Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Kings & Queens (11 page)

R
ichard II was a child for the first eight years of his reign. Unlike his strong father, who had gained the romantic soubriquet of Black Prince for his dashing exploits on the battle field dressed in menacing black armour, Richard was a physical weakling, a callow youth invested with a heavy responsibility he felt he could hardly bear.

Having little appetite for royal duty, Richard chafed at the restrictions imposed by his office. Yet he was brought up to believe he must fulfil the divinity which ‘doth hedge in a king’. This conflict in Richard’s character found its resolution in the most challenging moment of his royal life: the Peasant’s Revolt.

Trouble began in his realm in 1380 when his government tried to impose a new poll tax (on every head of the population). The poor would bear the burden the most. When tax collectors where sent out the following spring to haul in the dues, they were met with fierce resistance and this sparked a widespread revolt.

Gangs of peasants in Essex and Kent ransacked manor houses and burned down property. Whole towns would fall into the hands of the rebels. The Church was a target too, seen to be too wealthy, its tithe too punitive – even the archbishop’s palace in Canterbury was burnt to the ground. The army of countryfolk then marched on London and found little resistance; indeed many citizens were sympathetic to their cause.

The peasants, however, claimed they had not risen against the king, but his corrupt ministers. Richard watched anxiously from the battlements of the Tower of London as flames leapt into the sky from one baronial residence after another.

As the situation reached melting point, the nervous 14 year-old king announced, much to everyone’s surprise, that he would meet the rebels. On June 15, in an escort of some 200 courtiers and soldiers, Richard rode out to Smithfield, a large open space outside the City walls, which even then served as a cattle market. Drawn up in massed ranks, the angry hordes must have been highly intimidating to such a small detachment. In the boldest voice he could muster, Richard summoned their leader to come forward. A redundant soldier with a loud mouth, Wat Tyler, had assumed leadership among the rebels and presented himself.

He demanded the abolition of serfdom: ‘Let no man be the lord of another,’ he bellowed, ‘but all should be equal under the king.’ He then became abusive and one among the royal retinue recognised Tyler and shouted out that he was the ‘greatest thief in all Kent’. Drawing his sword, Tyler tried to advance to the king but was barred by the Lord Mayor, William Walworth. In the following scuffle, Tyler was stabbed in the shoulder and run through.

As the leader fell to the ground dead, the royal party may have thought thier number was up. Then, just as the peasants were drawing their bows, Richard suddenly rode towards them with hand held high.

‘Sirs,’ he shouted, ‘will you shoot your king? I will be your chief and captain and you shall have from me all that you ask.’ The king had crucially managed to buy some time and rode with the rebels to Clerkenwell, while his soldiers returned to the palace to drum up support.

For one long hour Richard negotiated with the rough insurgents. At last he saw the mayor’s forces arrive and slowly encircle the rebels. Summoning his royal authority as best he could, Richard called a halt to the meeting and with immense relief saw what had been an implacable enemy slowly disperse. The situation was defused, and before long the uprising was crushed. Richard’s proud boast at the end of that day of reckoning was really the young king’s supreme rite of passage: ‘Let us rejoice and praise God,’ he proclaimed, ‘for I have this day recovered my lost heritage.’

H
enry Bolingbroke’s rise to the top was a chequered affair. His father was the powerful John of Gaunt (third son of Edward III) who had guided his errant nephew Richard II through stormy waters early in his reign. When Henry – only a few months older than Richard – was appointed one of five ‘Lords Appellant’, or counsellors, to rule over the king, he had to suffer a prolonged enmity from this royal cousin, especially when the king came of age and ruled in his own right.

On one occasion when Henry had a spat with one of his dukes, King Richard decided their quarrel should be settled by a gentleman’s duel. An elaborate pageant was organised. Then, just as the contenders were about to engage, Richard waved the whole thing off, sending both into exile, Henry for ten years.

Salt was further rubbed into the wound when, on the death of Henry’s father in February of 1399, Richard commuted this ten-year sentence to life and promptly confiscated all his inheritance in the duchy of Lancaster. The landless, exiled duke could only plot his revenge – which he did with ruthless determination.

The right moment to make his move came a few months later when Richard was away in Ireland sorting out the conflict of rule. His enemy landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire, claiming he merely wished to retireve his rightful inheritance. Though initially having a force of only 300 men, Henry quickly gathered more support in the north as one discontented baron after another joined him, including one Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland.

The king, knowing his position in the realm to be vulnerable, was anxious to return but was delayed by storms. When he did finally land at Conwy Castle in July, he discovered his support had ebbed away. Tricked into believing he could remain as king if he accepted terms offered by Percy, now in the pay of Henry Bolingbroke, he was captured as he left the castle and thrown in prison.

Arms of Richard II with the fleurs-de-lys of France and lions of England

The next item of royal news came in September, namely that Richard II had abdicated in the face of 33 charges brought against him by parliament. Having ‘legitimately’ disposed of Richard’s right to rule, Henry Bolingbroke claimed the throne ‘by right line of blood’, and more persuasively because the country was in chaos.

The following February brought further news of the abdicated king, this time of his death while in custody at Pontefract Castle. Rumours were rife as to the manner of his demise. Some say he died violently, others that he was slowly starved to death.

Whichever way, it amounted to murder and was committed under orders from his bitter enemy, Henry IV. Thus began the rule of the House of Lancaster, and with it the bitter struggle for power against the rival House of York, who of course always maintained its crown was usurped. The struggle would culminate in the Wars of the Roses half a century later.

T
here were two iconic kings that Henry VIII wished to emulate: Arthur and Henry V. The latter, an ambitious Lancastrian whose military genius made him a legend in his own lifetime, came to within an ace of achieving what had eluded all his ancestors: winning the French throne for England.

It was the Battle of Agincourt, of course, that has gone down in English history as the great landmark in patriotic aspiration. The spirit of Agincourt is invoked whenever morale needs lifting up, and especially when our backs are to the wall. Shakespeare has immortalised the event with his stirring words put into the mouth of Henry V:

And so it was, on October 25, 1415, some 20 miles inland of Boulogne, that this warrior king urged on his 6,000 foot soldiers in the face of a French army numbering in excess of 20,000 – some accounts say as many as 50,000 – including the flower of their cavalry. One might question the king’s wisdom in subjecting so many of his ‘dear friends’ – husbands and fathers among them – to what must have appeared to be an early bloodbath, had it not been for one weapon: the longbow, the fear of the French.

Indeed, Henry himself was by all accounts surprised at the ease of his progress. On landing in Normandy he was expecting a quick raid. Instead the apparent disarray of the French allowed him a fantastic victory against all odds, through clever tactics, clever use of his prize weapon, and ‘clever’ rain that bogged down the enemy cavalry.

The French lost 7,000 men, among them the finest of their nobility. Their country was left defenceless and leaderless in the face of England’s determined 28 year-old king. By contrast the English had lost less than 100, and only one lord.

Pressing home his advantage, Henry continued the onslaught for another four years, capitalising on a France divided by civil war between the great families of Armagnac and Burgundy. Finally, in 1419, the influential duke of Burgundy capitulated and recognised Henry as unofficial king of France. Within months the whole country was under English control.

The following year Henry married Catherine, daughter of Charles VI of France, on the understanding he was heir to the French throne. The old king was ailing. It was surely only a matter of time before Henry could lay his hands on the crown. Alas a bout dysentery was to cruelly deny him – and just a month later the French king followed Henry to the grave. His baby son would succeed him, as Henry VI, but lose all that his illustrious father had gained.

H
enry was just eight months old when he inherited the crown on the death of his father, Henry V, in 1422. His uncles governed as regents for the next 15 years. He had to wait until he was old enough to be able to support a crown before he could undergo such a demanding ceremony as the coronation.

This he did when eight. Even then, the crown was too heavy for the boy to wear unaided, so it was held aloft while litanies were sung. To ease the burden of such an ordeal, a sumptuous feast was laid on with all the young royal’s favourites, including ‘roast meat fritters’ and jelly. Little did Henry know that a few hundred miles south a young French maid, nine years his senior, would in the same year lead an army of 4000 soldiers to champion the rights of French freedom from the English yoke. He might also not have been aware that the following year this girl, Joan of Arc, was burnt at the stake on the ground of being a witch. The French surely lost just the sort of mascot they needed to unite them.

Just nine months later Henry, now eleven, took part in a second elaborate coronation, this time in Paris, to crown him king of France. The prize for which his father devoted so much of his hard-fought life to win came effortlessly to his son. Perhaps it is not surprising that Henry VI lacked interest in keeping a grip on the French throne, for he had been handed it on a plate at a tender age. When the tide turned against the English and their crucial alliance with Burgundy broke down, Henry is said to have burst into tears.

Henry VI was the only sovereign to be crowned in both England and Wales

While the kingdom of France gradually slipped from English hands, the finer sensibilities of Henry’s character fed a different sort of ambition, in the direction of architecture, learning and Christian piety. Meanwhile his mother Catherine, widow to Henry V, formed a new liaison with a Welshman, Owen Tudor, a union destined to have a lasting impact on the English throne.

In the 50 years of what turned out to be a disastrous reign, Henry VI left behind one tangible legacy: the buildings that express his own qualities of faith and devotion to learning. The chapels he commissioned at King’s College Cambridge and at Eton are considered to reach a high point in the Gothic style that dominated European architecture for four centuries. One hundred metres of soaring columns and delicate fan vaulting in the Chapel of King’s College lead the eye to a mesmerizing stained glass window above the high altar.

Henry’s idea in founding Eton in 1440 was to provide free instruction ‘in the rudiments of grammar’ to anyone except ‘bastards’ and ‘the unfree’, as a preparation for higher learning at King’s College Cambridge.