Within the Hollow Crown Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Reading Group Guide

  About the Author

  Copyright © 1948, 1958, 2010 by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  Cover and internal design © 2010 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Series design by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by Rebecca Lown

  Cover image © Bridgeman Art Library

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

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  Originally published in 1948 by Macdonald and Jane's Publishers Limited.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Barnes, Margaret Campbell.

  Within the hollow crown : a reluctant king, a desperate nation, and the most misunderstood reign in history / Margaret Campbell Barnes. p. cm.

  1. Richard II, King of England, 1367-1400—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—

  History—Richard III, 1483-1485—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6003.A72W58 2010

  823'.912—dc22

  2009046226

  de Bohun

  Thomas of=EleanorWoodstock,Duke ofGloucestermurd. 1397

  Duke of Yorkd. 1402=Isabelle

  Edmund of Langley,

  of Castile

  d. 1399

  =Katherine Swynford

  Blanch=John of Gaunt,

  (Ist wife) Duke of Lancaster

  e

  1327-77

  Edward III=Philippa of Hainault

  Burgh

  Lionel, Duke of Clarenc d. 1368 = Elizabeth de

  Prince=Joan

  Edward the Black

  d. 1376 of Kent

  The Dukes ofBuckingham

  Edward ofAumerle

  (Bolingbroke)1399–1413

  Mary de=Henry IV Bohun

  Edmund=Philippa

  V

  Henry

  time of

  death)

  Richard's

  First Lancastrian king

  (a boy at the

  Marchd. 1381

  Mortimer,3rd Earl of

  Richard II1377–99

  (dep. & murd.)

  Last Plantagenet

  Marchd. 1398

  4th Earl of

  Edmund Mortimer,

  (a boy at time ofRichard II's death)

  Eleanor RogerHolland=Mortimer,

  5th Earl of March, d. 1425

  king

  "…Within the hollow crown

  That rounds the mortal temples of a king

  Keeps Death his court, and there the antick sits,

  Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,

  Allowing him a breath, a little scene,

  To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks,

  Infusing him with self and vain conceit

  As if the flesh which walls about our life

  Were brass impregnable; and humoured thus

  Comes at the last, and with a little pin

  Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!"

  Shakespeare, The Tragedy of King Richard II

  Author's Note

  In attempting to write a novel concerning a character so hedged about with controversy it has been necessary to read and weigh up a voluminous amount of contradictory testimony. Nothing was too bad to say about the second Richard after Henry Bolingbroke had usurped his throne, and the whole tone of contemporary chroniclers changes abruptly; yet to unintimidated French historians he remained the highly civilized person who was kind to Isabel of Valois and strove consistently for peace. And the comparatively recent discovery of a manuscript written by a Cistercian monk of Dieulacres Abbey shows the capable young king in a far kinder light than is allowed by any Lancastrian historian.

  In the case of the King's younger uncles and one or two other characters whose rank and titles changed during the reign, only one title has been used in order to avoid confusion.

  My thanks are due to the Librarian and staff of the Epsom and Ewell Public Libraries, and to the authors of works which I have consulted: Richard the Second, Anthony Steel; Richard II, H. A. Wallon, Paris; The Deposition of Richard II, M. V. Clarke, M.A., and Professor V. H. Galbraith, M.A.; King Richard II, Shakespeare; Richard of Bordeaux, Gordon Daviot; Chronique de la Traison et Mort, English Historical Society; Extracts from the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester; Froissart's Chronicles, Translated by Lord Berners; Froissart, Chronicler and Poet, F. S. Shears; Chaucer's Poems; Chaucer and his England, Dr. G. G. Coulton; Chaucer, George H. Cowling; Lives of the Queens of England, Agnes Strickland; England in the Age of Wycliffe, Professor G. M. Trevelyan; The Black Prince, John Cammidge; Lord Mayors of London, W. and R. Woodcock; Men and Women of Plantagenet England, D. M. Stuart; Two Thousand Years of London, C. Whitaker-Wilson; History of East London, Hubert Llewellyn Smith; Our Cockney Ancestors, K. Hare; Love, Marriage and Romance in Old London, C. T. S. Thompson; Old London Illustrated, H. W. Brewer and Herbert A. Cox; The Tower of London, Canon Benham, D.D., F.S.A.; Everyday Things in England, C. H. B. and M. Quennell; History of Pontefract Castle, Richard H. H. Holmes; History of Bodiam Castle.

  Yarmouth, Isle of Wight.

  Part One

  "Tout ce qui est de beau ne se garde longtemps, Les roses et les lys ne regnent qu'un printemps." —RONSARD

  Chapter One

  Young Richard Plantagenet knelt by a richly blazoned tomb in Canterbury Cathedral while priests and monks chanted prayers for the repose of his father's soul. Every now and then he made a valiant effort to recall his wandering thoughts and leash them to the solemn meaning of the Latin words; but it was difficult not to drowse in an atmosphere so heavy with incense and packed humanity. He was only fifteen and this was the fifth anniversary of the Black Prince's death, and even when he had been alive Richard hadn't cared for him with all that
passion of loyalty of which he was capable.

  Not that he would have dreamed of telling anyone so, of course—unless perhaps it were his closest friend, Robert de Vere.

  Such an unnatural confession would hurt his mother and shock his uncles, besides seeming to admit some rather shameful lack of appreciation in himself. For hadn't all these people crowded into the Cathedral year after year on the Black Prince's birthday to pay homage to a national hero? And wasn't all England still mourning for the martial, grown-up king they might have had instead of a useless minor like himself? But unfortunately his illustrious father had always been too busy fighting to play with him when he was small and Richard remembered him mostly as an irritable invalid, blighted in his prime by some unpleasant disease picked up in the Spanish campaign.

  Actually, he had preferred his old war-horse of a grandfather, Edward the Third, who had lived a year longer and anxiously bequeathed him the crown.

  At last the long Requiem chants died away in a series of lovely, diminishing echoes that pursued each other upwards from choir to clerestory and out through the open arches, one hoped, to the feet of God. Richard eased his knees from a faldstool and seated himself beside his mother to listen to the usual eulogy of their dead. Sudbury, the Archbishop, spoke proudly of how the late Prince of Wales had carried the renown of English arms like a flaunting banner across the Continent—of his courage at Crécy and his generalship at Poitiers. His effective voice was like a clarion call to the new, untried generation, and Richard, in common with other youngsters of his age, gazed with apologetic awe at the recumbent effigy of the proven warrior, flanked by a hardy company of living comrades-in-arms bearing the famous black armour and the captured ostrich feathers of Bohemia. He had been brought up on the names of Crécy and Poitiers. The overworked words had been dinned into him until something inside him sickened secretly at the sound of them. He felt that people used them unfairly, like pikes to prod him with, so that in self-defence he tried to avoid the warlike things they stood for. Unconsciously, against such high-sounding standards, he was always striving to keep inviolate that precious indescribable thing which was himself—the spiritual quality which so many well-meaning people tried to encroach upon. And being both imaginative and intelligent, he could usually find plenty of alleys of mental escape when he didn't want to listen to them. Even now, while formally trying to fill a chair of state which was considerably too big for him, he was able to give the primate's eloquence the slip and enter into the intimate, satisfying world of his own conceits.

  He couldn't be bored for long in so exquisite and interesting a place. If his father's war cult left him cold, the boy had imbibed his mother's cult of beauty. He loved the rich colours of vestments and stained glass, the cool mysterious perspective of dim aisles and the grandeur of tall arches soaring into the vaulting of the roof. By sliding forward a little in his chair he could catch a glimpse of the worn steps leading to Becket's golden shrine and relive the well-known tragedy of a previous Plantagenet's anger and remorse. What must it feel like, he wondered, to be murdered. How must poor Saint Thomas have reacted when he saw the King's knights invading his sanctuary? Had he suffered much? Richard shivered involuntarily, miserably uncertain whether he himself could ever face the violence of four assassins with the bravery of Becket. "Priest or no priest, he set about some of them first!" he recalled, reconstructing the thrilling scene which he and Robert de Vere had pestered their tutor to recount so often. From the time when he had first come from Bordeaux it had formed a favourite theme for their "play-acting"; and what with his own vivid imagination and Robert's dramatic skill, they had managed to scare themselves deliciously. And as soon as they were a bit older they had ghoulishly searched the Cathedral floor for bloodstains.

  But all that had been in the untrammelled days when he was only the King of England's grandson. Richard suppressed a yawn and tried to ease the heavy ermine cloak about his shoulders. For want of something better to do he began picturing the masons of William of Sens' time scaling ladders or standing on precarious stagings to build the lovely choir, and devoted monks carving queer little faces of men and beasts and angels. Sometimes they set the perfection of these reflections of their own laughing, Christ-loving souls so humbly high up—so removed from the earthbound glances of the righteous—that they seemed almost to be intended for an intimate, tender jest between craftsman and Creator. He remembered seeing one harsh, self-important face that had reminded him of his Uncle Thomas, a handsome one on some doorway that was like Uncle John and a grotesquely puff-cheeked figure of Gluttony that might have been meant for Uncle Edmund of York when he was hungry. The memory of such fortuitous resemblances delighted their unregenerate nephew so much that he almost forgot the solemnity of the occasion and laughed aloud. Mercifully he was hidden from Thomas of Gloucester by a massive pillar, York was dozing gently, and John of Lancaster—the eldest of the uncles—was up north trying to finish off some peace negotiations with Scotland.

  While the familiar recitation of his father's virtues drew towards its concluding homily, Richard turned his attention to the newly restored nave with its half-finished aisles. In spite of workmen's scaffoldings it was packed with people who had come surging after the royal party through the great west doors. He often wondered why they came so far and stood in such discomfort to see him. The men always shouted for him good-naturedly, the women sometimes cried a little because of his youth; and he on his side was always careful not to show his repugnance for their frowsty clothes and sweating bodies. For even if his mother spoiled him, at least she insisted upon good manners. And whenever he had complained about the way some of them stank, his tutor, Sir Simon Burley, had pointed out that no one who had seen inside their houses could expect them to wash much. Naturally, this was one of the things Richard had immediately wanted to do, but no one would let him for fear of the plague. But when he really began to rule he meant to do something for them, poor wretches, if only because of their unbelievable patience. Patience was the virtue Sir Simon was always exhorting him to have—particularly with the uncles—and he found it the most difficult of all to acquire.

  Although he often speculated about the common people and the queer, brutish lives they led, he hadn't, of course, an idea of what they thought about him. Being a decently modest lad, he supposed that they had followed him into the Cathedral mostly for his father's sake, and he was unaware of the reassuring picture he made for their anxious eyes. During the four years since his grandfather died he had learned to face their gaze with composure, so that even grudging, hard-bitten Thomas of Gloucester had to admit that he held himself well. The grandeur of the building made a fitting background for his fair and flawless youth and the glow of innumerable tapers warmed his smoothly burnished hair to the ruddy hue they associated with their kings, so that they were able to see in him the incarnation of those vaguely stirring, inarticulate ideals which lift even the coarsest clod above the beasts he tends, to some dim consciousness of his mislaid divinity.

  At last the Archbishop's hand was raised in final blessing. Richard glanced sidelong at his mother. Tears were slipping like chaplet beads between her white, perfumed fingers and falling desolately on to the grey flagstones as she knelt. This annual Requiem Mass was no formal anniversary to her. For all her frail frivolity she had loved her last husband passionately and nursed him devotedly. Because their first-born son had died, the only remaining one was doubly precious. She wanted to keep and cosset him. Richard understood this and adored her. But he often resented the cosseting and thought how much pleasanter it would be to be loved wholly for one's own sake.

  Monks and choristers were beginning to file out into the ambulatory with a gentle slither of sandalled feet and he stood up beside his mother, protectingly. He took her missal and carried it for her before any of her women could offer to do so—partly because he loved the smell and feel of the soft tooled leather and partly as an excuse to touch her hand encouragingly. And although her lashes were still we
t, she smiled a little, thinking what an understanding lover he would make. Unlike most of the Plantagenets, the Black Prince had not been a tall man, and she could almost imagine for a moment that it was he himself walking down the aisle beside her. This child of their passion, so inconveniently born at Bordeaux in the midst of men's preparations for battle, was shooting up and would soon be leaving boyhood behind. "You must grow up like him—and I shall be so proud!" she whispered inevitably.

  "Yes, madam," murmured Richard dutifully. But as they came out into the summer sunshine together, the half-hearted promise was borne away on the frantic cheering of the crowd. And he didn't really want to grow up like his father, always careering about Europe killing people. Nor like anybody else. All he asked was to be allowed to grow up in peace as himself, unheroic and ordinary, with all his keen young interests vibrant and unthwarted. He didn't want to be moulded by his dictatorial Uncle John, nor his ineffectual Uncle Edmund, nor his bellicose Uncle Thomas—nor even influenced too much by her…

  Edmund of York was at his elbow now, fussing about the lateness of the hour. "A splendid sermon!" he observed, although he had dozed through most of it. "We are fortunate—you and I, my boy—in having been sired by such fathers!"