13 October was the Feast of the Translation of Edward the Confessor, who was Richard II’s most cherished saint and king. So great was Richard’s veneration that he even impaled the Confessor’s arms with the royal arms of England. See above. And on this day every year of he presented a gift at the saint’s famous jewel-encrusted shrine in Westminster Abbey. Often the gift was another jewel.
Clearly the Confessor was very important to him and is depicted on the wonderful Wilton Diptych as one of the three saints protecting the boy Richard. You can read an interpretation of the Wilton Diptych here.
But everything went wrong for Richard and he was wrongly accused of many things, including being tyrannical. He wasn’t, but he did take revenge for all the insults and virtual imprisonments that he’d suffered since ascending the throne as a small boy. The end of his reign came when his exiled cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, by then Duke of Lancaster, returned at the head of an invading army. Richard was in Ireland and came back to England in some disarray. He was captured and forced to abdicate.
History has blamed Richard incorrectly for many crimes, but the abdication is one of which he was indeed guilty. Yes, guilty, because by stepping back from his crown he foisted the House of Lancaster upon us! Oh Richard, you should have inserted it IN Bolingbroke not simply handed it over!
Ah, now here’s the thing. All the illustrations of the time portray the scene as a simple handing over.
Shakespeare, of course, did ,the same, as shown below in this scene from the first episode of 2012 The Hollow Crown series, which episode concerned the reign of Richard II..
But the truth is rather different. Richard was MUCH too elegant and classy to just give the crown to his hateful cousin. According to Nigel Saul’s biography of him “…he did not resign it to Henry, instead he placed it on the ground and resigned it to God – from whom he had received it….” Definitely elegant, and definitely classy. Bolingbroke certainly hadn’t been either. Plus, Richard was pious and sure of his God-given right to the crown. He wouldn’t deign to simply put it in the hands of his despised cousin and enemy.
And in between this event and finally having Richard murdered at Pontefract, there came Bolingbroke’s coronation. It was the occasion when the House of Lancaster first imposed itself upon kingdom it stole. And what day did Bolingbroke choose for this sacrilege? Why 13 October, which had always meant so very much to Richard. To me this was an act of petty spite, a totally unnecessary unkindness to his vanquished foe.
murreyandblue 
Viscountessw, I defer to your more thorough knowledge here on both Richard and Bolingbroke. What was the trigger that forced Bolingbroke to return and overthrow his cousin, to take the throne, necessitating regicide? His own heir, Monmouth was on quite good terms with Richard, there was reason, I think, to believe in time that the son would have, could have brokered reconciliation between the cousins and persuaded clemency towards his father. Bolingbroke was also not desperately impoverished while in exile, nor I think a haughty, prideful man like his father Gaunt who would never have suffered the indignity of not getting his way about anything. I also don’t think the Mortimer’s, so very young, were the threat to Bolingbroke future historians like to make them – something tells me a rapprochement could have happened between the cousins but something or someone(s) did not want this. Am I overthinking this?
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I think you are (broadly) right. As for the guilty party, step forward that vile man, Archbishop Arundel.
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I think Bolingbroke always had his eye on the throne….and it was his father, John of Gaunt, who instilled it in him in the first place with all his efforts to prevent the female Mortimer line from coming before the more junior Lancastrian line. Bolingbroke and Richard II were cousins who disliked each other from childhood, and Bolingbroke’s loathing burst its banks after the farcical trial-by-combat with Mowbray and he (Bolingbroke) was exiled. No matter what is said now, RIchard II didn’t confiscate the Lancastrian lands permanently, but the whole business was a trigger. Bolingbroke said he was only coming back to claim his inheritance, but as far as he was concerned that was, from the outset, the crown of England!
And Brian is right….Bolingbroke’s Morton was Thomas Arundel. Oh, these two men of God were sly, scheming b-st-rds who managed to survive the result of their plotting. Pity. Satan missed his cue twice, because both were surely his creatures!
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