At Medieval Court How to Get Ahead

In the days of absolute monarchy,

the royal court was where you went to get ahead.

It was the nation's heart of power, influence and money.

But life at court was a game of high stakes.

It could make you, or it could break you.

Even kings and queens could lose a crown

by misjudging the mood at court.

Fortunes rose and fell.

Richard II was the first English king

to use art and rhetoric to build a sophisticated court.

It gave his reign a new aura.

Richard wanted to the take monarchy to a whole new level.

Until his day, the king was first among equals -

leader of the gang, sure, but still one of the chaps.

Instead, Richard craved absolute power, veneration,

the aura of divinity, even.

He was the first monarch who insisted on being addressed as

"Your Highness", "Your Majesty", even "Your High Royal Presence".

Richard still needed fearless warriors, like kings before him.

The art of chivalry was as important as ever.

Now there were new ways to flatter and indulge a king.

It's pretty hot in the old kitchens of Richard II.

'Dress to impress.

'Tell stories.'

Geoffrey Chaucer, the first

great superstar of English letters.

But Richard was a tricky customer.

Everything about his life was different and odd and other.

Being close to him brought many a courtier to a sticky end.

He could be spiky, thin-skinned, peevish,

over-sensitive, effete.

He could be the best of friends and company,

the next minute turn wrathful and difficult, he was unpredictable.

He liked the finer things in life, like clothes, food, architecture.

He had an artistic sensibility

at a time when nobody had heard of such a thing.

He was married twice

but had close male friends about whom rumours circulated.

Richard was altogether too complicated,

too modern for his time, and he would pay the price for that.

Richard's reign began in July, 1377

with the most splendid coronation England had ever seen.

A cavalcade of 3,000 courtiers paraded

through the streets of London to Westminster.

A red carpet marked the route into the abbey and up to the high altar.

As one chronicler wrote,

"It was a day of joyful gladness and of the braying of trumpets."

At the heart of all this fanfare and flummery was a ten-year-old child.

Richard was the youngest king ever crowned here at the abbey.

The oppressive grandeur of the occasion,

the sheer immensity of this old place,

even now one feels the weight of the fabric, the stone,

the history upon you, pressing down -

how much more of a burden, then,

upon the frail shoulders of a child barely out of short trousers.

Richard wasn't the only one quaking at the knees.

For most courtiers, this was their first chance to get close

to their new king - and first impressions mattered.

The burden of the great occasion weighed heavily on everyone present.

Every courtier, every guest, every bishop and servant,

each knew that they had to fulfil their role perfectly

because the merest misstep or hiccup,

to the superstitious medieval mind, was a portent of doom,

overshadowing Richard's reign before it had even begun.

Pre-eminent amongst the grand array of courtiers

was the King's Champion.

He rode a magnificent charger and wore a full suit of armour

while offering mortal combat to anyone who opposed Richard's rule.

No courtier was more important than the King's Champion.

And it was his role to proclaim aloud,

"If there be any man of high degree or low,

"that will say that this, our sovereign liege, Lord Richard,

"ought not of right to be King of England crowned,

"I am ready now till the last hour of my breath,

"with my body to beat him like a false man or a traitor."

This magnificent picture - the king seen against a backdrop

of gold gesso - is known to this day as The Coronation Portrait,

as if there could be no other.

And certainly there'd been nothing like this before.

It's the work of that distinguished artist, Anonymous.

Sadly, we don't know the identity of the gifted hand

responsible for this work.

But we do know that it's a milestone in art history and monarchy.

Before Richard, no king had been rendered on this scale,

bigger than life.

Until now, religious sensibilities meant that the sitter,

however elevated, would be seen in profile.

But Richard presumed to address the viewer directly,

looking straight into his eyes.

What this is saying is, "Here's a young man who believes,

"who understands in his bones, that his calling is from on high,

"from God himself."

This is the beginning of an aura of divinity around kingship

and if you look into Richard's eyes, even now, you can't doubt

he believes his calling is from the highest authority.

If you wanted to get ahead in Richard's court,

you had to be ahead of the latest fashions.

The king himself was certainly a dapper dresser.

He couldn't get enough fur, velvet and cloth of gold.

He was said to have spent £20,000 on a single outfit,

an unbelievable fortune.

Courtiers had to be well turned out, from head to toe.

We think we're the first people

to worry about the size of our footprint,

but in the 1300s, courtiers were falling over each other,

sometimes themselves, to put their best foot forward.

This is the Medieval cloth town of Lavenham in Suffolk,

where Paul Wragg is making pointed Medieval shoes, known as poulaines.

-Hello, Paul, I'm Stephen. How are you?

-Fine, thank you.

Proper little elves' workshop you've got going on. Can I sit down?

-Yeah, please do.

-So what are you doing?

Making a pair of shoes, a pair of poulaines.

Like nothing I've ever seen before.

How on earth would you even go about making a pair like that?

First of all, I would make a pattern of your feet,

take a drawing around your feet.

And then measurements across and around.

And then I'd transpose that onto a piece of leather and sew them

inside out along this, what we call the lasting seam.

And when the shoe is ready for turning, it's soaked in water

and then turned.

Were there any rules that you're aware of

determining who could wear what?

The length of the shoe was commensurate with your status in society.

So if you were of a lowly status,

you would only be allowed a very short poulaine.

If you were of a royal, kingly status,

-these could be as long as you like.

-The sky is the limit.

Now, I know you've kindly been making a pair of poulaines for me.

-Are these them?

-No, yours...

-They're finished!

..are here, in fashionable red.

Wow, get a load of those.

I was hoping for a long pair, but these will do.

-Love to try them.

-Please do.

'And to complete the look...'

-What's that?

-Hat as well.

-Seriously?

-Yeah.

Is there somewhere where I can slip into something less comfortable?

-Through there.

-Thank you.

Have fun.

Well, Paul, nice piece of work.

-Thank you.

-The only trouble is that I don't have a bag to go with them.

-What's the size of that?

-Even bigger.

Fill this room. To be honest with you, and I don't want to hurt your feelings,

-they're not for every day.

-No.

-Are they?

-No.

I mean, cycling's out... the allotment..

I think this is the finest cobblers I've ever been involved with, Paul.

-Thank you very much. God bless you.

-Thank you.

Richard's childhood was overshadowed by his father, the Black Prince.

He was a warrior down to his gore-flecked bootstraps

and was forever waging war.

His own chance of becoming king was snatched away

by his untimely death, leaving Richard to take the throne.

But who'd be there to guide him?

What Richard needed was a role model, as we say now,

a father figure, and there was no shortage of suitable candidates.

There was his own uncle, John of Gaunt.

His trusted tutors, Simon Burley and Guichard D'Angle.

There was even the Chamberlain of his household,

a man called Aubrey de Vere.

But nobody was better suited to the job than

the Archbishop of Canterbury,

the man who'd placed the crown on Richard's head at his coronation.

He was the pious Simon Sudbury.

Sudbury was always there for Richard.

After the Black Prince's death, he praised him as

"a fair son and the very image of his father'.

Richard made him one of his closest advisors.

But in 1381, the year of the Peasant's Revolt,

Sudbury's position at the king's right hand put him in danger.

The ugly truth was that when things turned nasty,

there was nothing the mob liked better

than exacting revenge against the king by killing someone he loved.

And that dire fate befell the king's father figure, Simon Sudbury.

Tragically for Richard, and for Simon, too, of course.

Here at St Gregory's Church in Sudbury,

there's a grizzly reminder of his end.

BELL TOLLS

Good afternoon, Vicar, how are you?

Good afternoon, Stephen. Welcome to St Gregory's.

Thank you very much. I believe you have a fascinating relic of Simon Sudbury.

Yes, you could call it a relic. Yes, we have.

Come this way, Stephen.

-The head's behind here.

-The head?

-It's a head?

-It's a head.

-My goodness.

-There we are, that's the head of Simon of Sudbury.

And it's a head, not a skull because there's little bits of flesh

and skin and cartilage.

How did they achieve that, that mummification process?

The story is that he was beheaded in the White Tower

as part of the Peasants' Revolt

and the head was put on a spike on London Bridge.

And apparently it was a very hot time of year, in the summer,

and it sort of mummified, I suppose, over that period of time.

And then the good folk of Sudbury took pity on the head

and felt it should come back here

to his home town of Sudbury, so brought back,

and it's been in the town ever since, so well over 600 years.

Can we take him out and have a look at him?

We can't touch him, I'm afraid, but I can tell you a bit more about him,

if you like, having seen it myself on another occasion.

On the back of the head, you can actually see marks

where the attempted beheading took place.

And the story goes that it took seven blows to take that head off,

which must have been horrific.

It's tough at the top but it's lonely, too.

And throughout history, leaders, monarchs have surrounded themselves

with their special people, intimates, familiars, favourites.

Those with whom they could talk in an unguarded way

removed from the strictures of court life.

But it's a slippery business being a favourite.

It tends to breed suspicion, enmity, bitter hatred, controversy.

And that was never truer than in the case of Richard.

One favourite caused more controversy than any other.

His name was Robert de Vere, tenth Earl of Oxford.

This was Robert de Vere's home.

His relationship with Richard was so close, it provoked resentment,

even scandal. Perhaps those two things were connected.

Thomas Walsingham, a leading chronicler of the day, a man

who could give any modern tabloid journalist a run for his money,

wrote of the king's relationship like this, "According to rumour,

"his closeness to Lord Robert and his deep love and affection for him

"was not without some taint of an obscene relationship."

Or, as Walsingham put it in Latin, the king was guilty of

"familiaritatis obsoenae".

Next door to the castle, de Vere's descendant, Demetra Lindsay,

still lives in the family home.

-Demetra, hello.

-Stephen.

-How are you?

-Very nice to see you.

-Come in!

-Thank you.

Smashing place.

Can we talk about your ancestor

and his friendship with the king?

What did the two of them have in common,

what was the bond that brought them together?

I think there was a rather nice relationship between them

because the Earl of Oxford, Robert, was five years older than Richard

and I think there was a certain amount of adoration going on.

-It was a sort of hero worship, in a way?

-I think so.

And from Robert's point of view, it was no bad thing

to be that close to Richard, of course.

I think it was certainly good for Robert.

Of course, Richard created the title of Marquess,

-for the very first time, for Robert.

-Just plucked it out of the air?

And then all these earls are sitting there

and suddenly there's a new title that they couldn't even aspire to.

There was Robert being showered with all these benisons,

all these titles and estates.

That wouldn't have been popular with everybody, I suppose.

I think it caused sincere jealousy at court.

So you wouldn't give any house room to these suggestions

that their relationship was more than platonic and friendly?

I'm sure you've heard the suggestions.

Absolutely, I...I see the whole of their relationship in the context

of this extraordinary place here

and that it was two boys growing up

in rather a fun and war-free time in England

and that it was just all about fun

and, you know, country pursuits.

But de Vere and Richard's other favourites were heading for a fall.

In 1387, a group of leading nobles

took control of the government by force

and executed or exiled Richard's closest friends.

De Vere was banished to France where he died in poverty two years later.

Richard arranged for his casket to be returned to England

and there's this touching, contemporary account of the funeral.

"Richard took care to open the cypress wood coffin,

"in which the body lay after being embalmed.

"He looked long at the face and touched it with his finger,

"publicly showing to Robert, when dead,

"the affection which he'd shown him previously when alive."

Freud would have had a field day with Richard,

but Shakespeare got there first.

His play, Richard II,

delves into the dark corners of the King's psyche.

David Tennant has played the King to great acclaim

for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Not all the water in the rough rude sea

can wash the balm off from an anointed king.

So you're immersing yourself in Richard II.

Is it fun to be him up there every night?

Um, it's...

There's something peculiarly exciting about entering

to trumpet fanfares every time you walk on stage.

What does that do to you?

It certainly swells the breast and you can imagine that it would

distort the ego as well, were that happening to you every day in life.

You can see why Richard would assume the airs that he did.

The modern equivalent was Michael Jackson -

just someone who'd lived in this kind of extraordinary...

From a very, very young age, they'd been other and different

and treated differently and then, possibly because of that,

you develop a psychology that's quite alien

and difficult to understand to the outside world

because you are not as other men, really.

God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay a glorious angel.

Then, if angels fight...

weak men must fall.

And can I just ask about the hair?

Is that based on intense research?

Quite the opposite! No.

Richard had a sort of mop of red hair

from the paintings that we have.

But there's a certain androgyny to him, so we were looking

for something that found that sort of androgynousness,

something that would set him apart from the world of his court.

And what about if you'd been a courtier

because that's something we're looking at?

What would it have been like to be a courtier?

I think it must have been a daily struggle

to be at the court of one of these people

because any kind of autocrat, of course,

you're having to dance around their whims.

You know, you can be a favourite one day

and you can have your head chopped off the next.

So that must have been an incredible stress and strain,

to try and, you know, keep your status up,

to every day be trying to please the King, particularly

if that king was capricious and difficult and...

potentially, if you read some commentators,

by the end of his life, a little bit mad.

In the Middle Ages, it wasn't enough for the King to rule.

He had to be seen to be ruling.

And the best way to guard against fear and intrigue and rumour

and plotting was for the King himself to appear in your town

or village or hamlet. Then you knew who was in charge.

'Richard was always on the road, making circuits of his kingdom.

'They were known as gyrations.

'In one four-month period, he set off from Kings Langley

'then went to Thame, Woodstock, Northleach, Gloucester, Worcester,

'before heading north and then returning via

'Northampton, Newport Pagnell and Dunstable to Kings Langley.

'A few months later, he fetched up here - Leeds Castle.'

The Bishop of Ely confided despairingly

to his household ledger in the 1380s

that he'd been visited by a "multitudine copiosa" -

a copious multitude -

or, in layman's terms, the place was rammed.

To attend to his needs on the road, Richard somehow got by with

no more than 1,000 courtiers.

There were court officials, men-at-arms,

household servants, camp followers.

And after he married Anne of Bohemia,

she and her household of 120 retainers,

well, they went everywhere as well.

'As the chronicler Walsingham put it,

'Richard was guilty of "non offerre sed aufferre"

'which, as we all know, means taking and not giving.'

In theory, a visit from the King would be a signal honour.

In practice, only those with the fullest coffers

could afford to withstand it.

It was actually something to be dreaded.

Richard and his ever hungry crew

could eat and carouse their way through your fortune.

He was the house guest from hell.

Thanks, Gavin.

In the Middle Ages, court was a place for the chaps.

Going to war, defending the realm,

that was the stuff that the boys got up to.

And a powerful woman around the place tended to mean

instability, even civil war, so nobody liked to see that.

But that all changed with Richard's mother, the - how to put it -

colourful, perhaps scarlet, Joan of Kent.

She was the sex bomb of the Middle Ages.

She loved her rocks and she loved her frocks,

the tighter and more plunging, the better.

Scandalously, she was married to two different men at the same time

and neither of them was Richard's father.

Joan put her charms to good use by patching up Richard's quarrels.

During one blazing row between Richard and his uncle,

an onlooker noted that, "At length,

"by the praiseworthy mediation of the Lady Joan,

"the discord was put to sleep."

'Joan was a trailblazer. Where she led, other women followed.

'Here at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London,

'there's an extraordinary picture of women at court.

'The Devonshire Hunting Tapestries, as they're known,

'run for 133 feet and, for me,

'they're the greatest depiction of courtly life in the Middle Ages.'

This party are actually out hunting. It's an exercise in falconry

but it looks more like a garden party, doesn't it?

The striking thing about it is how many women there are in the scene.

It's like a beautiful fashion plate.

As far as you look, the eye is caught by pearls, headdresses,

lovely, rich, flowing robes with long trains.

Richard was very comfortable with women at court.

He was essentially peace-loving

and, under him, court was a place where other virtues flourished,

a place of civilisation, if you like,

of learning and scholarship, not of the more macho disciplines

associated with his father or earlier Medieval monarchs.

But, as ever, ladies climbing up the ladder put noses out of joint.

The chronicler Walsingham complained

that Richard's courtiers were knights of Venus, not Mars,

better suited to manoeuvres in the bedroom than on the field of battle.

And what of that terrific harpy, Joan of Kent -

the King's mother and the forerunner,

the role model, of all those thrusting ladies at court?

Well, her end couldn't have been more blackly ironic.

If Richard was anything, he was a mummy's boy

and yet, he was responsible for his mother's own death

in the most tragic and horrible of circumstances.

The King believed he'd been betrayed by his half-brother

and sentenced him to death

but Joan pleaded for the life of her other son.

For four days, she begged the King to change his mind

but Richard was implacable, unmovable.

On the fifth day, Joan died, of a broken heart, they said.

Capricious and contrary to the last,

Richard then spared the life of his half-brother.

Rather late for Joan.

Phew! Getting pretty funky in here!

Can you imagine the assault on the senses that was a Medieval court?

All those nobles, their staff

and servants huddled close together, with the aroma on them

of their livestock, their beasts and the last few meals they ate.

If you wanted to get ahead at court,

you had to pinch your nose and dive right in.

Now, Richard was a fastidious fellow.

He insisted on cleanliness and demanded it of those around him,

as this top-level reconstruction may help us to imagine.

For the first time, really, since Roman England, the bath began

to make a bit of a comeback, and that was largely thanks to the King.

At a palace in London - alas, sadly now lost -

Richard established a kind of grand privy for himself, actually,

something like a Turkish bath on a little isle or island

in the middle of the Thames, and there he would luxuriate,

surrounded by 2,000 hand-painted tiles,

while hot and cold running water - can you imagine the novelty? -

gushed from taps into his bath.

Nor were his courtiers deprived.

Bear in mind, this is a time

when it wasn't only the great unwashed

who tended to go around unwashed.

Richard had thought of their comfort and ease

and in the palace proper, they had latrines which they could use.

Now, historians have been looking for conclusive proof

of these latrines

but so far, they have nothing to go on.

'This is the College of Arms - England's home of heraldry.

'People come here to this day to have their coats of arms made.

'But alongside the distinctive shields of heraldry

'are the lesser known badges.

'Courtiers wearing the King's badge proclaimed their allegiance -

'their true colours.

'York Herald Peter O'Donoghue is here to show me

'some of the oldest treasures in this collection.'

Richard was the first king to really make widespread use

of badges as opposed to coats of arms as a symbol of himself,

of his personal identity, whereas the coat of arms is

specific to the King and it's about kingship and lineage.

The badge can be used much more widely.

It was a way of recruiting what we might call an affinity -

a bunch of men around the country, all of whom were

bound personally to him by their acceptance of the badge.

And this manuscript here gives us

a nice illustration of the badges that he used.

The Broom Coat, of course, the Plantagenet symbol.

The Sun Badge, the White Hart.

That's the device most commonly associated with Richard.

Yeah. It's a badge with strong associations

with Christ-like qualities of humility and sacrifice.

And Richard strongly associated himself with those characteristics.

All right. You had the King's badge, the King's colour.

Was that a sort of signifier that you would, one day,

receive money from him?

Not necessarily money. Influence and connections.

And that's really how a lot of justice

seemed to be carried out in that time.

So if you wore the King's badge, you might find

you didn't get as much trouble from the local justices.

You might find that you're recruited to put pressure on people.

Gentry families that are on the wrong side of a question

might find gangs of ruffians wearing a badge outside their gates,

making trouble...smashing things up.

You mentioned gangs. It does sound a bit like gang warfare,

it sounds like LA - the Bloods and the Crips.

Whose colours do you wear?

There is an element of that, absolutely right. Yeah.

And that was very much how it was perceived at the time.

It was known to be a problem.

So Richard was very partial to a badge, found them extremely useful.

In the long run, was he wise to rely on them quite as much as he did?

I don't think he was, you know, because I think that he was behaving

more like a warlord, more like a magnate and not as a king.

Kings shouldn't behave like they're trying to recruit private armies.

They are the state. They're a reflection of,

and embodiment of, the state, so for Richard to be actively

seeking to recruit retainers in that private way,

which was exactly the same thing that all the other noblemen did,

was controversial, to say the least.

In the Middle Ages, the best way to the King's heart

was straight through his rib cage with a cleaver

and Richard lived in fear of that. But you could get to him

by the more traditional route - through the stomach.

He liked his food.

He wasn't one of those gnaw on a chicken bone

and toss it to the mastiffs kind of rulers. No!

He would have been very partial to the nouvelle cuisine of today

and the first cookbook in these islands was written for him -

196 recipes, everything from Blancmange to porpoise soup.

That's soup made out of rare dolphin, by the way, not paupers.

Richard's cookbook, the Forme of Cury,

or, as we'd say now, Ways of Cooking,

was compiled by his master cooks -

some of the most important people in the royal household.

They were in charge of over 300 kitchen staff -

scullions, spit-turners, spicers.

'One cook who knows how to serve up a Medieval dish is

'Clarissa Dickson Wright.'

-Clarissa!

-Hello!

-How are you?

-I'm all right, thanks.

-Very nice to see you.

-Good to see you, too.

Welcome to my humble kitchen.

Yes. Nice place you have.

-Yeah, it's great.

-Anything for supper?

Well, we're going to have Eggradouce of Rabbit.

My favourite! Can't beat an Eggradouce! What on earth is that?

-Sweet and sour.

-Ah! Heard of that.

-You know, your Chinese restaurant,

you could have Eggradouce pork balls or something.

And did you say rabbit?

Oh, rabbit was the luxury food of the day.

Get away!

Incredibly expensive. They were all farmed in warrens.

And great lords would fight for the privilege

of having the licence to keep a warren.

So what I'm going to do, first of all, is just mix the sauce.

And that's just some chopped onions. That goes in there.

And in goes black pepper from India,

ginger and cinnamon from the Spice Islands.

And currants from the Levant.

So this is quite ostentatious in its way?

Oh, incredible! I mean, you know, you go to one of your top chefs nowadays,

-you wouldn't get anything quite as lavish as this.

-Really?

Not in terms of price, anyway.

That's just a bit of vinegar to add the sour to the sweet.

So, now, would you like to be my scullion?

-I'd be honoured.

-Ah, excellent!

-Right, what do I need to do?

-In with the rabbit?

-In with the rabbit.

-The whole lot or...

-Yes, all the pieces.

-It's making a good noise. There we go.

-Well done.

-It's pretty hot here.

-Yeah.

I'm so glad I've got my suit on for it. Perfect!

-Why do you think I'm letting you do it?

-Yeah!

It's pretty hot in the old kitchens of Richard II.

-Smells like Christmas.

-That's the cinnamon, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-How's that doing, would you say?

-That's perfect. Absolutely perfect.

And then we leave that to cook for 35, 40 minutes, something like that.

Feasts were gargantuan occasions.

2,000 guests at a time sat down at banqueting tables

arranged over many rooms.

They got through a staggering pile of food.

This is a shopping list for one of Richard's feasts.

And you've got all sorts of things. You've got curlew.

120 curlew, mind you.

Yup. Curlew, apparently, taste like very lean beef.

-Do they?

-I met an old gamekeeper who had it. You look at it.

There's a lot of salt meat

because they salted everything down in winter,

but then they have fresh meat here alongside it.

So you've got salt venison and fresh venison.

-This isn't puffin, is it?

-Oh, yeah.

Apparently, it tastes just like fishy grouse.

60 puffin.

Where are you going to find 60 puffin?

Well, I think there were

rather more puffin around than there are now.

Right, well, that should be done now.

Oops! Well, that spoon's gone. Right.

-There we are.

-Well done.

-Couple of bits.

-Couple of bits.

-How's that to be going on with?

-Perfect.

All I need now is a fork, of course.

-No, no! You wouldn't have had a fork!

-Really?

Forks didn't come in. They were very eccentric, even in Tudor times.

-Were they?

-Yeah. Jacobeans, really, started using forks.

-So what do we do? Bare knuckles?

-Spoons.

-Of course.

He was a great one for you bringing your own spoon to the party.

And the knife.

-Shall we tuck in?

-Why not?

-After you.

-Mm.

-Good?

-Mm. That's all right. See what you think.

-Mm. That's nice.

-Good, isn't it? Good flavour.

-Lovely, crunchy onions and currants.

-Mm.

Oh, I think I'd come back here.

To the Middle Ages.

One of the greatest treasures of Richard's reign

is to be found here, at the National Gallery.

It's strangely overlooked and neglected

and yet, in its own subtle way, it's every bit as enigmatic

and mysterious as, say, the Mona Lisa in Paris.

What it does tell us, unambiguously though,

is that Richard was the first English monarch who really

was passionate about art and understood what it could do for him.

'Since Richard was a king perpetually on the move,

'he needed portable trappings of power.

'None was more important than his altarpiece -

'the finest painting to survive from the Medieval Age in Britain.'

This is the Wilton Diptych.

It's a picture, of course, but also something of a holy relic.

I think of it as a combination of Richard's portable chapel

and vanity cabinet.

At first sight, it strikes us

as a conventional image of veneration and worship.

Richard is kneeling, his hands, his fingers are splayed,

his gaze upon the holy infant.

But, actually, it's much more complicated and nuanced than that.

The king is accompanied by a trinity of significant and telling figures.

Two English monarchs who he venerated,

Edward the Confessor, Edmond the Martyr,

and, most importantly of all, St John the Baptist.

The arm of St John the Baptist is most significant here.

He paved the way for Christ in the Bible.

And there's a sense of equivalence here.

He is presenting, representing the king.

Over on the right hand panel, if you study the heavenly host,

not only are they wearing a striking, iridescent blue

but if you look closely,

they're bearing the insignia of Richard himself, the White Hart.

This is the medieval equivalent of the modern

football tradition of kissing the badge.

This is Richard's team. They're looking out for him.

In its own charming and understated way, at first,

this piece represents overweening monarchical ambition.

Richard and his artist are coming perilously close to

the blasphemous idea that there's some sort of equivalence between

the monarch - the flesh and blood man here on earth -

and the Christ child.

Any courtier privileged enough to be accompanying the king

at the moment during his travels when the diptych was unpacked

and the king fell to his knees presumably before it,

he might have found himself wondering,

"Exactly who is being worshipped here?"

Is the king perhaps adoring himself?

And there was a further provocative clue almost hidden away

in the top of the right-hand panel.

Above the standard that the angel is holding, the flag of St George,

there's a miniature representation, a cameo of England,

the sceptred isle.

Is the artist, was Richard, presuming to suggest that

England, his sovereign patch of land, was the new Jerusalem?

And that the king himself had been sent here by God as the new Messiah?

Now, we all lead busy lives,

and, by now, you might be asking yourself

"What did this Richard guy ever do for me?"

Well, the next time you have a snuffly nose,

you need to mop your brow, or put a knot in something as a memento,

then thank Richard because, voila,

he was the man who invented and popularised the humble handkerchief.

When he came to the throne, people didn't even know what to call this.

Sure, there may have been

some bracingly pungent Anglo-Saxon version of "snot rag",

but "handkerchief?" Nobody had heard of such a thing.

Indeed, the king's own tailor referred to "small pieces of cloth

"to give to the noble king...

"for blowing and covering his nose."

Richard turned this into perhaps the first English accessory,

the accoutrement one had to be seen with at court.

It's even suggested that Richard was in the habit

of distributing his favourite silks and linens to his courtiers

so that if you had the king's hankie,

you knew you were on the make.

When we think about the Tower, we tend to conjure a brooding,

forbidding place of repression, torture, even execution.

But in Richard's time, the Tower was as much a palace as it was a prison.

It was constantly being built on, developed, expanded,

and the man who was in charge of those works was

the father of English literature,

the author of The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer.

Richard appreciated literature as much as painting.

But it was still early days to make a living as a writer.

Chaucer needed other means to prosper at court.

Amongst his jobs he was Clerk of the King's Works,

responsible for upkeep of the Tower, as well as soldier,

diplomat, marriage broker, keeper of royal parks,

customs controller, and a member of parliament.

It would be 100 years

before the appointment of an official royal poet,

but Chaucer was a favourite of the king's and popular at court.

Here at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge,

is a rare illuminated manuscript of one of his poems.

This is one of Geoffrey Chaucer's less well-known

but much admired works,

Troilus And Criseyde, or as we would say Troilus And Cressida.

It's the story of a doomed, tragic love involving a warrior,

who's reckless as to the affairs of his heart,

and an unfaithful heroine.

It spoke to Richard's time and to Richard's court

with its themes of courtly love, of honour, of chivalry.

But it's not just the text that's valuable and insightful here.

It's also the beautiful artwork.

It's a beautifully achieved, eye-catching scene

of an apparently changeless, enchanted Albion.

There's Richard, the most brightly dressed of all,

clad from head to foot in gold, even a gold hat.

But, strangely enough, he's not the centre of attention.

That honour goes to, of all things, a writer,

Geoffrey Chaucer himself, the first great superstar of English letters.

Chaucer is declaiming his soon to be new bestseller.

And, almost heretically,

rather naughtily, he's not on a soap box or anything but in a pulpit.

He has usurped the clergyman.

The man of letters, it's suggested here,

is on an equivalent footing with the man of the cloth, the man of God.

All eyes are on the poet waiting to hear what he's come up with next.

All, that is, except for Richard himself.

He's standing at a little remove,

and he's facing the rest of the crowd, the court, saying,

"Are you not pleased?" He's revelling in his role as patron.

He was an indirect patron of Chaucer himself,

but, more generally, of a great flowering

in the arts and culture in England.

The first great era of English writing.

If you could tell stories, if you could hold the king's attention,

then you would prosper at court.

For once, it really was true that the pen was mightier than the sword.

Richard made enemies,

and that made him perpetually worried about his own safety.

His answer was to employ an elite corps of bodyguards

to watch over him day and night.

They were known as the Cheshire Archers,

311 highly skilled bowmen...

..all from Cheshire.

The Knights of Middle England

practise archery in the style of Richard's guards.

Kevin Hicks is here to tell me all about them.

So what would it have been like to be one of the elite guard?

The Cheshire Bowmen?

If you were one of the chosen ones,

you're there, aren't you? The best clothing,

favours from the king, the best wages, and best food.

You're going to be the SAS of the medieval period.

And they were arrogant with it.

These guys were professional killers.

So, they sound like guys you wouldn't necessarily want to meet

in an alley round the back of the tavern one night.

Well, the danger is they'll knock on your door and come through it.

They'd batter your door down and they will arrest you violently.

And people were scared of them.

They regarded them as thugs.

And they were a law unto themselves? If they wanted to do something,

nobody was going to quibble about it?

Only one man, the king.

So, it wasn't just enough to be handy with a bow and arrow,

you had to be from Cheshire?

You had to have a presence and be quite threatening.

A bit moody and tasty to fit in.

You had to be one of the boys.

-Right.

-OK. I'll put the arrow on for you.

-Yep.

Take the arrow over a bit, feel the weight of it,

-bring it back...

-Push and pull?

-Push and pull.

-Swing it up a bit?

-Yeah, yeah.

Just give it a go, relax.

HE GROANS

-I'm probably over-thinking it.

-Yeah, it's very simple.

You've got the arrow on the wrong side of the bow.

Yeah, not overthinking that bit.

-So, that rests there, does it?

-That's right, yeah.

Feel like I want to grip it, but... that would be wrong.

That's how people often shoot themselves in the finger.

-Right, give it a go.

-Stand well back.

-Better height.

-Yeah.

-It felt like a layman shot, though.

You missed by about, what, ten yards?

-Relax, you're so tense.

-I am tense.

I'll put my hand there so you don't lean further back.

-I'm leaning back, you're right.

-Go on, push forward.

Now shoot him.

-Hooray!

-In the target.

-You hit him in the knee. Do you want another go?

Well, he'll feel it. Yeah.

Shoot.

-There you go, another hit. Well done.

-Thank you.

-I knew you could do it.

Deep down inside, maybe.

By the 1390s, Richard's grip on power was getting shaky.

Even his own extravagant coronation was a distant memory.

So, what better than to set out the rules of monarchy?

A how-to book for the kings of the future.

Here in Westminster Abbey Library is the Liber Regalis,

the Royal Book.

This great manuscript is 600 years old, far too delicate

and fragile for me to touch.

But it's open on this lustrous, still very vivid illumination

that tells us what's about to ensue.

The monarch, seated upon a golden throne,

with clerics attending to him, placing the crown upon his head.

Over the page, which I daren't touch, the rubric,

the ritual of a coronation, the rules of procedure.

This states that a coronation should take place on a Sunday

or holy day.

That the king should proceed bare headed from the Tower of London,

through the city, to Westminster.

Then, when he arrives at the Abbey,

he's to prostrate himself upon the stones.

Fortunately for him, not on the cold marble itself.

His ushers are allowed to spread cushions and carpets

to keep him warm during the proceedings.

And, as the climax, the king receives the arcane,

the magisterial tools of the trade, if you like.

The ring of kingly dignity. The rod of virtue and equity.

The golden sceptre and the crown of glory.

And, as a final, significant gesture,

his nobles gathered around him stretch forth their arms

towards the monarch in a sign of fealty, of loyalty.

But, for Richard, loyalty, and time, were running out.

In April 1395, two London coppersmiths,

Nicholas Broker and Godfrey Prest,

won a prestigious contract...

..to create two gilt bronze effigies of Richard and his wife

for a tomb in Westminster Abbey.

Richard was 27 years old,

but, in his time, death was ever close at hand.

In the Middle Ages, it wasn't unknown for people of high birth

to invest time and money in the afterlife -

the design of their tombs and effigies.

It was a way of ensuring one's legacy and also of creating

a shrine, a place where one's loved ones and descendants could come

and pray and intercede on your behalf,

to ensure that your soul would spend as little time as possible

in purgatory before ascending into heaven.

But this was something different.

This was one of the most expensive pieces of funerary architecture

seen in medieval times.

It was also unusual in that it's a double effigy.

Richard reposes for all eternity alongside his first wife, Anne.

The king approved a drawing of himself, now sadly lost,

and Broker and Prest were expressly ordered to copy it.

To strive for such a true likeness was highly unusual for the time.

This is a supreme statement of medieval refinement,

almost a contradiction in terms until Richard came along.

And it throws forward to the sophistication of the Renaissance.

If ever you were looking for proof that Richard had changed art,

portraiture, then here it is in his eternal monument,

cast for the ages.

Richard can hardly have imagined the tomb would be

completed in the nick of time.

He'd become paranoid and tyrannical.

Rashly seizing the lands of his cousin, Henry,

proved his final undoing.

Henry led an uprising against Richard,

whom he imprisoned and forced to abdicate.

A few months later, in February 1400,

Richard was found starved to death.

The inscription's in Latin but it translates like this -

"Prudent and elegant, Richard, by oath, the second,

"overtaken by fate, lies here portrayed and under marble.

"He was true in speech

"and full of reason. Noble in body, and judicious in mind like Homer.

"He overthrew the proud and threw down whoever violated

"the royal prerogative.

"Oh, merciful Christ, to whom he was devoted,

"oh, Baptist, whom he venerated, may you by your prayers save him."

Richard came blasphemously close to believing that he was the chosen one

with a divine mission, and that his England would be a new Jerusalem.

Instead, it was something as exotic and almost as wonderful -

a new Xanadu.

Wherever his ever restless court went

was a pleasure dome of all that was finest in life.

The arts, sculpture, painting, writing, fine living,

food, drink, fancy clothes.

The trouble with Richard was,

although he was a terrific patron of the arts, he was a lousy king,

and his legacy, like the man himself, is conflicted and contrary.

On the one hand, he ushered in

the first golden age in the English arts, if you like.

On the other hand, he bequeathed us the divine right of kings,

a tyrant's charter to amass wealth illegally and slaughter willy-nilly.

Richard's reign is also one of the great what-if moments in British history.

What if he hadn't fallen out so badly with his cousin?

What if he hadn't pampered and spoiled those pets,

those favourites of his at court?

Perhaps then it would have been these soggy, unlikely islands

that would have witnessed the first flowering

of the Renaissance in Western Europe.

As it was, that privilege fell to Italy.

But that's a story for next time.