The court that Chaucer lived in
* * *
RICHARD AND PEACE
In 1401-2, a young Frenchman who had been a squire in the retinue of Richard
II, and therefore well placed to observe matters of the court, recorded his opinion
about Richard’s downfall in 1399: ‘In truth,’ wrote Jean Creton, ‘the only reason
why he was deposed and betrayed, was because he loyally loved his father-in-law
the king of France with a love as true and sincere as any man alive. That was
the root of the problem, and the cause of the envy – although they charged him
with having evilly caused the deaths of the dukes his uncles, and of being neither
prudent nor wise enough to govern the realm.’
What Richard actually thought about his French father-in-law is anybody’s
guess, but what is certain is that he had married the 7-year-old Isabel for the
clear purpose of consolidating the peace between their two countries. It was a
peace for which Richard had been working most of his reign.
In fact, the pursuit of peace is one of the most remarkable and yet least celebrated
characteristics of Richard’s rule. It may also have been, as the squire Jean Creton
hinted, his undoing.
Richard’s father, the Black Prince, had been a
famous warrior, who from the day of his birth had
‘cherished no thought but loyalty, nobleness, valour,
and goodness, and was endued with prowess’.
He was ‘the most valiant prince in all the world …
since the time of Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, or
Arthur’. The words are those of the Black Prince’s
chief eulogist: an anonymous herald in the retinue
of Sir John Chandos, but they pretty much echoed
the popular view of the prince. It was a daunting
reputation for his son to live up to. It seems that
Richard didn’t try. Like so many sons with a famous father, he chose – or was
drawn to – an alternative lifestyle, and, as king, he tried to establish a different
ethos at court.
The court of the Black Prince at Bordeaux had been permanently geared for
war. So had the court of Richard’s grandfather, Edward III. Both had been characterized
by military games and chivalric culture. ‘Prowess’ (or military skill)
seems to have been a determining factor in the status of their courtiers, and
jousts were essential to the training of knights for war.
Richard II, on the other hand, seems to have had no relish for war per se. He
certainly encouraged the arts of chivalry and took an interest in tournaments and
pageantry. Indeed, on the continent he was hailed as a representative of chivalry
not only by Jean Creton, but as well by the chronicler of St Denys and that most
impressive of medieval blue-stockings, Christine de Pisan, who even went so far
as to call him ‘a true Lancelot’:
A chevalier wearing a crown
In a place near the sea …
Willingly he was praised
For being valiant, a true Lancelot …
Of course, these may have been no more than conventional pieties; references
to royal jousting in Richard’s reign are far fewer than in his grandfather’s, and it
may be that he saw chivalry as a political tool, and not as an end in itself.
Richard’s interest in chivalric activities may well have been simply another
aspect of his cultivation of the craft of kingship. Knights undoubtedly had to be
encouraged in their knightly pursuits; to have done otherwise would have been
folly for the prudent ruler. Chivalry was the fashion – it had become the standard
mode of communication for the modern European court. ‘Courts in every
part of the continent became more formal, and more formally organized.
Ambitious rulers presented themselves as patrons of letters and exemplars of
chivalry and courtesy.’
Besides, the pageantry and glamour of the tournament provided a ready-made
opportunity for staging displays of power which could only help assert the
central role of the crown.
But, when the chips were down, Richard’s was a civilian court, and tournaments
were seen as an alternative to war not a prelude. As far as we know,
Richard never jousted personally, and he appears to have had a genuine distaste
for the spilling of Christian blood. From the
moment Richard took over personal control of
the government in 1389, the pursuit of peace
with France became a priority.
On a theoretical level, this shouldn’t have come
as a shock. Peace was seen by many influential
thinkers of the day as an ideal of kingship and the
desire for peace as the mark of a just ruler.
For example, the Italian theologian and philosopher
Giles of Rome (1245-1316) taught that a
true king desires peace and is not tempted to conquest.
We know that Richard’s education included
the works of Giles – and Giles was not alone in
his opinion. He was supported by Dante, and the
writings of other Italian political theorists such
as Marsilius of Padua, who was Rector of the University of Paris from 1312 to
1313. Chaucer, too, notes that it is the mark of a tyrant to delight in war and that
it is always preferable to pursue policies of peace.
The peace policy most probably expressed Richard’s own inclination. It could,
however, also have been the brainchild of his advisers, like Sir Simon Burley, or
of John of Gaunt, who ‘had the insight, rare among Englishmen of the time, to
favor a realistic settlement with France’. In any case, peace with France remained
the objective of royal policy until the end of Richard’s reign.
This was a quite extraordinary achievement, and it should not be surprising if
it made Richard enemies.
HAWKS VERSUS DOVES
England had been at war with its neighbour almost continuously since 1337, and
for many the habit was hard to break. As one historian writes: ‘Gaunt and others
close to Richard may well have shared his pacifist concerns but the country
as a whole may have found it hard to abandon attitudes and expectations which
had developed over two generations.’ The chronicler Froissart tells us that the
king’s policy of peace towards France did not make him popular at home.
There were at least three members of the nobility who did not share Richard’s
‘pacifist concerns’: his uncle Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, Thomas
Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick and Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel. These
three were the constant thorn in Richard’s side throughout his minority and
indeed throughout most of his rule. In 1398, writing to the Emperor Manuel
Palaeologus, Richard complained of ‘their rebellion and wantonness’ and of the
public humiliation he had been forced to endure at their hands for so long:
You know, what I believe is notorious enough throughout all quarters of the
world, how some of our subject magnates and nobles, while we were yet of tender
age and afterwards also, have made many attempts on the prerogative and
royal right of our regal state, and have wickedly directed their malevolence
even against our person.
Gloucester had many pressing reasons why he wished to remain at war with
France, and none of them were to do with the good of the country as a whole. As
the seventh and youngest son of Edward III, he suffered from that terrible,
though familiar, debility – a lack of means. There he was: of royal blood and yet
without the property or income to support himself in the manner in which he
wished to become accustomed. When his father died
in 1377, Thomas, as Earl of Buckingham, was left no
territorial endowment. The only lands he possessed
were those of his wife. At his nephew’s coronation,
he had been raised to the estate of earl and granted
an annuity of 1,000 per year, but this annuity was
to prove a trifle elusive. ‘To a degree exceptional for a
royal duke, Gloucester was dependent for his income
on exchequer goodwill; and when the exchequer
was hard pressed for cash … so too was the Duke.’
In fact, the war with France was Gloucester’s
chief and brightest hope, not only for increasing his
wealth but also for increasing his influence generally.
As a military leader he could offer the gentry opportunities for fame, glory and
profit in battle – but only while there was a war to be fought. Without war, his
‘affinity’ (or circle of influence) could not expand.
His two confederates, the Earls of Warwick and Arundel, were also hawks
opposed to the doves of Richard’s court. As soon as these three seized power, in
1387, they threw out peace as a policy-objective, and reinstated the war. Arundel
mobilized an expedition and public money was once again poured into the devastation
of France.
There were also other magnates who would have
felt the pinch of peace. Peace with France brought
in its wake a truce with Scotland, and this meant a
reduction in the 3,000 a year that the Percy family
received for keeping watch over the East March.
It is no wonder that the head of that family – the
Earl of Northumberland – spoke out in support of
the Lords Appellant (the name conveniently given
by historians to the revolting barons of 1387) when
they arrived in London.
Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick’s opposition to
Richard – or, rather, their antagonism to Richard – was
thus based upon a strong difference of policy.
But there was also something more to it – something
more personal. As with the hawks versus doves arguments of today, the differences
of policy went hand-in-hand with a hearty distaste for each other’s lifestyles.
Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick were pretty rough customers – they were the
’embittered older generation of the nobility’. Gloucester was highly literate but
he was also a ‘rough, ruthless, and self-confident man’ who ‘had been a prominent
enemy of the court from the first, and had brutally threatened his nephew,
the king, in 1386 with the fate of Edward II … Richard, Earl of Arundel, was if
anything coarser and more ruthless. His life is punctuated with violent quarrels.’
Judging by his behaviour, as reported in the chronicles, Arundel had an
aggressive streak a mile wide. He was also someone who knew how to nurse a
hatred. Warwick seems to have been a rather tetchy, vigorous man, and perhaps
not overbright.
They were men who revelled in military society, and they must have been pretty
contemptuous of the new-style court of the 1380s. As Richard grew to maturity he
showed increasing signs of refinement and sensitivity and his court ‘assumes a
rather precious, even effete, character’. It is the court of Venus rather than of Bellona,
comments the hawkish chronicler Thomas Walsingham, with evident disgust.
The magnates were also ambitious and ruthless, 1387 was nothing less than an
armed rebellion. The triumvirate of Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick, joined
for the occasion by Henry of Derby (the future usurper) and others, imposed
their will on Richard and promoted their own relatives and friends. According
to one chronicle, it was only the fact that Gloucester and Henry of Derby squabbled
amongst themselves about who was to take over as king that saved Richard
from being deposed in 1387.
Of course the rebellious barons’ complaints against the government of the
realm, as recorded by the chroniclers, concentrate on the presence of evil counsellors
surrounding the king, but this is scarcely surprising. To attack the king
himself would have been treason. To attack the king’s advisers was a convenient
fiction – a way of side-stepping the main charge of treason whilst maintaining
the pretence of loyalty to the crown: ‘We’re doing this for your own good, sire!’
And they showed no mercy.
In the aptly named Merciless Parliament of 1388, Gloucester, Arundel and
Warwick ruthlessly eliminated Richard’s associates. Perhaps most shameful – and
hardest to understand – was the execution of the king’s old tutor, Sir Simon
Burley. Passions certainly ran high on the subject. The Westminster Chronicler
describes how Gloucester nearly came to blows with his brother, the Duke of
York, on the floor of parliament. York rose in full parliament offering to defend
Sir Simon Burley in personal combat if need be, whereupon Gloucester retorted
that he would prove Burley had been false in his allegiance ‘with his own sword-arm
and without multiplying arguments. At this the Duke of York turned white
with anger and told his brother to his face that he was a liar, only to receive a
prompt retort in kind from the Duke of Gloucester; and after this exchange they
would have hurled themselves upon each other had not the king with characteristic
mildness and good-will, been quick to calm them down.’
Even when the king himself and the queen went down on their bended knees
to beg for mercy for the old man, Gloucester showed his ultimate remorselessness
and refused to listen. Burley was beheaded despite all protest – perhaps an
indication that he was seen as either the architect of the peace process or else as a
disseminator of dangerous ideas.
It’s scarcely surprising that Richard didn’t get on with these bellicose barons.
Their aims and tastes were poles apart. Richard simply ‘was not “one of the lads”
in a way that Edward I or Edward III had been, nor as Henry IV and Henry V
were to be later …’ He was trying to change the English court from a war culture
to a peace culture. This was, according to the Westminster chronicler, one
of the chief reasons for the barons’ rebellion:
In common with his council the king … thought it better to secure a short
breathing-space from the tumult of strife in that quarter than to be harassed by
the unending troubles of war. Although it came to nothing, it was nevertheless
this project (with other matters …) that formed a reason for the lords’ rising.
To offer men like Gloucester and Arundel tournaments with blunted weapons
instead of real-life chevauches into France was like asking Attila the Hun to settle
down to a nice game of draughts and a cup of tea. Even the royal military
expeditions that Richard did undertake had peace as their aim rather than the
celebration of war.
THE ARGUMENT FOR PEACE
Richard (or whoever was directing court policy at this time) was determined to
have peace, but his (or their) reasons were not necessarily idealistic or pacifist.
Peace made economic sense.
The coffers of England had been emptied by the continual war against the
French. What is more, the returns from that war had been diminishing. In the
early days, Edward III had hit the jackpot with great victories like Crcy, Calais
and Poitiers. But as the years went by the exorbitant expense and the lack of
anything to show for it had taken some of the gilt off the whole enterprise.
Possibly the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 helped to concentrate people’s minds on
the fact that since 1377 a staggering 250,000 had disappeared into the military
coffers with precious little to show for it. A lot of it had gone to finance the
exploits of Gloucester and John of Gaunt in the name of chivalry.
Continues…
Excerpted from Who Murdered Chaucer?
by Terry Jones Robert Yeager Terry Dolan Alan Fletcher Juliette Dor
Copyright © 2003
by Terry Jones, Terry Dolan, Juliette Dor Alan Fletcher and Robert E. Yeager .
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS
Copyright © 2003
Terry Jones, Terry Dolan, Juliette Dor Alan Fletcher and Robert E. Yeager
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-312-33587-3
