and Sir William Baggot who was a former retainer of the earl of Nottingham. By doing this, Richard was undermining the noble’s power in their own area, so when Richard required military assistance, no one was prepared to risk their life for him, and Bolingbroke found support quite swiftly.
All of these acts of creating fear and demanding loyalty from his subjects showing the action of a fearful man, who tried to use force, blackmail, fear and imagery to propel his own image and make others submit to his will and his will alone. Richard himself would argue that he was doing nothing wrong and that there would not be much difference between him and his European counter parts. That may be true but Richard pushed it too far and let his own interpretation of Kingship and royal power blind himself to the practicalities of ruling.. Just like he accused the main three appellants of behaving like traitors and therefore they must be punished like traitors, we can argue the exact same of Richard II.
Bibliography
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Goodman, A. (1992) John of Gaunt: The Excersie of Princely Power in Fourteenth Century Europe. (Essex: Longman Group UK Limited).
Goodman, A. (1999) “Introduction” In A. Goodman (ed.) Richard II: The Art of Kingship. (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Marron, C. M. (2000) “The Reign of Richard II” In M. Jones (ed) The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume VI c. 1300-1415. (Cambridge: Cambridge University) pp. 297-333.
McKisack, M. (1959) The Fourteenth Century: 1307-1399. (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Saul, N.,(1999) Richard II. (1st ed). (New Haven and London: Yale University Press).
Saul, N. (1999).” The Kingship of Richard II”. In A. Goodman (ed). Richard II: The Art of Kingship. (Oxford: Oxford University Press) pp. 37-57.
Tuck, A. (1973) Richard II and the English Nobility. (London: Butler and Tanner Ltd).
Tuck, A. (1985). Crown and Nobility 1272-1461. (London: Fontana Paperbacks).
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