The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [20]
His household was sumptuous and extravagant. Walsingham describes the courtiers as rapacious and ‘more valiant in bed than in battle’, accusing them of corrupting the young King. Many chroniclers strongly criticised the outlandish fashions of the court, targeting the men’s built-up shoulders and collars, pointed-toed shoes and tight hose that prevented their wearers from kneeling in Church. Long sleeves that swept the floor were reviled as ‘full of slashes and devils’.
In 1384, after an uneasy minority, Richard had assumed personal rule. However, his incompetence in government and his reliance on favourites such as Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, and Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, provoked bitter opposition among his nobles. Richard’s first queen, Anne of Bohemia, exercised some restraint over him during her lifetime, but not enough, and although he loved her deeply, they were childless.
Richard’s infatuation for Robert de Vere was a political disaster. De Vere was a courageous, ambitious and resourceful young man, and as a magnate he had a legitimate role to play in government, but many believed his influence over the King to be pernicious and unnatural and his abilities mediocre. Married to the King’s cousin, Philippa de Coucy, he embarked upon a notorious affair with one of Queen Anne’s Czech ladies, Agnes de Launcekrona, whom he abducted and made his mistress. He then produced fraudulent evidence to secure an annulment of his marriage in order to marry her. As if this were not scandal enough, there were strong indications that his relationship with Richard was of a homosexual nature. Walsingham refers to ‘the depths of King Richard’s affection for this man, whom he cultivated and loved, not without a degree of improper intimacy, or so it was rumoured. It provoked discontent among the other lords and barons, for he was no superior to the rest of them.’ Elsewhere, Walsingham describes the relationship between the King and de Vere as ‘obscene’.
De Vere compounded his offences by continually urging Richard to ignore the advice of his nobles and the decrees of Parliament, and Richard, completely besotted, complied; some said bitterly that if de Vere said black was white, the King would not contradict him. He lavished land, honours and wealth on the favourite, and turned a blind eye to his adultery and the slighting of his royal wife, which aroused the anger of many of Richard’s family.
One nobleman who was particularly dismayed by the King’s behaviour was his cousin Henry of Bolingbroke, Gaunt’s heir, who had hitherto been as loyal to the King as Gaunt himself.
Henry of Bolingbroke had been born in 1367 at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire. For much of his youth he was styled Earl of Derby, one of Gaunt’s lesser titles. Around 1380–1 he married Mary, co-heiress of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, Essex and Northampton, and a descendant of Henry III. The Bohuns were of ancient Norman stock, one of England’s greatest noble families, and Mary’s sister Eleanor was the wife of Bolingbroke’s uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, later Duke of Gloucester.
Mary, born around 1369–70, had hardly reached puberty by the time of her marriage. She had been reared for the cloister but Gaunt wanted her half of the Bohun inheritance for his son. Unwisely, the young couple were allowed to cohabit immediately, with the result that Mary’s first son died at birth in 1382. Five years later she bore her next child, Henry of Monmouth, and then five others in quick succession: Thomas in 1388, John in 1389, Humphrey in 1390, Blanche in 1392 and Philippa in 1394. Mary did not survive this last birth. Henry’s faithfulness to his wife was commented on throughout the courts of Europe, and he sincerely mourned her death.
Henry of Bolingbroke was of medium height, good looking, strongly