The third part of this series starts here. Unlike the two parts before it, what follows is made out of things that happened. The kings of England spend close to a hundred years killing each other over one crown.
It begins with Richard II in 1399. He became king at ten and had held the place for twenty-two years. There was nothing questionable about how he got it. His father was the eldest son of his grandfather, Edward the Third.
The question was what he did once he was there.
The Fight That Was Nearly Fought
One day two nobles accused each other in front of the king. One of them was the king’s cousin, Henry Bolingbroke. The other was Thomas Mowbray.
Bolingbroke said that Mowbray had killed the king’s uncle, the Duke of Gloucester. He added a charge of stealing money from the crown. Mowbray answered that all of it was false. Words settled nothing, and a day was set for trial by combat.
On the day the two men faced each other with lances. And just before the signal fell, the king stopped the combat. He then declared that both of them were to leave the country. Ten years for Bolingbroke, and the rest of his life for Mowbray.
Soon the king cuts Bolingbroke’s ten years down to six. He had seen the face of the man’s father, John of Gaunt, go white. Gaunt was the king’s uncle and the most powerful noble of that hour. He knew he would never see his son again.
Here is one thing the play does not settle. It keeps being said that the man who ordered Gloucester’s death was the king himself. No scene ever arrives to confirm it.
What a Dying Man Says
Gaunt takes to his bed. Hearing that he has something to say before he dies, the king goes to him. Gaunt speaks at length about what kind of land England had been. Then he tells the king that he is no longer a king but a landlord who has let that land out.
The king was angry, and Gaunt died soon after. What the king does next is the trigger of the whole play. He seized the entire estate. He needed money to put down the rising in Ireland.
That estate was what the banished Bolingbroke stood to inherit. The king had stepped between a son and what his father left him.
The King Who Cut Off Succession
The king’s other uncle, the Duke of York, was in the room. He is a man who has borne with the king’s side until now. At this he does not bear it, and speaks.
“Be not thyself; for how art thou a king But by fair sequence and succession?” (Act 2, Scene 1)
That one line opens the whole of this part. The ground Richard is king on and the ground Bolingbroke would inherit on are the same ground. To keep the first you have to keep the second. Cut one and the other goes with it.
The king lets York’s words pass. Then he leaves for Ireland and puts the country in his hands.
Back Before the Six Years
Bolingbroke lands in England as soon as the king is across the water. It was not long at all since he had been sent away. Northumberland and other nobles came over to him at once. An army was made while the king was out of the country.
York goes out to stop him. He asked how a banished man dared come back. Bolingbroke’s answer was a simple one. He was banished as Hereford, he said, and he comes back as Lancaster.
Which is to say he has come for his father’s place. He does not once ask for the crown. York knew that the answer held together. So he neither stops him nor joins him, and steps aside.
The Name and the Power Come Apart
While Bolingbroke’s army grew, the king’s army melted away. The soldiers waiting for the king heard he was dead and went home. By the time he crossed back from Ireland there was almost nothing left.
Bolingbroke took two of the king’s favourites and had them put to death. And he goes on saying that he is a man who kneels to the king. He wants only his father’s property returned, he said.
But the army was in his hands. The king had none. Who was king was still perfectly clear, and so was who held the power.
Today, Can a King Be Pulled Down
There is no wicked king and no virtuous rebel in this chapter. Richard took what belonged to another, and Bolingbroke came home against an order. Both are standing on their grounds, and the grounds interlock.
If the side pulling him down wins, the act is called justice. If it loses, it is called treason. What is frightening in this play is that both names fit the same act.
The question was dangerous in Shakespeare’s own time as well. The scene of a king being pulled down was left out of the play’s first printings altogether. It could be done on a stage and not kept on paper.
In the next chapter Richard walks into that scene. And he takes the crown off with his own hands.