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.
Arundeclass="underline" Truly you lie. Never was I a traitor.
Lancaster: Why in that case did you seek a pardon?
Arundeclass="underline" To silence the tongues of my enemies, of whom you are one.
Richard: Answer the appeal.
Arundeclass="underline" 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.
It was indeed worthless. On the same day Arundel was led to Tower Hill where he was beheaded. The earl of Warwick suffered a more lenient fate. He was banished for life to the Isle of Man. The extensive lands of the three lords were confiscated, and given to the king’s friends and supporters. His enemies appeared to have been scattered.
Yet Richard was despondent. His wife, Anne of Bohemia, had died in 1394 from an outbreak of the plague; they had been married for twelve years, but had produced no children. That was another mark against him. He was, after all, already twenty-seven years old and should have sired a family. In his extravagant grief he ordered that the palace of Sheen should be razed to the ground; this is the place where he and Anne had once been happy. It seems likely that his health was also deteriorating, since the royal accounts show very large sums of money being paid to his physicians. He may have been becoming dangerous.
Many of the lords testified later that they had in fact become frightened of the king. With the invisible list of fifty traitors he could confiscate lands and property as he wished. He could consign anyone to prison. According to a later deposition the king had declared that the law of England resided in his own breast, and that he could make or break laws at his discretion. He levied large fines on the towns and shires that had sided with the rebel lords. He demanded loans from the richer abbeys and monasteries. He was, like most kings, avaricious and acquisitive; but his greed was compounded by violence and disregard of law. ‘He is a child of death,’ he wrote to the count of Holland, ‘who offends the king.’ Yet like all tyrants he was fearful. He was defended at all times by the 300 Cheshire archers. ‘Sleep securely while we wake, Dick,’ the captain of his guard was heard to say to him, ‘and dread naught while we live.’
Richard’s pre-eminent will became manifest in a quarrel between two lords at the end of 1397. Thomas Mowbray, the duke of Norfolk, and the king’s cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, the duke of Hereford, had only recently been ennobled to the highest rank of the peerage. They were rewarded for their support of the king. Mowbray, for example, had been captain of Calais when the unfortunate Thomas of Woodstock was despatched to that garrison town; there is no doubt that he played some role in his suffocation. In the climate of fear and suspicion in which they now lived, however, even the king’s friends began to fear for their lives.
They had a conversation. ‘We are on the point of being undone,’ Mowbray told Bolingbroke. ‘That cannot be,’ Bolingbroke replied. ‘The king has granted us pardon and has declared in parliament that we behaved as good and loyal servants’. Mowbray went on to remark that ‘it is a marvellous and false world that we live in’, suggesting that Bolingbroke and his father, John of Gaunt, narrowly escaped being murdered by the king’s men; he also suggested that Richard, with the connivance of other lords, was planning to disinherit both of them and give their lands to others. ‘God forbid’, Bolingbroke exclaimed. ‘It will be a wonder if the king assents to such designs. He appears to make me good cheer, and has promised to be my good lord. Indeed he has sworn by St Edward [the Confessor] to be a good lord to me and others.’ Mowbray was dismissive. ‘So has he often sworn to me by God’s body; but I do not trust him the more for that.’ In a world of whispers and of clandestine plotting, of lies and of secrecy, this was equivalent to treason.
Rumours spread. Bolingbroke informed his father, John of Gaunt, of the conversation. Word got back to the king. It seems likely that he confronted Bolingbroke, and demanded a full account of what had been said. Having heard his report the king demanded that he repeat it to the parliament. Mowbray then gave himself up into the king’s custody, and denied everything that Bolingbroke had revealed. The two dukes were told to appear before a parliamentary committee set up to resolve the dispute. Still the controversy could not be concluded and, in the old judicial fashion, it was decreed that Thomas Mowbray and Henry Bolingbroke should fight a duel in which God would confer victory upon the true man. Yet who was the true man? It is possible that their roles should be reversed, and that Bolingbroke had been the one who had first expressed misgivings about the king; when they failed to work upon Mowbray, he decided to accuse him of treason to cover up his own guilt. That is one possibility. It is also possible that Mowbray had whispered treason as a plot to snare Bolingbroke; Bolingbroke, suspecting this, decided to end the conspiracy by denouncing him. The truth cannot now be recovered.