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Portrait of Richard II of England

Monarchs · Lancaster & York

Richard II of England

1367–1400

House of Plantagenet — the king deposed by Lancaster

In office: 1377–1399

Grandson of Edward III and son of the Black Prince, he came to the throne at ten and faced the Peasants' Revolt at fourteen. A cultivated, autocratic and increasingly vengeful king, he was curbed by the Lords Appellant in 1388, took his revenge a decade later, and was deposed in 1399 by the cousin he had exiled and disinherited. He died a prisoner at Pontefract, and his fall opened the dynastic quarrel that became the Wars of the Roses.

How to spot them

  • ▸A boy king of ten in 1377; a rising of the commons met face to face at fourteen
  • ▸Clue words: 'white hart', 'Wilton Diptych', 'Merciless Parliament', 'Lords Appellant', 'Pontefract'
  • ▸Deposed in 1399 while the crown was claimed by his exiled cousin; the first English king to abdicate
  • ▸Married first to Anne of Bohemia, then, at 29, to a French princess of seven
  • ▸Shakespeare gave his fall the 'hollow crown' and 'this sceptred isle' speeches

In the reign

A rising of the commons over a poll tax, faced down at Mile End and Smithfield by a boy of fourteen (1381)

Wat Tyler was killed at Smithfield; the charters of freedom promised to the rebels were revoked within weeks.

A small hinged panel painting in which a kneeling king is presented to the Virgin by eleven angels wearing his badge (c. 1395–1399)

The Wilton Diptych, in the National Gallery; the angels wear the white hart.

The parliament of 1388 that destroyed the king's favourites and was named for its lack of mercy (1388)

The Merciless Parliament, driven by the five Lords Appellant, among them the future Henry IV.

A great hammerbeam roof of oak raised over the largest hall in Westminster in the 1390s (1393–1399)

Hugh Herland's roof over Westminster Hall — the largest medieval timber roof in northern Europe.

A judicial duel at Coventry halted at the last moment, both combatants banished instead (1398)

Mowbray for life, Bolingbroke for ten years; when Bolingbroke's inheritance was then seized, he came back for it.

An expedition to Ireland in 1399 that left the kingdom open to an invader landing in Yorkshire (1399)

He returned to find the north and the Midlands gone over to his cousin; he surrendered at Flint Castle.

A deposition announced to parliament in Westminster Hall on 30 September 1399, with thirty-three articles of accusation (1399)

The first English king to renounce the crown; his cousin claimed it the same day.

A prisoner starved or murdered at Pontefract Castle in February 1400, his body displayed at St Paul's to prove it (1400)

First buried at King's Langley; reburied in Westminster Abbey by Henry V in 1413.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born at Bordeaux on 6 January 1367, son of Edward the Black Prince and Joan of Kent; his elder brother having died, he became heir to Edward III at nine.
  • •He succeeded on 22 June 1377 aged ten and was crowned in Westminster Abbey on 16 July 1377.
  • •During the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 Archbishop Simon Sudbury and Treasurer Robert Hales were dragged from the Tower and beheaded.
  • •His first wife, Anne of Bohemia, died of plague at Sheen in 1394; he had the palace there demolished in grief.
  • •He married Isabella of Valois in 1396 as part of a 28-year truce with France; she was six or seven and the marriage was never consummated.
  • •The Lords Appellant of 1388 included Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, later murdered at Calais in 1397 on the king's orders.
  • •His personal badge was the white hart, chained and crowned; he is credited with an extravagant court and with the ceremonial address 'your majesty'.
  • •He was deposed on 30 September 1399 and died at Pontefract around 14 February 1400, probably starved.
  • •His gilt-bronze effigy in Westminster Abbey, made in his lifetime with Anne of Bohemia, is the first double royal tomb in England; the effigies once held hands.
  • •Shakespeare's Richard II, whose deposition scene was staged at the Globe on the eve of the Essex rebellion in 1601, made Elizabeth I remark, 'I am Richard II, know ye not that?'

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