The death of King Richard II in 1400

February 14th is often given as the date of the death of the deposed King Richard II iin Pontefract Castle in 1400.  If that is correct then today is the 625th anniversary of that event. However if his body was publically displayed in St Paul’s in London on February 17th that would surely suggest a slightly earlier date for his death to have occurred to allow for the transportation of his body from Pontefract.

King Richard II

From the Westminster Abbey portrait

Image: Wikipedia 

As to what happened in the castle at Pontefract there is little hard evidence. 

The somewhat cryptic references in the Privy Council records to the former monarch in the wake of the failure of the Epiphany Plot to restore him to the throne yield little beyond that there was concern for the security of the prisoner at Pontefract and clearly rumours or reports were circulating. 

Starvation was alleged at the time as the cause of his death. The new government claimed he fell into depression and refused to eat until it was too late. This is not impossible, and might parallel the later instance of the insanity which seemingly gripped the Empress Charlotte of Mexico when in Rome in 1867.

The opponents of King Henry IV, such as Archbishop Scroogein 1405, charged the King with wilfully starving his predecessor to death.. They may, in addition, have had the allegedly similar fate of the Scottish heir, David Duke of Rothesay, in 1402 in mind.

If faced by an emergency one wonders why his keepers would wait a week to a fortnight, or maybe longer assuming that the patron of The Forme of Cury was well nourished, in an age when everyone carried a dagger and a probably a sword, unless they scrupled to spill the blood royal. Smothering as with the Duke of Gloucester in 1397, and quite possibly or probably the Princes in the Tower in 1483 would be quicker and not leave visible wounds.

The tradition of a violent bloody assault on the prisoner is the tradition of the-contemporary French chroniclers. With his marriage to the child Queen Isabel, daughter of King Charles VI there was interest in his fate and hostility to the new King from leading French figures, such as the Duje of Orleans, as well as the m longstanding view of English as regicicdal now reinforced all the more.

Shakespeare used this tradition in his play and by 1634 visitors to Pontefract were shown cuts on a pillar around which his “barbarous murderes” forced their victim to flee as they struck him down. This is the earliest specific reference to such a feature. It may have been in the Round Tower, the keep, clearly visible on the left in the picture below.

A couple of small rooms, one on the ruined entrance level of the Round Tower and the other the base of the adjacent Gascoigne Tower, being still recognisable as rooms have been pointed out on occasion since the early nineteenth century as ‘King Richard’s Cell’ but only I suspect because they were recognisable as rooms of a cell like nature. It is perhaps more likely he was kept in a larger part of the Round Tower, built as recently as 1374-78, and innermost part of the castle, or in part of the main residential apartments on the north east side of the main enclosure.

In 1530 the newly arrested Cardinal Wolsey asked, upon seeing the castle in the distance if he was being taken there to die “like a beast”, which might also refer to the fates of Rivers, Grey and Vaughn in 1483. Shakespeare gives Rivers lines referring to the castle as the scene of the 1409 regicide. Wolsey need not have worried, being lodged overnight at the neighbouring Cluniac priory.

A further weakness in Shakespeare’s version is the absence from the historical record of Sir 

Piers of Exton. The theory to explain him is that  he may be a misreading of Sir Peter Bukton, who is recorded. 

However the dramatic image of a death dealing blow to the royal skull was disproved when the grave at Westminster was opened in 1871. Although possessed of a thin nature the cranium was undamaged.

At the time the Constable of the castle was Sir Thomas Swynford, the new King’s step-brother, and the Steward of the Honour of Pontefract was Robert Waterton, who had been instrumental in meeting Bolingbroke at Spurn.the previous June. I wrote about him in a post last month at Robert Waterton. 

These were two men with everything to win or lose on the detention or final removal of Richard of Bordeaux.

When there were rumours that he had escaped and lived in Scotland as Thomas Ward until he died in 1419 and was buried in the Dominican house in Stirling one is reminded of the Danish False Okuf of 1402, the careers of Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, of the various false Kings Sebastian in Portugal after 1578, the false Ivan VI in eighteenth century Russia and of Anna Anderson in the twentieth century. When asked about such rumours in 1404 Waterton categorically assured Parliament that Richard was definitely dead - and left it at that. Interestingly he was to include King Richard II his intentions for those to be prayed for at his chantry at Methleyin his will of 1425. He must surely have known more than most ast o what happened on his watch in 1400.

Pontefract Castle in the 1630s

Image: Wakefield City Museum s/ Blogging 4 History

Ii have not yet read Helen Castor’s widely acclaimed joint biography of King Richard and King Henry The Eagle and the Hart. I have seen  her give excellent online seminars and interviews about her work on the two monarchs.

Last year I read Marie Louise Bruce’s  Usurper King which, despite its slightly sensational title and somewhat uninspired cover, attempts the same type of biography and was, I thought, well worth reading. 

Whatever his strengths and failings, his virtues and vices, and he was a complex man in so many ways, gifted yet flawed, one can at least pray for the repose of the soul of King Richard II. 

Robert Waterton

Last Friday was the six hundredth anniversary of the death at his manor house at Methley in the West Riding of Yorkshire of Robert Waterton. His splendid tomb, together with that of his second wife, remains as one of the great treasures of the church at Methley.

 

The tomb of Robert and Cicely Waterton in Methley Church 

Image: John Kirk on Find a Grave

Waterton, born sometime in the 1360s at Waterton in the north-west of Lincolnshire, was a member of a family whose lives and careers were shaped by service to the house of Lancaster. Although there is some uncertainty about the exact family relationships, and confusion in older works as to the number of Robert’s marriages, such that he has been identified as being both a father and a non-existent son, his life is otherwise well documented in the surviving records of the Crown and the Duchy of Lancaster. 

He seems to have been especially close to the future King Henry IV and in July 1399, together with two hundred foresters, met the returning Duke of Lancaster at Spurn Point, thus participating from the very beginning in the rising which rapidly unseated King Richard II.

Following the accession of King Henry IV Waterton as Steward of the Honour of Pontefract was probably one of the few people who knew with certainty the fate of the former king in Pontefract Castle. He was to be prominent in King Henry’s suppression of revolts against him. and a trusted and close counsellor, serving as Master of the Horse. His effigy suggests he cultivated his beard to resemble that of his master.

Although credited by Shakespeare as being a knight in “Richard II” he never received the accolade and was never more than an esquire, despite his wide ranging influence and responsibilities.Having had custody at Pontefract of the captive boy King James I of Scots he was to serve King Henry V as the custodian, at various times in the next decade in the same castle or his own house at Methley of numerous prisoners taken at Agincourt. These included the most prestigious of all Charles Duke of Orleans, the Duke of Bourbon, Arthur of Richmond, later Constable of France and Duke  of Brittany, and Marshal Boucicault, who died at Methley in 1421. Even though the King worried at times about their security he clearly trusted Waterton, and they maintained a correspondence that survives in part. The Waterton household appears to have been cultivated and affluent in these years, and based in Robert’s newly built Methley Hall. The social standing and cultured chivalric interests of his illustrious ‘guests’ must have made it an interesting community.

Waterton’s second wife, Cecily, was the sister of “my” Bishop Richard Fleming, whose earlier career Waterton clearly assisted. 

In many ways I feel Robert Waterton has been a constant companion to me since I was a schoolboy forming an interest in the later medieval period. It was therefore a privilege to advocate his inclusion, and to write the entry for him in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography published in 2004.

If you have online access to the ONDB I would recommend you to read my article, although unfortunately it harder to be edited down from what I had originally submitted.

There is an excellent account of him also by Dr Sarah Rose which pay particular attention to his role as a custodian of French prisoners and also the child Richard Duke of York for King Henry V. That can be read at Robert Waterton and Henry V Summary The ... - Lancaster EPrints

Wikipedia has a biography of Waterton which is useful but it perpetuate the mistake but split him into two differentindividuals. It can be seen at Robert Waterton

The church at Methley deserves to be better known for its collection of tombs; in addition to that of Waterton and his wife that is that of their daughter and son-in-law Lord Welles, who by his second marriage was to become the stepfather of Lady Margaret Beaufort, as well as of the Savile family who have owned the estate since the late sixteenth century.

Robert Waterton is a quintessential example of a Lancastrian retainer from the time of John of Gaunt and King Henry IV. In succeeding generations his son-in-law. grandson and great grandson and at least one other relative died violent deaths in the service of the Lancastrian dynasty. Such was the bond of service the Lancastrians could command.

As the inscription on the tomb requests:

Pray for the soul of Robert Waterton & Cecily  his wife,

That God will take to his kingdom their poor & endless life

St Catherine and Marshal Boucicaut

Were yesterday not Sunday, and therefore the Solemnity of Christ the King in the modern rite, it would have been the feast of St Catherine of Alexandria. An immensely popular saint in middle ages and in subsequent centuries she was dropped from the Calendar in 1970, but reinstated by Pope John Paul II  in 2002. This may have been an opening towards the Orthodox who have retained great devotion to her.

This illustration of devotion to her is taken from the Book of Hours of Marshal Boucicaut, dating from 1410-15.

St Catherine and Marshal Boucicaut

Image: Wikipedia

There is an account of the artist, known today as the Master of Boucicaut here  and views of other pages of the manuscrpt can be found online.

The Hours were produced for Jean le Meingre II, known as Marshal Boucicaut following his appointment as Marshal of France in 1391, and who lived from 1366-1421. There is an online life of him here and also an account here.  

Hailed in his lifetime as a paragon of the chivalric code  and life of the military elite he was a crusader and jouster who narrowly survived the disaster of the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396, served as the French Governor of Genoa and was finally defeated and captured at Agincourt on October 25th 1415. He had served as commander of the vanguard in the battle. Taken as a prisoner to England he was to remain one of King Henry V's captives until his death in 1421.

Marshal Boucicaut Image: Findagrave

I am particularly interested in this phase of his life as he was in the custody of Robert Waterton in Yorkshire for part of this time and it was at Waterton's house at Methley that the Marshal died on June 21 1421. His body was sent back to France for burial at Tours. Part of the house Waterton built survived as part of Methley Hall until its demolition in the early 1960s. Waterton, an emiment and long-serving Lancastrian retainer, was the brother-in-law of Bishop Richard Fleming, and the online Oxford DNB life of him can be read here. My innate modesty forbids me from drawing attention to the authorship of the biography.

Around St Pauls

Whilst on my visit to St Pauls for the Ordination I had an incidental opportunity to do some sight-seeing by dint of walking around a small portion of this historic part of London.

Emerging from the tube at St Paul's one is almost immediately confronted by the memorial rected in 1910 on the site of St Paul's Cross, the celebrated public pulpit of London from the later medieval period down to its destruction in the Civil War. There are articles about it here and here. This is a place of particular interest to me both because of an incident involving Robert Waterton the brother-in-law of Bishop Fleming in the reign of King Henry IV when Waterton's servant mocked a preacher at the Cross, an action for which he was made to do penance, and also the great sermon preached there by Bishop Gardiner following the reconciliation of England and the Papacy in 1554 - reading that helped me in my path to my own reconciliation four and a half centuries later.

Across the road were the ruins of a Wren church, still with its tower, which was obviously a victim of the Blitz. Only on checking afterwards did I find that these were the remains of Christ Church Newgate Street, built out of and over the site of the great church of the London Greyfriars. It is the burial place of, amongst others, those medieval members of the French royal house who married into the Plantagenets, Queen Margaret, the second wife of King Edward I and of Queen Isabella the King Edward II. There is a history with links here.

A reconstruction of the London Greyfriars on the eve of the reformation by H.W.Brewer

The remains of Christ Church Newgate Street

Image: Peter Herring's photostream on Flickr

Regular readers will not be surprised to read that I deplore the failure to properly rebuild these parts of our architectural heritage following the Blitz. On the continent the policy seems much more, and however long it may have taken or indeed still be taking, to rebuild and reinstate. Admittedly London has been responsible since 1860 for destroying quite a number of its historic churches without the assisatance of the Luftwaffe or the IRA, as can be seen in this article with its links.

Round in St Paul's Churchyard was a much better piece of conservation, the re-erected Temple Bar. Designed by Wren, removed from the Strand in the 1870s and rebuilt at Theobalds Park in Hertfordshire it was, after years of neglect, rebuilt and restored as the entrance to Paternoster Row facing the north side of St Paul's in November 2004. There are articles about it here and here.

Temple Bar in its new setting

Image: Wikipedia

The restored Bar looks very splendid and it is good to see it back in the City of London, though part of me at least would havewanted to see it restored to its original site , though that would have meant removing the Temple Bar monument by the Law Courts, never mind the effect on the traffic flow...

After the ordination in the cathedral we journeyed to celebrate with our friend at El Vino's branch in Blackfriars (his father is a journalist) and so once again one was surrounded by history. It was, of course, at Blackfriars that Wolsey held his legatine court to determine the validity of the marriage of Kng Henry VIII and Queen Katherine of Aragon in 1529. It is also of interest as an area to me as it appears that it was in this part of London that Master James of Spain, the cousin of King Edward II who gave the house called La Oriole, and hence its name, to my college, lived out his last years in the late 1320s and early 1330s. I could add a lot about James of Spain, but that can await another day.

Aftera most enjoyable reunion with friends from Oriel and elsewhere in Oxford I went off with a friend up towards Holborn, and into the vicinity of that wonderful building from the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries St Etheldreda's Ely Place - for which see here, here and here - and Charterhouse - the latter with connections to Bishop Fleming, who dedicated its church bell in the 1420s.

Passing the restored market at Smithfield, and evoking memories of the end of the 1381 Peasant's Revolt with the slaying of Wat Tyler by Sir William Walworth and the executions there in the sixteenth century, we had a very good Indian meal before walking back past the entrance to St Barts and found ourselves opposite the Old Bailey and looking in the dusk at the outside of
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, which is still substantially medieval.

St Sepulchre without Newgate

Image: Geograph.org.uk

In the churchyard was an information board about the grim and grisly story of the Black Dog of Newgate, which can be read here and here.

Seeking the right tube station we returned to the west end of St Paul's, and walked along the south side, passing the tower, all that now remains of St Augustine Watling Street - another failure to rebuild other than incorporating the tower into the new building of St Paul's Choir School- before getting the tube westwards to Victoria and going our separate ways.

The tower of St Augustine's Watling Street

Image: Wikipedia

The actual distance travelled was slight but it took in a huge amount of historical interest. I definitely want to go back and explore more of the City of London, which I have to admit, is something I have hitherto failed to do.