Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Richard II.
RICHARD II., King of England; son of the Black Prince and Joanna of Kent; born in Bordeaux, Jan. 6, 1367; was ac- knowledged by Parliament heir to the crown on the death of his father in 1376, and succeeded his grandfather, Edward III., on June 21, 1377. The government was entrusted to a council of 12, from which the king's uncles, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, Edmund, Earl of Cambridge, and Thomas, Earl of Buck- ingham (afterward Duke of Gloucester), were excluded. Nevertheless the central figure during the early years of this reign, as he had been during the last years of the preceding reign, was John of Gaunt, whose overreaching ambition and inability were a fruitful source of disquietude. He was on bad terms with the clergy and with the Londoners, and was viewed with great suspicion by the king and the commons; yet he was the most powerful man in the kingdom, hav- ing at his back the nobles and to some extent the Lollards. War was going on with France, but in a very weak and desultory fashion; the French ravaged the S. coast at the time of Edward III.'s death, and truces were constantly being made for short durations. But this war cost money; so too did the extravagance of the court; and more was absorbed or wasted by the government, for which John of Gaunt was held by the nation at large to be mainly responsible. Con- sequently taxation was heavy.
The imposition of a graduated poll- tax in 1380 provoked popular risings, directed principally against the gentry and land-holders, in nearly all parts of the kingdom, at Whitsuntide in the fol- lowing year. The insurgents destroyed the parks, attacked the manor houses, burned the court-rolls, and massacred the lawyers who had charge of them. The men of Essex and Kent, to the number of 100,000, marched on London. The former body, whom the king met at Mile End on June 14, consented to return home when the young monarch assured them he would grant their requests, and take measures to liberate the villeins from bondage and to commute their per- sonal services into fixed money rents. The men of Kent, after destroying the Savoy (the Duke of Lancaster's palace), burning Temple Bar, opening the pris- ons, and breaking into the Tower and slaying the Archbishop of Canterbury, met the king at Smithfield (15th). Dur- ing the negotiations, William Walworth, the mayor of London, struck down Wat Tyler, the leader of the insurgents. The king immediately rode among them, ex- claiming he would be their leader, and granted them the concessions they asked, and the risings collapsed.
The causes of this wide-spread and simultaneous uprising on the part of the mass of the rural population may be summarized as follows: There had been long continuance of heavy taxation; the villeins resented the re-imposition since the black death of personal services, and were anxious to become tenants of their little farms at a fixed rental; the free tillers of the soil had formed themselves into associations to defeat the Statute of Laborers (1349), which fixed the maxi- mum and minimum of wages; the Lol- lard or Wyclifite preachers were de- nouncing the idleness and vices of the regular clergy, and they and others (as John Ball) were promulgating social doctrines calculated to make the _ com- mon people discontented with their lot and hostile to the landholders. From the fact that the insurgents directed their enmity against himself and the advisers of the king, John of Gaunt saw that he could never hope to succeed in his ambitious schemes in England; and from this time he kept very much in the background, till, in 1386, he carried him- self and his restless plottings to Spain and Gascony. Richard, in 1390, made him Duke of Aquitaine for life. In 1385 Richard invaded Scotland, and took Ed- inburgh and burned it; but, not encoun- tering the Scotch, returned home.
About the same year another coalition of the baronial party, headed by Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, began to oppose the king and his chosen friends. They impeached several of them before the Merciless Parliament (1388), and secured convictions and executions. But on May 3, 1389, Richard suddenly de- clared himself of age, and proceeded to govern on his own responsibility. For eight years he ruled as a moderate con- stitutional monarch, and the country en- joyed peace — hostilities with France were not renewed after 1388 — and was fairly prosperous. But in 1394 Richard's first wife, Anne of Bohemia, whom he had wedded in 1382, died, and two years later he married Isabella, daughter of Charles VI. of France, a girl of eight. From that time he seems to have adopt- ed very largely French tastes, manners, and ideas. At all events, in the Parlia- ment of 1397 he began to assert the pre- tensions of an absolute monarch. On July 8 he had Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick arrested on the charge of con- spiring against the crown. Arundel was beheaded; Gloucester was sent a pris- oner to Calais, and died there in prison, probably murdered, a fortnight after his arrest; and Warwick was banished to the Isle of Man. Thomas Arundel, Arch- bishop of Canterbury, was also banished. In the following year an obsequious Par- liament granted to the king the subsidy on wool for life, and delegated all its authority and power to a commission of 18 members, all supporters of the king.
Richard soon aroused the slumbering discontent of his subjects by his unjust methods of raising money, principally by means of forced loans, and by his arbi- trary and despotic rule. In the begin- ning of 1398 the Duke of Norfolk and the Duke of Hereford (Henry, son of John of Gaunt) were accused to the king of having spoken treason against him. Richard banished them — Norfolk for life and Hereford for 10 years. In January, 1399, John of Gaunt died, and Hereford succeeded him as Duke of Lancaster; but the king refused to give up to the exile the lands of his dead father. Rich- ard in May went over to Ireland, which he had previously visited at the head of a military expedition in 1394-1395. Henry of Lancaster seized on the opportunity afforded by the king's absence, and landed on July 4 (see Henry IV.). Richard at once hurried back, but had neither heart nor power to withstand his cousin. He submitted to Lancaster at Flint, Aug. 19, was carried to London, and placed in the Tower. On Sept. 29 he resigned the crown, and on the following day was likewise deposed by the Parliament, which chose Henry of Lancaster as his successor.
A month after his resignation Richard was condemned to perpetual imprisonment by Parliament. His fate is wrapped in obscurity, beyond the almost certain fact that he met a violent death, for which it is not altogether clear that Henry IV. was responsible. A month after Henry's accession some noblemen of Richard's party formed a conspiracy to restore Richard to the throne, but their purpose was discovered. No doubt this decided the fate of Richard; at all events, authentic history knows nothing more about him from this time.