Richard II, King of England

b. 1367; d. 1400

Younger son of Edward, Prince of Wales (The Black Prince), succeeded Edward III in June 1377. During his minority there was a struggle for the control of affairs, and in 1381 the Peasants' Revolt broke out. He married in 1382 Anne, sister of Wenceslas, King of Bohemia, and in that year, attaining his majority, attempted to wrest the government of the country from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. He appointed Michael de la Pole, whom he created Duke of Suffolk, as chancellor, and though he sent Lancaster on a mission to Spain, he had to contend against the nobles, who resented the appointment. The struggle was continuous until 1397, when he summarily condemned the Earl of Arundel and the Duke of Gloucester to death. A rising in 1399, under Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford (the later Henry IV), was successful, and Richard surrendered and was imprisoned at Pontefract, where he died on 14 February 1400.

Richard's first consort, Anne of Bohemia, had died in 1394, and two years later he had married Isabella, daughter of Charles VI of France. Richard's position was from the start difficult; he succeeded to a kingdom weakened by expensive wars and disheartened by recent defeats, disorganised by the Black Death, in the midst of a period of social transition, and suffering from the emergence of the 'over-mighty subject', the result of Edward III's cessions to his many sons. Richard became unpopular because of developments arising from his predecessor's policy, and for actions taken in his name by others during his long minority; an unhappy childhood may have been responsible for his unbalanced character.

His reign was a conflict in which Richard appears as struggling for the trappings of power even more than for power itself: he has been called the last of the medieval English kings to rule by virtue of divine right. His actions, especially in his last years, suggest a progress from chronic instability to something closely allied to insanity. He failed to keep his throne, not because of his arbitrariness, but because he lacked the political sense of Henry Bolingbroke, and was increasingly governed by emotion.

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