By Tim Venning
Richard II exerting control during the Peasants' Revolt. According to James Doyle, anyway.
Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Part 1 of this series can be found Here.
Part 2: Richard II restored to power, and considerations of the succession.
The premise is that a surviving Richard II regains his throne, with either French or Welsh help. This is most likely to happen in the real-life 1403 rebellion. Incidentally, there was a current prophecy doing the rounds in the 1400s that the sixth king after King John (d. 1216) would lose his throne to a ‘ravening wolf’ but regain it later, and this was used against Henry IV by partisans of his rivals after his usurpation in 1399. This prophecy fuelled claims at the time that Richard had not really died in prison at Pontefract Castle, Yorkshire in February 1400 – murdered or not – but was alive and in hiding.
Nor was Henry seen as the legitimate heir to Richard, as his father had only been the third son of Edward III and his accession had sidelined the grandson of the deceased second son, Lionel (Edmund Mortimer). Henry even had pro-Ricardian and/or Mortimer ally friars call him a usurper to his face – which was unprecedented. All this was fuel for rebellion.
Prince Henry, son of Henry IV, the English claimant to the title of Prince of Wales, was – in 1403 – in charge of the Royal forces in Wales that would have been facing Richard, Glyn Dwr, and their French allies. He had been on good terms with Richard as a ‘hostage’ at his court in 1398-99 and is supposed to have retained affection for his memory. His antagonism towards his father did not become a political factor until the King’s ill-health led to the Prince struggling for dominance at court in the late 1400s, but if Richard and his wife Isabella had still been childless (or without a son, no woman having successfully ruled England at this point) Richard may have been prepared to offer the Prince the heirship in return for abandoning his father. The longer the military confrontation between Richard and Henry IV continued, the greater would have been the chance of this occurring.
Owen Glyn Dwr at his Parliament at Machynlleth.
Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
There is also the possibility that if Richard’s invasion of England took place in 1405 rather than 1403 – perhaps as a result of French delays or the absence of a Percy rebellion in 1403 – his attack on Henry would also have been successful. It could well have taken place shortly before the King’s (real life) sudden outbreak of some debilitating illness that summer. In real life, while Henry was marching to deal with the 1405 pro-Mortimer rebellion in the North, he had what was described as sudden burning pains in his body, fell off his horse with dizziness, and was bedridden for a short period. He recovered, but as he had just executed the pro-rebel Archbishop Richard Scrope of York for leading an anti-tax revolt, his illness was regarded by many as Divine punishment for ‘martyring’ the archbishop. This could lead to fearful allies deserting his army, or his troops refusing to fight.
Archbishop Richard Scrope of York. Executed by Henry IV.
Picture courtesy History Today.
His illness, which is still a mystery and was initially centred on some sort of skin condition (possibly caught on pilgrimage to the Holy Land or on campaign in Lithuania in the 1390s), was later to immobilise him for weeks or months at a time. It returned in 1406 and 1408 with increasing severity which curtailed his mobility though not his mental ability. His son Henry was to end up running his government for two years, and a later outbreak of the disease – said by the superstitious to be leprosy, and including a series of strokes – killed the King at the age of 45 or 46.
If Henry IV had suffered this sudden, serious illness just as Richard invaded then he would not be able to campaign. This would be a major opportunity for Richard. If Henry IV were able to crush the Northern rebels before Richard and the French arrived from Wales in 1405, then Richard would not benefit from that distraction. Henry suffering a serious illness at this time would have curtailed his campaigning, giving Richard chance to benefit.
The same would be true if Archbishop Scrope, supported by the Earl of Northumberland and his Scots allies had successfully seized York.
Richard had one big problem. He lacked the military skill, charisma, and decisive temperament that his grandfather, his father the ‘Black Prince’, his cousin Henry IV, and the later Edward IV. Richard had ruled in the mid-late 1390s through fear and intimidation, which made it difficult for him to lead the nobility by consent. He had grown up as a teenager as already being King and was surrounded with flattery. He lacked a normal boyhood or many close friends among the nobility.
But senior nobles from his entourage, his proteges in government in 1397-99, felt enough personal loyalty to him to attempt to restore him in January 1400. The Percy dynasty of Northumberland, lords of NE England (who had abandoned him in 1399), revolted in 1403 when Richard was rumoured to be still alive and hiding in Scotland.
Richard’s conduct in the 1390s and his executions had not lost him all noble support. As early as January 1400, his allies tried to seize Windsor Castle in a coup and murder his successor. Richard’s lack of military competence or calculation before September 1399 would not have mattered so much in the decisive campaign against Henry if the Earl of Northumberland or his son Hotspur Percy, hardened veterans of border warfare with a private army of tenants, were available to organise strategy for him.
If Henry IV had been incapacitated, the leadership of the campaign against Richard would have passed to Prince Henry, who had commanded the forces fighting the Welsh rebels since he was around sixteen; he was an experienced general able to call on the landed resources of the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall (and Chester as its Earl, if it is not lost to rebels).
But if Henry IV had caused a revulsion of feeling against his rule by the unprecedented execution of Archbishop Scrope, and had then fallen sick within days, this would have handed a major psychological boost to the invaders, making it seem like Divine vengeance. Even if the Prince held the invaders at bay in the West Midlands in autumn 1405, they could easily retreat into Wales and resume the attack next spring with French ships (and possibly pro-Ricardian lords in Ireland) bringing in reinforcements. English control of the Channel, preventing French meddling in Wales, was not fully restored until Henry V took the Norman ports in 1415.
With King Henry sick and incapacitated, his troops worn down since 1400 and facing battle from a larger Welsh-French-Ricardian/Mortimer army; with the Earl of Northumberland striking in the north and with his own supporters fading away, Prince Henry might have been forced to come to terms with Richard to end the destructive civil war.
Prince Henry would still have had a substantial ‘bargaining counter’ in the form of his army. Given Richard’s political follies of 1397-99, Henry and other leading armed magnates would have been prudent to insist on a strong political role for the Council and some Parliamentary statutes to reinforce just and unpartisan royal rule. The political resolutions to end the civil wars in 1217 and 1267 which won over most of the losing side were good precedents. Restoration of the rightful sovereign would almost certainly require all sorts of legal promises and requirements for an amnesty ‘policed’ by senior aristocrats.
He would probably have had to grant independence to those parts of Wales now held by the rebels – which would probably be all of it except parts of the south and east of Wales. This would infuriate those Marcher Lords who lost land as a result.
Richard would have been in a weak position for dispensing patronage and holding onto power. However, the death of King Robert III of Scotland and the accession of the 12-year-old James I to the Scottish throne in 1406 would have meant that there would have been no threat from that region. As happened in real life, James might have been captured by the English en route to France and been kept in custody as leverage over the Regent, Duke Robert of Albany.
One can assume that Richard, with French help, can persuade Glyn Dwr to abandon claims on any ex-Welsh lands in the Marches now held by lords loyal to Richard, in particular the large Mortimer estates around Ludlow. Glyn Dwr would have had to accept English control of Glamorgan and major south coastal ports sooner rather than later, or risk a war between his lords and the local Marcher lords. Prince Henry would have had to be compensated for this loss of the heartland of his power base, probably with his father’s Duchy of Lancaster.
In 1405, Richard would not have been in the same position to damage his enemies that he was during the 1390s. However unpopular Henry IV had become, Richard being humiliatingly restored by French and Welsh soldiers would have done his reputation no good. He would have had to tread warily.
Prince Henry, having campaigned with credit against the Welsh, would have had a powerful position if he had come to terms with Richard – assuming that he had not stayed loyal to his father in the face of overwhelming odds and fled abroad. Richard might have had to accept Henry as his heir as part of a peace deal to end the civil war, abandoning the claims of the Mortimers. It would be interesting to see how long Richard could survive on his throne for a second reign, faced with a vigorous young heir with prestige and troops, along with increasing demands that he abandon his alliance with the French and take advantage of the savage in-fighting that broke out at the French court after the murder of the Duke of Orleans in 1407.
Richard’s Queen Isabella (who was married off as a widow to Orleans’ son in real life) would have been an additional factor to Richard’s personal 1390s policy of alliance to support the French court. This would make an alliance with the Armagnac faction – associates of Duke Louis of Orleans, lover of the mother of Isabella – more likely if it came to a choice.
Isabella, Queen of England, married to Richard II. She was, despite what the artist here would have you believe, 7 years old when she married Richard.
Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Richard’s survival would have cast a long shadow on later 15th Century French politics. Duke Charles, who in real life was the second husband of Richard’s Queen, was widowed without children when she died in 1409. He was captive between 1415 and 1440 in England following the Battle of Agincourt, and could only remarry in 1440. His son Louis, who succeeded to the French throne in 1498, was born in 1462. If Charles had not married Isabella, would he have had a son by another wife by 1415? This boy – or more likely his son – would have become the new King of France when Charles VIII was killed in a freak accident in 1498 when he hit his head on a door lintel.
The results of Isabella being free to remarry from 1400 thus affected France for a century, with son-less Louis XII being succeeded by his cousin Francois I on New Year’s Eve 1514. If Francois was never King, would the alternative ruler from the Orleans line be less of a rival to his contemporary, Henry VIII of England? Would he have even potentially sought to forge an alliance with Henry against France’s chief foe, Habsburg Emperor Charles V. He might back Henry’s divorce of Charles’ aunt Catherine of Aragon.
If the French king had avoided defeat by Emperor Charles at Padua in 1525, and if the Pope had, as a consequence, been free of Imperial pressure as Henry sought a divorce, would he have allowed Henry to marry Anne Boleyn as urged by the King of France? If this were to be the case, there would be no need for Henry’s ‘Breach with Rome’, and consequently there would be a different Reformation in England.
If Richard II had continued his pacific policy of the 1390s, which seems likely if Charles VI had helped with his restoration, then he would have missed the opportunity to retake Normandy or expand Guienne by an invasion. In addition, any treaty requirement with Glyn Dwr that the Marcher lords abandon lands in south and east Wales would have left a body of restive landless noble warlords in need of new lands and hence keen to attack France, the cause of their expulsion. Richard would have had to make up for their loss from lands confiscated from Henrician loyalists, while still preserving a substantial landed inheritance for Prince Henry.
The weak landed position of the Crown in the later 1400s would have argued in favour of an eventual French war once Prince Henry took the Crown, assuming that Richard and Isabella remained childless.
Lacking a personal core of noble support of close allies as he did in 1397-99, Richard would have had to be more astute than his record suggests likely to have avoided becoming a figurehead for the more dynamic and capable Prince Henry through the 1410s. If he had survived for a number of years, it is probable that tension would have arisen between him and the Prince over the advisability of intervening in faction-torn France after 1412 with Henry as keen to invade as he was in real-life 1414-15. The English aristocracy, denied a war against either Scots or Welsh, would have needed a campaign to promote unity and win control of loot and lands.
The likelihood is that the Armagnac-Burgundian feud over control of the French court would have enabled Henry to persuade Richard (possibly via Richard’s wife Queen Isabella) to assist one faction or other. An expedition, possibly led by Henry or his brothers John of Bedford or Thomas of Clarence, would have militarily aided Richard’s mentally declining father-in-law against one or other of his unwelcome would-be controllers. This would probably be Duke John of Burgundy, as the English Queen had closer family links to the Armagnacs.
The French court would not have suffered the catastrophic losses of senior aristocrats nor the psychological shock that it did in real life at Agincourt. However, its weakness would have enabled the English to recover from their weak international position following Richard’s restoration and become power-brokers in France. At some point, the dynamic war-leader Henry would have had the chance to win a military conflict against one French faction or another, and thus become the major politico-military influence over Charles VI. Henry could well have secured Queen Isabella’s younger sister Catherine as his bride around 1420 as he did in real life. As he would be the indispensable prop of Charles’ regime, he could demand that Duchy of Normandy and his fief or in full independence.
Following Glyn Dwr’s death around 1416, he would also have been encouraged by the dispossessed Marcher lords to repossess the Principality of Wales; he would probably have been able to overcome the leaderless Welsh and restore the English Crown’s position in the area. There was no obvious source of military aid or support for the Welsh apart from the now ineffective French.
Regardless of whether or not Richard, who would only be 53 in 1420, was still alive, Henry would have been the dominant military figure in England. As long as Richard didn’t have a son, Henry would have been the unchallenged heir. The regained Principality of Wales when added to the Duchy of Lancaster (by around 1420?) would in due course have made him as powerful a magnate as Warwick ‘the Kingmaker’ was to be in the 1460s, with the added advantage of being heir to the throne.
However, with Wales to reconquer, he would have been too pre-occupied around 1420-22 to devote effort to taking over the Kingdom of France when Charles VI died, thus avoiding the long wars with Charles VII (ruled 1422-1461) until some later dispute arose.
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Tim Venning has written a series of books for SLP on Ancient Rome, starting with Caesars of the Bosphorus.
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