Shakespeare's Kings (11 page)

he held a great and solemn feast in his palace of Westminster, which all the prelates, earls, barons and knights of England were commanded to attend. And there Richard, the Prince's son, was raised up and carried before the King, who invested him in the presence of the lords just mentioned with the succession to the throne of England, to hold it after his death; and he seated him at his own side. He then required an oath from all prelates, barons, knights, officers of the cities and towns, of the ports and frontier-posts of England, that they would recognize him as their King
.

There must have been many people present at that feast who questioned the wisdom of entrusting the throne to a boy of ten. Royal minorities were dangerous things; John of Gaunt, who for some time already had been regent in all but name, might certainly have seemed a more sensible choice. But he was dangerously unpopular, particularly in the city of London, and Edward - who had himself succeeded at
the age of only fourteen - doubtl
ess thought it better that John should govern through his nephew rather than in his own name. And so it was that on Thursday
16
July
1377
young Richard, son of Edward the Black Prince and his wife Joan — 'the Fair Maid of Kent' - and himself 'fair among men as another Absalom',
¹
was crowned at Westminster by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury. The coronation service was appallingly long, and was followed by a state banquet which continued even longer; it was hardly surprising that by the end of the day its principal participant was so exhausted that he had to be carried back to his palace by his tutor Sir Simon Burley, losing one of his slippers on the way.

1. Adam
of
Usk,
Chronicle.

Joan of Kent had been delivered of her second son at the stroke often on the morning of the Feast of the Epiphany, Wednesday 6 January
1367,
in the Abbey of St Andrew at Bordeaux. For the first four years of his life Richard had an elder brother, called Edward after his father and grandfather and born at Angouleme two years before him; but Edward of Angouleme had died in
13
71
at the age of six and Richard, small and sickly as he was, was thenceforth their only child. Many years later his cousin Henry Bolingbroke was to claim that he was not the son of the Black Prince at all, but of a Bordeaux priest; such an accusation, however, was only to be expected in the circumstances, and was almost certainly baseless. All that we know of Joan suggests that she was faithful to her husband, and he for his part loved her much.

Richard returned to England with his family in the year of his brother's death, and for the six years up to his coronation - years which were spent, presumably, with his parents at Berkhamsted — we hear little of him. There can be no doubt that the principal influence on him during that most formative period of his life was his mother; and since she was to maintain that influence until her death in
1385,
it may be worthwhile saying a little more about her before this story continues. Born in
1328,
she was the daughter of Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, sixth son of King Edward I. Only two years after her birth, her father was beheaded for his opposition to Edward II's widow, Isabella of France, and her lover Roger Mortimer;
¹
and Joan was brought up by Queen Philippa at the court of her cousin, Edward III. Her nickname, 'the Fair Maid of Kent', was richly deserved: she was, according to Froissart,
en son temps la plus belle de tout la roiaulme d'Engleterre et la plus amoureuse
.
Not surprisingly she had many suitors, including William de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury; but at an early stage she fell in love with his steward, Sir Thomas Holland, and entered into a pre-contract of matrimony with him. Unfortunately, however, before their marriage could be solemnized Holland was called away to the wars; and Salisbury took advantage of his absence to marry Joan himself. Whether she gave her willing consent to this second commitment seems unlikely; at all events, when Holland on his return in
1349
successfully petitioned the Pope for the restitution of his conjugal rights she went back to him at

1. See p. 16.

once, and the two lived - so far as we know - happily together for the next eleven years, until his death in
1360.

Joan - since the death of her brother eight years before Countess of Kent in her own right - was, at thirty-two, still relatively young and devastatingly attractive; and it was not long before she caught the eye of the Black Prince. There were initial obstacles to their marriage. Not only was the Prince her cousin at a single remove, he was also godfather to her elder son Thomas Holland, a spiritual relationship which in the eyes of the Church created every bit as much of a problem as the physical one. Eventually, however, the King - himself not altogether immune to the Countess's charms - was persuaded to intercede with the Pope, and the two were married at Lambeth in October
1361.
For the rest of her life, in England and in Aquitaine, as wife and as widow, Joan seems to have been universally loved and respected, and by no one more than by Richard her son.

Inevitably, the influence of Richard's father was less strong than that of his mother. For most of the first four years of the boy's life the Black Prince was away on campaign; after the family's return to England in
13
71
he was ill and largely incapacitated, as well as being deeply distressed by the death of his elder son, whom he had always preferred to the younger. Though not ill-disposed towards Richard, he seems never to have altogether forgiven him for his slight stature and unimpressive physique. He certainly made no allowances for such defects: he was determined that the boy should be brought up as a knight and a warrior just as he himself had been, and Richard's tutors were given instructions to build up his strength and endurance and to give him a thorough training in the arts of war. The result was a feeling of inadequacy which he never managed entirely to overcome, and which was made the more intolerable by his exaggerated conception of kingship, his acute consciousness of his own royal blood and his determination to be not only a good king but a great one. An additional irritation may well have been the brilliance of his two half-brothers Thomas and John Holland, both of whom, though much older than he was — Thomas by seventeen years and John by probably fourteen or fifteen - excelled at all military and chivalric pursuits; Thomas had actually been knighted by the Black Prince on a Castilian
Battle
field in the year of Richard's birth.

Although the young King was still only ten and a half at the time of his coronation, there was no official regency. His mother continued to act as his guardian, while day-to-day government was entrusted to a council of twelve members, from which Richard's royal uncles were perhaps rather surprisingly excluded. There was no doubt, on the other hand, as to where the real power lay. John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, occupied a unique position in the kingdom. His lands were said to extend over one-third of the entire country, while for many years he maintained at his own expense a personal retinue of no fewer than
125
knights and
132
esquires, effectively a sizeable private army. His palace of the Savoy
¹
on the Thames was more magnificent than anything his nephew could boast. Such a man, it need hardly be said, might well have constituted a serious danger to the peace of the realm. He was, after all, Edward Ill's eldest surviving son, already thirty-seven years old at the time of Richard's coronation and possessed of all the wisdom, maturity and experience that his young nephew so obviously lacked. At a time when, after England's recent reverses in the French wars, such qualities were desperately needed, it would have been easy for him to have claimed the crown for himself. Even after the coronation had taken place he could have attacked Richard's legitimacy by challenging either the papal decision of
1349
that upheld his mother's contract with Sir Thomas Holland or the dispensation of
1361
permitting her to marry the Black Prince; similar attempts had been made before, and with Gaunt's money and influence he might well have succeeded. It is to his credit that he did none of these things, but remained a loyal subject throughout his life.

This is not to say that relations between the two were invariably easy, still less that Gaunt was ever popular among his countrymen. Just as he was the most powerful figure in the kingdom, he was also the most hated. With his father and elder brother both dead, it was inevitable that he should be regarded as the man most responsible for the decline in English fortunes over the past decade. Nor could his immense wealth and the ostentation of his court fail to arouse envy and mistrust in the hearts of those less fortunate than himself, nobles and commoners alike. It was well known, too, that despite the time he spent furthering his

1. The palace had been built in the thirteenth century by Peter, the future Count of Savoy and uncle of Henry Ill's Queen, Eleanor. Some idea of its size can be gained from the fact that it covered the area now occupied by the Savoy Hotel, Theatre and Chapel, the Victoria Embankment, Embankment Gardens and the west wing of Somerset House.

claim through his second wife to the throne of Castile, he in fact paid her little attention, preferring to spend his time with his daughters' governess, Katherine Swynford. Various other rumours, less well founded but a good deal more unsavoury, were also in circulation by the year preceding his nephew's accession: that Gaunt was not Edward's son at all, having been smuggled into Ghent Abbey to replace a daughter born to Queen Philippa; that he had poisoned his first wife's sister and was only awaiting his opportunity to do the same to Richard; and that he was secretly plotting with the Pope against the King.

Matters had come to a head early in
1377,
when his protege John Wycliffe, the radical Oxford scholar who had already become famous as a preacher against ecclesiastical abuses, was summoned to appear before the bench of bishops on charges of heresy. Seeing this - rightly — as a challenge to himself, Gaunt had engaged four doctors of divinity to speak in Wycliffe's defence; but when he attended the inquiry in person, attended by an armed retinue, in the Lady Chapel of St Paul's, it soon became clear that he had no intention of allowing the trial to continue. After a furious shouting match between himself and the Bishop of London, William Courtenay, the proceedings broke up in confusion, though not before he had announced his intention of imposing martial law throughout the city. This, however, proved a grave mistake. Courtenay and his fellow bishops had no difficulty in stirring up the London mob at this threat to their civil liberties, and a crowd of several thousand besieged the palace of the Savoy, hung the arms of the Duchy of Lancaster, reversed as a sign of treason, in Cheapside and pursued everyone they found wearing the ducal livery all the way to Westminster. Gaunt himself was obliged to seek refuge with his sister-in-law, the widowed Princess Joan, across the river in Kennington.

Peace was restored at last, thanks largely to Bishop Courtenay. The mayor, who had played a major part in the rioting, was deposed and a marble pillar was erected in Cheapside bearing the arms of Lancaster -now right way up - on a gilded shield. But it was only after Richard's accession a few months later that the quarrel was finally settled. In the presence of a delegation of Londoners, come to request that the new King should pay a formal visit to the city and compose the unfortunate differences between themselves and the Duke of Lancaster, Gaunt fell somewhat dramatically at the

King's feet and begged him to pardon
them
.
Richard
of
course
did
so,
thereby
acquiring
an
instant
reputation as
a
peacemaker
and
ensuring
an
enthusiastic
reception
for
his
coronation a
few
days
later.

All
those
concerned
had
good
reason
to
congratulate
themselves
on the
surprisingly
happy
conclusion
to
what
had
at
one
moment
appeared a
dangerous
crisis;
both
sides,
it
seemed,
had
been
taught
a
salutary lesson
that
they
would
not
quickly
forget.
All
too
soon,
however,
both were
to
realize
that
the
storming
of
the
Savoy
was
but
a
pale
rehearsal of
the
infinitely
more
serious
confrontation
which
was
already
on
its way.