On 30 September 1399, Richard II’s cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, would usurp the throne, taking the name Henry IV, and months after the coronation, Richard would die a prisoner in Pontefract Castle amidst speculation that he was murdered.
Did the Battle of Hyddgen even take place?
May 14, 2014 By
The Battle of Hyddgen is said to be the first victory of the Welsh leader Owain Glyndŵr and many historians believe it played a central role to his revolt in the early fifteenth-century. A historian is now questioning where the battle took place, and even if the encounter took place at all.
Gower’s “Confessio” and the “Nova statuta Angliae”: royal lessons in English law
November 13, 2013 By
In the following discussion, I will explore some hitherto unexamined links between the Confessio Amantis and one of these legal texts, the Nova Statuta Angliae or New Statutes of England, which circulated among professional and non-professional readers in the 1380s and 1390s and which Richard II received in a manuscript now in Cambridge: St. John’s College MS A.7.
‘Kings were not wont to render account’ Henry IV and the Authority of the King
July 31, 2013 By
Henry travelled extensively, became famed throughout Christendom as a champion jouster, crusaded in Eastern Europe, and looked after his father’s holdings whilst John of Gaunt campaigned in Spain.3 It is impossible not to note that Henry Bolingbroke’s popularity continued to increase while Richard II’s declined.
Sir John Fortescue and the French Polemical Treatises of the Hundred Years War
February 10, 2013 By
Inevitably Fortescue had to adopt new arguments for the defence of Henry VI. To this end he asserted that the Lancastrians now had a just title through divine and ecclesiastical approbation, popular consent and prescription, but the core of his case was a direct response to the Yorkist claim that they had a superior hereditary title to the throne.
Narrative and political strategies at the deposition of Richard II
January 27, 2013 By
This paper is an attempt to examine the role of what might loosely be termed formal and informal political ideas in the coup d’e´tat which brought Henry IV to power in 1399.
The personnel of English and Welsh castles, 1272-1422
August 22, 2012 By
In England, the role played on the continent by the castellanies would appear to have been performed by the county castle and the sheriff, a post that remained firmly under the king’s control in all but a few counties. Instead, a more subtle link between the castle community and political power will have to be found. It will be searched for in the appointment of constables to royal castles, and in grants of ownership of castles, royal or forfeited. It may be found in the building activity that was so common in this period, or in the marriage alliances that created many of the great castle owning estates.
The Nevilles and the political establishment in north-eastern England, 1377-1413
August 5, 2012 By
The Nevilles were instrumental in Henry IV’s rise to power, and became the focal point of his subsequent efforts to stabilise the North.
“In the Name of Almighty God”: Gregory VII and the Investiture Controversy
October 6, 2011 By
A Norfolk gentlewoman and Lydgatian patronage: Lady Sibylle Boys and her cultural environment
August 30, 2011 By
A Norfolk gentlewoman and Lydgatian patronage: Lady Sibylle Boys and her cultural environment Bale, A. Medium Aevum, 78(2), (2009) Abstract The poetry of John Lydgate (c.1370–1449/50) is often discussed in terms of the poet’s illustrious and powerful patrons: literary commissions for royal figures such as Henry V (Troy Book), Henry VI (numerous mummings and pageant poems), […]
The two funerals and two bodies of King Richard II : a study on the idea of kingship, transference of power and political theology
March 11, 2011 By
The two funerals and two bodies of King Richard II : a study on the idea of kingship, transference of power and political theology Jovanovic, Kosana MA Thesis in Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, May (2009) Abstract England was a turbulent place at the time when King Richard II was in power (1377-1399). This thesis addresses […]
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