A fragile peace Richard gradually re-established royal authority in the months after the deliberations of the Merciless Parliament. The aggressive foreign policy of the Lords Appellant failed when their efforts to build a wide, anti-French coalition came to nothing, and the north of England fell victim to a
Scottish incursion. Richard was now over twenty-one years old and could with confidence claim the right to govern in his own name. Furthermore, John of Gaunt returned to England in 1389 and settled his differences with the King, after which the old statesman acted as a moderating influence on English politics. Richard assumed full control of the government on 3 May 1389, claiming that the difficulties of the past years had been due solely to bad councillors. He outlined a foreign policy that reversed the actions of the appellants by seeking peace and reconciliation with France, and promised to lessen the burden of taxation on the people significantly. In particular, the execution of his former teacher Sir Simon de Burley was an insult not easily forgotten. on their wedding day in 1396. She was six – he was 29. With national stability secured, Richard began negotiating a permanent peace with France. A proposal put forward in 1393 would have greatly expanded the territory of
Aquitaine possessed by the English Crown. However, the plan failed because it included a requirement that the English king pay
homage to the King of France—a condition that proved unacceptable to the English public. Instead, in 1396, a truce was agreed to, which was to last 28 years. As part of the truce, Richard agreed to marry
Isabella of Valois, daughter of
Charles VI of France, when she came of age. There were some misgivings about the betrothal, in particular, because the princess was then only six years old and thus would not be able to produce an heir to the throne of England for many years. Although Richard sought peace with France, he took a different approach to the situation in Ireland. The English
lordships in Ireland were in danger of being overrun by the Gaelic Irish kingdoms, and the
Anglo-Irish lords were pleading for the King to intervene. In the autumn of 1394, Richard left for Ireland, where he remained until May 1395. His army of more than 8,000 men was the largest force brought to the island during the late Middle Ages. The invasion was a success, and a number of Irish chieftains submitted to English overlordship. It was one of the most successful achievements of Richard's reign, and strengthened his support at home, although the consolidation of the English position in Ireland proved to be short-lived. The King had Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick arrested in July 1397. The timing of these arrests and Richard's motivation are not entirely clear. Although one chronicle suggested that a plot was being planned against the King, there is no evidence that this was the case. It is more likely that Richard had simply come to feel strong enough to safely retaliate against these three men for their role in events of 1386–1388 and eliminate them as threats to his power. Arundel was the first of the three to be brought to trial, at the parliament of September 1397. After a heated quarrel with the King, he was condemned and executed. Gloucester was being held prisoner by the Earl of Nottingham at Calais while awaiting his trial. As the time for the trial drew near, Nottingham brought news that Gloucester was dead. It is thought likely that the King had ordered him to be killed to avoid the disgrace of executing a prince of the blood. Warwick was also condemned to death, but his life was spared and his sentence reduced to life imprisonment. Arundel's brother
Thomas Arundel, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was exiled for life. Richard then took his persecution of adversaries to the localities. While recruiting
retainers for himself in various counties, he prosecuted local men who had been loyal to the appellants. The fines levied on these men brought great revenues to the crown, although contemporary chroniclers raised questions about the legality of the proceedings. These included the former Lords Appellant •
Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, who was made
Duke of Hereford, and • Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, who was created
Duke of Norfolk. Also among them were •
John Holland, the King's half-brother, promoted from
Earl of Huntingdon to
Duke of Exeter •
Thomas Holland, the King's nephew, promoted from
Earl of Kent to
Duke of Surrey •
Edward of Norwich, Earl of Rutland, the King's cousin, who received Gloucester's French title of
Duke of Aumale • Gaunt's son
John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset, who was made
Marquess of Somerset and
Marquess of Dorset •
John Montacute, 3rd Earl of Salisbury •
Lord Thomas le Despenser, who became
Earl of Gloucester. With the forfeited lands of the convicted appellants, the King could reward these men with lands suited to their new ranks. A threat to Richard's authority still existed, however, in the form of the
House of Lancaster, represented by John of Gaunt and his son Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford. The House of Lancaster not only possessed greater wealth than any other family in England, they were of royal descent and, as such, likely candidates to succeed the childless Richard. Discord broke out in the inner circles of court in December 1397, when Bolingbroke and Mowbray became embroiled in a quarrel. According to Bolingbroke, Mowbray had claimed that the two, as former Lords Appellant, were next in line for royal retribution. Mowbray vehemently denied these charges, as such a claim would have amounted to treason. In 1398 Richard summoned the Parliament of
Shrewsbury, often called the Revenge Parliament and understood to have met in the Abbey of that town, which declared all the acts of the Merciless Parliament to be null and void, and announced that no restraint could legally be put on the King. It delegated all parliamentary power to a committee of twelve lords and six commoners chosen from the King's friends, making Richard an absolute ruler unbound by the necessity of gathering a Parliament again. On 3 February 1399, Gaunt died. Rather than allowing Bolingbroke to succeed, Richard extended the term of his exile to life and expropriated his properties. The King felt safe from Bolingbroke, who was residing in Paris, since the French had little interest in any challenge to Richard and his peace policy. Richard left the country in May for another expedition in Ireland.
Court culture In the last years of Richard's reign, and particularly in the months after the suppression of the appellants in 1397, the King enjoyed a virtual monopoly on power in the country, a relatively uncommon situation in medieval England. In this period a particular court culture was allowed to emerge, one that differed sharply from that of earlier times. A new form of address developed; where the King previously had been addressed simply as "
highness", now "royal
majesty", or "high majesty" were often used. It was said that on solemn festivals Richard would sit on his throne in the royal hall for hours without speaking, and anyone on whom his eyes fell had to bow his knees to the King. The inspiration for this new sumptuousness and emphasis on dignity came from the courts on the continent, not only the French and Bohemian courts that had been the homes of Richard's two wives, but also the court that his father had maintained while residing in Aquitaine. Richard's approach to kingship was rooted in his strong belief in the
royal prerogative, the inspiration of which can be found in his early youth, when his authority was challenged first by the Peasants' Revolts and then by the Lords Appellant. Richard rejected the approach his grandfather Edward III had taken to the nobility. Edward's court had been a martial one, based on the interdependence between the king and his most trusted noblemen as military captains. In Richard's view, this put a dangerous amount of power in the hands of the baronage. To avoid dependence on the nobility for military recruitment, he pursued a policy of peace towards France. At the same time, he developed his own private military retinue, larger than that of any English king before him, and gave them
livery badges with his
White Hart. He was then free to develop a courtly atmosphere in which the king was a distant, venerated figure, and art and culture, rather than warfare, were at the centre. == Patronage and the arts ==