Original subtitles

[Swords clashing, men yelling]

NARRATOR: Out of the chaos, darkness, and violence

of the middle ages,

one family rose to seize control of England.

[Man grunts]

NARRATOR: 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.

[Men shouting]

What I love about the Plantagenet 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 tyrannized 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.

But Richard II became the most vicious Plantagenet of them all.

[Speaking French]

And his reign of terror brought the whole Plantagenet dynasty

crashing down.

June 11, 1381.

Two 14-year-old boys are taking refuge

here at the Tower of London

as murderous rebels stalk the streets outside.

[People 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 has been king since he was ten --

since then, his realm has been ruled by counselors.

Now, in the eyes of the peasants,

these counselors are greedy and evil.

And how do you fix a problem like that?

Well, you kill them, obviously.

Richard's counselors 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 counselors

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...

[Screaming]

The rebels simply let Richard pass.

He's not their target.

His evil counselors are.

Unfortunately for young Henry Bolingbroke,

his dad, John of Gaunt, the king's uncle,

is one of those evil counselors --

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]

[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...

[Screaming]

...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.

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.

[Crowd cheering]

Sudbury and Hales are beheaded in the street.

Sudbury's head is stuck on a spike on London Bridge,

his archbishop's miter 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 100 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 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.

[Shouting]

[Shouting]

JONES: 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 toward 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.

[Rebels 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 firsthand account of the meeting

still exists here in the British Library.

This is the chronicle of Thomas Walsingham,

who was 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 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.

A 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,

but 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.

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 favorite, 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.

When the Archbishop

criticizes Richard for keeping bad company,

the king makes it crystal clear

that he's not interested in his opinion anymore.

[Shouts in French, laughter]

[Speaking French]

Then he drums his point home by attacking the old man.

He's only stopped from doing

serious harm by the intervention of his uncle, Gloucester.

This time Richard climbs down.

But egged on by de Vere and the others,

the split between the king and his old counselors

is only going to get worse.

One important young noble

is missing from the king's entourage --

his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, so far best known

for hiding in a cupboard.

Because while Richard is 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.

[Spectators cheering]

But while Bolingbroke is away,

Richard's new pals

are still making all the running.

The king is 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 behavior,

Gloucester must have realized

his nephew was never going to take this well.

All the same, Richard's reaction absolutely floors him.

[Shouting 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.

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.

[Speaking French]

Richard and de Vere organize

a secret meeting of judges.

The king sees the actions of the old guard as treason.

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 law 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 is 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.

He 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 is 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 that Richard has been

negotiating for peace with the French

without Parliament's knowledge.

They enter the Tower to confront the king.

And locked 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 has 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.

[Speaking 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

anytime he likes --

and then God help the men who stood against him.

JONES: 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 has 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 behavior of a warlord 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 eleven angels,

all wearing the symbol of the white hart.

It's the symbol of Richard's private army.

It'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.

[Speaking French]

But Richard graciously welcomes him back.

The nasty business in the Tower of London

seems forgotten.

He even makes Henry a trusted counselor 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.

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 stabilizing 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 has 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.

And 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

was a seriously nasty piece of work.

He really did

sit like this on a high throne above his court, staring around.

It 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

or 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 buildup of a private army.

I think Richard has 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.

And Richard's just warming up.

Gloucester was the ringleader of the five

who threatened him --

now, Richard rides through the night

to return the favor.

Ah, mon cher uncle.

The king greats 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.

[Gloucester grunts, Mowbray shushes]

To atone for his sins,

he's now the king's hatchet man.

[Muffled screams]

[Reciting in Latin]

The fourth man, Arundel, is arrested and imprisoned as well.

He, too, was 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 is 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...

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.

[Screaming]

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.

[Whispering in French]

Mowbray tells him that the king is plotting against them.

Mowbray may well be telling the truth,

but this could easily be a trap.

[Speaking 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 10 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 has 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.

JONES: 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 landholder

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're 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,

bangs him up in the Tower.

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.

[Speaking 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 -- it's a temper tantrum.

The next day in Parliament,

250 years after the first Plantagenet king

claimed and won the English crown,

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 impertinencies,

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 6, 1400,

when the last plot to spring him was foiled.

By February 17,

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.

[Speaking French]

So, knowing just how fast Richard dies,

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

and 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.