October 1, 2024 • 43 mins
Richard II, grandson of the great King Edward III, inherited the throne when he was 10 years old, and was told he was a Messiah. The power went to his head. Dana is joined by historian Helen Castor, author of the upcoming The Eagle and the Hart, a dual biography of Richard II and his cousin, Henry IV, who would depose him.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised, Hi, listeners,
I am so excited to be here today talking to
the brilliant historian Helen Caster, whose new book The Eagle
and the Heart, The Tragedy of Richard the Second and
(00:23):
Henry the Fourth, is out October fifteenth. Helen, thank you
so much for joining me.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Now, I have to confess, Richard the Second is one
of those kings I sort of gloss over in my histories.
I was familiar, obviously with the fact that Shakespeare wrote
to play about him, but I was less familiar with
who he was as a king. So can you talk
just a little broadly about how Richard the Second became
king as a child, and then what his legacy is
(00:53):
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I can certainly try. One of the things I've learned
in the course of writing this book is that I
often have to explain to start with that he's not
rich the lion heart and nor is he the king
in the car park. He's the one in between. He
became king in thirteen seventy seven, at the age of ten,
we're in that very tumultuous period, the fourteenth century, when
(01:18):
what we know is the one hundred Years War between
England and France has already been going on for nearly
forty years. But when Richard comes to the throne, the
problem for England is that the crown skips a generation.
So he is the grandson of the Great King, Edward
the Third, the one who has started the one hundred
(01:41):
Years War between England and France, who is a great warrior,
the great Lion of England, one of the best medieval
kings England had. And Edward's son was the Black Prince,
another military hero, the man who won at Cressy and
Poitier and all these great battles. But the Black Prince
died young in thirteen seventy six, and Edward the Third
(02:05):
died quite old in thirteen seventy seven, leaving the throne
to this ten year old boy. So this is a
moment of crisis for England, really, and the crisis only
really develops and gets worse as Richard grows up, because
it turns out that he has completely misunderstood what being
a king is all about. He thinks it's all about
(02:28):
the rights that he's been given by God, and he
doesn't see that those rights come with responsibilities to his people,
and so he ends up getting in the end, getting
deposed by his first cousin, Henry of Bollingbrooke, who takes
the throne to become Henry the Fourth.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
And in Richard's defense, I imagine it would be fairly
difficult to grow up knowing that you're about to become king,
becoming King of England at ten years old, and not
letting it get to your head a little bit.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
It's impossible, particularly when we remember that he's never seen
the job being done properly. If he's only ten when
he becomes king, then for the whole of his childhood
so far, his grandfather's been aging getting iller, and his father,
the Black Prince, has a chronic illness in the last
years of his life. So Richard has never seen what
(03:18):
this job looks like in real time. And at the
same time, he's been told he's unique, he's special. The
powers of the king are given by God, that's what
everybody believes. But he is brought into Parliament just after
his tenth birthday. His father's already dead, his grandfather is ill,
and is going to be dead in six months, and
he's brought in and described in front of his own
(03:42):
face as England's messiah. Oh gosh, yeah, and that the
royal ministers do that in order to try and reassure
Parliament that they're in safe hands. Everything's going to be fine. Look,
King Edward has sent his grandson just as God sent
Christ to the world. But everyone there knows it's rhetoric,
(04:04):
apart from Richard. He's ten and he believes it.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Of course, even though he becomes king at ten, I
imagine he has a lot of adult uncles who probably
want to actually seize power. What do those uncles look like.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
It's an interesting question whether or not they want to
seize power. They certainly know they've got to fill in
until the king is old enough to rule for himself.
And it's a difficult one to assess because they are
very ambitious, very proud, very powerful men. But they're not
trying to be king in Richard's place. That's what he
thinks they're trying to do. But in fact, if we
(04:41):
look at someone like John of Gaunt, which is obviously
a big name in medieval English history, but John of
Gaunt is Richard's oldest surviving uncle, and he's the one
who is trying to keep everything going until Richard is
old enough to rule for himself, and he's hated for
doing it. Everyone suspects that Gaunt is trying to take over,
(05:04):
and in fact, I think he's just really trying to
keep the plate spinning, trying to stop the war spiraling
out of control. He's doing a very difficult job in
very difficult circumstances, not helped by his two younger brothers.
At Richard's other uncles, the middle one, Edmund de Blangley,
who becomes Duke of York, absolute waste of space, just
(05:28):
you know, you can't give him any job to do
because it won't get done properly. And then the youngest one,
Thomas of Woodstock, who becomes Duke of Gloucester. Well, his
nose is out of joint right from the very beginning,
because he's sort of stuck between generations. He's only twelve
years older than Richard, and he's never been given the
power and the resources that he really thinks he ought
(05:49):
to have. He was the youngest of Edward the Third's children,
and so he is resentful. He's on the Margins. He
thinks everyone should listen to him, and no one really does,
certainly not as much as he thinks they ought to.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Well, that's a great transition, because Thomas has a slightly
unfortunate end. Can we fast forward a little bit and
can you talk a little bit about what happened to Thomas,
Duke of Gloucester.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
We certainly can. Thomas Duke of Gloucester, Thomas of Woodstock had,
whenever the opportunity arose, put himself forward as the leader
of what we would probably call the opposition to Richard.
As Richard grows up, Gaunt is the uncle who's always
trying to make things work, make things smooth, as smooth
(06:37):
as they possibly can be in these very difficult circumstances.
But in the late thirteen eighties, a crisis erupts. Gaunt
has gone away to fight abroad. There's a terrible crisis
in the war, and Thomas of Woodstock is the one
trying to get Richard to focus on it. Richard sees
this as appalling insolence, and it spirals into a horrible
(06:57):
confrontation in which Woodstock leads the charge to remove and
destroy the people immediately around Richard Richard's favorites if you like,
because Woodstock actually really wants to get it Richard. But
you can't take down the king without everything falling apart.
This is all smoothed over eventually, but during the thirteen nineties,
(07:19):
Richard and Thomas of Woodstock never see eye to I.
Richard is trying to make peace with France, Thomas of
Woodstock thinks they ought to be fighting, and the memory
of this terrible crisis in the late thirteen eighties has
never gone away. So when Richard gets his chance, and
you know, there's a lot that's going on. But Richard,
(07:41):
we can see, has sort of been biding his time
and waiting to see if he would face more opposition
from Woodstock. And at the moment when he thinks he
is that Thomas of Woodstock is plotting against him again,
he decides he's going to destroy him, and in thirteen
ninety seven he arrests him suddenly overnight, literally overnight. He
(08:05):
rides through the night to Woodstock's home in Essex with
a detachment of armed men, takes him into custody, dispatches
him to Calais, which belongs to England. It's a garrison
town in northern France, England's main stronghold on the continent,
and he sends him to prison there and he's going
(08:26):
to put him on trial for treason. But when the
trial starts in Parliament, the call goes out to Woodstock's
jailor bring Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Glocester, into Parliament.
And the man who's been given the task of being
in charge of guarding him comes to Parliament and says,
I can't bring the Duke of Gloucester in because he's dead.
(08:47):
Oh now, what has happened. What has happened? Gloucester has
died in his prison at Calais, and at that point
it's completely unexplained. There's a sort of shocked sign in Parliament,
and then well they agree that obviously he was a
traitor and all his land should be forfeit. But it
is not explained that the king's own uncle, the son
(09:09):
of the Great Edward the third, has mysteriously died behind
the walls of his prison. And in fact it doesn't
get explained for another two years, two years of terrible
crisis in England, two years that result in Richard's deposition,
not least because he's set about destroying many of the
great nobles of England in exactly the way he's done
(09:32):
to Woodstock.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
So when and how does it come out exactly what
happened to Woodstock?
Speaker 2 (09:37):
When Richard is deposed in thirteen ninety nine by his
cousin Henry of Bolingbrooke, whom Richard has tried to destroy
in a differently imaginative way. Henry has been embroiled in
an argument with another nobleman about whether one or both
of them are traitors. Richard says they have to fight
a duel. Then he stops the duel, he banishes them,
(09:59):
and then says Henry can't inherit his father's lands. It's
a whole terrible crisis. Henry comes back, takes the throne
England rallies to his banner, and in parliament in thirteen
ninety nine, the same parliament that is sorting out how
to depose the king and make a new king. I mean,
it's a crisis on a scale that England hasn't seen
(10:21):
for ever, or certainly not since a different kind of deposition,
the Norman Conquest in ten sixty six. Various questions are
asked and witnesses are brought into Parliament, and one witness
is a man called William Baggot, who has served Richard,
and he is asked what happened to Thomas of Woodstock?
Do you who of Gloucester? And William Baggott says out
(10:43):
loud in public for the first time, Thomas of Woodstock
was murdered. He was murdered in Calais, and he was
murdered on the orders of King Richard. And he then says,
if you want to know more, there's a man in
prison in London who was a valet called John Hall.
Bring him in and he'll tell you everything. So the
(11:04):
poor wretched man John Hall is dragged into Parliament and
made to tell what he knows. And what he knows
is he says, I was a servant of Thomas Mowbray,
the man who was in charge of Calais Garrison and
in charge of Woodstock, when he was a prisoner, and
I got an order from my Lord in the middle
(11:24):
of the night get out of bed and come to
this particular inn in Calais. And when he got there
he found that Thomas of Woodstock had been brought there
out of his prison, and there was a collection of
servants of Richard and Mowbray and another nobleman there, and
Thomas of Woodstock, the King's uncle, the Duke of Gloucester,
(11:44):
was given a few minutes to make his last confession
of his sins, and then he was made to lie
down on a bed in this room at an inn
in Calais, and a feather mattress was put on top
of him and it was held down over his face
until he suffocated to death brutal.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
And so what I find interesting is it wasn't this
death that sort of propagandized people into wanting to overthrow
Richard the Second. It was just sort of an additional detail.
The moves to overthrow Richard the Second were already happening.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
The information about the detail of it came out in
public at this point, And you're absolutely right that it's
part of the process of justifying and explaining the deposition
of Richard the problem two years earlier, when it was
announced that Woodstock had died, but not how is that
rumors were flying. Calais a leaky place you can't keep
(12:43):
and certainly for a death that a lot of people
have been involved in, this isn't one blade in a
dark alley and only one person that knows what's happened.
You know, a whole number of men have been involved
in this. But in thirteen ninety seven, when it's announced
that Woodstock has died in a parliament controlled by Richard,
this is a context where another great nobleman, the Earl
(13:05):
of Arundel, has just been tried as a traitor and beheaded.
The Parliament itself is meeting in a temporary building because
there's building work going on in Westminster, so they're meeting
essentially in a big tent, and Richard has a personal army,
a personal bodyguard that he has just recruited hundreds of archers,
(13:26):
and he has stationed a number of them around the
sides of this tent, facing inwards with their bows in
their hand. So it's a brave man who will speak
up at that point, say hold on what's happened to
Thomas Woodstock, Dug of Gloucester. It's a brave man who
will say anything at all against a king who is
beginning to show his true colors, who's beginning to give
(13:50):
very clear signs that he is going to rule by
military force with an iron fist, and that anyone who
resists in any way, might go the same way as
the Earl of Arundel or Thomas of Woodstock, who has
now died. So I think it's not that nobody knows anything.
It's that Richard is showing his true colors as a
(14:12):
tyrant rather than a good king, and it's going to
take a couple of years for the full implications of
that to come out and for a leader to show themselves,
Henry Bollingbrook to show themselves as a leader. We also
have to remember Thomas Woodstock hade himself pretty unpopular over
the previous few years, So if you're going to stick
your neck out for anyone in the first instance, you
(14:36):
might not choose Thomas of Woodstock to do it.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
I mean, it's incredible that someone was brave enough to
stand up to this is evidence that the king is
being a violent tyrant, and standing up to him, you
are very much risking your own quite literally neck you are.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
And I think, but I think it's interesting to show
the kind of stages by which a regime like this
can and reveal itself, and then the stages by which
resistance can start to emerge. Because in thirteen ninety seven,
when Woodstock's death was first announced in Parliament. Richard had
been quite careful for a few years. He'd played his
(15:14):
cards pretty well up to that point. He'd, for instance,
made peace with France, not a permanent piece, that was
too difficult to do, but he'd made a thirty year
truce with France by arranging a marriage alliance for himself
at the age of twenty nine, to the six year
old daughter of the King of France. And that meant
(15:35):
that a lot of the pressures on his government had
been sort of reduced or released. He'd got an enormous
amount of money as the dowry with this little girl,
and the immediate pressure of the war, which Thomas of
Woodstock had been going on and on and on about,
was sort of lessened. And so at the point when
he arrested Thomas of Woodstock, he made out initially that
(16:00):
Woodstock was plotting new treasons against him, and I think
everyone everyone sort of said, well, you know, not so implausible.
He's done some pretty out there things before. Okay, we'll
give the king the benefit of the doubt. We'll wait
and see what terrible crimes Woodstock has committed. But three
months later, when Parliament actually meets it turns out there
(16:20):
are no new crimes. There are only the old crimes
from ten years earlier, for which Woodstock has already explicitly
been pardoned. He literally has a sort of charterer from
the King saying, don't worry, that's all in the past.
Everyone's forgiven for what they've done, and Richard is now saying, well,
(16:41):
I've changed my mind. I'm not going to pardon people
for things ten years ago. So suddenly the danger is
there for anyone who might have stepped out of line
in the past in a way the King now doesn't like.
So you've then got to make very careful calculations about
what have I done? What could I do? Do I
need to try to keep my head down and hope
(17:03):
the King doesn't notice me, or what point am I
going to have to stand up and be counted?
Speaker 1 (17:08):
And I imagine how that lack of order was a
major misstep on Richard the Second's part, because not only
was he murdering the son of a king, someone who
people might have thought would have been protected by the system,
but he's showing that the system itself can be bent
to his will, which I imagine made nobles very very nervous.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
That's exactly the problem. It made Nobl's very nervous, and eventually,
as the full horror reveals itself, it makes everyone in
the country very nervous because the whole contract of a government,
if you like, is we will impose laws on everyone,
(17:52):
and those laws will keep everyone safe. So you know, you,
the people of England, buy into the fact that you
are ruled by the king in order to know that, yes,
you might not be able to break the law, but
neither can anyone else, you know, in theory, so you
are safe. Everyone is safe because you all know what
(18:13):
the rules are. But Richard has failed to understand that.
He thinks he can impose whatever laws he likes on
his own subjects, and he is outside the law, so
he can do whatever he wants. He thinks he's going
to be secure as king on his golden throne if
he makes everyone else in his kingdom insecure.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Parliament did call him Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Himself exactly all of twenty years earlier, and he's spent
twenty years feeling really thwarted because it's turned out he
can't just do what he likes. You know. At an
earlier stage in the war with France. When France was
threatening invasion, there'd been a literally a French armada waiting
to set sail to invade England. And when another parliament
(18:56):
tried to get Thomas and Woodstock in fact taking the
lead in this, trying to get him to focus on
that danger, he'd said, how dare you My subjects are
being so insolent towards me, I'm going to ask my
cousin the King of France for help against you. And
the level of sort of delusion of not understanding that
if France is about to invade, then asking your cousin
(19:19):
the King of France for help against your own subjects
is not the thing you should be doing as King
of England. It's such a fundamental misunderstanding of what the
power of a government, a royal government in this case,
should be used for.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Well, let's transition on that. You had mentioned his second
marriage to the six year old daughter of the King
of France. Richard had been married once before to Anna
of Bohemia. She dies what leads to his decision to
marry a a six year old girl? And was there
a conversation obviously the you know, to modern ears that
(20:06):
sounds ludicrous but what was the conversation around a twenty
something I imagine marrying a six year old at that time.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
The big picture is the war with France, which has
been going on for decades by this point. I mean
it's been going on since thirteen forty and we're now
in thirty ninety five at the point that the negotiations start.
So Richard has wanted peace for a long time. He
doesn't like fighting, he doesn't like the pressure he comes
under at home over money and campaigns. He wants some
(20:36):
form of peace, and the death of his first wife
means he has a new bargaining chip. He has his
own hand in marriage. And so the French say, would
you like a French bride? Problem being, Richard is only
going to accept a French bride of the right kind
of status. And the King of France's children are all
very young. But Richard doesn't see that as a problem.
(20:59):
And that's the fact that he has no children. Because
you'd think, as you're saying that a man in his
mid going on into late twenties, who has no direct
air is looking for a new wife. He might be
looking for someone around his own age, or at least
some kind of adult. Richard doesn't seem bothered by that
(21:20):
at all. It's not that I mean, we shouldn't. Obviously,
it looks terrible to us. But it's not that he
wants to live with a six year old as his
wife in every sense of every sense of the word.
But what he doesn't seem at all bothered by is
the idea of having children in the foreseeable future. Richard
is so far the center of his own universe that
(21:42):
I think he doesn't really like to think about a
future in which he is not the beating heart of
the entire body politics. So he's going to put off
the idea of an air or someone who might you know.
He seems to see the idea of having an air
as a sort of threat or a challenge, a rival.
He wants it to be all about himself. And so
(22:05):
when his uncle Thomas of Woodstock says to him, not
a great idea to marry someone so young. Why don't
you marry my twelve year old daughter. That would be
far more suitable.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
If the waiting period for an air is going to
be much shorter.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Exactly, And of course Thomas Woodstock has his own agenda.
He thinks it's a great idea for his daughter to
become queen. Richard says, no, no, no, no, no, it's great.
She's five going on six. I will be able to
bring her up in English ways and in the forms
of time. There's no rush, but I will have an
air in due course. We're going to do what I want,
(22:41):
and what he's wanted for a very long time is
to have a glorious face to face summit meeting with
his French counterpart, the glorious King of France. And that's
what they arrange in thirteen ninety six. If you imagine
the most lavish combination between the biggest royal wedding you
can imagine and the most important political summit meeting, all
(23:04):
held literally on the spot of the Field of the
Cloth of Gold, which of course hasn't happened yet. But
this is the Middle Ages version of the Field of
the Cloth of Gold in October thirteen ninety six.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
What sort of festivities and riches can we imagine during
this summit?
Speaker 2 (23:22):
We've got to imagine ourselves in the rather bleak flatlands
just south of Calais. It's a region that's been fought
over for decades. The Battle of Cresse has been fought
near there. The Battle of Agincrps will be fought near
there in the following century. So it's not a prepossessing
beautiful place, but the French and the English make it
beautiful by building essentially two small towns out of fabric,
(23:48):
two encampments of the most beautiful pavilions made out of
cloth of gold rich colours, one hundred and twenty on
each side, surrounded by a palisade, and at their gates.
The French have built one super pavilion, which in their
(24:09):
case is huge and square, and on the English side
there is a tall round tower of a pavilion. And
each encampment is going to be filled by a court,
the English court on one side, the French court on
the other, and the security and the protocol for this meeting.
(24:32):
You have to read it to imagine, really, because the
detail is so extraordinary. We need to imagine the medieval
version of the secret services sweeping the area for weeks
beforehand trade is stopped, the carriage of weapons is stopped,
everyone is locked down in the towns nearby. And then
the distance between these two encampments is measured to the
(24:56):
inch and the exact halfway point is marked with a stake,
so that when the two courts, the kings at their
head emerge from these encampments, neither king will walk a
single inch further than the other one to the point
at which they're going to meet. And that is in
fact what happens on Friday, the twenty seventh of October
(25:19):
thirteen ninety six. These great processions emerge from these these
new towns of tents that have sprung up on this
sort of now hallowed ground. Each king is accompanied by
his royal uncle's other lavishly dressed nobles, and four hundred
knights and esquires which act as a bodyguard. Except they've
(25:40):
also all been given very clear instructions, and it's checked
to the nth degree that they must only carry one
dagger or one sword each. So it's that it kind
of to make sure there are no surprises, no nasty surprises.
Each king is protected, but in an exactly equal way
(26:01):
for this amazing moment when they will finally meet. Bearing
in mind that the last time a King of France
and a King of England met it was because the
King of France, King Charles's grandfather had been captured by
the King of England, Richard's grandfather. So this is a
historic moment when peace replaces war.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
And I do find the one portrait that I've seen
on the internet of Richard marrying little Isabella is almost
comical because he's so much bigger and like leaning down,
it looks like to kiss around the cheek. But just
for modern listeners, it's not as if you would have
consummated this marriage.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Absolutely not. No, it's very clear to everyone. I mean,
royal marriages were consummated earlier than we might like to
think about happening. The age of consent technically, according to
the Church for a girl was twelve fourteen for a boy,
but usually royal marriages were left even a little bit
longer than that, to an age when it was less
(26:59):
dangers for a girl to potentially give birth, So we
might imagine usually fourteen or fifteen before a marriage was
consummated and a young queen was expected to carry a child.
But in this case it's the alliance that she represents.
But there are so many elements to all this ceremonial
(27:20):
that are comical and sometimes then verging on heartbreaking. Even
the two men meeting, which they do first on the
first two days, the Friday and the Saturday, have their
comical stroke poignant moments. Because Richard is twenty nine, he's
been looking forward to this for a very long time.
(27:41):
And he appears lavishly and magnificently dressed, we're told, in
red velvet or red velvet sweeping royal gown on the
first day, laden with jewels. But his counterpart, his new
father in law, who's two years younger than him, by
the way, he's twenty seven, is a much so figure
because Charles the sixth of France has not been well
(28:04):
for the last four years. Four years earlier, he'd had
a psychotic breakdown one day as he was riding out
on campaign with his army, he'd lost all sense of
who he was, where he was. He'd set about him
with his sword killed, several of his servants had to
be restrained, and ever since then he's had periodic bouts
(28:27):
of madness. Sometimes he doesn't know who he is. He
thinks he's made of glass. He's not a well man.
So this summit meeting has been scheduled and very carefully
organized in a period where he's not ranting and raving.
He does know who he is. But he's a very
fragile figure, and he's having to be supported by his
(28:48):
royal uncles, particularly the Dukes of Burgundy and Berry. And
for instance, the English note slightly critically that King Charles
wears the same outfit every single day. They think is
a little bit inelegant compared to their king, who is
wearing a brand new, fashionable outfit every single time you
see him. But the French say, oh, well, this summit
(29:10):
meeting is all about God's peace, and it's not about
the clothes. It's about the content, you know. So there
are difficulties here, enormous ceremonial lavish gifts being exchanged every
time they meet. You know, you can't have a conversation
without some gold plate or a pouch of jewels being
(29:31):
handed in each direction. They walk hand in hand, they
have dinner in the English tent. They sit on golden
thrones under golden canopies in the French tent to agree
the peace treaty that's already been negotiated. They're not doing
anything like hard work at this point, but they are
going through an elaborate choreography of a diplomatic dance that's
(29:52):
been choreographed to the nth degree. And finally, finally on
the Monday, after a difficult Sunday, because there's been an
enormous storm on the Saturday night, wind and rain and
a torrential downpour, and half the French camp has been
flattened and the English camp has been damaged. And of
(30:13):
course the initial thought is does God disapprove? But no, no, no, no,
They quickly find another solution. The devil is angry that
peace is being made, so they spend Sunday hastily repairing everything.
And then on Monday, little Isabella, poor little Isabella, who's six,
coming up to her seventh birthday, is brought in to
(30:34):
meet her new husband. And we're told that Richard on
this day is wearing a glorious blue and gold gown,
which are the royal colors of France, and little Isabella
is brought in in a matching gown of blue covered
in gold Fleur de lys. She's got a little crown
of golden pearls on her head, and the description is
(30:54):
so detail you can just imagine her little face. She's
trying to hold herself together. The account says that she
acquitted herself with wonderful dignity, and only cried when her
father and her uncle and her great uncles gave her
a caper a hug in a very formal way as
she was about to be handed over to the English ladies.
(31:17):
It's heartbreaking when you think about it. And we then
get the detail in the sort of again formal accounts
of everything that was brought with her to England, that
when they packed up her trousseau with all her glorious
gowns made of precious stuff and the jewels that she
brought with her, that she also brought her dolls with her.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
She won't be in England for long, because it'll just
be a few years later that Richard the second is
deposed in favor of his first cousin, Henry Bolingbroke.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
That's right, just three years later.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Yeah, I want to get a little bit into the
actual deposition, but just because I have to know what
happened to Isabella after Richard was imprisoned in no longer care.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I'm afraid the story cares on being heartbreaking Henry very much.
Of course, she was treated with enormous she was not harmed,
she was treated with enormous dignity. She's still the daughter
of the King of France. Henry wants to marry her
to one of his own young sons, but the French
won't have that and Isabella. In fact, the French send
(32:21):
an ambassador to see her to check on her well being,
and she says she has no greater desire in the
world than to see her parents and her siblings again,
so she is sent back to France. Eventually, it's all
quite tricky because Henry can't give her dowry back because
it's all been spent, and in fact then has to
spend a lot more holding a sort of reverse summit
meeting all dressed in black, and another meeting in more
(32:45):
or less the same place with not quite equal but
almost equal magnificence to hand her back, and she is eventually,
a few years later married off again to her younger cousin,
the Duke of Orleans, whose father has just been murdered.
French politics is descending into chaos as well, but she
(33:05):
becomes the Duchess of Orleans, and then a couple of
years after that, at nineteen, she becomes pregnant and she
dies giving birth to her first child. It's not much
of her life.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
No, that's a tragic story. I'm glad that she at
least got to come back to France, though that they
didn't keep her in English.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
She did, she saw her family again and made at
least another marriage that kept her at the heart of
her family, rather than being sent off yet again to
another foreign court. I think perhaps the fact that we're
used to the fact that young royal brides were sent
off to make these grand diplomatic marriages, I think we
(33:46):
can guess we can lose sight of the human dimension sometimes,
these very young women sent to countries they'd never been
to to marry men they'd never met, with a handful
of servants who quite often would have to return home
soon after they arrived there. So it's an extraordinary fate
that these young women faced, and the ones who made
(34:07):
successes of it, I think we have to recognize the
scale of their achievement.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Absolutely. And now, just to wrap up the story of
Richard the Scond, I've always been under the impression that
Henry of bowling Brook that it was a fairly easy takeover.
Is that a correct impression.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
By the time the takeover actually happens, Yes, you're absolutely right,
But of course it's the end of the long process
that we were talking about earlier. It's as though, you
know that saying about how if you throw a frog
into boiling water, it will scream and die horribly. Know
that it's dying horribly. But if you put a frog
(34:46):
into cold water and heat it up gradually, it doesn't
really know what's going on. In a sense, that's sort
of the story of the last two years of Richard's reign.
But what Henry does is he rescues the frog right
at the last minute. Because Henry has been exiled, and
Richard has promised him at the point when he goes
(35:06):
into exile that anything he inherits while he's banished, which
he's been told is for the term of ten years,
he will be allowed to inherit. You know, the law
will take its course, his property rights will not be disturbed.
But when his father, John of Gaunt dies brokenhearted in
February thirteen ninety nine, the Duchy of Lancaster, John of
(35:29):
Gaunt's great noble inheritance, which is the most powerful, the biggest, richest,
and most powerful noble inheritance in the country, Richard just
goes back on his word and says, no, Henry can't
inherit it. After all, I'm going to take it into
my own hands. And at that point Richard clearly feels safe.
Finally he believes he's destroyed his cousin's power. Henry's in exile,
(35:51):
he doesn't have his inheritance. Richard takes his private army
that he's been recruiting and goes off to Ireland, where
he's enjoyed a few years earlier. He's enjoyed going over
there and making the Gaelic chiefs kneel before him, and
he clearly fancies doing a bit of that again. So
he leaves his country undefended at exactly the point when
(36:11):
he has done the thing that has demonstrated to every
one of his subjects that if the most powerful nobleman
in the country isn't safe, they're not safe either. So Henry,
who's in exile in Paris at this point, decides he's
going to have to come back, and he sails for
England with a small number of devoted servants who've been
(36:32):
with him in exile. He doesn't have an army with him,
but he arrives on the shores of England, puts in
first on the south coast to drop off a few
very loyal servants who take a castle on the south
coast for him, and then he sails on to the
coast of Yorkshire, to a place called Ravenspur, and he
makes his way into England via the Lancastrian castles in
(36:56):
the north, these great strongholds. And what he discovers is
that England rallies to his banner. Everywhere he goes, more
men flock to him. No one is saying we must
stand up for good King Richard. In fact, they're saying, okay,
this looks like rescue. And that's where the name of
my book comes from, because Richard's been using the badge
(37:18):
of the White Heart. The one thing Richard knows how
to do is make a visual impact, and he's chosen
this beautiful badge of the White Heart, which all his
retainers and his private soldiers all wear. But in thirteen
ninety nine, when Henry comes back, poems written and they
say the Eagle Duke is coming to rescue us, using
(37:41):
a badge that Henry's father and his grandfather, Edward the
Third have used. The Eagle Duke will save us from
the crimes and the threat of the men of the
White heart that Richard has sent to visit such terror
upon us. And by the time Richard manages to scramble
(38:02):
his way back from Ireland, England's already lost. Henry, it's clear,
is going to be the next king.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
And he isn't suffocated by a mattress, but he does
meet an unfortunate.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
End he does. Henry's problem in coming to save England
is that he Henry is not the rightful heir. It's
not clear who is the rightful heir, but it's not
clear that Henry is the legitimate heir to Richard. He's
his first cousin, but he's not his son, he's not
his brother. So at the point where Parliament decides that yes,
(38:37):
we must get rid of Richard, Richard is deposed. It's
all a bit of a fudge. Richard is made to abdicate,
then it's agreed that he should also be deposed, and
he's sent off into what Henry hopes will be oblivion
in prison at Pontefract, which is one of these great
castles in the North, and Henry is acclaimed as king,
(38:58):
and there's a sort of we're not going to look
too closely at quite how Henry has become king. But
he's going to be crowned, and we all agree that
good King Henry should be our king.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Oh and we all agree that, of course, you know,
even though there are grandchildren of Edward the third descended
from older sons, well, they had to descend from female lines,
or of course Henry are through men. They're coming up
with these.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Rules exactly, and they are, although they're also not saying
that out loud too much because the English claim to
the throne of France that still hasn't been given up. Okay,
there's this thirty year truce in place, but we haven't
stopped claiming that the King of England is also the
King of France. That claim comes through a woman, so
you can't go too hard on the female line. Doesn't
(39:45):
work in England, but equally absolutely right, those grandchildren through
the female line, the Earls of March, the Mortimer Earls
of March. He's a little boy at this point, and
we've tried having a little boy before. Didn't work out
too well. It's not a solution to anybody's problems at
this point. So let's just say Henry has come back
(40:08):
and we all agree that he's king. That's more or
less what they say, and once he's crowned, you know,
then God has also approved. But three months later, in
New Year fourteen hundred, four of the noblemen who were
closest to Richard's regime, who've thrown in their lot with
Henry because everybody's doing so. They've been there at Henry's coronation,
(40:30):
they've been there for his first parliament. But they're getting really,
really worried about what might happen to them. They decide
to rebel just after New Year fourteen hundred. The revolt
is put down really quickly. They don't get anywhere near succeeding,
but it's a real shock to Henry's new system. He'd
been hoping that God would simply smile on him and
(40:51):
then he could show that he was rightfully king by
being by offering England good government, and everyone would just
live happily. Ever after, once this alter has happened and
it's been put down, it's clear that it's too dangerous
to have an ex king hanging around the place. And
a few weeks later the news comes from Pontefract that
Richard has died, and rather like Thomas of Woodstock, who
(41:13):
we talked about at the beginning. There is no explanation
of how he's died, but rumor has it, the word
on the street has it that Richard has been starved
to death. So his body is displayed with suitable honor
on its journey down from Yorkshire down to London, so
(41:35):
that everyone can see the king really is dead and
he has no marks of violence on him. But however
it's happened. The King is dead, he's prayed for, he's
shown in public, and then he's buried quietly at King's
Langley outside London. Henry doesn't want to put him in
the grand gilded tomb that Richard had already built for
himself at Westminster Abbey because the risk of that then
(41:58):
becoming a shrine and a sight of pilgrimage is too much,
too much of a threat.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Absolutely well, it's a fascinating story and I feel like
an area of medieval history that people haven't focused on enough,
which is a shame, because so much happens. The Eagle
and the Heart, The Tragedy of Richard the Second and
Henry the Fourth is out October fifteenth. Helen, thank you
so so much for joining me and talking all this
(42:25):
through with me.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
It's an absolute pleasure, Danna, thank you so much for
having me.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and
Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is hosted by me
Danish Worts, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston,
Hannah Zewick, Courtney Sender, Juliet Malon, and Arman Cassam. The
show is edited and produced by Noahmy Griffin and rima
(43:06):
il Kaali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers
Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised, Hi, listeners,
I am so excited to be here today talking to
the brilliant historian Helen Caster, whose new book The Eagle
and the Heart, The Tragedy of Richard the Second and
(00:23):
Henry the Fourth, is out October fifteenth. Helen, thank you
so much for joining me.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Now, I have to confess, Richard the Second is one
of those kings I sort of gloss over in my histories.
I was familiar, obviously with the fact that Shakespeare wrote
to play about him, but I was less familiar with
who he was as a king. So can you talk
just a little broadly about how Richard the Second became
king as a child, and then what his legacy is
(00:53):
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I can certainly try. One of the things I've learned
in the course of writing this book is that I
often have to explain to start with that he's not
rich the lion heart and nor is he the king
in the car park. He's the one in between. He
became king in thirteen seventy seven, at the age of ten,
we're in that very tumultuous period, the fourteenth century, when
(01:18):
what we know is the one hundred Years War between
England and France has already been going on for nearly
forty years. But when Richard comes to the throne, the
problem for England is that the crown skips a generation.
So he is the grandson of the Great King, Edward
the Third, the one who has started the one hundred
(01:41):
Years War between England and France, who is a great warrior,
the great Lion of England, one of the best medieval
kings England had. And Edward's son was the Black Prince,
another military hero, the man who won at Cressy and
Poitier and all these great battles. But the Black Prince
died young in thirteen seventy six, and Edward the Third
(02:05):
died quite old in thirteen seventy seven, leaving the throne
to this ten year old boy. So this is a
moment of crisis for England, really, and the crisis only
really develops and gets worse as Richard grows up, because
it turns out that he has completely misunderstood what being
a king is all about. He thinks it's all about
(02:28):
the rights that he's been given by God, and he
doesn't see that those rights come with responsibilities to his people,
and so he ends up getting in the end, getting
deposed by his first cousin, Henry of Bollingbrooke, who takes
the throne to become Henry the Fourth.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
And in Richard's defense, I imagine it would be fairly
difficult to grow up knowing that you're about to become king,
becoming King of England at ten years old, and not
letting it get to your head a little bit.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
It's impossible, particularly when we remember that he's never seen
the job being done properly. If he's only ten when
he becomes king, then for the whole of his childhood
so far, his grandfather's been aging getting iller, and his father,
the Black Prince, has a chronic illness in the last
years of his life. So Richard has never seen what
(03:18):
this job looks like in real time. And at the
same time, he's been told he's unique, he's special. The
powers of the king are given by God, that's what
everybody believes. But he is brought into Parliament just after
his tenth birthday. His father's already dead, his grandfather is ill,
and is going to be dead in six months, and
he's brought in and described in front of his own
(03:42):
face as England's messiah. Oh gosh, yeah, and that the
royal ministers do that in order to try and reassure
Parliament that they're in safe hands. Everything's going to be fine. Look,
King Edward has sent his grandson just as God sent
Christ to the world. But everyone there knows it's rhetoric,
(04:04):
apart from Richard. He's ten and he believes it.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Of course, even though he becomes king at ten, I
imagine he has a lot of adult uncles who probably
want to actually seize power. What do those uncles look like.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
It's an interesting question whether or not they want to
seize power. They certainly know they've got to fill in
until the king is old enough to rule for himself.
And it's a difficult one to assess because they are
very ambitious, very proud, very powerful men. But they're not
trying to be king in Richard's place. That's what he
thinks they're trying to do. But in fact, if we
(04:41):
look at someone like John of Gaunt, which is obviously
a big name in medieval English history, but John of
Gaunt is Richard's oldest surviving uncle, and he's the one
who is trying to keep everything going until Richard is
old enough to rule for himself, and he's hated for
doing it. Everyone suspects that Gaunt is trying to take over,
(05:04):
and in fact, I think he's just really trying to
keep the plate spinning, trying to stop the war spiraling
out of control. He's doing a very difficult job in
very difficult circumstances, not helped by his two younger brothers.
At Richard's other uncles, the middle one, Edmund de Blangley,
who becomes Duke of York, absolute waste of space, just
(05:28):
you know, you can't give him any job to do
because it won't get done properly. And then the youngest one,
Thomas of Woodstock, who becomes Duke of Gloucester. Well, his
nose is out of joint right from the very beginning,
because he's sort of stuck between generations. He's only twelve
years older than Richard, and he's never been given the
power and the resources that he really thinks he ought
(05:49):
to have. He was the youngest of Edward the Third's children,
and so he is resentful. He's on the Margins. He
thinks everyone should listen to him, and no one really does,
certainly not as much as he thinks they ought to.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Well, that's a great transition, because Thomas has a slightly
unfortunate end. Can we fast forward a little bit and
can you talk a little bit about what happened to Thomas,
Duke of Gloucester.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
We certainly can. Thomas Duke of Gloucester, Thomas of Woodstock had,
whenever the opportunity arose, put himself forward as the leader
of what we would probably call the opposition to Richard.
As Richard grows up, Gaunt is the uncle who's always
trying to make things work, make things smooth, as smooth
(06:37):
as they possibly can be in these very difficult circumstances.
But in the late thirteen eighties, a crisis erupts. Gaunt
has gone away to fight abroad. There's a terrible crisis
in the war, and Thomas of Woodstock is the one
trying to get Richard to focus on it. Richard sees
this as appalling insolence, and it spirals into a horrible
(06:57):
confrontation in which Woodstock leads the charge to remove and
destroy the people immediately around Richard Richard's favorites if you like,
because Woodstock actually really wants to get it Richard. But
you can't take down the king without everything falling apart.
This is all smoothed over eventually, but during the thirteen nineties,
(07:19):
Richard and Thomas of Woodstock never see eye to I.
Richard is trying to make peace with France, Thomas of
Woodstock thinks they ought to be fighting, and the memory
of this terrible crisis in the late thirteen eighties has
never gone away. So when Richard gets his chance, and
you know, there's a lot that's going on. But Richard,
(07:41):
we can see, has sort of been biding his time
and waiting to see if he would face more opposition
from Woodstock. And at the moment when he thinks he
is that Thomas of Woodstock is plotting against him again,
he decides he's going to destroy him, and in thirteen
ninety seven he arrests him suddenly overnight, literally overnight. He
(08:05):
rides through the night to Woodstock's home in Essex with
a detachment of armed men, takes him into custody, dispatches
him to Calais, which belongs to England. It's a garrison
town in northern France, England's main stronghold on the continent,
and he sends him to prison there and he's going
(08:26):
to put him on trial for treason. But when the
trial starts in Parliament, the call goes out to Woodstock's
jailor bring Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Glocester, into Parliament.
And the man who's been given the task of being
in charge of guarding him comes to Parliament and says,
I can't bring the Duke of Gloucester in because he's dead.
(08:47):
Oh now, what has happened. What has happened? Gloucester has
died in his prison at Calais, and at that point
it's completely unexplained. There's a sort of shocked sign in Parliament,
and then well they agree that obviously he was a
traitor and all his land should be forfeit. But it
is not explained that the king's own uncle, the son
(09:09):
of the Great Edward the third, has mysteriously died behind
the walls of his prison. And in fact it doesn't
get explained for another two years, two years of terrible
crisis in England, two years that result in Richard's deposition,
not least because he's set about destroying many of the
great nobles of England in exactly the way he's done
(09:32):
to Woodstock.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
So when and how does it come out exactly what
happened to Woodstock?
Speaker 2 (09:37):
When Richard is deposed in thirteen ninety nine by his
cousin Henry of Bolingbrooke, whom Richard has tried to destroy
in a differently imaginative way. Henry has been embroiled in
an argument with another nobleman about whether one or both
of them are traitors. Richard says they have to fight
a duel. Then he stops the duel, he banishes them,
(09:59):
and then says Henry can't inherit his father's lands. It's
a whole terrible crisis. Henry comes back, takes the throne
England rallies to his banner, and in parliament in thirteen
ninety nine, the same parliament that is sorting out how
to depose the king and make a new king. I mean,
it's a crisis on a scale that England hasn't seen
(10:21):
for ever, or certainly not since a different kind of deposition,
the Norman Conquest in ten sixty six. Various questions are
asked and witnesses are brought into Parliament, and one witness
is a man called William Baggot, who has served Richard,
and he is asked what happened to Thomas of Woodstock?
Do you who of Gloucester? And William Baggott says out
(10:43):
loud in public for the first time, Thomas of Woodstock
was murdered. He was murdered in Calais, and he was
murdered on the orders of King Richard. And he then says,
if you want to know more, there's a man in
prison in London who was a valet called John Hall.
Bring him in and he'll tell you everything. So the
(11:04):
poor wretched man John Hall is dragged into Parliament and
made to tell what he knows. And what he knows
is he says, I was a servant of Thomas Mowbray,
the man who was in charge of Calais Garrison and
in charge of Woodstock, when he was a prisoner, and
I got an order from my Lord in the middle
(11:24):
of the night get out of bed and come to
this particular inn in Calais. And when he got there
he found that Thomas of Woodstock had been brought there
out of his prison, and there was a collection of
servants of Richard and Mowbray and another nobleman there, and
Thomas of Woodstock, the King's uncle, the Duke of Gloucester,
(11:44):
was given a few minutes to make his last confession
of his sins, and then he was made to lie
down on a bed in this room at an inn
in Calais, and a feather mattress was put on top
of him and it was held down over his face
until he suffocated to death brutal.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
And so what I find interesting is it wasn't this
death that sort of propagandized people into wanting to overthrow
Richard the Second. It was just sort of an additional detail.
The moves to overthrow Richard the Second were already happening.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
The information about the detail of it came out in
public at this point, And you're absolutely right that it's
part of the process of justifying and explaining the deposition
of Richard the problem two years earlier, when it was
announced that Woodstock had died, but not how is that
rumors were flying. Calais a leaky place you can't keep
(12:43):
and certainly for a death that a lot of people
have been involved in, this isn't one blade in a
dark alley and only one person that knows what's happened.
You know, a whole number of men have been involved
in this. But in thirteen ninety seven, when it's announced
that Woodstock has died in a parliament controlled by Richard,
this is a context where another great nobleman, the Earl
(13:05):
of Arundel, has just been tried as a traitor and beheaded.
The Parliament itself is meeting in a temporary building because
there's building work going on in Westminster, so they're meeting
essentially in a big tent, and Richard has a personal army,
a personal bodyguard that he has just recruited hundreds of archers,
(13:26):
and he has stationed a number of them around the
sides of this tent, facing inwards with their bows in
their hand. So it's a brave man who will speak
up at that point, say hold on what's happened to
Thomas Woodstock, Dug of Gloucester. It's a brave man who
will say anything at all against a king who is
beginning to show his true colors, who's beginning to give
(13:50):
very clear signs that he is going to rule by
military force with an iron fist, and that anyone who
resists in any way, might go the same way as
the Earl of Arundel or Thomas of Woodstock, who has
now died. So I think it's not that nobody knows anything.
It's that Richard is showing his true colors as a
(14:12):
tyrant rather than a good king, and it's going to
take a couple of years for the full implications of
that to come out and for a leader to show themselves,
Henry Bollingbrook to show themselves as a leader. We also
have to remember Thomas Woodstock hade himself pretty unpopular over
the previous few years, So if you're going to stick
your neck out for anyone in the first instance, you
(14:36):
might not choose Thomas of Woodstock to do it.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
I mean, it's incredible that someone was brave enough to
stand up to this is evidence that the king is
being a violent tyrant, and standing up to him, you
are very much risking your own quite literally neck you are.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
And I think, but I think it's interesting to show
the kind of stages by which a regime like this
can and reveal itself, and then the stages by which
resistance can start to emerge. Because in thirteen ninety seven,
when Woodstock's death was first announced in Parliament. Richard had
been quite careful for a few years. He'd played his
(15:14):
cards pretty well up to that point. He'd, for instance,
made peace with France, not a permanent piece, that was
too difficult to do, but he'd made a thirty year
truce with France by arranging a marriage alliance for himself
at the age of twenty nine, to the six year
old daughter of the King of France. And that meant
(15:35):
that a lot of the pressures on his government had
been sort of reduced or released. He'd got an enormous
amount of money as the dowry with this little girl,
and the immediate pressure of the war, which Thomas of
Woodstock had been going on and on and on about,
was sort of lessened. And so at the point when
he arrested Thomas of Woodstock, he made out initially that
(16:00):
Woodstock was plotting new treasons against him, and I think
everyone everyone sort of said, well, you know, not so implausible.
He's done some pretty out there things before. Okay, we'll
give the king the benefit of the doubt. We'll wait
and see what terrible crimes Woodstock has committed. But three
months later, when Parliament actually meets it turns out there
(16:20):
are no new crimes. There are only the old crimes
from ten years earlier, for which Woodstock has already explicitly
been pardoned. He literally has a sort of charterer from
the King saying, don't worry, that's all in the past.
Everyone's forgiven for what they've done, and Richard is now saying, well,
(16:41):
I've changed my mind. I'm not going to pardon people
for things ten years ago. So suddenly the danger is
there for anyone who might have stepped out of line
in the past in a way the King now doesn't like.
So you've then got to make very careful calculations about
what have I done? What could I do? Do I
need to try to keep my head down and hope
(17:03):
the King doesn't notice me, or what point am I
going to have to stand up and be counted?
Speaker 1 (17:08):
And I imagine how that lack of order was a
major misstep on Richard the Second's part, because not only
was he murdering the son of a king, someone who
people might have thought would have been protected by the system,
but he's showing that the system itself can be bent
to his will, which I imagine made nobles very very nervous.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
That's exactly the problem. It made Nobl's very nervous, and eventually,
as the full horror reveals itself, it makes everyone in
the country very nervous because the whole contract of a government,
if you like, is we will impose laws on everyone,
(17:52):
and those laws will keep everyone safe. So you know, you,
the people of England, buy into the fact that you
are ruled by the king in order to know that, yes,
you might not be able to break the law, but
neither can anyone else, you know, in theory, so you
are safe. Everyone is safe because you all know what
(18:13):
the rules are. But Richard has failed to understand that.
He thinks he can impose whatever laws he likes on
his own subjects, and he is outside the law, so
he can do whatever he wants. He thinks he's going
to be secure as king on his golden throne if
he makes everyone else in his kingdom insecure.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Parliament did call him Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Himself exactly all of twenty years earlier, and he's spent
twenty years feeling really thwarted because it's turned out he
can't just do what he likes. You know. At an
earlier stage in the war with France. When France was
threatening invasion, there'd been a literally a French armada waiting
to set sail to invade England. And when another parliament
(18:56):
tried to get Thomas and Woodstock in fact taking the
lead in this, trying to get him to focus on
that danger, he'd said, how dare you My subjects are
being so insolent towards me, I'm going to ask my
cousin the King of France for help against you. And
the level of sort of delusion of not understanding that
if France is about to invade, then asking your cousin
(19:19):
the King of France for help against your own subjects
is not the thing you should be doing as King
of England. It's such a fundamental misunderstanding of what the
power of a government, a royal government in this case,
should be used for.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Well, let's transition on that. You had mentioned his second
marriage to the six year old daughter of the King
of France. Richard had been married once before to Anna
of Bohemia. She dies what leads to his decision to
marry a a six year old girl? And was there
a conversation obviously the you know, to modern ears that
(20:06):
sounds ludicrous but what was the conversation around a twenty
something I imagine marrying a six year old at that time.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
The big picture is the war with France, which has
been going on for decades by this point. I mean
it's been going on since thirteen forty and we're now
in thirty ninety five at the point that the negotiations start.
So Richard has wanted peace for a long time. He
doesn't like fighting, he doesn't like the pressure he comes
under at home over money and campaigns. He wants some
(20:36):
form of peace, and the death of his first wife
means he has a new bargaining chip. He has his
own hand in marriage. And so the French say, would
you like a French bride? Problem being, Richard is only
going to accept a French bride of the right kind
of status. And the King of France's children are all
very young. But Richard doesn't see that as a problem.
(20:59):
And that's the fact that he has no children. Because
you'd think, as you're saying that a man in his
mid going on into late twenties, who has no direct
air is looking for a new wife. He might be
looking for someone around his own age, or at least
some kind of adult. Richard doesn't seem bothered by that
(21:20):
at all. It's not that I mean, we shouldn't. Obviously,
it looks terrible to us. But it's not that he
wants to live with a six year old as his
wife in every sense of every sense of the word.
But what he doesn't seem at all bothered by is
the idea of having children in the foreseeable future. Richard
is so far the center of his own universe that
(21:42):
I think he doesn't really like to think about a
future in which he is not the beating heart of
the entire body politics. So he's going to put off
the idea of an air or someone who might you know.
He seems to see the idea of having an air
as a sort of threat or a challenge, a rival.
He wants it to be all about himself. And so
(22:05):
when his uncle Thomas of Woodstock says to him, not
a great idea to marry someone so young. Why don't
you marry my twelve year old daughter. That would be
far more suitable.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
If the waiting period for an air is going to
be much shorter.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Exactly, And of course Thomas Woodstock has his own agenda.
He thinks it's a great idea for his daughter to
become queen. Richard says, no, no, no, no, no, it's great.
She's five going on six. I will be able to
bring her up in English ways and in the forms
of time. There's no rush, but I will have an
air in due course. We're going to do what I want,
(22:41):
and what he's wanted for a very long time is
to have a glorious face to face summit meeting with
his French counterpart, the glorious King of France. And that's
what they arrange in thirteen ninety six. If you imagine
the most lavish combination between the biggest royal wedding you
can imagine and the most important political summit meeting, all
(23:04):
held literally on the spot of the Field of the
Cloth of Gold, which of course hasn't happened yet. But
this is the Middle Ages version of the Field of
the Cloth of Gold in October thirteen ninety six.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
What sort of festivities and riches can we imagine during
this summit?
Speaker 2 (23:22):
We've got to imagine ourselves in the rather bleak flatlands
just south of Calais. It's a region that's been fought
over for decades. The Battle of Cresse has been fought
near there. The Battle of Agincrps will be fought near
there in the following century. So it's not a prepossessing
beautiful place, but the French and the English make it
beautiful by building essentially two small towns out of fabric,
(23:48):
two encampments of the most beautiful pavilions made out of
cloth of gold rich colours, one hundred and twenty on
each side, surrounded by a palisade, and at their gates.
The French have built one super pavilion, which in their
(24:09):
case is huge and square, and on the English side
there is a tall round tower of a pavilion. And
each encampment is going to be filled by a court,
the English court on one side, the French court on
the other, and the security and the protocol for this meeting.
(24:32):
You have to read it to imagine, really, because the
detail is so extraordinary. We need to imagine the medieval
version of the secret services sweeping the area for weeks
beforehand trade is stopped, the carriage of weapons is stopped,
everyone is locked down in the towns nearby. And then
the distance between these two encampments is measured to the
(24:56):
inch and the exact halfway point is marked with a stake,
so that when the two courts, the kings at their
head emerge from these encampments, neither king will walk a
single inch further than the other one to the point
at which they're going to meet. And that is in
fact what happens on Friday, the twenty seventh of October
(25:19):
thirteen ninety six. These great processions emerge from these these
new towns of tents that have sprung up on this
sort of now hallowed ground. Each king is accompanied by
his royal uncle's other lavishly dressed nobles, and four hundred
knights and esquires which act as a bodyguard. Except they've
(25:40):
also all been given very clear instructions, and it's checked
to the nth degree that they must only carry one
dagger or one sword each. So it's that it kind
of to make sure there are no surprises, no nasty surprises.
Each king is protected, but in an exactly equal way
(26:01):
for this amazing moment when they will finally meet. Bearing
in mind that the last time a King of France
and a King of England met it was because the
King of France, King Charles's grandfather had been captured by
the King of England, Richard's grandfather. So this is a
historic moment when peace replaces war.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
And I do find the one portrait that I've seen
on the internet of Richard marrying little Isabella is almost
comical because he's so much bigger and like leaning down,
it looks like to kiss around the cheek. But just
for modern listeners, it's not as if you would have
consummated this marriage.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Absolutely not. No, it's very clear to everyone. I mean,
royal marriages were consummated earlier than we might like to
think about happening. The age of consent technically, according to
the Church for a girl was twelve fourteen for a boy,
but usually royal marriages were left even a little bit
longer than that, to an age when it was less
(26:59):
dangers for a girl to potentially give birth, So we
might imagine usually fourteen or fifteen before a marriage was
consummated and a young queen was expected to carry a child.
But in this case it's the alliance that she represents.
But there are so many elements to all this ceremonial
(27:20):
that are comical and sometimes then verging on heartbreaking. Even
the two men meeting, which they do first on the
first two days, the Friday and the Saturday, have their
comical stroke poignant moments. Because Richard is twenty nine, he's
been looking forward to this for a very long time.
(27:41):
And he appears lavishly and magnificently dressed, we're told, in
red velvet or red velvet sweeping royal gown on the
first day, laden with jewels. But his counterpart, his new
father in law, who's two years younger than him, by
the way, he's twenty seven, is a much so figure
because Charles the sixth of France has not been well
(28:04):
for the last four years. Four years earlier, he'd had
a psychotic breakdown one day as he was riding out
on campaign with his army, he'd lost all sense of
who he was, where he was. He'd set about him
with his sword killed, several of his servants had to
be restrained, and ever since then he's had periodic bouts
(28:27):
of madness. Sometimes he doesn't know who he is. He
thinks he's made of glass. He's not a well man.
So this summit meeting has been scheduled and very carefully
organized in a period where he's not ranting and raving.
He does know who he is. But he's a very
fragile figure, and he's having to be supported by his
(28:48):
royal uncles, particularly the Dukes of Burgundy and Berry. And
for instance, the English note slightly critically that King Charles
wears the same outfit every single day. They think is
a little bit inelegant compared to their king, who is
wearing a brand new, fashionable outfit every single time you
see him. But the French say, oh, well, this summit
(29:10):
meeting is all about God's peace, and it's not about
the clothes. It's about the content, you know. So there
are difficulties here, enormous ceremonial lavish gifts being exchanged every
time they meet. You know, you can't have a conversation
without some gold plate or a pouch of jewels being
(29:31):
handed in each direction. They walk hand in hand, they
have dinner in the English tent. They sit on golden
thrones under golden canopies in the French tent to agree
the peace treaty that's already been negotiated. They're not doing
anything like hard work at this point, but they are
going through an elaborate choreography of a diplomatic dance that's
(29:52):
been choreographed to the nth degree. And finally, finally on
the Monday, after a difficult Sunday, because there's been an
enormous storm on the Saturday night, wind and rain and
a torrential downpour, and half the French camp has been
flattened and the English camp has been damaged. And of
(30:13):
course the initial thought is does God disapprove? But no, no, no, no,
They quickly find another solution. The devil is angry that
peace is being made, so they spend Sunday hastily repairing everything.
And then on Monday, little Isabella, poor little Isabella, who's six,
coming up to her seventh birthday, is brought in to
(30:34):
meet her new husband. And we're told that Richard on
this day is wearing a glorious blue and gold gown,
which are the royal colors of France, and little Isabella
is brought in in a matching gown of blue covered
in gold Fleur de lys. She's got a little crown
of golden pearls on her head, and the description is
(30:54):
so detail you can just imagine her little face. She's
trying to hold herself together. The account says that she
acquitted herself with wonderful dignity, and only cried when her
father and her uncle and her great uncles gave her
a caper a hug in a very formal way as
she was about to be handed over to the English ladies.
(31:17):
It's heartbreaking when you think about it. And we then
get the detail in the sort of again formal accounts
of everything that was brought with her to England, that
when they packed up her trousseau with all her glorious
gowns made of precious stuff and the jewels that she
brought with her, that she also brought her dolls with her.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
She won't be in England for long, because it'll just
be a few years later that Richard the second is
deposed in favor of his first cousin, Henry Bolingbroke.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
That's right, just three years later.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Yeah, I want to get a little bit into the
actual deposition, but just because I have to know what
happened to Isabella after Richard was imprisoned in no longer care.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I'm afraid the story cares on being heartbreaking Henry very much.
Of course, she was treated with enormous she was not harmed,
she was treated with enormous dignity. She's still the daughter
of the King of France. Henry wants to marry her
to one of his own young sons, but the French
won't have that and Isabella. In fact, the French send
(32:21):
an ambassador to see her to check on her well being,
and she says she has no greater desire in the
world than to see her parents and her siblings again,
so she is sent back to France. Eventually, it's all
quite tricky because Henry can't give her dowry back because
it's all been spent, and in fact then has to
spend a lot more holding a sort of reverse summit
meeting all dressed in black, and another meeting in more
(32:45):
or less the same place with not quite equal but
almost equal magnificence to hand her back, and she is eventually,
a few years later married off again to her younger cousin,
the Duke of Orleans, whose father has just been murdered.
French politics is descending into chaos as well, but she
(33:05):
becomes the Duchess of Orleans, and then a couple of
years after that, at nineteen, she becomes pregnant and she
dies giving birth to her first child. It's not much
of her life.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
No, that's a tragic story. I'm glad that she at
least got to come back to France, though that they
didn't keep her in English.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
She did, she saw her family again and made at
least another marriage that kept her at the heart of
her family, rather than being sent off yet again to
another foreign court. I think perhaps the fact that we're
used to the fact that young royal brides were sent
off to make these grand diplomatic marriages, I think we
(33:46):
can guess we can lose sight of the human dimension sometimes,
these very young women sent to countries they'd never been
to to marry men they'd never met, with a handful
of servants who quite often would have to return home
soon after they arrived there. So it's an extraordinary fate
that these young women faced, and the ones who made
(34:07):
successes of it, I think we have to recognize the
scale of their achievement.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Absolutely. And now, just to wrap up the story of
Richard the Scond, I've always been under the impression that
Henry of bowling Brook that it was a fairly easy takeover.
Is that a correct impression.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
By the time the takeover actually happens, Yes, you're absolutely right,
But of course it's the end of the long process
that we were talking about earlier. It's as though, you
know that saying about how if you throw a frog
into boiling water, it will scream and die horribly. Know
that it's dying horribly. But if you put a frog
(34:46):
into cold water and heat it up gradually, it doesn't
really know what's going on. In a sense, that's sort
of the story of the last two years of Richard's reign.
But what Henry does is he rescues the frog right
at the last minute. Because Henry has been exiled, and
Richard has promised him at the point when he goes
(35:06):
into exile that anything he inherits while he's banished, which
he's been told is for the term of ten years,
he will be allowed to inherit. You know, the law
will take its course, his property rights will not be disturbed.
But when his father, John of Gaunt dies brokenhearted in
February thirteen ninety nine, the Duchy of Lancaster, John of
(35:29):
Gaunt's great noble inheritance, which is the most powerful, the biggest, richest,
and most powerful noble inheritance in the country, Richard just
goes back on his word and says, no, Henry can't
inherit it. After all, I'm going to take it into
my own hands. And at that point Richard clearly feels safe.
Finally he believes he's destroyed his cousin's power. Henry's in exile,
(35:51):
he doesn't have his inheritance. Richard takes his private army
that he's been recruiting and goes off to Ireland, where
he's enjoyed a few years earlier. He's enjoyed going over
there and making the Gaelic chiefs kneel before him, and
he clearly fancies doing a bit of that again. So
he leaves his country undefended at exactly the point when
(36:11):
he has done the thing that has demonstrated to every
one of his subjects that if the most powerful nobleman
in the country isn't safe, they're not safe either. So Henry,
who's in exile in Paris at this point, decides he's
going to have to come back, and he sails for
England with a small number of devoted servants who've been
(36:32):
with him in exile. He doesn't have an army with him,
but he arrives on the shores of England, puts in
first on the south coast to drop off a few
very loyal servants who take a castle on the south
coast for him, and then he sails on to the
coast of Yorkshire, to a place called Ravenspur, and he
makes his way into England via the Lancastrian castles in
(36:56):
the north, these great strongholds. And what he discovers is
that England rallies to his banner. Everywhere he goes, more
men flock to him. No one is saying we must
stand up for good King Richard. In fact, they're saying, okay,
this looks like rescue. And that's where the name of
my book comes from, because Richard's been using the badge
(37:18):
of the White Heart. The one thing Richard knows how
to do is make a visual impact, and he's chosen
this beautiful badge of the White Heart, which all his
retainers and his private soldiers all wear. But in thirteen
ninety nine, when Henry comes back, poems written and they
say the Eagle Duke is coming to rescue us, using
(37:41):
a badge that Henry's father and his grandfather, Edward the
Third have used. The Eagle Duke will save us from
the crimes and the threat of the men of the
White heart that Richard has sent to visit such terror
upon us. And by the time Richard manages to scramble
(38:02):
his way back from Ireland, England's already lost. Henry, it's clear,
is going to be the next king.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
And he isn't suffocated by a mattress, but he does
meet an unfortunate.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
End he does. Henry's problem in coming to save England
is that he Henry is not the rightful heir. It's
not clear who is the rightful heir, but it's not
clear that Henry is the legitimate heir to Richard. He's
his first cousin, but he's not his son, he's not
his brother. So at the point where Parliament decides that yes,
(38:37):
we must get rid of Richard, Richard is deposed. It's
all a bit of a fudge. Richard is made to abdicate,
then it's agreed that he should also be deposed, and
he's sent off into what Henry hopes will be oblivion
in prison at Pontefract, which is one of these great
castles in the North, and Henry is acclaimed as king,
(38:58):
and there's a sort of we're not going to look
too closely at quite how Henry has become king. But
he's going to be crowned, and we all agree that
good King Henry should be our king.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Oh and we all agree that, of course, you know,
even though there are grandchildren of Edward the third descended
from older sons, well, they had to descend from female lines,
or of course Henry are through men. They're coming up
with these.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Rules exactly, and they are, although they're also not saying
that out loud too much because the English claim to
the throne of France that still hasn't been given up. Okay,
there's this thirty year truce in place, but we haven't
stopped claiming that the King of England is also the
King of France. That claim comes through a woman, so
you can't go too hard on the female line. Doesn't
(39:45):
work in England, but equally absolutely right, those grandchildren through
the female line, the Earls of March, the Mortimer Earls
of March. He's a little boy at this point, and
we've tried having a little boy before. Didn't work out
too well. It's not a solution to anybody's problems at
this point. So let's just say Henry has come back
(40:08):
and we all agree that he's king. That's more or
less what they say, and once he's crowned, you know,
then God has also approved. But three months later, in
New Year fourteen hundred, four of the noblemen who were
closest to Richard's regime, who've thrown in their lot with
Henry because everybody's doing so. They've been there at Henry's coronation,
(40:30):
they've been there for his first parliament. But they're getting really,
really worried about what might happen to them. They decide
to rebel just after New Year fourteen hundred. The revolt
is put down really quickly. They don't get anywhere near succeeding,
but it's a real shock to Henry's new system. He'd
been hoping that God would simply smile on him and
(40:51):
then he could show that he was rightfully king by
being by offering England good government, and everyone would just
live happily. Ever after, once this alter has happened and
it's been put down, it's clear that it's too dangerous
to have an ex king hanging around the place. And
a few weeks later the news comes from Pontefract that
Richard has died, and rather like Thomas of Woodstock, who
(41:13):
we talked about at the beginning. There is no explanation
of how he's died, but rumor has it, the word
on the street has it that Richard has been starved
to death. So his body is displayed with suitable honor
on its journey down from Yorkshire down to London, so
(41:35):
that everyone can see the king really is dead and
he has no marks of violence on him. But however
it's happened. The King is dead, he's prayed for, he's
shown in public, and then he's buried quietly at King's
Langley outside London. Henry doesn't want to put him in
the grand gilded tomb that Richard had already built for
himself at Westminster Abbey because the risk of that then
(41:58):
becoming a shrine and a sight of pilgrimage is too much,
too much of a threat.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Absolutely well, it's a fascinating story and I feel like
an area of medieval history that people haven't focused on enough,
which is a shame, because so much happens. The Eagle
and the Heart, The Tragedy of Richard the Second and
Henry the Fourth is out October fifteenth. Helen, thank you
so so much for joining me and talking all this
(42:25):
through with me.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
It's an absolute pleasure, Danna, thank you so much for
having me.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and
Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is hosted by me
Danish Worts, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston,
Hannah Zewick, Courtney Sender, Juliet Malon, and Arman Cassam. The
show is edited and produced by Noahmy Griffin and rima
(43:06):
il Kaali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers
Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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