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