powers to monitor administration for a year. Determined
to evade its control, Richard toured the realm in 1387,
seeking support. He prompted the judges to defi ne recent
political initiatives as treasonable encroachments on
royal prerogative; he aroused suspicions of a sellout to
the French by seeking a conference with King Charles
VI. In November Gloucester and the earls of Arundel
and Warwick rose in arms and launched an Appeal of
Treason against fi ve of the king’s supporters. Richard
conceded that the appeal would be heard in parliament.
The “Appellants” were joined by Gaunt’s son Henry
Bolingbroke and by Thomas Mowbray, earl of Not-
tingham. Richard’s close friend Robert de Vere, duke
of Ireland, raised an army at his instigation, only to
be defeated by the Appellants at Radcot Bridge (in
Oxfordshire). In parliament in 1388 the appellees were
found guilty; the two in custody, the Londoner Nicho-
las Brembre and Chief Justice Robert Tresilian, were
executed. The Commons impeached other judges and
four household offi cers; the latter (notably Sir Simon
Burley, who had tutored the king) were executed.
The Appellants soon lost common purpose and sup-
port. The schemes of Gloucester and Arundel for an
invasion of France failed, and in August, at Otterburn in
Northumberland, the English suffered the worst defeat
by the Scots since Bannockburn (1314). In May 1389
Richard declared himself of age and took control of
government; in the early 1390s his moderate exercise
of authority was underpinned by the returned Gaunt,
principal negotiator in attempts to make a fi nal peace
with the French.
Richard boosted his authority by suspending the
liberties of London (1391–92) and leading an expedi-
tion to Ireland (1394–95); London citizens and Irish
chieftains alike submitted to his mercy. Continuous
truces with the French since 1389 culminated in 1396
in a truce for 28 years; Richard married Charles VT’s
daughter Isabella.
But the moves in the 1390s toward an Anglo-French
rapprochement provoked widespread disquiet; the
earl of Arundel was a leading critic, and from 1395
Gloucester emerged as one. In July 1397 Richard ar-
rested Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick; young nobles
made an Appeal of Treason against them for their acts
in 1386–88, and they were found guilty in the Septem-
ber parliament. It was announced then that Gloucester
had died in custody; Arundel was executed, Warwick
sentenced to life imprisonment. The condemnations of
1388 were reversed, and Richard rewarded his noble
partisans, such as his half-brother John Holland, earl of
Huntingdon, with exalted peerage titles and the forfeited
estates of the traitors.
In 1397 Richard had a more solid base of noble sup-
port than in 1387 and could call on the many knights
and esquires he had retained in recent years, as well
as his bodyguard of Cheshire archers. But the general
alarm caused by his policies was augmented by the
exclusion from the general pardon of January 1398,
of those who had ridden against him. Supporters of
the Appellants in 1387–88 now had to seek the royal
mercy and pay fi nes. Richard’s daring restructuring of
magnate power was threatened when, in this session,
Bolingbroke accused Thomas Mowbray, his fellow Ap-
pellant of 1387–88 and 1397, of treason. In September
Richard intervened when the parties were about to settle
their quarrel by judicial duel and sentenced Mowbray
to exile for life and Bolingbroke for ten years. On the
death of Bolingbroke’s father, Gaunt, in February 1399
Richard made his banishment perpetual and confi scated
the Lancastrian inheritance.
In June, soon after Richard had gone on expedition
to Ireland to salvage his 1395 setdement, Bolingbroke
sailed widi a small company from France and landed in
Yorkshire. He was soon joined by Lancastrian retainers
and northern lords, including the earls of Northum-
berland and Westmorland, disgruntled by Richard’s
interference in their sphere of infl uence. Bolingbroke ad-
vanced through the Midlands to seize Bristol; Richard’s
uncle and regent, Edmund duke of York, along with
other supporters, was unable to rally effective opposi-
tion. From Bristol Bolingbroke moved up through the
Welsh marches to capture Chester, the main bastion of
Ricardian sentiment.
In Ireland Richard failed to appreciate the urgent
need to rally support in person in north Wales and
Cheshire; he landed too late in south Wales, moving
north to Conway after his forces had disintegrated. The
mediating earl of Northumberland betrayed Richard into
Bolingbroke’s hands; he was conveyed as a prisoner
from Flint to the Tower of London. There he was ap-
parently forced to abdicate, and in September a version
of this agreement was submitted to the parliament sum-
moned in his name. His requests for a public hearing
were refused; the estates accepted the charges made
against him in parliament as ground for deposition and
acknowledged Bolingbroke’s claim to the throne.
The deposed Richard was moved to other prisons,
eventually to Pontefract in Yorkshire, where he died
(or was killed) after the rising in January 1400 by some
of his former favorites—Huntingdon, Huntingdon’s
nephew Thomas Holland, earl of Kent, John Montague,
earl of Salisbury, and Thomas, Lord Despenser. It was
easily suppressed. In February Richard’s body was
brought from his prison for public view in London
and buried obscurely in the Dominican friary at
Langley, Hertfordshire. In 1416 Henry V moved it to
the splendid tomb Richard had prepared for himself
in Westminster Abbey.
Richard was 6 feet tall, well built, handsome, and
light-haired. Willful, devious, vindictive, sharp- temperedRICHARD II