¹ I would like to thank Professor James W. Alexander for discussing certain points raised in this article with me.

² Works on the reign since McKisack, May, The Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1959)Google Scholar, include: Hutchison, Harold F., The Hollow Crown (New York, 1969)Google Scholar, Jones, R. H, The Royal Policy of Richard II: Absolutism in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar, Mathew, Gervase, The Court of Richard II (London, 1968)Google Scholar, Fryde, E. B. and Miller, Edward, eds., Origins to 1399, Historical Studies of the English Parliament, Vol. I (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar, Goodman, Anthony, The Loyal Conspiracy, the Lords Appellant under Richard II (London, 1971)Google Scholar, DuBoulay, F. R. H. and Barron, Caroline M., eds. The Reign of Richard II; Essays in Honour of May McKisack (London, 1971)Google Scholar, Palmer, J. J. N., England, France and Christendom, 1377-99 (Chapel Hill, 1972)Google Scholar, Tuck, Anthony, Richard II and the English Nobility (London, 1973)Google Scholar, Rogers, Alan, “Parliamentary Appeals of Treason in the Reign of Richard II,” American Journal of Legal History, VIII (1964): 95–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Barron, Caroline M., “The Tyranny of Richard II,” Bull. Inst. Hist. Research, XLI (1968): 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Palmer, J. J. N., “The Impeachment of Michael de la Pole in 1386,” Bull. Inst. Hist. Research, XLII (1969): 96–101Google Scholar, Tuck, J. A., “The Cambridge Parliament, 1388,” E.H.R., LXXXIV (1969): 225–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Clementi, D., “Richard II's Ninth Question to the Judges,” E.H. R., LXXXVI (1971): 96–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Palmer, J. J. N., “The Parliament of 1385 and the Constitutional Crisis of 1386,” Speculum, XLV (1971): 477–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Sayles, G. O., “King Richard II of England: A Fresh Look,” Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., CXV (1971): 28–31Google Scholar, Searle, Eleanor and Burghart, Robert, “The Defense of England and the Peasants' Revolt,” Viator, III (1972): 365–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Stow, George B. Jr., “The Vita Ricardi as a Source for the Reign of Richard II,” VALEE of Evesham Historical Society Research Papers, IV (1973): 63–75Google Scholar, Gillespie, J. L., “Thomas Mortimer and Thomas Molineux: Radcot Bridge and the Appeal of 1397,” Albion, VII (1975): 161–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Forthcoming works include: George B. Stow, Jr. ed., Vita Ricardi Secundi, J. L. Gillespie, “Richard II's Cheshire Archers,” Trans. Lancs. and Ches. Hist. Soc. and a study on Richard's return to Wales by J. W. Sherborne in the Welsh Hist. Rev.

³ Wallon, Henri, Richard II (2 vols.; Paris, 1864).Google Scholar

⁴ Lingard, John, A History of England (Philadelphia, 1827), IV: 207.Google Scholar

⁵ Herbert Butterfield's definition of Whig history adequately describes Hallam's position. Butterfield asserts that Whig historians examine the past with reference to the present and celebrate the present constitution's triumph over the tyrants of the past without considering the favorable impact any constitutional conflict may have had on its development. The Whig Interpretation of History (New York, 1951), pp. 11, 41.Google Scholar

⁶ Hallam, Henry, View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages (single vol. ed., New York, 1847), p. 391Google Scholar. Hallam characterized Richard thus: “Extreme pride and violence, with an inordinate partiality for the most worthless favorites, were his predominant characteristics.” (p. 384).

⁷ Stubbs, William, The Constitutional History of England (4th ed.; New York, 1967), II: 486, 487, 500, 525, 524, 510–11, 536.Google Scholar

⁸ Green, J. R., A Short History of the English People, eds., Green, A. S. and Norgate, Kate (London, 1892), II: 506.Google Scholar

⁹ Tout, T. F., Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England (Manchester, 1928, 1967), IV: 52.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Wilkinson, Bertie, The Constitutional History of Medieval England (London, 1952), II: 293.Google Scholar

¹¹ A discussion of sixteenth century opinions of Richard may be found in Aston, Margaret, “Richard II and the Wars of the Roses,” in DuBoulay, and Barron, , eds., Reign of Richard II, pp. 280–317.Google Scholar

¹² Richard II is not the only medieval English king whose sanity has been unjustly questioned; Sayles, G. O. (The Medieval Foundations of England [Philadelphia, 1950], p. 390)Google Scholar and Petit-Dutaillis, Charles (The Feudal Monarchy in France and England [London, 1936], pp. 215, 216)Google Scholar described King John as insane. C. Warren Hollister pointed out the questionable aspects of such theories in “King John and the Historians,” Journal of British Studies, I (1961): 1–19.Google Scholar

¹³ Although an explicit relationship is difficult to trace, it seems that both Steel and McKisack were influenced by Maude Clarke to some degree. Steel acknowledged his admiration in the preface to Richard II (Cambridge, 1941)Google Scholar and McKisack was Clarke's pupil.

¹⁴ McFarlane, K. B., The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), pp. 2, 3.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Tout, , Chapters, III;401.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Jones, , Royal Policy, pp. 132, 144.Google ScholarPubMed

¹⁷ Tout, , Chapters, III:418Google Scholar. McKisack, , Fourteenth Century, pp. 426, 436.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Tuck, , English Nobility, pp. 60, 61, 62.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Hutchison, , Hollow Crown, p. 101.Google Scholar

²⁰ Tuck, (English Nobility, pp. 58–86)Google Scholar maintains that Richard was shaping policy already during this period but his conclusions lack conviction.

²¹ For examples of the King's largesse for Burley see: KKnighton, Henry, Chronicon Henrici Kniton, ed., Lumby, J. R. (Rolls Series, 92, 1895), II: 205Google Scholar, Cal. Patent Rolls, 1377-81, pp. 223, 257, 262; Cal. Patent Rolls, 1381-85, pp. 107, 305, 343, 447; Cal. Patent Rolls, 1385-89, pp. 37,45; for Beauchamp: Cal. Fine Rolls, 1383-91, p. 41; Cal. Patent Rolls, 1381-85, pp. 156, 318, 493; Cal. Patent Rolls, 1385-89, pp. 153, 292, 348; for de la Pole: Cal. Patent Rolls, 1381-85, pp. 156, 317; Cal. Patent Rolls, 1385-89, pp. 18, 24; Rotuli Parliamentorum (London, 1783), III: 216-17;; Holmes, G. A., The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1957), p. 42.Google Scholar

²² Monk of Westminister, in Polychronicon Ranulphi Hidgen, ed., Lumby, J. R. (Rolls Series, 41, 1886), IX:33–34Google Scholar. Hector, L. C. (“An Alleged Hysterical Outburst of Richard II,” E.H.R., LXVIII [1953]:63–65)CrossRefGoogle Scholar has demonstrated that the explosiveness of Richard's reaction was an editing mistake of Lumby's.

²³ Monk of Westminister, 58. Walsingham, Thomas, Thomas Walsingham Historia Anglicana, ed., Riley, H. T. (Rolls Series, 28, 1864), II:126.Google Scholar

²⁴ In an interview with Richard at Eltham in October 1386 the duke of Gloucester and Bishop Arundel asserted that the kingdom had the right to depose the king in certain cases, an unmistakeable reference to the fate of Edward II. Knighton, , Chronicon, II:216–20Google Scholar, Steel, Anthony, Richard II, p. 122Google Scholar, Jones, , Royal Policy, p. 30Google ScholarPubMed, Goodman, , Loyal Conspiracy, p. 13Google Scholar, Tuck, , English Nobility, p. 103.Google Scholar

²⁵ Walsingham, , Historia, II:152.Google Scholar

²⁶ Steel, , Richard II, p. 124.Google Scholar

²⁷ Jones, , Royal Policy, p. 37.Google ScholarPubMed

²⁸ Stubbs, , Constitutional History, II:501Google Scholar. Tout, T. F. (Chapters, III: 422–23)Google Scholar and Goodman, Anthony (Loyal Conspiracy, p. 20)Google Scholar are the exceptions to this trend.

²⁹ Chrimes, S.B., “Richard II's Questions to the Judges, 1387,” Law Quarterly Review, LXXII (1956):385.Google Scholar

³⁰ Plucknett, T. F. T., “State Trials under Richard II,” Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc., Ser. 5, II (1952): 167.Google Scholar

³¹ Steel, , Richard II, p. 132Google Scholar. Bellamy, J. G., The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 111–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³² Jones, , Royal Policy, p. 97.Google ScholarPubMed

³³ Wilkinson, , Constitutional History, II, 238.Google Scholar

³⁴ Jones, , Royal Policy, p. 65Google ScholarPubMed. Tuck, J. A. (“Cambridge Parliament,” p. 243)Google Scholar demonstrates the weakness of Appellant control in connection with the Cambridge Parliament of 1388.

³⁵ Tout, , Chapters, III:432.Google Scholar

³⁶ Steel, , Richard II, p. 137.Google Scholar

³⁷ Walsingham, , Historia, II:156Google Scholar. See Rot. Parl., III:230–36Google Scholar for the charges.

³⁸ Bellamy, , Law of Treason, pp. 95–96, 112–13Google Scholar. The possibility exists that the Appellants were repaying Richard in his own coin by stretching the definition of treason as the judges had done in 1387, and it can be argued that de Vere did accroach the royal power by the method of his appointment as justice of Chester. Rot. Parl., III:232.Google Scholar

³⁹ Monk of Westminister, 168. Although the trial was conducted in parliament, it was conducted according to both common law and civil law procedures in a fashion so as to harm Brembre. Ibid., 148-49, and Rot. Parl, III:238Google Scholar. Tuck, Both (English Nobility, p. 124)Google Scholar and Steel, (Richard II, pp. 154–56)Google Scholar point out that the Appellants were determined to secure the conviction of Brembre and used whatever legal remedies they could find to do so.

⁴⁰ Monk of Westminister, 176. Walsingham, , Historia, II:174.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Steel, , Richard II, p. 175.Google Scholar

⁴² Ibid., p. 204.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ McKisack, , Fourteenth Century, p. 498.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Shakespeare, WilliamKing Richard the Second II. i. 120–23.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Richard's attempted destruction of the palace of Sheen after the death of Queen Anne seems to lend some credence to claims of his insanity. The blow which he delivered to the Earl of Arundel in Westminister Abbey at the Queen's funeral was delivered under the stress of Anne's death and Arundel's unseemly provocation and cannot be taken as a sign of insanity. George B. Stow, Jr. was critical of attempts to psychoanalyze Richard II in a paper entitled “Richard II and Psychohistory: Clio Misguided,” delivered at the Tenth Conference on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University.

⁴⁷ Tout, , Chapters, III: 495.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Jones, , Royal Policy, p. 182Google Scholar. Tuck agrees that by 1397 Richard was bent on absolutism, but contends that his program in the early 1390s was to give England good government (English Nobility, pp. 105, 156).

⁴⁹ Barron, , “Tyranny of Richard II,” p. 17.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Armitage-Smith, S., John of Gaunt (London, 1904), pp. 353–55.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Rot. Parl., III: 285, 301Google Scholar. Richard also made several requests to London to lend him money but was turned down each time. Walsingham, , Historia, II: 207–08Google Scholar; Monk of Westminister, 270. Caroline M. Barron discusses the ensuing quarrel between Richard and the city in 1392 in “The Quarrel of Richard II with London 1392-7,” in DuBoulay, and Barron, , eds., Reign of Richard II, pp. 173–201.Google Scholar

⁵² Tuck, , English Nobility, pp. 148–50.Google Scholar

⁵³ McKisack, , Fourteenth Century, p. 477.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Jones, , Royal Policy, p. 73.Google ScholarPubMed

⁵⁵ Tuck, , English Nobility, pp. 182–83.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ McKisack, , Fourteenth Century, p. 483Google Scholar. Goodman, , Loyal Conspiracy, pp. 66–67.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Rot. Parl., III:417–22.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Rogers, , “Parliamentary Appeals of Treason,” p. 118.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Plucknett, , “State Trials,” p. 154Google Scholar. Plucknett may be correct by a strictly legal interpretation, but impeachment might have been attempted.

⁶⁰ Jones, , Royal Policy, p. 97.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Rot. Parl., III: 347.Google Scholar

⁶² Ibid., pp. 350, 351, 418. Walsingham, (Historia, II:224)Google Scholar describes the actions of Richard's three minions, Sir John Bushy, Sir William Bagot, and Sir Henry Green, in obtaining the revocation of the pardons.

⁶³ Stubbs, , Constitutional History, II:520–21.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Steel, , Richard II, p. 241Google Scholar. Stubbs, (Constitutional History, II:520, n. 2)Google Scholar is unsure that Richard had Gloucester murdered. For references to the debate concerning Gloucester's murder see Tuck, , English Nobility, p. 186.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Ross, C. D., “Forfeiture for Treason in the Reign of Richard II,” E.H.R., LXX (1956): 575Google Scholar. Clarke, M. V. also stated this opinion in Fourteenth Century Studies, eds., Sutherland, L. S. and McKisack, May (Oxford, 1937; Freeport, N. Y., 1967), pp. 103, 111Google Scholar. An example of the severity of the sentences is that estates in fee tail and use were forfeited in addition to those in fee simple.

⁶⁶ Barron, , “Tyranny of Richard II,” pp. 10–12.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Stubbs, , Constitutional History, II:525Google Scholar. See Rot. Parl., III:357, 358, 360, 368Google Scholar, for details of this parliament.

⁶⁸ Wilkinson, Bertie, The Later Middle Ages in England, 1216-1485 (New York, 1969), p. 178.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Walsingham, , Historia, II:226.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Edwards, J. G., “The Parliamentary Committee of 1398,” E.H.R., XL (1930):327–28.Google Scholar

⁷¹ At the fourth meeting the committee condemned Sir Robert Plesyngton, who had acted with Gloucester in 1386, as a traitor despite Plesyngton's death in 1393. Henry Bowet, who had helped Hereford draw up a petition requesting any inheritance should be handled by his attorney upon his banishment, was also condemned as a traitor, ibid., p. 328.

⁷² Tout, , Chapters, IV:38, 40Google Scholar. Tuck, (English Nobility, p. 198)Google Scholar is more accurate in locating the center of government in the council whose power the King had been building since the early 1390s.

⁷³ Richard had given Henry leave to take up his father's property should Gaunt die while Henry was still in exile. Cal. Patent Rolls, 1396-99, p. 417. But in 1399 the letters patent were revoked and the term of the Duke of Hereford's banishment was made life. Rot. Parl., III:372.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Tuck, (English Nobility, p. 209)Google Scholar discusses Richard's dilemma and concludes that “Gaunt's death placed Richard in an impossible position.”

⁷⁵ Jones, , Royal Policy, p. 182.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Ibid., pp. 1, 4, 6, 176, 179.

⁷⁷ Tuck, , English Nobility, p. 225.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ See, for example, Walsingham, , Historia, II: 229Google Scholar, or the anonymous song “On King Richard's Ministers,” in Wright, Thomas, ed., Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History (Rolls Series, 14, 1859), 1:363–66Google Scholar. V. J. Scattergood makes this same point in his analysis of the contemporary poem “Mum and the Sothsegger” in Politics and Poetry in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1971), p. 108.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles pointed out, perhaps unfairly at times, what they considered as the unfortunate influence of Stubbs on the historiography of medieval England. The Governance of Medieval England from the Conquest to Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1963), pp. 1–21, and passim.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Other exceptions are some of the essays in DuBoulay and Barron, eds., Reign of Richard II. See Palmer, J. J. N., “English Foreign Policy 1388-99,” pp. 75–107Google Scholar, or Harvey, Barbara F., “The Monks of Westminister and the University of Oxford,” pp. 108–30Google Scholar. The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 still attracts interest, the latest work is Hilton, R. H., Bond Men Made Free (New York, 1973)Google Scholar. Hilton's book is a treatment of the revolt as an example of peasant revolts, hence Richard's role receives scant treatment. Church history of the reign has been examined by Aston, Margaret in Thomas Arundel (Oxford, 1967)Google Scholar; her interpretation of political events is in the accepted tradition.

⁸¹ Sayles, , “King Richard II, p. 30Google Scholar. In a paper entitled “Richard II's Irish Problems,” delivered at the Tenth Conference on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, Dennis W. Cashman concluded that Richard proved to be a good diplomat and soldier in achieveing somewhat of a settlement in Ireland in 1394.

⁸² Unlike the foreign policy of Henry VI: see Ferguson, John, English Diplomacy 1422-1461 (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar. Palmer is beginning to fill this void with the essay cited in note 79 and the discussion of Anglo-French and Anglo-Italian foreign policy during the reign in England, France and Christendom, 1377-99.

⁸³ Jones, , Royal Policy, p. 124Google ScholarPubMed. When it is completed, J. W. Sherborne's biography should fill this lacuna.