The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [24]
As he progressed south Bolingbroke was gratified to find so many people ready to support him. Nobles and commons flocked to his banner and he quickly collected a large army, meeting little resistance anywhere. The princes of the Church offered their support and the Archbishop of Canterbury assured all who joined Bolingbroke of the remission of their sins and ‘a sure place in Paradise’. In Bristol, the Duke found some of Richard’s most hated advisers and summarily ordered their heads cut off, which greatly pleased the citizens.
Bad weather meant that news of Bolingbroke’s invasion took some time to reach the King in Ireland, and as soon as he knew the worst, Richard sailed home, determined to raise an army and meet his cousin in the field. Late in July he landed in South Wales, but was unable to rouse much support; indeed many of his followers were deserting him, including Rutland, who dismissed the King’s remaining soldiers and rode off to join Bolingbroke, whom York had now finally decided to support. Abandoned and panic-stricken, Richard disguised himself as a friar and fled to Conway Castle, where he surrendered to a deputation sent by Bolingbroke. At Lichfield, on the way to London, he tried to escape by climbing out of a tower window, but was caught leaving the garden below. After that he was never alone, being guarded by ten or twelve armed men.
On 2 September Bolingbroke entered London to a tumultuous reception. King Richard, a prisoner in his train, was greeted with jeers and pelted from the rooftops with rubbish, and later that day he was confined in the Tower of London. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who was now ruling England. Nevertheless, Henry had sworn at Conway that Richard should ‘keep his royal power and dominion’.
Throughout September the King made repeated demands to be publicly heard in Parliament. Even the pro-Lancastrian chronicler, Adam of Usk, who saw him in prison at this time, felt compassion and noted ‘the trouble of his mind, hearing him talk on the fate of kings in England’. Doubtless he was haunted by the fate of Edward II, murdered after his deposition in 1327.
Meanwhile, Bolingbroke, forgetting his promise, had appointed a commission to consider who should be king. Many of the magnates were unhappy at the prospect of his taking the throne; several committees of lords, having examined his claim to rule by right of descent, declared it flawed. Yet Adam of Usk says that the magnates found reasons enough for setting Richard aside: ‘perjuries, sacrileges, unnatural crimes, exactions from his subjects, reduction of his people to slavery, cowardice and weakness of rule’. Henry, it seemed, was the only realistic alternative, for the legitimate heir, March, was just a child. Usk claimed that Richard was ‘ready to yield up the crown’, but this was a Lancastrian fiction. Ready or not, ‘for better security it was determined that he should be deposed by the authority of clergy and people, for which purpose they were summoned hastily, in the King’s name, on Michaelmas Day’.
In fact, Richard was by no means willing to give up the throne, and Bolingbroke knew it. His first impulse was to make Richard stand trial by his peers in the high court of Parliament, but there was no precedent for this and, such was the mystique of kingship, it might not produce the desired result. He therefore used every means in his power to force Richard to abdicate, for he was anxious that the removal of his cousin from the throne and his own subsequent accession should have some basis in law. Knowing that his own title was precarious, the official line was to be that Richard’s misgovernment justified his deposition. The laws of succession were best left out of it.
Although Richard at first had had no intention of abdicating,