Richard II of England

About Richard II of England

Who is it?: King of England
Birth Day: January 06, 1367
Died On: c. 14 February 1400(1400-02-14) (aged 33)\nPontefract Castle, Yorkshire
Birth Sign: Aquarius
Reign: 21 June 1377 – 30 September 1399
Coronation: 16 July 1377
Predecessor: Edward III
Successor: Henry IV
Burial: 6 March 1400 Kings Langley, Hertfordshire 1413 Westminster Abbey, London
Consort: Anne of Bohemia (m. 1382; d. 1394) Isabella of Valois (m. 1396)
House: Plantagenet
Father: Edward, the Black Prince
Mother: Joan, 4th Countess of Kent

Richard II of England Net Worth

Richard II of England was born on January 06, 1367, is King of England. Richard II was the King of England from 1377 to 1399. Also known as Richard of Bordeaux, he was an ambitious king with great political aspirations. His reign was marked by several political upheavals and the early years of his reign were overshadowed by the Hundred Years’ War and a prolonged struggle with France. Richard was one of the sons of Edward, the Black Prince and was born during the reign of his grandfather, Edward III. His father was the heir apparent to succeed to the throne held by his grandfather but the untimely death of Edward the Black Prince made Richard the first in line for the throne. His grandfather died in 1377 and Richard, aged just ten at the time, succeeded to the throne. Due to his young age, the control of the government was placed in the hands of a series of councils, and the young king’s uncle, John of Gaunt became a highly influential person in the English court. Richard was just a teenager when he faced his first major challenge as the king—the Peasants’ Revolt. He played a key role in the suppression of this revolt and earned the respect of his citizens. Eventually he assumed the control of government himself but his growing dependency on a small group of courtiers made him unpopular. He was finally deposed by his cousin Henry of Bolingbroke who took the throne of England for himself
Richard II of England is a member of Historical Personalities

💰 Net worth: Under Review

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Biography/Timeline

1871

Contemporary Writers, even those less sympathetic to the king, agreed that Richard was a "most beautiful king", though with a "face which was white, rounded and feminine", implying he lacked manliness. He was athletic and tall; when his tomb was opened in 1871 he was found to be six feet tall. He was also intelligent and well read, and when agitated he had a tendency to stammer. While the Westminster Abbey portrait probably shows a good similarity of the king, the Wilton Diptych portrays the king as significantly younger than he was at the time; it must be assumed that he had a beard by this point. Religiously, he was orthodox, and particularly towards the end of his reign he became a strong opponent of the Lollard heresy. He was particularly devoted to the cult of Edward the Confessor, and around 1395 he had his own coat of arms impaled with the mythical arms of the Confessor. Though not a warrior king like his grandfather, Richard nevertheless enjoyed tournaments, as well as hunting.

1941

Richard's mental state has been a major issue of historical debate since the first academic historians started treating the subject in the 19th century. One of the first modern historians to deal with Richard II as a king and as a person was Bishop Stubbs. Stubbs argued that towards the end of his reign, Richard's mind "was losing its balance altogether". Historian Anthony Steel, who wrote a full-scale biography of the king in 1941, took a psychiatric approach to the issue, and concluded that the king had schizophrenia. This was challenged by V. H. Galbraith, who argued that there was no historical basis for such a diagnosis, a line that has also been followed by later historians of the period, such as Anthony Goodman and Anthony Tuck. Nigel Saul, who wrote the most recent academic biography on Richard II, concedes that – even though there is no basis for assuming the king had a mental illness – he showed clear signs of a narcissistic personality, and towards the end of his reign "Richard's grasp on reality was becoming weaker".

2013

Rumours that Richard was still alive persisted, but never gained much credence in England; in Scotland, however, a man identified as Richard came into the hands of Regent Albany, lodged in Stirling Castle, and serving as the notional – and perhaps reluctant – figurehead of various anti-Lancastrian and Lollard intrigues in England. Henry IV's government dismissed him as an impostor, and several sources from both sides of the Border suggest the man had a mental illness, one also describing him as a "beggar" by the time of his death in 1419, but he was buried as a king in the local Dominican friary in Stirling. Meanwhile, in 1413, Henry V – in an effort both to atone for his father's act of murder and to silence the rumours of Richard's survival – had decided to have the body at King's Langley moved to its final resting place in Westminster Abbey. Here Richard himself had prepared an elaborate tomb, where the remains of his wife Anne were already entombed.

2015

Richard's posthumous reputation has been shaped to a large extent by william Shakespeare, whose play Richard II portrayed Richard's misrule and his deposition by Bolingbroke as responsible for the 15th-century Wars of the Roses. Modern historians do not accept this interpretation, while not exonerating Richard from responsibility for his own deposition. While probably not insane, as historians of the 19th and 20th centuries believed, he may have had what Psychologists today identify as a personality disorder, particularly manifesting itself towards the end of his reign. Most authorities agree that, even though his policies were not unprecedented or entirely unrealistic, the way in which he carried them out was unacceptable to the political establishment, and this led to his downfall.