The 14th of February 1400 is allegedly the day that Richard II, last of the Plantagenet Kings, died in Pontefract Castle. The cause of death is said to have been starvation.
Richard was born on the 6th of January 1367 in Bordeaux. He was the second son of Edward, the Black Prince, and Joan, later known as the ‘Fair Maid of Kent’. Richard’s grandfather, Edward III, and his father were renowned soldiers.
Richard’s elder brother died in 1371, by which time his father was already an invalid. The Black Prince died in June 1376, leaving Richard, aged nine, as heir to the English Crown.
By 1377, Edward III was also an invalid and declining into senility. He was unable to open the last Parliament of his reign in January 1377, and Richard stood in for him on the opening day.
Edward III died on the 21st of June 1377, and Richard was crowned just eleven days later. Richard swore the, by now, traditional oath to uphold the laws and customs of his ancestors, to protect the Church and the clergy, to do justice to all and, finally, to uphold the laws which the people would ‘justly and reasonably’ choose. He was carried shoulder high from the church and in the process lost a shoe. This was later described as a ‘bad omen’.
Part of Richard’s self-penned epitaph reads:
Prudent and Elegant;
Richard, by oath, the second, overtaken by fate;
Lies here, portrayed under marble;
He was true in speech and full of reason;
Noble in body, and judicious in mind like Homer…
Certainly Richard had a name for elegance: he was personally fastidious so much so that he is credited with having invented the handkerchief. He was extravagant; one of his coats was valued at thirty thousand marks. He loved good food, and his master chef’s book ‘Forme of Cury’ is one of the earliest English cookery books. He was a patron of Gower, and Chaucer stood high in his favour for some long while. His portrait, now in Westminster Abbey, is thought to be one of the earliest true-to-life portraits of an English monarch.
But Richard was no dilettente. His courage and quick thinking during the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt at fourteen showed him to be a worthy successor to his grandfather and father. (More of that on a later post!)
Unfortunately, he gained the reputation of promising one thing, and doing another. He was short-tempered and moody. He bore long grudges and often took arbitrary action for any slight or grievance.
Like other deposed monarchs, Richard was seen as favouring the ‘wrong’ sort of advisor, and of distributing patronage to only a few. His final folly was to overturn the rights of heirs to inherit by confiscating the Duchy of Lancaster from the rightful heir, Henry of Bolingbroke, later Henry IV.
Richard was forced to abdicate on the 29th of September 1399. The commons in parliament petitioned for a trial, but the petition was ignored. Sometime in October, Richard was taken from the Tower to Gravesend, from there to Leeds and finally, at the beginning of December, to Pontefract Castle. In early 1400 there was an abortive rebellion to restore Richard. Clearly, as long as Richard lived he would pose a threat to Henry, but whether, as some chroniclers maintain, Richard ‘grieved ever more sorely and mourned even unto death‘, or was, as others state ‘tormented by Sir Swynford with starving fare’, we shall probably never know.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Morning Boa, Ja I do read and enjoy them!
I see a conflict of dates, second para and picture caption.
Excellent stuff Boadicea, I’m following keenly 🙂
PS. I would be interested in your view on this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/simonheffer/7222919/We-cant-afford-to-have-less-history-taught-at-universities.html
Madness.
…and then there are Pontefract cakes, pronounced Pomfret in Yarksher. they are licorice-flavoured, black ‘coins’, if you haven’t tried them.
You’re part right and part wrong, Soutie! He lived 1367-1400, but reigned 1377-1399. 🙂
Ah!
Perhaps I’ll stick to just reading them 😉
According to loyal old Wiki:
Pontefract cakes (also known as Pomfret cakes and Pomfrey cakes) are a type of small, roughly circular black sweet measuring approximately 2 cm in diameter and 4 mm thick, made of liquorice, originally manufactured in the Yorkshire town of Pontefract, England.
The original name for these small tablets of liquorice is a “Pomfret” cake, after the old Norman name for Pontefract. However, that name has fallen into disuse and they are now almost invariably labelled “Pontefract cakes”.
Originally, the sweets were embossed by hand with a stamp, to form their traditional look, but now they are usually machinery formed. The embossed stamp was originally a stylised image of Pontefract Castle.
The liquorice root used in these cakes was exported to Australia for the first time by a member of the famous Carter family who hailed from Pontefract.
Healthcare professionals have warned against overindulgence on Pontefract Cakes after a 56 year old woman was admitted to hospital after overdosing on the confectionery.
Please note the Oz link.
Thanks, Bravo.
As to the Heffer article – Heffer is right.
A man is the sum total of his experiences, and the way he looks at the world is shaped by those experiences and the structures in which he was raised. So, too, it is with countries.
How can we understand the differences between our own and other ‘cultures’ if we do not know and understand the historical events which shaped ours and theirs?
Certainly more modern events may seem to be more relevant – but unless we understand why those events occurred we are likely to repeat the same mistakes again and again from a simple misunderstanding of the way earlier histories have shaped different ways of thinking.
I liken Early and Medieval History to the ‘childhood’ of a nation. There are patterns of thinking set in childhood that most of us don’t even think about it – so too are patterns of ‘culture’. There are so many things that we simply take for granted because they have always been there – and that’s no different elsewhere.
To me, not teaching people about the foundations of their country is akin to sending an adult into the world stripped of the memory of his childhood.
Janus – I remember going to Pontefract years ago… one could smell the licorice before one entered the town!
Thanks for the answer Boadicea, much what I was thinking, but much more cogently expressed.
Your paragraph starting “unfortunately he gained the reputation …” reminded me of our current leader, Boadicea. Human nature doesn’t change much over the centuries. Thank you for another interesting post.
Ah but he did one excellent thing.
Beat the hell out of the Irish. His one effective military expedition.
Good read, thank you.