What Did It Take To Survive In Richard II's Royal Court? | To Get Ahead | Absolute History

[Music] in the days of absolute monarchy the royal court was where you went to get ahead it was the nation's heart of power influence and money but life at court was a game of high stakes it could make you or it could break you even kings and queens could lose a crown by misjudging the mood at court fortunes rose and fell richard ii was the first english king to use art and rhetoric to build a sophisticated court it gave his reign a new aura richard wanted to take the monarchy to a whole new level until his day the king was first among equals leader of the gang sure but still one of the chaps instead richard craved absolute power veneration the aura of divinity even he was the first monarch who insisted on being addressed as your highness your majesty even your high royal presence Richard still needed fearless warriors like Kings before him the art of chivalry was as important as ever but now there were new ways to flatter and indulge a king dress to impress tell stories geoffrey chaucer the first great superstar of English letters but Richard was a tricky customer everything about his life was different than odd and other being close to him brought many a courtier to a sticky end [Music] he could be spikey thin-skinned peevish oversensitive defeat he could be the best of friends and company the next minute turn wrathful and difficult he was unpredictable he liked the finer things in life like clothes food architecture he had an artistic sensibility at a time when nobody had heard of such a thing he was married twice that had close male friends about whom rumors circulated Richard was altogether too complicated too modern for his time and he would pay the price for that [Music] witches reign began in July 1377 with the most splendid coronation England had ever seen a cavalcade of 3,000 courtiers paraded through the streets of London to Westminster a red carpet marked the route into the Abbey and up to the high altar as one chronicler wrote it was a day of joyful gladness and of the braying of trumpets at the heart of all this fanfare and flummery was a ten-year-old child Richard was the youngest King ever crowned here at the Abbey the oppressive grandeur of the occasion sheer immensity of this old place even now one feels the weight of the fabric the stone the history upon you pressing down how much more of a burden then upon the frail shoulders of a child barely out of short trousers Richard wasn't the only one quaking at the knees for most courtiers this was their first chance to get close to their new king and first impressions mattered the burden of the great occasion weighed heavily on everyone present every courtier every guest every bishop and servant each knew that they had to fulfill their role perfectly because the merest misstep or hiccup to the superstitious medieval mind was a portent of doom overshadowing Richard's reign before it had even begun pre-eminent amongst the grand array of courtiers was the king's champion he rode a magnificent charger and wore a full suit of armor while offering mortal combat to anyone who opposed Richards rule no courtier was more important than the king's champion and it was his role to proclaim aloud if there be any man of high degree or low that will say that this our sovereign Liege Lord Richard or not of right to be king of England crowned I'm ready now till the last hour of my breath with my body to beat him like a false man or a traitor this magnificent picture the King seen against a backdrop of dull gesso is known to this day as the coronation portrait as if there could be no other and certainly there'd been nothing like this before it's the work of that distinguished artist anonymous sadly we don't know the identity of the gifted hand responsible for this work but we do know that it's a milestone in art history and monarchy before Richard no King had been rendered on this scale bigger than life until now religious sensibilities meant that the sitter however elevated will be seen in profile but Richard presumed to address the viewer directly looking straight into his eyes [Music] what this is saying is here's a young man who believes who understands in his bones that his calling is from on high from God himself this is the beginning of an aura of divinity around kingship if you look into Richards eyes even now you can't doubt he believes his calling is from the highest authority [Music] if you wanted to get ahead in Richards court you had to be ahead of the latest fashions the king himself was certainly a dapper dresser he couldn't get enough for velvet and cloth of gold he was said to have spent 20,000 pounds on a single outfit an unbelievable fortune courtiers had to be well turned out from head-to-toe we think were the first people to worry about the size of our footprint but in the 1300s courtiers were falling over each other sometimes themselves to put their best foot forward this is the medieval cloth town of Lavenham in Suffolk where pull rag is making pointed medieval shoes known as pool aliens so what are you doing making a pair of shoes pair of pool aides like nothing I've ever seen before how on earth would you make even go about making a pair like that well first of all I would make a pattern of your feet take a drawing around your feet and then measurements across and around and then I transpose that onto a piece of leather and then I would sew them inside out along with what we call the lasting sea and when the shoes ready for turning they soaked in water and then turned were there any rules that you're aware of determining who could wear what Paul the the length of the shoe was commensurate with your sort of status in society so if you were a lowly status you would only be allowed a very short plank if you were sort of royal kingly sort of status these could be as long as you like it's nice to limit now I know you've kindly been making a pair of pool lanes for me is that these them no no no eul's the finished it was ahead in fashionable read well get a load of those I was hoping for a long pair but decent to love to try them please do and to complete the look happy as well that's as well seriously yep okay somewhere I can just slip into something less comfortable through there okay thank you Topol nice piece of work thank you any trouble is I don't got a bag to go with this what's the size of that for goodness sake well even bigger fill this room to be honest with you and I don't want to hurt your feelings they're not for every day no are they no I mean cycling's out mmm the allotment I think this is some of the finest cobblers I've ever been involved with Paul thank you very much chicken god bless you [Music] [Applause] Richards childhood was overshadowed by his father the Black Prince he was a warrior down to his girl flecked bootstraps and was forever waging war his own chance of becoming King was snatched away by his untimely death leaving Richard to take the throne but who'd be there to guide him what Richard needed was a role model as we say now a father figure and there was no shortage of suitable candidates there was his own Uncle John of Gaunt his trusted tutors Simon burly and Gousha dongle there was even the Chamberlain of his household a man called Aubrey de Vere but nobody was better suited to the job than the Archbishop of Canterbury the man who'd placed the crown on Richards head at his coronation he was the pious Simon Sudbury Sudbury was always there for Richard after the black Prince's death he praised him as a fair son and the very image of his father Richard made him one of his closest advisors but in 1381 the year of the peasants revolt Sudbury's position at the Kings right hand put him in danger [Music] the ugly truth was that when things turn nasty there was nothing the mob like better than exacting revenge against the king by killing someone he loved and that dire fate befell the king's father figure Simon Sudbury tragically for Richard and for Simon too of course he rats and Gregory's Church in Sudbury there's a grisly reminder of his end [Music] good afternoon Victor how are you good afternoon Steven welcome to the Greg thank you very much I believe you have a fascinating relic of Simon Sudbury yes right you could call it a relic yes we have come this way Steven so that the heads behind here's a head better it's a head very artless that's the head of Simon of Sudbury and as you see it's a head it's not a skull because there's four bits of flesh and skin and cartilage how did they achieve that that mummification process well the story is that he was beheaded in the White Tower as part of the peasants peasants revolt and the head was put on a spike on London Bridge and apparently a very hot time of the years in the summer and it sort of mummified I suppose over over that period of time and then the the good folk of Sudbury took pity on the head and felt it ought to come back here to his hometown of Sudbury and so brought it back and it's been in the town ever since so well over 600 years so can we take him out and have a look at wouldn't give it to Earl or we can't touch you ma'am afraid but I can tell a little bit more about it but he's not against them having seen it myself on another occasion and on the back of the head you can actually see marks where the attempted beheading took place and the story goes that it took seven blows to take that head off which has been horrific [Music] it's tough at the top but it's lonely too and throughout history leaders monarchs have surrounded themselves with their special people intimates familiars favorites those with whom they could talk in an unguarded way removed from the strictures of court life but it's a slippery business being a favorite it tends to breed suspicions em natee bitter hatred controversy and that was never truer than in the case of Richard [Music] one favorite caused more controversy than any other his name was Robert De Vere 10th Earl of Oxford this was Robert de Vere's home his relationship with Richard was so close it provoked resentment even scandal perhaps those two things were connected Thomas Wolsey him a leading chronicler of the day a man who could give any modern tabloid journalist a run for his money wrote of the Kings relationship like this according to rumor his closeness to Lord Robert and his deep love and affection for him was not without some taint of an obscene relationship or as Walsingham put it in latin the king was guilty of familiar Tartus obscene I next door to the castle de Vere's descendant Dimitra Lindsay still lives in the family home [Music] hello how are you nice to see you come in thank you can we talk about your ancestor and his friendship with the king what did the two of them have in common do you think what was the bond that brought them together I think there was a rather nice relationship between them because the Earl of Oxford Robert was five years older than Richard and I think there was a certain amount of adoration going on there was a sort of hero worship you know I think through and from Robert's point of view it was no bad thing to be that close to Richard of course I think how is that Mick ever of it of course Richard created the title of Marquess it's the very first time and then you know all these Earl for sitting there and suddenly there's a new title but they couldn't even aspire to there was Robert being showered with all these venison's all these titles and estates that wouldn't have been popular with everybody I suppose I think it caused sincere jealousy at court you wouldn't give any house room to these suggestions that their relationship was more than platonic and friendly I'm sure you've heard these suggestions absolutely I I I see the whole of their relationship in the context of this extraordinary place here and that it was two boys growing up in rather a fun and war free time in England and and that it was just all about fun and and you know the piece suits country pursuits [Music] but Devere and Richards other favorites were heading for a fall in 1387 a group of leading Nobles took control of the government by force and executed or exiled Richards closest friends Devere was banished to France where he died in poverty two years later Richard arranged for his casket to be returned to England and there's this touching contemporary account of the funerals Richard took care to open the cypress wood coffin in which the body lay after being embalmed he looked long at the face and touched it with his finger publicly showing to Robert when dead the affection which had shown him previously when alive [Music] Freud would have had a field day with Richard but Shakespeare got there first his play Richard ii delves into the dark corners of the Kings psyche david tennant has played the King to great acclaim for the Royal Shakespeare Company not all the water in the rough sea can wash the bomb off from an anointed king so your immersing yourself in richard ii is it fun to be him up there every night M it's something bad peculiarly exciting about entering to trumpet fanfares every time you walk on stage that's very that takes people understand to you simply swells the breast and and you can imagine that it would distort the ego as well well that happening to you every day in life you can see why Richard would assume the air that he did the modern equivalent was Michael Jackson just someone who'd lived in this kind of extraordinary very young age they'd been other and different and treated differently and then possibly because of that you develop a psychology that's that's quite alien and difficult to understand to the outside world because because you are not as other man really God for his Richard 1/2 in heavenly pay a glorious angel then if angels fight weak men must fall and can I just ask about the hair is that based on intense research a quite the opposite no Richard had a sort of mow up of red hair from the paintings that we have but there's a certain androgyny to him that so we were looking for something that found that sort of androgynous Ness something that that would just to set him apart from from the world of his court and what about if you'd been a courtier because that's something we're looking at alright what would it have been like to be a chord she must have been really struggle to be the court of one of these people because any kind of autocrat of course you're having to dance around their whims you know can be a favorite one day and you can have your head chopped off the next so that must have been an incredible stress and strain to try and you know keep your status up to every day be trying to please the king particularly that King was capricious and difficult and potentially if you read some commentators by the end of his life a little bit mad in the Middle Ages it wasn't enough for the King to rule he had to be seen to be ruling and the best way to guard against fear and intrigue and rumor and plotting that was for the king himself to appear in your town or village or Hamlet then you knew who was in charge Richard was always on the road making circuits of his kingdom they were known as gyrations in one four-month period he set off from Kings Langley then went to tame Woodstock north leach Gloucester Worcester before heading north and then returning via North Hampton Newport Pagnell and Dunstable to Kings Langley a few months later who fetched up here Leeds Castle [Music] the Bishop of Ely confided despairingly to his household ledger in the 1380s that he'd been visited by a multitude and I copy Oh sir a copious multitude or in layman's terms the place was round to attend to his needs on the road Richard somehow got by with no more than a thousand courtiers there were court officials men-at-arms household servants camp followers and after he married Anne of Bohemia she and her household of a hundred and twenty retainers well they went everywhere as well as the chronicler Walsingham put it Richard was guilty of non affair said alpha rare which as we all know means taking and not giving in theory a visit from the king would be a signal honor in practice only those with the fullest coffers could afford to withstand it was actually something to be dreaded Richard and his ever-hungry crew could eat and carouse their way through your fortune he was the houseguest from hell thanks Gavin [Music] in the middle-ages court was a place for the chaps going to war defending the realm that was the stuff that the boys got up to and a powerful woman around the place tended to mean instability even civil war so nobody liked to see that but that all changed with Richards mother the how to put it colorful perhaps scarlet Joan of Kent she was the sex bomb of the Middle Ages she loved her rocks and she loved her frocks the tighter and more plunging the better scandalously she was married to two different men at the same time and neither of them was Richard's father Joan put her charms to good use by patching up Richards quarrels during one blazing row between Richard and his uncle and onlooker noted that at length by the praiseworthy mediation of the lady Joan and the discord was put to sleep Joan was a trailblazer where she led other women followed here at the Victorian Albert Museum in London there's an extraordinary picture of women at court The Devonshire Hunting tapestries as they're known run for a hundred and thirty three feet and for me they're the greatest depiction of courtly life in the Middle Ages this party are actually out hunting it's an exercise in falconry but it looks more like a garden party doesn't it the striking thing about it is how many women there are in the scene [Music] it's like a beautiful fashion plate as far as you look the eye is caught by pearls headdresses lovely rich flowing robes with long trains Richard was very comfortable with women at court he was essentially peace-loving and under him court was a place where other virtues flourished a place of civilization if you like of learning and scholarship not of the more macho disciplines associated with his father or earlier medieval monarchs but as ever ladies climbing up the ladder put noses out of joint the chronicler Walsingham complained that Richards courtiers were Knights of Venus not Mars better suited to maneuvers in the bedroom than on the field of battle and what of that terrific harpy Joan of Kent the king's mother and the forerunner the role model of all those thrusting ladies of court well her end couldn't have been more blackly ironic if Richard was anything he was a mummy's boy and yet he was responsible for his mother's own death in the most tragic and horrible of circumstances the King believed he'd been betrayed by his half-brother and sentenced him to death but Joan pleaded for the life of her other son to four days she begged the King to change his mind that Richard was implacable unmovable on the fifth day joan died of a broken heart they said capricious and contrary to the last which had then spared the life of his half-brother rather late for Joan [Music] Hieu getting pretty funky in here can you imagine the assault on the senses that was a medieval court all those Nobles their staff and servants huddled close together with the aroma on them of their livestock their beasts and the last few meals they ate if you wanted to get ahead at court you had to pinch your nose dive right in now Richard was a fastidious fellow he insisted on cleanliness and demanded it of those around him as this top-level reconstruction may help us to imagine but the first time really since Roman England the baths began to make a bit of a comeback and that was largely thanks to the king at a palace in London alas sadly now lost Richard established a kind of grande Prive for himself actually something like a Turkish bath on a little Isle - island in the middle of the Thames and there he would luxuriate surrounded by 2,000 hand-painted tiles while hot and cold running water can you imagine the novelty gushed from taps into his bath nor were his courtiers deprived bear in mind this is a time when it wasn't only the great unwashed who tended to go around unwashed Richard had thought of their comfort in the ease and in the palace proper they had latrines which they could use now historians have been looking for conclusive proof of these latrines but so far they have nothing to go [Music] this is the College of Arms England's home of heraldry people come here to this day to have their coats of arms made but alongside the distinctive shields of heraldry and a lesser-known badges courtiers wearing the Kings badge proclaimed their allegiance their true colours York Herald Peter O'Donoghue is here to show me some of the oldest treasures in this collection [Music] richard was the first king to really make widespread use of badges as opposed to coats of arms as a symbol of him of himself of his personal identity whereas the kit the coat of arms is is specific to the king and it's about kingship and lineage the badge can be used much more widely it was a way of recruiting what we might call an affinity a bunch of men around the country all of whom were bound personally to him by their acceptance of the badge and this manuscript is gives us a nice illustration of the badges that he used the broom cord of course the Plantagenet cent symbol the Sun badge the white heart that's the device most commonly associated with Richard yeah it's a badge with strong association with christ-like qualities of humility and sacrifice and Richard strongly associated himself with those characteristics all right you had the Kings badge the Kings color was that a sort of signifier that you would one day receive money from him all why would use money influence and connections and that's really how a lot of justice was seen to be carried out in that time so if you wore the Kings badge you might find you didn't get as much trouble from the local justices you might find that you're recruited to put pressure on people gentry families that have come on that are on the wrong side of a question might might find gangs of ruffians wearing a badge outside their gates making trouble smashing things up you mentioned gangs it does sound a bit like gang warfare sounds like la the Bloods and the Crips whose colors do you were there's an element of that absolutely right yeah and and that was very much how it was perceived at the time it was known to be a problem so Richard was very partial to a badge found them extremely useful in the long run was he wise to rely on them quite as much as he did I don't think he was you know because I think that he was behaving more like a warlord more like a magnate and not as a king Kings shouldn't behave like they're trying to creet private armies they are the state they're a reflection of an embodiment of the state so for Richard to be actively seeking to recruit retainers in that private way which was exactly the same thing that all the other noblemen did was controversial to say the least [Music] in the Middle Ages the best way to the King's heart was straight through his ribcage with a cleaver and Richard lived in fear of that get to him by the more traditional route through the stomach he liked his food he wasn't one of those nor on a chicken bone and toss it to the Mastiffs kind of rulers no he would have been very partial to the nouvelle cuisine of today and the first cookbook in these islands was written for him a hundred and ninety-six recipes everything from blancmange to porpoise soup that soup made out of rare dolphin by the way not paupers Richard's cookbook the form of curry or as we'd say now ways of cooking was compiled by his master cooks some of the most important people in the royal household they were in charge of over 300 kitchen staff scallions spit turns and spices one cook who knows how to serve up a medieval dish is Clarissa Dickson right Clarissa hello how are you good to see you - Oh welcome to my humble kitchen yes nice place you have yeah that's great anything for supper well we're going to have a guru deuce of rabbits my favorite you can't beat an egg reduce what on earth is that sweet and sour ah Chinese restaurant who could have egg reduce say rabbit no rabbit was the luxury food of the day get away incredibly expensive they were all farmed in warrens and a Munich great Lords would fight for the privilege of having license to keep a warrant say what I'm going to do first of all is just mix the sauce and that's just some chopped onions that goes in there and in goes black pepper from India ginger and cinnamon from the Spice Islands and currants from the Levant so this is quite ostentatious it is away incredible I mean eunuch we gated one of your top chefs nowadays you wouldn't get anything quite as lavish as this really not in terms of price anyway that's just a bit of vinegar to add the sour to the to the sweet say now would you like to be my Scullion I'd be honored ah right what do I need to do in with the rabbit in with the rabbit whole lot ah yes being a good noise there we go well done pretty hot here yeah I'm so glad I've got my suit on well I do think I would I think you do it yeah it's pretty hot in the old kitchens of Richard the second smells like Christmas letsa cinnamon isn't it yeah how's that doing with that perfect absolutely perfect and then we leave that to cook yes for 3540 minutes something like that feasts were gargantuan occasions 2,000 guests at a time sat down at banqueting tables arranged over many rooms they got through a staggering pile of food this is a shopping list for one of Richard's feasts and you've got all sort of things you've got curly usually 20 curly yeah mind you Cal you apparently tastes like very bleedin beef I met a no gamekeeper had it you look at it there's a lot of salt meat because they sorted everything down in winter but then they have fresh meat along we've got salt venison fresh venison this isn't puffin is it oh yeah apparently it tastes just like fishy gross sixty puffin mmm you're gonna find 60 puffins well I think they will rather more puffing around than there are now right well that should be done though oops that spoons gone right yeah well done a couple of bits cap a little bit how's that to be going on with perfect all I need now is a fork of course no no really folks didn't come in they were very eccentric even in Tudor times were they yeah Jacobi and really started using fork so what do we do bare-knuckle spoons of course with a great one if you bringing your own spoon to the party and the knife shall we tuck in why not love to you hmm good hmm right see what you think nice good flavor lovely crunchy onions and Lawrence well I think I'd come back here now to the Middle Ages [Music] one of the greatest treasures of Richard's reign is to be found here at the National Gallery it's strangely overlooked and neglected and yet in its own subtle way it's every bit as enigmatic and mysterious as say the Mona Lisa in Paris what it does tell us unambiguously though is that Richard was the first English monarch who really was passionate about art and understood what it could do for him since Richard was a king perpetually on the move he needed portable trappings of power none was more important than his altarpiece the finest painting to survive from the medieval age in Britain this is the Wilton diptych it's a picture of course but also something of a holy relic I think of it as a combination of Richard's portable Chapel and vanity cabinet at first sight it strikes us as a conventional image of veneration and worship Richard is kneeling his hands his fingers are splayed his gaze upon the Holy Infant but actually it's much more complicated and nuanced than that the king is accompanied by a Trinity of significant and telling figures to English monarchs who he venerated Edward the Confessor Edmund the martyr and most importantly of all Sir John the Baptist the arm of Sir John the Baptist is most significant here he paved the way for Christ in the Bible and there's a sense of equivalence here he is presenting representing the king over on the right-hand panel if you study the heavenly host not only are they wearing a striking iridescent blue but if you look closely they're bearing the insignia of Richard in self the white heart this is the medieval equivalent of the modern football tradition of kissing the badge this is Richards team they're looking out for him [Music] in its own charming and understated way at first this piece represents overweening minar kacal ambition Richard and his artists are coming perilously close to the blasphemous idea but there's some sort of equivalence between the monarch the flesh and blood man here on earth and the Christ child any courtier privileged enough to be accompanying the king at the moment during his travels when the diptych was unpacked and the King fell to his knees presumably before it he might have found himself wondering exactly who is being worshipped here is the King perhaps adoring himself and there was a further provocative clue almost hidden away in the top of the right-hand panel above the standard that the angel is holding the flag of sin George there's a miniature representation a cameo of England the sceptre dial is the artist was Richard presuming to suggest that England his sovereign patch of land was the New Jerusalem and that the king himself had been sent here by God as the new Messiah [Music] now we all lead busy lives and by now you might be asking yourself what did this Richard guy ever do for me well next time you have a snuffly nose you need to mop your brow or put a knot in something as a momento then thank Richard because voila he was the man who invented and popularized the humble handkerchief when he came to the throne people didn't even know what to call this sure there may have been some bracingly pungent anglo-saxon version of snot rag but handkerchief nobody had heard of such a thing indeed the King's Own tailor referred to small pieces of cloth to give to the noble King for blowing and covering his nose Richard turned this into perhaps the first English accessory the accoutrement one had to be seen with at court it's even suggested that Richard was in the habit of distributing his favorite silks and linens to his courtiers so that if you had the Kings hankie you knew you were on the make [Music] when we think about the tower we tend to conjure a brooding forbidding place of repression torture even execution but in Richards time the tower was as much a palace as it was a prison it was constantly being built on developed expanded and the man who was in charge of those works was the father of English literature the author of The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer Richard appreciated literature as much as painting but it was still early days to make a living as a writer Chaucer needed other means to prosper at court amongst his jobs he was clerk of the Kings Works responsible for the upkeep of the tower as well as soldier diplomat marriage broker keeper of Royal Parks customs controller and a member of parliament it would be a hundred years before the appointment of an official royal poet but Chaucer was a favorite of the Kings and popular at court here at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge is a rare illuminated manuscript of one of his poems this is one of Geoffrey Chaucer's less well known but much admired works Troilus and Criseyde or as we would say now Troilus and Cressida it's the story of a doomed tragic love involving a warrior whose reckless as to the affairs of his heart and an unfaithful heroine it spoke to Richards time and to Richards court with its themes of courtly love of Honor of chivalry but it's not just the text that's valuable and insightful here it's also the beautiful artwork it's a beautifully achieved eye catching scene of an apparently changeless enchanted Albion there's Richard the most brightly dressed of all clad from head to foot in gold even a gold hat but strangely enough he's not the center of attention that honor goes to of all things a writer Geoffrey Chaucer himself the first great superstar of English letters Chaucer is declaiming his soon-to-be new bestseller and almost heretic Lee rather naughtily he's not on a soapbox or anything but in a pulpit he has usurped the clergyman the man of letters it's suggested here is on an equivalent footing with the man of the cloth the man of God all eyes are on the poet waiting to hear what he's come up with next all that is except for Richard himself he's standing at a little remove and he's facing the rest of the crowd the court saying are you not pleased he's reveling in his role as patron he was an indirect patron of Chaucer himself but more generally of a great flowering in the arts and culture in England the first great era of English writing if you could tell stories if you could hold the Kings attention then you would prosper at court for once it really was true that the pen was mightier than the sword [Music] Richard made enemies and that made him actually worried about his own safety his answer was to employ an elite corps of bodyguards to watch over him day and night they were known as the Cheshire archers 311 highly-skilled bowmen all from Cheshire the Knights of middle England practice archery in the style of Richards guards Kevin Hicks is here to tell me all about them so what would it have been like to be one of the elite guard the Cheshire Bowman if you're one of the chosen ones you're there aren't you the best clothing favors from the king the best wage is the best food you're gonna be the the SAS of the medieval food and they were arrogant with it and these guys were professional killers so they sound like guys you wouldn't necessarily want to meet in an alley around the back of the tavern one night well the danger is they'll come and knock on your door and then come through it no batter you're dealt out and they will arrest you violently the people were scared onto they regarded them as thanked and they were a law unto themselves if they wanted to do something nobody was really good equivalent it honey want man the king so it wasn't enough just to be handy with a bow and arrow you had to be from Cheshire you had to have a presence and be quite threatening but moody and tasty to fit in you had to be one of the boys okay put the arrow between what might count the bow over earth of it feel the weight of him bring him back push and pull push them full swing it up a bit yeah yeah just ready to go relax [Music] I'm probably overthinking it yeah it's very simple you've got they are on the wrong side of the bar yeah I'm not overthinking that bit so that rest said does that's right yeah I feel like I want to grip it but that's how people often shoot themselves in the finger well I give it a go stand well back [Music] better height yeah it felt like a layman shot though you missed by about 110 yards relax you you're so tense I am tense put my hand there so you know right in further I have to look I'm leaning back here right right so fun push forward now shoot him in the target he hits him in the knee well he'll feel it yeah shoot there you go another thank you I need you Kevin funny if you do deep down inside maybe [Music] by the 13 90 s Richards grip on power was getting shaky even his own extravagant coronation was a distant memory so what better than to set out the rules of monarchy a how-to book for the kings of the future here in Westminster Abbey library is the libera geillis the Royal book this great manuscript is 600 years old far too delicate and fragile for me to touch but it's open on this lustrous still very vivid illumination that tells us what's about to ensue the monarch seated upon a golden throne with clerics attending to him placing the crown upon his head over the page which I den touch the rubric the ritual of a coronation the rules of procedure this states that a coronation should take place on a Sunday or a holy day that the king should precede bareheaded from the Tower of London through the city to Westminster then when he arrives at the Abbey is to prostrate himself upon the stones fortunately for him not on the cold marble itself his ashes are allowed to spread cushions and carpets to keep him warm during proceedings and as the climax the King receives the arcane and Magisterial tools of the trade if you like the ring of kingly dignity the rod of virtue inequity the golden scepter and the crown of glory and as a final significant gesture his nobles gathered around him stretch forth their arms towards the monarch in a sign of fealty of loyalty but for Richard loyalty and time were running out in April 1395 to London coppersmiths Nicholas broker and Godfrey pressed won a prestigious contract to create two gilt bronze effigies of Richard and his wife for a tomb in Westminster Abbey which it was 27 years old but in his time death was ever close at hand in the Middle Ages it wasn't unknown for people of high birth to invest time and money in the afterlife the design of their tombs and effigies it was a way of ensuring one's legacy and also of creating a shrine a place where one's loved ones and descendants could come and pray and intercede on your behalf to ensure that your soul spent as little time as possible in purgatory before ascending into heaven but this was something different this was one of the most expensive pieces of funerary architecture seen in medieval times it was also unusual in that it's a double effigy Richard reposes for all eternity alongside his first wife Anne the King approved a drawing of himself now sadly lost and broker impressed were expressly ordered to copy it to strive for such a true likeness was highly unusual for the time this is a supreme statement of medieval refinement almost a contradiction in terms until Richard came along and it throws forward to the sophistication of the Renaissance if ever you were looking for proof that Richard had changed art portraiture then here it is in his eternal monument cast for the ages Richard can hardly have imagined the tomb would be completed in the nick of time he'd become paranoid and tyrannical rashly seizing the lands of his cousin Henry proved his final undoing Henry led an uprising against Richard whom he imprisoned and forced to abdicate a few months later in February 1400 Richard was found starved to death the inscriptions in Latin but it translates like this prudent an elegant Richard by oath ii overtaken by fate lies here portrayed and under marble he was true in speech and full of reason noble in body and judicious in mind like homer he overthrew the proud and threw down whoever violated the Royal Prerogative Oh merciful Christ to whom he was devoted OBE Aptus to whom he venerated may you by your prayers save him [Music] Richard came blasphemously close to believing that he was the chosen one with a divine mission and that his England would be a New Jerusalem instead it was something as exotic and almost as wonderful a new Xanadu wherever his ever Restless court went was a pleasure dome of all that was finest in life the arts sculpture painting writing fine living food drink fancy clothes the trouble with Richard was although he was a terrific patron of the Arts he was a lousy King and his legacy like the man himself is conflicted and contrary on the one hand he ushered in the first golden age in the English arts if you like on the other hand he bequeathed us the Divine Right of Kings a tyrants charter to amass wealth illegally and slaughter willy-nilly Richards reign is also one of the great what-if moments in British history what if he hadn't fallen out so badly with his cousin what if he hadn't pampered and spoiled those pets those favorites of his at court perhaps then it would have been these soggy unlikely islands that would have witnessed the first flowering of the Renaissance in Western Europe as it was that privilege fell to Italy but that's a story for next time [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 319,624

Rating: 4.8477612 out of 5

Keywords: timeline, richard ii, history documentary, documentary history, david tennant, david tennant richard ii, david tennant richard ii kiss, david tennant theatre, british kings, royalty, royal history, british royal history, britain royal family, britain royal family documentary, britain royal family tree, british culture, british art, peasants revolt, middle ages, bbc documentary, medieval documentary, 100 years war

Id: uGvDRjBIolI

Length: 58min 39sec (3519 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 04 2020

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[u/alllie]

This episode considers the court of Richard II. Richard presided over the first truly sophisticated and artistic court in England. Painters, sculptors, poets, tailors, weavers and builders flocked to court to make their fortunes. But these were dangerous times. Being close to Richard brought many courtiers to a sticky end.