Richard II and Henry IV were first cousins, born in 1367 just three months apart. They were ten years old when Richard became king of England. They were 32 when, in 1399, Henry overthrew him to become king in his place.
It was a shocking and intensely dangerous moment. To understand why—what was at stake, and why the attempt to depose a king might threaten the security of the whole kingdom—we need to understand where the king’s authority came from, and what he was required to do with it.
The story of Richard II’s rule is the story of what happens when a ruler demands loyalty to himself as an individual, rather than duty to the established constitution; when he seeks to create his own reality rather than concede the force of verifiable truths; when he demands that his own will should trump the force of law; when he recognises no interests other than his own.
Its themes of power, legitimacy and the limits of rule and resistance are as urgent now as they have ever been.
All those who claim sovereign power, whatever the time or place, seek legitimation from somewhere. In medieval England, the source of the crown’s authority was clear: the king was appointed by God to rule the kingdom and its people.
His right to rule came with profound responsibilities, the most fundamental of which were shown on the king’s great seal, the physical manifestation of the crown’s authority by which royal commands were authenticated. On one side of the seal the king sat enthroned to give law and justice to his subjects; on the other, he rode a warhorse, his sword unsheathed to defend his kingdom. As both judge and warrior, his task was to protect the realm from internal anarchy and from external attack.
If the authority of the king was instituted by God, then to depose him was to risk everything—worldly security and immortal soul—by challenging the order of God’s creation.
Such devastatingly radical action could never be justified unless kingship turned into tyranny. But, even then, could anyone except God rightfully remove a sovereign He had anointed?
Richard had always known that he was special
In 1376, the Black Prince died, followed a year later by his father the king, and England had to face a stark new reality. Edward III had ruled for half a century, but now the crown would come to rest on the head of a ten-year-old boy: the Black Prince’s only legitimate child, Richard.
Richard had always known that he was special. As the “true heir apparent of the realm”, he was unique and irreplaceable. But he had never seen kingship in action because, for as long as he could remember, his father and grandfather had been too ill to lead England’s government.
His coronation reinforced his sense of his own majesty, even while, because he was a child, his nobles had to find a way to rule his kingdom for him. But, as he grew older, his obsession with the rights of his crown was not matched by an understanding of its duties. He had no interest in fighting to defend his kingdom, in the hard work of negotiating peace, or in the importance of law and justice. Instead, what had gone wrong in England, he thought, was that his nobles were usurping his God-given authority.
In 1386, a parliament led by Richard’s uncle Thomas of Woodstock tried to force the 19-year-old king to focus on the imminent threat of invasion by a French armada. Richard’s furious response was that he would ask for help against parliament’s insolence from the French king, “and rather submit ourselves to him than succumb to our own subjects”.
It was a shocking demonstration that Richard had grown into a thin-skinned narcissist whose understanding of power was focused entirely on his own will rather than the needs of his people. Not only was the king failing to defend his kingdom from the coming attack, but he was choosing to suggest that his subjects were his enemy—and England’s enemy his friend.
The attempt to restrain him spiralled into dangerous confrontation. Richard declared anyone who opposed him a traitor, and Woodstock led five lords into armed rebellion. Ten years later, Richard took his revenge, unleashing a tyranny in which he claimed that “his laws were in his own mouth”, and that the lives and property of his people “were his, and subject to his will”.
The king who should have protected them had become their greatest threat. England’s people looked for rescue to his cousin Henry.
The king who should have protected them had become their greatest threat
From a distance of 600 years, we can see what happened in 1399. Richard’s attempt to reject the crown’s duties to its subjects—or, in his view, to seize the power he believed was rightfully his—ultimately failed.
But being able to see, with hindsight, what happened doesn’t mean that it was inevitable; nor does it mean that it came without profound costs. Thanks to the 16th-century worldview that we’ve inherited most powerfully through Shakespeare (read Kate Maltby’s review of Nicholas Hytner’s new production of Richard II here), Richard’s deposition and Henry’s usurpation are often framed as the root of civil war, the bloody conflict of the Wars of the Roses that ended only with the coming of the Tudors.
But there is another framing, another question to be asked: what would have happened to England if Richard had not been removed?
This is an edited extract from The Lancaster History Lecture which Helen Castor will give in the Faraday Lecture Theatre at Lancaster University on 12th March at 6.30pm. The lecture, a collaboration between Lancaster University and Litfest (Lancaster Literature Festival), will be live, livestreamed and recorded: www.litfest.org
