Out of the chaos, darkness and violence of the Middle Ages...
...one family rose to seize control of England.
Generation after generation,
they ruled the country for more than 300 years.
Ruthlessly crushing all competition...
...to become the greatest English dynasty of all time.
The Plantagenets.
(War cry)
What I love about the Plantagenets' story
is that it's more shocking,
more brutal and more astonishing
than anything you'll find in fiction.
I want to show you the Plantagenets as I see them.
Real, living, breathing people,
driven by ambition, jealousy,
hatred and revenge.
These kings murdered, betrayed and tyrannised their way to spectacular success.
For better and for worse, the Plantagenets forged England as a nation.
This time, the golden boy who single-handedly ended the Peasants' Revolt.
(Horse whinnies)
But Richard II became the most vicious Plantagenet of them all.
(Speaks French)
And his reign of terror brought the whole Plantagenet dynasty crashing down.
Ripped By mstoll, adjusted by GeoffS
(Screaming and shouting)
(Ravens caw)
June 11th, 1381.
Two 14-year-old boys are taking refuge here at the Tower of London
as murderous rebels stalk the streets outside.
(Shouting)
The first of the boys is the King himself, Richard II.
Eighth in the unbroken line of Plantagenet kings.
The second is his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, son and heir of the Duke of Lancaster.
They will change the face of England.
But first they have to survive this bloody crisis, and that's not exactly guaranteed.
The only thing on the King's side is that it's not him the rebels are after.
Richard II's been King since he was ten.
Since then his realm has been ruled by councillors.
Now, in the eyes of the peasants, these councillors are greedy and evil.
How do you fix a problem like that? Well, you kill them, obviously.
(Shouting)
Richard's councillors are the most senior nobles in the land.
Most of them have fled London, The rest are hiding in the tower with the King.
As the situation deteriorates,
the most hated of Richard's councillors hatch a desperate plan.
They send the young King with an entourage out of the Tower
and through the streets to create a distraction.
They're hoping the mob will follow so they can make their escape.
But their cowardice very quickly comes back to haunt them.
(Soundtrack over whispered prayer)
(Angry shouting)
(Horses' hooves)
The rebels simply let Richard pass. He's not their target.
His evil councillors are.
Unfortunately for young Henry Bolingbroke, his dad, John of Gaunt, the King's uncle,
is one of those evil councillors, which puts Henry directly in the firing line.
And worse than that, he's stuck up in the tower with the two most hated men in England.
The king's chancellor and his treasurer.
And the rebels massed outside these walls can smell blood.
It was probably only the King's presence that was holding them back.
But he's gone now.
The mob storms the gates.
(Crashing thud)
(Shouting)
The rebels tear through the tower going from room to room,
looking for the men they hate.
They find the treasurer Sir Robert Hales.
Aargh!
And then in this chapel, they find the chancellor, Archbishop Sudbury,
cowering in prayer in front of the altar.
But God's not going to save him.
(Shouting and screaming)
Both men are dragged out into the street, kicking and screaming in terror.
While all this is going on, Henry's hiding in a cupboard.
And you can imagine him, alone in the darkness, barely daring to breathe.
Waiting for the rebels to find him.
But they never do.
They have their victims.
(Cheering)
Sudbury and Hales are beheaded in the street.
Sudbury's head is stuck on a spike on London Bridge,
his archbishop's mitre nailed to his head - so there's no doubt about who they've killed.
England is on the brink of full-blown anarchy.
It's the greatest crisis the country has faced in more than a hundred years.
Richard could lose his crown.
In desperation, his ministers start issuing charters of freedom to the rebels,
but it doesn't work.
They've just murdered two of his top ministers and got away with it.
A few bits of parchment aren't going to stop them now.
The 14-year-old King has one last throw of the dice.
To ride out again through the blood-frenzied mob and confront the rebel leaders.
For his whole life, Richard's been told that he alone can save England.
Now he's about to find out if it's true.
The whole future of England is now in the hands of a 14-year-old boy.
He meets the rebels outside the city walls at Smithfield.
Open countryside near where the meat market is today.
Wat Tyler, the fearsome rebel leader, comes across to make his demands.
They are extraordinary.
What he's asking for is completely outrageous.
No more bishops, no more nobles, common ownership to all lands.
Seven centuries later, you'd call it communism.
In medieval England it's just bonkers.
And it leads to a standoff.
There are conflicting accounts about exactly what happens next.
What we do know is a scuffle breaks out between Tyler and one of Richard's men.
Weapons are drawn.
In the struggle, Richard's man cuts the rebel leader
hard across the face and neck with his sword.
Tyler is mortally wounded.
When Tyler's army of Kentish rebels see what's happening
they draw back their bows ready to fire.
And in that instant the whole future of the English monarchy hangs in the balance.
(Angry shouting)
(Shouting)
(Horse whinnies)
Faced with certain death, the King's terrified men turn to flee but Richard doesn't.
Instead, the young King does something astonishing.
The 14-year-old charges alone straight towards the rebel ranks.
He cries out in English that he is their leader, their captain and their King.
He commands them to lower their weapons.
And incredibly, they do.
It's always been seen as an astonishing act of bravery by the young King.
But I think there's more to it than that.
For Richard's whole life, he's been told that he's
the man to save England from terminal decline.
All he's ever known is adulation.
"You are God's anointed king. Your people adore you. You will be mighty."
After a while, that sort of thing can go to a kid's head.
So when Richard rides out to meet the rebels, that's what's going through his mind.
"My people love me. God will protect me."
And when the rebels kneel before him,
it just confirms everything he's ever believed about himself.
(Cheering)
From this moment on, nothing will ever shake Richard's belief that God is on his side.
He is the King, he is right and he is invincible.
When Richard orders the peasants home, they go happily,
clutching their charters of freedom safe in the knowledge that Richard is their man,
their captain, their King.
They are wrong.
The following week, Richard meets the rebels again.
They've come to seal the deal with their new champion.
But Richard's got a new deal in mind.
A first-hand account of the meeting still exists here in the British Library.
This is the chronicle of Thomas Walsingham,
who is an eyewitness to many of the events of the Peasants' Revolt.
And he records Richard's reaction, but it's not what the peasants were expecting at all.
It's in Latin. Richard says,
"Peasants you are and peasants you'll remain.
In permanent bondage, not as you were before, but in an incomparably harsher state."
Then Richard goes on to say he's going to devote the rest of his life
to tormenting the rebels so much
that no one in England will ever dare to rise up again.
So much for being their captain and their leader.
Richard's going to be their hangman.
(Shouting)
In the months that follow, hundreds, possibly thousands of peasants
are strung up by the King's men.
His people never dare rise up against him again.
Richard's terrifying ordeal at the hands of the rebels has taught him a lesson.
The King doesn't need to be loved.
He needs to be feared.
By 1385, even the country's senior nobles are starting to become nervous.
It's four years since Richard crushed the Peasants' Revolt,
and he's no longer a child.
He's 19, he's married to Anne of Bohemia, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor.
And he's fed up with people telling him what to do.
He decides to take the lead, and from this point on
Richard's reign will be dominated by his struggle to do things his way.
(Chatter and laughter)
Richard and Anne are a great match and the Queen is clearly a good influence on him.
A young court of nobles springs up around them,
led by the King's favourite, Robert de Vere.
Like the King, his young court have little time for the old guard.
Men like his uncle, Gloucester, and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
But Richard's under 21 so they can legitimately control his council -
the equivalent of cabinet.
They still think of him as a child.
But he's not.
(Speaks French)
When the archbishop criticises Richard for keeping bad company,
the King makes it crystal clear that he's not interested in his opinion any more.
(Speaks French)
(Laughter)
(Shouts in French)
Then he drums his point home by attacking the old man.
(Speaks French)
(Cries out)
(Gloucester laughs)
He's only stopped from doing serious harm by the intervention of his uncle, Gloucester.
(Laughter)
This time, Richard climbs down.
Bravo!
But egged on by de Vere and the others,
the split between the King and his old councillors is only going to get worse.
One important young noble's missing from the King's new entourage.
His cousin Henry Bolingbroke.
So far best known for hiding in a cupboard.
Because while Richard's swanning about at court with his new pals,
Henry's off fighting in tournaments and learning the business of war.
And Bolingbroke stands to inherit the most powerful duchy in Richard's kingdom.
So despite his absence, Henry will have far more influence on the King's reign
than any of his new friends.
(Cheering)
But while Bolingbroke's away, Richard's new pals are still making all the running.
The King's wrestling control away from the old guard
by replacing them on his council with his new friends like de Vere.
But a crisis in the never-ending war with France is about to undo all Richard's plans.
By the autumn of 1386, the French are poised to launch an invasion.
De Vere and the others do nothing to prevent it.
The old guard have had enough.
They go to Parliament and get them onside against the King and his young allies.
The King's uncle is the man charged with telling Richard to get rid of them or the old guard will.
Gloucester delivers the ultimatum to Richard here at Eltham Palace.
And given the King's tendency to blow his top
at even the slightest attempt to curb his behaviour,
Gloucester must have realised his nephew was never going to take this well.
All the same, Richard's reaction absolutely floors him.
(Shouts in French)
He accuses his council and Parliament of treason.
And threatens to seek help from the French.
If the old guard don't yield, he'll invite in the country's deadliest enemy to destroy them.
Gloucester doesn't rise to the bait.
He simply asks Richard to think about his great-grandfather Edward II.
(Muffled cries)
It's an explicit threat.
Gloucester has called the King's bluff.
In a bloodless coup, all Richard's ministers are removed.
Gloucester and the old guard retake control of the council and the country.
But if they think they've got Richard under control, they're dead wrong.
Because the King is more devious, more cunning and more ruthless
than anyone has dared to imagine.
(Speaks French)
Richard and de Vere organise a secret meeting of judges.
The King sees the actions of the old guard as treason.
(French)
Unfortunately, that's not what the law says.
Richard has a simple solution to that.
Change the law.
No sane judge would ever agree.
But then...it all depends on how you ask them.
The judges rule that any opposition to the King is equivalent to treason.
It's basically a tyrant's charter.
"Do what I say or you'll be strung up."
Richard thinks he's cracked it. This judgment threatens everyone.
And to Richard that's what being a king is all about.
Intimidation.
The old guard have a stark choice.
They can let Richard's treason laws stand,
in which case the King can kill them whenever he likes.
Or they can raise an army against him.
Unsurprisingly, Gloucester and his allies go for the second option.
In response, de Vere, Richard's best pal, raises an army to defend the King.
With the situation escalating,
all the leading nobles have to choose a side...
...and that brings a decisive new player into the game.
The King's cousin, Henry Bolingbroke.
Until now, Henry's been pretty loyal to Richard,
even if the deal with the judges was quite hard to swallow.
But he can't stand de Vere.
Not only has de Vere chucked his wife, who's Henry's cousin,
he's also been poaching Henry's lands.
Now Henry knows de Vere couldn't have done any of this without Richard's approval.
And an attack on de Vere is effectively an attack on the King.
But he's had enough.
And so as de Vere tries to cross Radcot Bridge, here in Oxfordshire,
Henry Bolingbroke is waiting for him.
Henry is a battle-hardened veteran.
So when de Vere's army run into Henry's troops, they basically run for the hills.
De Vere flees to France and never returns.
Settling his score with de Vere
means that Henry has now sided with the barons against the King.
And with de Vere gone... nothing stands between them and Richard.
The King is forced to offer peace talks at the Tower of London.
Along with four other senior nobles,
Gloucester, Arundel, Warwick and Mowbray,
Henry heads to the tower, where Richard's waiting.
They take 500 soldiers with them
just in case the King gets the mistaken idea that this is a friendly chat.
On top of twisting the treason laws,
they've discovered Richard has been negotiating for peace with the French
without Parliament's knowledge.
They enter the tower to confront the King.
(Door slams)
And lock the doors behind them.
For three days Richard is locked up in the tower with his enemies.
And forced to watch as the five of them decide what to do with him.
Deposing the King is undoubtedly on the table.
After all, Gloucester's already threatened Richard with it once.
When the doors finally open, the King is sent to Parliament to await his fate.
It's a packed house as the five lords return from the tower to deliver their verdict.
Everyone is expecting them to force Richard to abdicate.
But they don't.
Instead, all five bow low and swear allegiance to the King.
(Lords speak French)
Despite everything he's done, Richard survives. It's an astonishing turnaround.
No one knows exactly what happened in that tower.
But I think Henry and the others were actually going to depose Richard.
And in the end the only thing that stopped them was the fear of civil war.
The chaos and slaughter of the inevitable fight
over who should be king instead would tear the country apart.
The reality is, leaving Richard in place is simply the least worst option.
So how does Richard feel? Grateful? Lucky?
Humbled? No.
In Richard's mind, this is further proof that whatever he does, God will protect him.
After the tower, Richard keeps a low profile but he's just biding his time.
He's now 21.
Theoretically he can take full control of the country any time he likes.
And then...God help the men who stood against him.
With Richard in charge, the old guard probably fear the worst.
But getting the power he's always craved seems to calm him down.
Astonishingly, peace breaks out.
The King agrees a truce with France
and in Henry's absence, he even makes up with Gloucester and the others.
It looks like Richard's grown out of his youthful malice.
But he hasn't.
While all this public peace and reconciliation is going on,
Richard's quietly doing something
that will completely alter the balance of power in the kingdom.
He's raising a private army in the north of England.
But this isn't an army paid for or approved by Parliament,
it's a band of private mercenaries with no loyalty to anyone but Richard himself.
The emblem he chooses for his soldiers is the white hart.
Strange, isn't it? This is more like the behaviour of a war lord than a king.
So what's he up to?
Well, incredibly, more than six centuries on,
there is a way to peer inside the mind of Richard II.
And it's here at the National Gallery.
This is the Wilton Diptych.
It's a portrait painted for Richard at around this time.
And everything you see in it, every aspect of the symbolism,
is here because Richard wants it here.
But even though this was painted when he was a fully grown man,
he's presented here as though he was still 14 years old.
The age of his greatest triumph in the Peasants' Revolt.
Behind him we have the saints: St Edmund, Edward the Confessor, John the Baptist.
And here we have the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus,
both looking adoringly down at Richard, giving him their blessing.
What's most interesting are these 11 angels, all wearing the symbol of the white hart.
It's the symbol of Richard's private army.
He's saying, "Even the angels wear my badge. God is on my side."
This is a painting of a man who truly believes he can do whatever the hell he wants.
Three years after leaving England, Henry Bolingbroke returns.
The kingdom has changed a lot.
Richard may have brought peace to the country
but the white hart, symbol of his personal power, is everywhere.
On flags, buildings, statues, windows.
And, of course, on the King's private soldiers.
And they're everywhere too.
It seems threatening...with good reason.
Henry must have been sweating it.
The last time he saw his cousin, he all but deposed him.
Cousin!
(Speaks French)
But Richard graciously welcomes him back.
The nasty business in the Tower of London seems forgotten.
He even makes Henry a trusted councillor and diplomat.
After all, they are cousins.
Despite Richard's disturbing track record,
he's now ruled his country in his own right peacefully for more than five years.
But all that's about to change.
(Low prayer in Latin)
Richard's queen, Anne of Bohemia, dies suddenly at just 28.
The King is utterly inconsolable and properly unhinged.
I think Anne was some sort of stabilising influence on him.
Now she's gone, there's nothing holding him back.
And that's apparent straightaway when Arundel, one of the five from the tower,
turns up late to her funeral.
The peace-loving image the King's cultivated is ripped away.
Here in Westminster Abbey there's direct evidence of the real Richard that emerges.
This is an incredible piece of history.
It's the earliest surviving portrait of a British monarch to be taken from life.
And it was painted around the time of Richard's wife's death.
It shows you the King not only as he wanted to be seen,
but as his subjects really did see him.
Because the Richard that's shown here is a seriously nasty piece of work.
He really did sit like this on a high throne above his court, staring around.
Sort of feels like his gaze is on me now.
And if he looked at you you were supposed to throw yourself to the ground and face his wrath.
This was a really dangerous atmosphere.
But I don't think this is a new personality. Richard's always had this in him.
Think about his bloody crushing of the Peasants' Revolt.
His attack on the archbishop.
His abuse of the treason laws.
His build-up of a private army.
I think Richard's always been a tyrant.
Backed by his private army, the King reinstates his version of the treason law.
Anybody who opposes him now faces death.
The monster has been unleashed.
Ten years earlier, in that tower over there,
five men humiliated the King and threatened to rip his crown away from him.
Now one way or another, Richard's going to crush them.
This is a vendetta, pure and simple. Richard's tried being a nice guy.
He didn't like it.
As one chronicler of the time wrote, "This is the year that Richard's tyranny began."
The Earl of Warwick was one of the five who humiliated Richard in the tower.
He should probably have thought better of going back there for dinner with the King.
When the meal is finished... so is Warwick.
(Shouts in French)
And Richard is just warming up.
(Horse whinnies)
Gloucester was the ringleader of the five who threatened him.
Now, Richard rides through the night to return the favour.
(Greeting in French)
The King greets him as fair uncle...
...and has him arrested on the spot.
Gloucester is packed off into the custody of Thomas Mowbray, another of the five.
(Muffled groans)
Ssh!
To atone for his sins... he is now the King's hatchet man.
(Muffled cries)
(Speaks Latin)
(Others repeat Latin)
The fourth man, Arundel, is arrested and imprisoned as well.
He too is charged with treason.
Gloucester, Warwick and Arundel have their trials set for a Parliament in Westminster.
Just like today, Westminster Hall was under construction.
So Parliament's held in a wooden hall next door.
It opens with a sermon from Ezekiel. "There'll be one king over them all."
And indeed there is, because towering above them
on a specially-built high throne, is Richard, with 300 of his white hart archers at his back.
The message is simple. You're either with the King or you're against him.
There is no politics now. Just life or death.
Graphic proof of this comes when Mowbray reports
that unfortunately Gloucester can't stand trial.
(Speaks French)
On account of being dead.
Luckily, before he died, he made a full confession, admitting to all Richard's charges.
In reality, of course, Richard has had him tortured to death.
(Screams)
Henry Bolingbroke was the fifth man in the tower.
And not for the first time, he has to choose a side.
Join with the King or share Gloucester's fate.
Henry chooses life.
He makes a speech condemning his old ally Arundel.
Arundel is sentenced to death. Warwick banished for life.
Of the five who stood against the King, only Henry and Mowbray remain.
And they must know they're not safe.
The King has just murdered his own uncle, a royal duke.
Anybody could be next.
Three months later, as fear and paranoia stalk the land,
Henry is called to a secret meeting.
(Speaks French)
Mowbray tells him that the King is plotting against them.
(Whispered conversation)
Mowbray may well be telling the truth but this could easily be a trap.
(Speaks French)
Henry can't risk it.
He goes straight to the King and denounces Mowbray.
But since it was a private conversation,
there are no witnesses to prove who was telling the truth.
This is perfect for the King.
He declares the case can't be proven and exiles them both.
Henry for ten years, Mowbray for life.
In one fell swoop, the last two of the five from the tower are gone.
Richard's revenge is complete.
He believes no one can challenge him.
But Henry Bolingbroke will now be watching the King's every move from exile in France.
Richard should have killed him.
What happens next shows just what a ruthless tyrant Richard's become.
With Bolingbroke and Mowbray out of the way,
Richard sends his thugs round to the houses of all the other nobles he suspects,
and forces them to put their seals on pieces of blank parchment.
Once he has those he can write on them pretty much anything he wants.
"I'll give the King £10,000."
"I'll leave the King my lands and all my castles."
"I am a traitor."
If anyone puts a foot out of line, or even if they don't, Richard can destroy them.
A year later, Richard's tyranny is in full swing
when Henry Bolingbroke's father, the Duke of Lancaster, dies.
This is what remains of Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire.
Just one of more than 30 castles Henry Bolingbroke should now inherit
as part of the largest duchy in the kingdom.
It will make Henry the most powerful noble in England.
But given the history between the King and his cousin,
there's no way Richard can allow that to happen.
So with Henry still banished, Richard just takes the lot for himself.
But in doing so he undermines the whole basis of law and order in England -
the right to property and inheritance.
And he's given Henry Bolingbroke the excuse he's been waiting for to take the King down.
May 1399.
Richard is in Wales. He's got exactly what he always wanted.
Everyone in his kingdom fears him.
But even that's not enough.
So Richard is heading for Ireland to extend his tyranny there.
It's a massive miscalculation.
There's a fundamental flaw in Richard's whole idea of kingship.
He doesn't understand that the strongest kings have always governed by consent.
Iron-fisted consent, maybe, but consent all the same.
If you rule by fear, like Richard, the moment you leave the country,
what is there for your enemies to be afraid of?
What's there to stop them moving against you?
As soon as Richard's gone, Henry Bolingbroke seizes his moment.
He races back across the Channel with one thing on his mind.
Regime change.
By stealing his inheritance, Richard has created an enemy with nothing to lose.
And alienated every single land holder in the kingdom.
The nobles of England flock to Henry's side.
Richard's white hart army is no match for the combined might of the enraged English barons.
By the time Richard makes it back from Ireland, his army is gone.
He's friendless and exposed.
If you were expecting a war, forget it.
It's over before it's even begun. And Richard has lost.
The King is forced to surrender to his cousin.
Henry takes him to London and bangs him up in the tower.
(Caws)
12 years before,
Henry Bolingbroke was one of the five nobles who backed away from deposing Richard.
He won't make the same mistake again.
This time, he's going to take the throne.
(Speaks French)
According to one chronicler, the King was so enraged that he could hardly speak.
And when he did, it was to make a threat.
This is pretty funny, really.
If there's one thing Richard isn't, it's physically brave.
And even if he were, Henry's been a crusader, a tournament champ.
He'd toast Richard on his own.
All Richard knows is fear. But without the men or the authority to back him up, he's nothing.
He's reduced to shouting. He has a temper tantrum.
The next day, in Parliament,
250 years after the first Plantagenet King claimed and won the English Crown,
In the name of the Father...
...Henry Bolingbroke formally claims his cousin's throne.
I, Henry of Lancaster, challenge this realm of England and the Crown
with all the members and the appurtenances,
that I am descendant by the right line of blood coming from the good Lord,
King Henry III.
By claiming the throne not in Latin or French but in English,
the first King to do so since the Norman Conquest,
Henry's sending a very clear message.
"I am not like Richard. His tyranny is over."
There's just one problem. Richard is still alive.
And as long as he is, he remains a dangerous threat.
No one knows for sure how Richard II died,
but what we do know is that he was being held in a room in this tower on January 6th, 1400,
when the last plot to spring him was foiled.
By February 17th, he's already dead.
Given the stakes involved,
I think it's safe to assume that Henry is behind it.
What he needs is plausible deniability.
It can't look like he's murdered the ex-King.
(Speaks French)
- So knowing just how fast Richard dies... - (Shouts in French)
...I think it's pretty obvious what really happens.
Richard II, the boy-king who crushed the Peasants' Revolt,
was simply left in a room with no food and no water, allowed to die of thirst.
It's a grim way to die.
As his kidneys shut down, his blood thickens and ear-splitting headaches set in.
Richard would have had plenty of time to think about his mistakes.
The King dies without a mark on him.
So technically no one, especially not the new King, has blood on their hands.
Richard II is dead.
It's the end of one of the greatest periods in British history.
The Crown of England had passed down legitimately through eight generations,
since Henry II established the Plantagenet dynasty two and a half centuries earlier.
Henry IV's coronation ends that.
From now on, anyone with a drop of royal blood can theoretically claim the throne.
And that possibility will plunge England into the Wars of the Roses
and half a century of civil war.
Ripped By mstoll, adjusted by GeoffS