He believed himself to be the source of all justice and order, the pattern of authority; that is why he was gracious to the Commons as well as to the Lords. They were all equally his subjects. It is a measure of his sense of greatness that his household was three times as large as that of Henry I. In the autumn of 1390 he also began to gather around him a body of followers, known as an ‘affinity’, who adopted as a badge the image of the white hart. He derived it from the coat of arms of his mother. All is of a piece with his love of pageantry and his taste for magnificent robes. The court became the stage for his splendour. At some banquets, and at the three festal crown-wearings of the year, he would sit in state upon his throne watching everyone but conversing with nobody; he would remain very still, crowned and in full regalia, as if he had become a living statue. ‘And if his eye fell upon anyone,’ a chronicler reveals, ‘that person had to bend his knee to the king.’
His sense of royalty was also an aspect of his piety. God was his only overlord. He frequently visited the shrines of saints, and instituted new cults; he was fascinated by reports and rumours of miracles; he was the patron of the Carthusians, and lavished treasure for the rebuilding of churches and abbeys. There is a panel painting, known as ‘the Wilton Diptych’. On the left panel Richard is depicted kneeling, dressed in a red mantle embroidered in gold, with Edward the Confessor (saint), John the Baptist (saint) and King Edmund (saint and martyr) standing around him. On the right-hand panel is painted an image of the Virgin and Child surrounded by eleven angels. One of the angels holds aloft the flag of St George. So here Richard celebrates the continuity of his reign with his saintly Anglo-Saxon forebears, united in the veneration of peace and national renewal. He compounded his attachment to the memory of Edward the Confessor by impaling his own arms with the arms of the dead king. It might almost seem that Richard even considered himself to be worthy of canonization.
Yet triumphalism can turn into tyranny. In the summer of 1397 Richard invited the earl of Warwick to dinner and then, when the meal was over, ordered his arrest. On hearing the news of this, the earl of Arundel was persuaded to surrender himself. The king then rode out to Pleshey Castle in Essex, the home of Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, with a party of armed retainers. Woodstock was roused from sleep, and was then personally arrested by his nephew. Richard ordered the immediate arrest of these three great lords on the grounds that they were conspiring against him. He may also have been brooding on old offences, since these were the three men who had led the rebellion against him and had briefly deposed him in the Tower. He now believed himself strong enough to destroy them. He was asserting his manhood by avenging past affronts.
The chronicler, Thomas Walsingham, wrote that the kingdom was ‘suddenly and unexpectedly thrown into confusion’. Richard then called a parliament that, in the general atmosphere of suspicion and terror, was notably submissive. It had every reason to be cooperative. Westminster itself was filled with troops, and the king was protected by a bodyguard of 300 archers from his favourite county of Cheshire. The building in which the parliament assembled was surrounded by archers. Richard was relying upon force, and the threat of force, to make his way.
At the beginning of the session he declared, through the mouth of his chancellor, that the king demanded the full plenitude of his power. He had been aware of many illegalities committed in previous years but now, out of his affection for his people, he extended a general pardon – except to fifty individuals, whom he would not explicitly name. This was of course a policy to keep everyone in subjection. He might include anyone he pleased within the category of the unknown fifty. The king was also gracious enough to accept, at the urging of the Commons, the duties levied on leather and wool in perpetuity.
Thomas of Woodstock, after his arrest, was despatched to the English bastion at Calais where on the king’s direct orders he was quietly killed. Reports suggest that he was either strangled with a towel or suffocated beneath a featherbed. The result was in any case the same.
Arundel was subjected to what would now be called a show trial, of which a partial transcript survives. John of Gaunt, the duke of Lancaster, presided.
Lancaster: Your pardon is revoked, traitor.
Arundel: Truly you lie. Never was I a traitor.
Lancaster: Why in that case did you seek a pardon?
Arundel: To silence the tongues of my enemies, of whom you are one.
Richard: Answer the appeal.
Arundel: I see it all now. You, who accuse me, are all liars. I claim the benefit of pardon, which you granted when you were of full age.
Richard: I granted it provided it were not to my prejudice.
Lancaster: The pardon is worthless.
