but not bloodthirsty, he was capable of showing affection
and inspiring loyalty. He wanted his majesty to awe his
subjects but could exert the common touch. He shared
the conventional tastes of the higher nobility: hunting,
the tournament (mainly as a spectator), courtly poetry.
Not notably pious, in maturity he shared with Charles
VI an enthusiasm for peace among Christians, an end to
the Great Schism of the papacy, and a crusade against
the Turks.
His real passion was to stabilize the personal author-
ity of kingship, raising respect for its holy nature by
trying to procure the canonization of Edward II and
adopting the supposed heraldic arms of Edward the
Confessor. His regal ideals and some of the ways in
which he tried to project them can be seen in his portrait
in Westminster Abbey, in the Wilton Diptych (National
Gallery, London), and in his rebuilding of Westminster
Hall. Denunciations of his rule are to be found in the
poem Richard the Redeless and in John Gower’s Tri-
partite Chronicle.
See also Edward III; Gower, John; Henry IV
Further Reading
Primary Sources
Creton, Jean. A Metrical History of the Deposition of Richard II.
Ed. J. Webb. Archaeologia 20 (1824): 295–423.
Given-Wilson, Chris, ed. and trans. Chronicles of the Revolution,
1397–1400: The Reign of Richard II. Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1993.
Hector, L.C., and Barbara F. Harvey, eds. and trans. The Westmin-
ster Chronicle, 1381–1394. Oxford: Clarendon, 1982.
de Mézières, Philippe de. Letter to Richard II. Trans. G.W. Coop-
land. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1975.
Secondary Sources
Aston, Margaret. Thomas Arundel: A Study of Church Life in the
Reign of Richard II. Oxford: Clarendon, 1967.
Barron, Caroline M. “The Tyranny of Richard II.” BIHR 41
(1968): 1–18.
Clarke, Maude V. Fourteenth Century Studies. Oxford: Claren-
don, 1937.
Du Boulay, F.R.H., and Caroline M. Barron, eds. The Reign of
Richard II: Essays in Honour of May McKisack. London:
University of London, Athlone, 1971.
Gillespie, James L. “Richard II’s Archers of the Crown.” Journal
of British Studies 18 (1979): 14–29.
Given-Wilson, Chris. The Royal Household and the King’s Af-
fi nity: Service, Politics and Finance in England, 1360–1413.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.
Goodman, Anthony. The Loyal Conspiracy: The Lords Appellant
under Richard II. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971.
Harvey, John H. “The Wilton Diptych—A Reexamination,”
Archaeologia 98 (1961): 1–28.
Mathew, Gervase. The Court of Richard II. London: Murray,
1968.
Palmer, J.J.N. England, France and Christendom, 1377–99.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972.
Saul, Nigel. Richard II. New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1997.
Scattergood, V. J., and J.W. Sherborne, eds. English Court Culture
in the Later Middle Ages. London: Duckworth, 1983.
Tuck, Anthony. Richard II and the English Nobility. London:
Arnold, 1973.
Anthony E. GoodmanRICHARD III (1452–1485; R. 1483–85)
No medieval English king has generated more contro-
versy and emotion, not least as a result of Shakespeare’s
portrayal of him as the personifi cation of evil. Shake-
speare, moreover, clearly reflected images already
well formed in early Tudor times. Polydore Vergil, for
instance, considered Richard a man who “thought of
nothing but tyranny and cruelty”; Sir Thomas More
derided him as an ambitious and ruthless monstros-
ity “who spared no man’s death whose life withstood
his purpose.” Even the king’s contemporaries were
frequently critical. Dominic Mancini, writing within a
few months of his seizure of the throne in June 1483, re-
marked forcefully on his “ambition and lust for power,”
and the well-informed Crowland chronicler was scathing
on the tyrannical northern-dominated regime that, he
believed, Richard established in the south.
Yet the last Yorkist king has always had his admir-
ers as well as critics. Thomas Langton, bishop of St.
David’s, declared in August 1483 that “he contents
the people wherever he goes better than ever did any
prince,” and the York Civic Records reported “great
heaviness” in the city when news arrived of his fete
(“piteously slain and murdered”) on Bosworth Field in- Modern historians, too, have brought in notably
contrasting verdicts, ranging from Charles Ross’s con-
clusion that no one familiar with “the careers of King
Louis XI of France, in Richard’s own time, or Henry
VIII of England... would wish to cast any special slur
on Richard, still less to select him as the exemplar
of a tyrant” to Desmond Seward’s hostile biography
of this “peculiarly grim young English precursor of
Machiavelli’s Prince.”
The youngest son of Richard of York, Richard duke
of Gloucester proved notably loyal to his brother Ed-
ward IV during the crisis of 1469–71 and in the 1470s
showed himself as reliable and trustworthy as any of
the king’s servants (and was rewarded accordingly).
His rule of the north during these years was singularly
successful; he built a powerful affi nity there. Mancini
admitted mat he “acquired the favour of the people.”
No one will ever know for certain whether he set his
sights on the throne as soon as he heard of Edward IV’s
sudden death on 9 April 1483, or if, at fi rst, he merely
intended to obtain control of his nephew Edward V
so as to prevent the Wydevilles—the family of young
Edward’s mother—from securing power. What is clear
is that the series of preemptive strikes by which he
RICHARD III