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Murder, Lies, and Storytelling: The Manipulation of Justice(s) in the Parliaments of 1397 and1399Author(s): Matthew GiancarloReviewed work(s):Source: Speculum, Vol. 77, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), pp. 76-112Published by: Medieval Academy of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2903787 .Accessed: 05/04/2012 09:18

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Murder, Lies, and Storytelling: The Manipulation of Justice(s) in the Parliaments of 1397 and 1399

By Matthew Giancarlo

In the parliament that opened at Westminster on 17 September 1397, King Rich- ard II of England was quite literally at the height of his power. With the parlia- mentary estates gathered in the yard outside Westminster and surrounded by his own personal retinue of over three hundred archers, Richard gazed down from a specially constructed throne raised above the assembly. From this perch the king presided over the parliament as the chief of a judicial tribunal exacting revenge against the primary movers of the Merciless Parliament of 1388. In this Revenge Parliament of 1397, all of the proceedings of 1388 were voided; the pardons to the Lords Appellant of 1388 were revoked; Richard Fitzalan, the earl of Arundel, was appealed of treason, tried, and summarily beheaded; his brother Thomas, the archbishop of Canterbury, was condemned to perpetual exile; and the king's own uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, the duke of Gloucester, who had been imprisoned across the English Channel in Calais, was accused of treason and, having died in captivity, was posthumously condemned. Shortly thereafter, on 28 September, the third principal appellant of 1388, Thomas Beauchamp, the earl of Warwick, was similarly accused of treason and condemned; but his death sentence was com- muted to banishment after he confessed and pleaded for his life before the assem- bly. Triumphant over his former suppressors, Richard dismissed the parliament after having the judgments declared perpetually irrevocable.'

Certainly the ascendant Richard of 1397 would never have predicted that within exactly two years he would be stripped of his power. In an uncanny example of that most medieval of commonplaces, the turn of Fortune's wheel, Richard's own fortunes were completely reversed. Following the Hereford-Norfolk dispute of 1398, the banished and disinherited Henry Bolingbroke, the duke of Hereford, reentered England from the east in early July of 1399 while Richard was on cam- paign in Ireland. When Hereford finally encountered Richard in north Wales at Conway and at Flint in mid-August, he managed to capture the king without

struggle. He took Richard back to London, imprisoned him in the Tower, and

Research for this article was funded by a faculty research grant from the Griswold Fund of the

Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University; my thanks also to Yvonne Taylor and Peter Walsh for their material assistance. My sincere thanks to Candace Barrington, Traugott Lawler, and the readers for Speculum for their helpful comments and criticisms. My deepest thanks go to Emily Steiner, who has been the prime mover and best critic of this project.

1 Richard's specific motivations for the coup of 1397 are still speculative at best: see Nigel Saul, Richard II (New Haven, Conn., 1997), pp. 366-68. The standard account provided by May McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, 1307-1399, Oxford History of England 5 (Oxford, 1959), pp. 462-98, remains largely accepted.

Speculum 77 (2002) 76

Murder, Lies, and Storytelling

secured his abdication in a document supposedly signed by the king's own hand. In an assembly gathered the next day, on 30 September 1399, the abdication was read, charges were brought against the king, and Richard II was formally deposed from the throne by the assent of all the estates. Henry Hereford, now the duke of Lancaster, challenged the assembly for the throne and ascended to the kingship as Henry IV. In a final formal act, a small group representing the estates visited Richard on the following day to relinquish their homage to him. The assembly was immediately dissolved in order to reassemble a week later, on 6 October 1399, as the first parliament of the new king, and Henry was crowned on 13 October. The acts of the 1397 parliament were promptly reversed, and those of 1388 were reinstated. Now the appellants of 1397 were brought to trial; Richard's perpetual imprisonment was formally ratified; and the death of the duke of Gloucester was investigated. The parliament was dissolved on 19 November. Shortly thereafter Richard was moved to Pontefract, where he met his own end sometime early in the new year.

The remarkable events of these years produced an equally remarkable number of documents. There survive a host of chronicle accounts of Richard's downfall, both ecclesiastical and secular; official and quasi-official records, some in multiple versions and languages; and even, in one case, a full-blown poetic drama, Creton's "Metrical History," which, however fanciful in its representations, carries the au- thority of an eyewitness account for many of the events in the early stages of the Lancastrian coup d'etat. This body of historical material has been particularly well served in recent years by revisionist historians who have developed a more complicated picture of the course of the Lancastrian revolution than had been previously accepted.2 Indeed, several of the texts that are now key to our under- standing of 1399 only became available in the last century. Perhaps not surpris- ingly, the shifting interpretation of the revolution has come at the expense of what was for a long time-arguably since Henry's first parliament in 1399-the official account of Richard's deposition: the "Record and Process" contained in the Rotuli

2 See especially Chris Given-Wilson, ed., Chronicles of the Revolution, 1397-1400: The Reign of Richard II (Manchester, Eng., 1993). Given-Wilson's chronology, introduction, and documentation

provide a definitive resource for the period. For important historiographical analysis see also by Given- Wilson: "Adam Usk, the Monk of Evesham, and the Parliament of 1397-8," Historical Research 66

(1993), 329-35; and "The Manner of King Richard's Renunciation: A 'Lancastrian Narrative"'? En-

glish Historical Review 108 (1993), 365-70. Other comprehensive historiographical surveys include

John Taylor, English Historical Literature in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1987), chap. 9, "Chron- icles of the Deposition of Richard II," pp. 175-94, who concludes, "The chronicles of the deposition of the [sic] Richard II provide one instance ... of the manner in which the evidence of literary sources

may on occasion prove superior to that of the records of government" (p. 194); and Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England, 2: C. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982), chap. 6, "Chroniclers of the Reign of Richard II," pp. 157-93. For revisionist accounts see Caroline Barron, "The Deposition of Richard II," in Politics and Crisis in Fourteenth Century England, ed. J. Taylor and W. Childs (Gloucester, Eng., 1990), pp. 132-49; and Barron's earlier analysis, "The Tyranny of Richard II," Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 41 (1968), 1-18; James Sherborne, "Per-

jury and the Lancastrian Revolution of 1399," in War, Politics, and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. Anthony Tuck (London, 1994), pp. 131-53; and G. O. Sayles, "Richard II in 1381 and

1399," English Historical Review 94 (1979), 820-29.

77

Murder, Lies, and Storytelling Parliamentorum.3 After M. V. Clarke and V. H. Galbraith exposed its omissions and misrepresentations,4 the account provided by the "Record and Process" went from being an uncritically accepted basis for William Stubbs's thesis of Lancastrian constitutionalism to being called a "tendentious and dishonest fabrication" pro- duced for the purposes of legitimating the usurpation of power by Henry Boling- broke.5 In more recent historical evaluations, the probative worth of the parlia- mentary roll of 1399 has not been-nor, by any means, should be-rated any higher. But having recovered from the realization that we, too, are the victims of "the deliberately misleading propaganda of the usurping Lancastrian dynasty,"6 we now stand in a better position to evaluate the story told by the parliamentary roll in the larger setting of what Chris Given-Wilson has called "a case study in the detection of partisanship, credulity and deliberate misinformation in medieval historical writing."7 As is clear from even a bare summary of the events in ques- tion, the parliamentary proceedings of these years and their documentary records were quite consciously cultivated to rewrite the past: 1397 redid and undid 1388, and 1399 redid and undid 1397-and in the process, un-undid 1388. As the "official" and "legal" record of these proceedings, the parliamentary rolls offer a remarkable account of these maneuverings, even if we must be continually wary of their historical provenance.

Indeed as recent studies have demonstrated, a problematic historical provenance can often reveal a fascinating literary one, as the cross-currents of historicist in- quiry have provided new methods and categories for the investigation of pivotal moments such as the parliaments of 1397 and 1399.8 It is in this critical context that some otherwise overshadowed and "taciturn" documents can be made to tell a remarkable tale.9 Curiously and incongruously central to this study of vexed

3 "Les Record & Proces del Renunciation du Roy Richard le Second apres le Conquest, & de

l'Acceptation de mesme la Renunciation; ensemblement ove la Deposition de mesme le Roy Richard, ensuent cy apres," printed in Rotuli Parliamentorum, ed. J. Strachey et al., 6 vols. (London, 1767- 77), 3 (henceforth RP), pp. 416-32 (I have transcribed the RP's z as y throughout). The Rotuli Par- liamentorum is not to be confused with the "Record and Process," which as a general term signifies the official account of judicial proceedings before a tribunal, and in the case of the "Record and Process" of 1399 signifies the official record, recorded in the parliament roll, of the proceedings against Richard.

4 M. V. Clarke and V. H. Galbraith, "The Deposition of Richard II," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 14 (1930), 125-81.

5 The comment is by H. G. Richardson, "Richard II's Last Parliament," English Historical Review 53 (1937), 41; on Stubbs's acceptance of the RP's account, see The Constitutional History of England in Its Origin and Development, 2, 4th ed. (Oxford, 1896), pp. 517-36, and the critique of the "Lan- castrian constitutionalism" thesis provided by K. B. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford, 1972).

6 Sayles, "Richard II in 1381 and 1399," p. 820. 7 Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution, p. 11. 8 For a good example of such a historicist analysis that is immediately relevant to the texts discussed

here, see Paul Strohm, "Saving the Appearances: Chaucer's Purse and the Fabrication of the Lancas- trian Claim," in Chaucer's England: Literature in Historical Context, ed. Barbara Hanawalt, Medieval Studies at Minnesota 4 (Minneapolis, 1992), pp. 21-40, and also Hochon's Arrow: The Social Imag- ination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, N.J., 1992), pp. 75-94.

9 My reference here is to Steven Justice, Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 (Berkeley, Calif., 1994), whose study has provided an important model for the investigation undertaken here, and to the "assumption" of his work, "that taciturn records can be squeezed until they talk" (p. 9).

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partisanship are two legal documents found in the parliamentary rolls for those

years: the duke of Gloucester's confession on 8 September 1397 and the account of the delegation relinquishing homage to the deposed Richard on 1 October 1399. They are curious because of their language: amidst the mass of Latin and

legal French of the rolls, these documents are in English, and each speaks with a

personal voice. While the English language is not a total stranger to the rolls, its

presence is a rarity; the language of parliamentary record was primarily the for- malized Anglo-Norman of the legal and royal courts. But these specifically English documents are simultaneously central and peripheral both in their legal impor- tance and in their narrative value, and they stand out in the record as small islands of the vernacular in a specific linguistic environment that was itself something of an island. Thus we might fairly ask what they are doing there and what purposes they serve by being included in the official records of Parliament, questions that lead us to recognize their deeper incongruities. Ultimately, as I will argue, in both cases these legal and narrative instruments bear indirect testimony not so much to the truth of the events they record-and perform-as to the lies they try to cover up. For us, from a modern perspective, the importance of uncovering these

cover-ups is in part straightforwardly historical: we can get a better idea (if never a completely accurate one) of what really happened, or at least of what probably happened. But at the same time, the desire for this sort of historical certainty is

precisely what critical investigation calls into question, for the process of recon-

structing and collating written evidence does not simply reveal some historical truth or some propagandist "untruth," as has been the focus of so much inquiry. Rather, what stands revealed are the ways in which the manufacturers of docu-

mentary "truth" understood the relationships between institutions and persons, between narratives and the law, and between documentary evidence and the sto-

rytellers who present it. In this case the storytellers were both commissioned jus- tices of the Crown and apparently wary-and probably unwilling-participants in two of the most remarkable events of fourteenth-century English politics: the

"tragedy" of Richard's fall and the "drama" of Henry's rise. As will become

increasingly clear, the relationships between these many elements are irreducibly complex, bound up as they are in lies, misrepresentations, and the vagaries of

history. But at the same time the stories emerge as very familiar ones indeed, ones for which a new kind of historical perspective is eminently suited.

1. GLOUCESTER'S CONFESSION

When Richard made his move on 10-11 July 1397 against the former appel- lants of 1388, he sent Gloucester to be imprisoned at Calais. Gloucester's arrest was carried out clandestinely and apparently caused some unrest. But the king was able to remove the royal uncle quickly and isolate him overseas. Two months

later, on 21 September, the same day as Arundel's execution, a writ was issued to Thomas Mowbray, the earl of Nottingham (who was then the captain of Calais), to produce Gloucester for trial; but the writ was returned on 24 September with the message that Gloucester could not come because he was dead. No further

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80 Murder, Lies, and Storytelling

explanation was recorded.10 Notwithstanding this, the appellants of 1397 "re-

quested in their own persons that the said duke of Gloucester be adjudged as a traitor and enemy of the king" because the duke's "crime and treason" in the events of 1388 "were notoriously known by them and by all the realm."" Despite the questionable regularity of a postmortem judgment-in which the accused could make no self-defense-Gloucester was condemned as a traitor, and his heirs were disinherited.

On the next day, 25 September, the appellants are recorded as asking the king "that, if there was any further matter on record concerning those appealed, or from some other person, it should be made known and publicly recited in full

parliament."12 Immediately following this scripted setup, two such documents are recorded in the "Record and Process." The first is a royal commission, written in Latin and dated a month earlier, on August 17, and assigned to one William Rickhill, a justice of the Common Bench. The commission ordered Rickhill to travel to Calais for a "colloquium" with the duke of Gloucester concerning any and all matters that the duke might wish to tell him.13 Rickhill was to hear and record what the duke said, and he was to have the record "clearly and openly certified under his [i.e., Rickhill's] seal" ("sub sigillo vestro distincte et aperte certificandum"). The second document is the script of the duke's confession, which, for the sake of its importance, is fully transcribed here from the published parliament roll (important variants are in italics):14

10 RP, p. 378 (for this and the following excerpts from RP, pp. 378-79, see also Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution, pp. 78-83): "LE lundy, le XXIV jour de Septembre, le dit Capitayn retourna son Brief en le dit Parlement, en la manere q'ensuit: Responsio Thome Comitis Marescalli. THOMAM Ducem Gloucestre in Brevi michi misso nominatum, coram Vobis & Consilio vestro in

presenti Parliamento venire facere non possum, ad faciendum prout istud Breve exigit & requirit, pro eo quod idem Dux mortuus est. Et quem quidem Ducem ex precepto excellentissimi Domini mei Domini Regis habui in Custodia mea in prisona Domini Regis Ville Calesii: Et ibidem in eadem morie- batur. Coram Domino nostro Rege, & Consilio suo in presenti Parliamento. Per Thomam Comitem

Marescallum, Capitaneum Ville Calesii." 1 RP, p. 378: "ET sur ceo les ditz Brief & Retourne d'icell' en le dit Parlement lieus & entenduz,

les avaunt ditz Appellauntz en lours propres persones prierent au Roy, Qe le dit Duc de Gloucestre serroit ajuge come Traitour & Ennemy du Roy.... Et sur ceo, toutz les Seigneurs Temporels de dit

Parlement, & Monsieur Thomas Percy eiant poair come desuis est dit, pleinment examinez, disoient, Qe les ditz Cryme & Treson furent notoirement conuz a eux, & a toute le Roialme."

12 RP, p. 378: "Et sur ceo le Marsdy, le XXV jour de Septembre, les ditz Appellantz en lours propres persones en plein Parlement prierent au Roy, que si ascun chose y fuist de record, soit il par confession d'ascuns des persones ensy appellez, ou d'autre persone queconque, touchant lour dit Appel & les Declarations d'ycell, q'il purroit overtment estre conuz & declarez en plein Parlement."

13 RP, p. 378: "Et adonques, par comaundement du Roy, & avys de toutz les Seigneurs Temporels fuis ditz, en le dit Parlement fuist lieu une Commission direct a Monsieur William Rikhill, un de des Justices de son Commune Bank, & une Confession devaunt luy faite par le dit Thomas Duc de Glou- cestre par force de dite Commission, & la Retourne de mesme la Commission. Queux Commission, Confession, & Retourne pleinment appiergent en les paroles q'ensuent." After this follows a copy of Rickhill's commission dated 17 August, which is also entered in the patent rolls under the same date: see Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1377-99 (henceforth CPR), 6 vols. (London, 1895-1909), 6:311.

14 This transcription is taken from RP, pp. 378-79; section numbers are added for reference. A

complete transcription with annotations and analysis of the omitted text is also provided by James Tait, "Did Richard II. Murder the Duke of Gloucester?" in Historical Essays by Members of the Owens

College, Manchester, ed. T. F. Tout and James Tait (London, 1902), pp. 193-216, which remains the

Murder, Lies, and Storytelling This is the Answer of William Rikhill to the Commission of his liege Loord.

[1] THOMAS Duk of Gloucestre, be the name Thomas of Wodestoke, the VIII day of Septembre, the yer of the Kyng Richard on and twenty, in the Castel of Caleys be vertu of a Commission of the Kyng, as it is more pleynleche declared in the same Com- mission directid to William Rikhill Justice, hathe iknowe and confessyd tofore the same William alle the matiere and poyntz iwrete in this grete roule annexid to this sedule, the weche sedule and grete roule beth asselid undir the sele of the forseyd William. Ande the same day of Septembre, alle the matieres and pointz before iknowe and confessid be the forseyd Duk in the Castel of Caleys, the forssaide Duk be his owne honde[,] fully and pleynly iwrete, delyverid it to the same William Rikhill, in presence of Johan Lan- castre, and Johan Lovetot. And al that evere the forseyd William Rikhill dede touching thys matiere, it was ido in the presence of the forseyde Johan, and Johan, and in none other manere.

[2] I Thomas of Wodestok, the VIII day of Septembre, the yeer of my Lord the Kyng on and twenty, be the vertue of a Commission of my Lord the Kyng the same yeer directid to William Rykhill Justice, the which is comprehendid more pleynly in the forseid Com- mission, knowleche, that I was on wyth steryng of other men to assente to the makyng of a Commission; In the which Commission I amonges other restreyned my Lord of his fredom, and toke upon me amonge other Power Reall, trewly naght knowyng ne wytyng that tyme that I dede ayeyns his Estate ne his Realte, as I dede after, and do now. And forasmuche as I knew afterward that I hadde do wronge, and taken upon me more than me owght to do, I submettede me to my Lord, and cryed hym mercy and grace, and yet do als lowlych and as mekely as any man may, and putte me heygh and lowe in his

mercy and in his grace, as he that always hath ben ful of mercy and of grace to all other. [3] Also, in that tyme that I came armed into my Lordes presence, and into his Palais,

howsoever that I dede it for drede of my lyf, I knowleche for certain that I dede evyll, and ayeyns his Regalie and his Estate: Wherfor I submett me lowly and mekely into his

mercy and to his grace. [4] Also, in that that I took my Lordes Lettres of his Messagers, and opened hem

ayeyns his leve, I knowleche that I dede evyll: Wherfor I putt me lowly in his grace. [5] Also, in that that I sclaundred my Loord, I knowleche that I dede evyll and wyk-

kedly, in that that I spake it unto hym in sclaunderouse wyse in audience of other folk. But by the wey that my sowle schall to, I mente none evyll therin. Nevertheles I wote and I knowleche that I dede evyll and unkunnyngelych: Wherfor I submett me heygh and lowe in his grace.

[6] Also, in that that I among other communed for feer of my lyf to yyve up myn hommage to my Lord, I knowlech wel, that for certain that I among other communed and asked of certeins Clercs, whethir that we myght yyve up our homage for drede of our lyves, or pon; and whethir that we assentyd therto for to do it, trewlich and by my trowth I ne have now none full mynde therof, bot I trowe rather ye than nay: Wherfor I submett me heygh and lowe evermore in his grace.

[7] Also, in that that I was in place ther it was communed and spoken in manere of

deposal of my liege Loord, trewly I knowlech wele, that we were assented therto for two

dayes or three, And than we for to have done our homage and our oothes, and putt hym as heyly in hys estate as ever he was. But forsothe ther I knowlech, that I dede untrewly and unkyndely as to hym that is my lyege Loord, and hath bene so gode and kynde Loord to me. Wherfor I beseche to hym naghtwythstondyng myn unkyndenesse, I be-

single most important article on the matters surrounding Gloucester's confession and is the source for much of the following analysis.

81

Murder, Lies, and Storytelling seche hym evermore of his mercy and of his grace, as lowly as any creature may beseche it unto his lyege Loord.

[8] And as of any newe thyng or ordenaunce that ever I shuld have wyten or knowen, ordeyned or assentyd, pryve or apert, that schuld have bene ayeyns my Loordys estate, or his luste, or ony that longeth abowte hym, syth that day that I swore unto hym at

Langeley on Goddys body trewly. And be that oothe that I ther made, I never knew of gaderyng ayeyns hym, ne none other that longeth unto hym.

[9] And as touchyng all this poyntes that I have made confession of tofore William Rykyll Justice, in the which I wote wele that I have offendyd my Loord unkyndely and untrewly, as I have seyde befor how that I have in all this poyntes offendid hym, and done ayeyns hym; trewly, and as I wyll answere befor Godd, it was my menyng and my wenyng for to have do the best for his persone and for his estate. Nevertheles I wote wel, and know wel nowe, that my dedes and my werchynges were ayeyns myn entente. Bot, be the way that my sowle schall to, of this poyntes, and of all othir the which that I have done of neclygence and of unkunnyng, It was never myn entent, ne my wyll, ne my thoght, for to do thynge that schuld have bene distresse or harmyng ayeyns the salvation of my lyege Loordys persone, as I wyll answer tofor Godd at the day of Jugement.

[10] And therfor I beseche my lyege and souverayn Loord the Kyng, that he wyll of his heygh grace and benyngnytee accepte me to his mercy and his grace, as I that putt my lyf, my body, and my goode holy at his wyll, as lowlych as mekelych as any creature kan do or may do to his lyege Loord. Besechyng to his heygh Lordeschipp, that he wyll, for the passion that God soffred for all mankynde, and the compassion that he hadde of his Moder on the Cros, and the pytee that he hadde of Marye Maudeleyne, that he wyll vouchesauf for to have compassion and pytee; and to accepte me unto his mercy and to his grace, as he that hathe ever bene ful of mercy and of grace to all his lyeges, and to all other that have naght bene so neygh unto hym as I have bene, thogh I be unworthy.

The text of this confession calls for comment in several respects. First, with respect to the parliament roll's copy of the "Record and Process" itself, this pub- lished version of the confession is in fact misleading-precisely because it is prob- ably the real confession. The eighteenth-century editors of the Rotuli Parliamen- torum noted that a longer and more complete copy of the confession was enrolled in another parliamentary roll as well as in the plea rolls of the Placita Coronae; and a third copy of the longer version is also enrolled in the patent rolls.15 Thus

15 A footnote to the text of the Rotuli Parliamentorum (p. 378) notes: "The original Commission, with Judge Rikhill's Answer and the Duke of Gloucester's Confession under Seal, are placed improperly in one of the Rolls of Parliament of the eleventh of K. Richard II [i.e., in a duplicate 1388 parliament roll]. In the Rolls of the 21st of the same King [i.e., in the 1397 parliament roll] is another very faulty copy. There is likewise a copy of the Appeal, the articles of Accusation, the Duke's Confession, and the Writ to bring him over to answer, on the Roll of the Placita Coronae, 21 Ric. II." Tait suggested that the fuller version found under 11 Richard II was in effect being "put out of the way" by being hidden in the wrong roll: "Did Richard II. Murder the Duke of Gloucester?" p. 204 n. 22. But A. E. Stamp later noted that "the roll in question is not a duplicate roll [of 11 Richard II] at all, but merely a copy of the proceedings of 11 Richard II attached (doubtless for reference) to the original documents of 21 Richard II": "Richard II and the Duke of Gloucester," English Historical Review 38 (1923), 249-51. Stamp also noted that the duplicate roll for 1397 has a copy of the full confession attached to it, thus calling into question whether the evidence points to any suppression of the full confession at all. But, as argued by H. G. Wright, the full version of the confession found in the duplicate of the

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there are at least four separate copies of this English confession, but the least complete copy is the one in the official record of the proceedings where the con- fession was presented before Parliament. The modern published version was sum- marily augmented to include the substantial portion of missing text, italicized above.

But further, while the text of the official copy of the confession may be misrep- resentative, it is probably not innocently so. In 1902 James Tait convincingly argued that the shorter version in the "Record and Process" gives every indication of having been deliberately altered. The three references to the actual day of the confession in sections 1-2 are omitted, and the last three lengthy paragraphs of self-defense and pleading-but no further confessions-are left off. These alter- ations make significant changes in the tenor of the text. In its full form the con- fession follows a discernible structure. From the beginning of the confession proper in section 2 six treasonable points are admitted: the making of the 1386 commission of reform that restrained the king and usurped royal power; proceed- ing armed in the presence of the king; the unauthorized opening of Crown letters; slander of the king; countenancing the yielding up of homage to the king; and countenancing the deposition of the king.16 However, all of these admissions refer to the events of 1386-88; and in section 8 Gloucester explicitly denies any trea- sons or knowledge of treasons since Richard's sacramental oath and pardon to him at Langley chapel in 1388 and thus after he had been reconciled with the king for his prior actions.17 This denial is also significant because when Richard arrested Gloucester, Warwick, and Arundel in 1397, he publicized that the arrests were for new offenses, not for the events of the previous decade.18 Next comes an excul- patory clause claiming both a good intent and a regrettable ignorance of the full implications of his actions, that "my dedes and my werchynges were ayeyns myn entente." And finally there is a long and abject appeal for mercy in which Glouces- ter both feminizes himself by an overt comparison to the two Marys of the New Testament-a remarkable gesture in itself-and invokes his ties to Richard as a man "so neygh unto hym," that is, we may surmise, as a fellow member of the

1397 roll was probably added after the events of 1399-when Richard's manipulations of the records were made clear-as a corrective to the parliamentary record: "Richard II and the Death of

Gloucester," English Historical Review 47 (1932). The copies in the Placita Coronae and the patent roll would not have been generally accessible, and there is clear evidence that the shortened confession was the version publicly circulated: see below, p. 87, and Wright, "Richard II and the Death of Glouces-

ter," p. 279 n. 3. 16 The exemplification of the confession entered in the patent rolls (Public Record Office C66/347

m. 3) is, except for minor differences, practically identical with the full version in the modern edition and in the transcription by Tait, except that the opening section (Rickhill's certificate of execution) comes more fittingly at the end. As this certificate adds the weight of Rickhill's authority to the doc-

ument, it seems likely that in the RP copy it was edited (the references to the date removed) and shifted to the front as the last three sections of the confession proper were removed.

17 On the general (if temporary) rapprochement between Richard and the appellants of 1388, see

Saul, Richard II, pp. 235-36; McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, pp. 462-66; and Anthony Good-

man, The Loyal Conspiracy: The Lords Appellant under Richard II (London, 1971), pp. 52-57. 18 A general announcement to this effect had been made to calm the alarm generated by the arrests:

Calendar of the Close Rolls, 1377-1399 (henceforth CCR), 6 vols. (London, 1914-27), 6:208. See

Saul, Richard II, pp. 374-75.

Murder, Lies, and Storytelling

royal family. But these last three clauses were removed as well; and the result is a document that is not only undated but essentially undatable and a confession that comes across as fully damning but significantly less self-exculpatory and less pen- itent.19

By default, then, the only date attaching to the altered document is the date of William Rickhill's commission, 17 August; but that date is strongly misleading since it gives the appearance that the duke of Gloucester's confession was taken almost a month before the opening of the Revenge Parliament instead of only a few days before. Also attaching to the confession-but by design and not by default-are the name and authority of its commissioned executor. The parlia- ment roll for 1397 records that after the confession was read out, Rickhill, "a man of great loyalty and proven integrity" ("approve de graunt loialte & discre- tion"), was requested by the king to attest to the truthfulness of the confession, which he did before the assembly. His testimony consists of a brief account of his trip to Calais, his interview with the duke, and several apparently authenticating details: the times of the interviews, the names of his fellow witnesses, and testi- mony that Gloucester "read in writing the said confession with his own mouth" ("lisa en escript la dite Confession par son bouche propre") and handed it over "with his own hand" ("ove sa mayn propre").20 Rickhill's testimony also adds one further condemnatory detail from the events of 1388: Gloucester admitted threatening Richard that if he wanted to remain king, he must stop trying to save the life of Simon Burley. Gloucester asked Rickhill to relate his acknowledgment of this additional transgression "by mouth" ("par bouche").21 But no further men- tion of dates, or of pleas for mercy, is recorded.

And so the parliament roll presents a troubling little English document, one that historians have puzzled over and that probably caused some puzzlement when it was first revealed. Gloucester's confession was a profoundly important piece of

19 On these points see Tait, "Did Richard II. Murder the Duke of Gloucester?" pp. 208-11. The remaining omission in section 6 seems to be a scribal error as a result of eye-skip on the phrase "that I among other communed." While it is arguably an exculpatory detail that Gloucester considered defying Richard "for feer of my lyf," it does not make much sense to omit reference to it here and not in the similar passage in section 3 ("howsoever that I dede it for drede of my lyf").

20 RP, p. 379: "ET puis fuist prie par les ditz Appellauntz, que le dit William Rikhill, approve de graunt loialte & discretion, soit comaunde par le Roy sur sa ligeance pur declarer la verite touchant la dite Confession. Quele William Rikhill, en presence du Roy & de toutz les Seigneurs Espirituels & Temporelx & Communes du Roialme esteantz en le dit Parlement, disoit & declara, Qe entour VIII del clokke devaunt l'oure de noon, il venoit deinz le Chastel de Caleys, a dit Duc de Gloucestre esteant alors en bone memorie & hors de duresse de prison, luy monstrant sa Commission & la Cause de sa venue a luy, en presence de John Lancastre, & John Lovetoft, & luy pria, que tout ceo q'il voloit dire

que luy plerroit le mettere en escript. Et sur ceo le dit William Rikhill departa de dit Duc de Gloucestre, & revient a luy entour de neof del clokke apres l'oure de noon, mesme le jour. Lequel Duc de Gloucestre lisa en escript la dite Confession par son bouche propre, & mesme la Confession bailla en escript a dit William Rikhill ove sa mayn propre."

21 RP, p. 379: "Et outre, le dit William Rikhill disoit a dit Duc de Gloucestre, que si y fuist autre chose touchant la dite matiere, q'il le dirroit en plesaunce du Roy, qar le Roy avoit conisance de toute la verite de dite matiere. Et sur ceo, le dit Duc de Gloucestre disoit, q'il avoit oblie une matiere que luy vient en memorie apres l'escripture de dite Confession: c'est assaver, q'il disoit au Roy, que s'il vorroit estre Roy, q'il ne prieroit pur le dit Symond de Beurle de luy saver de morte. Et pria le dit William Rikhill, q'il vorroit monstrer ceste matier au Roy par bouche."

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documentary evidence read out and attested to by a justice, William Rickhill; but it was, as far as we can tell, presented as dateless and awkwardly incomplete. The parliamentary audience would have had no way of knowing at the time that the document had been altered, but its after-the-fact introduction and its nebulousness may very well have raised some eyebrows, especially since it concerned the death of a royal family member, what Shakespeare would later call "the bloody office of his timeless end"-timeless not just in Shakespeare's sense of "premature" but also, literally, as having no time, no set day. It is in fact the problematic chronology of Gloucester's confession, as Tait argued, that opens the door to a wider view of the sordid events that lay behind it. But there is much more to it than simply the indirect evidence of Gloucester's murder, for the manipulation of the man behind the document-Rickhill himself and not Gloucester-will emerge as the more salient and in some ways the more disturbing aspect of the confession's produc- tion.

To recognize this, we must turn back the clock a bit and take a closer look at the chronology of Rickhill's involvement, and we must also look forward to his later testimony in 1399. According to Walsingham's account, there was a universal outcry over the arrest of the lords and over Gloucester's arrest in particular. Whether or not this outcry was real or a later embellishment by the chronicler, there does seem to have been some agitation on their behalf.22 A month later, two commissions were issued to William Rickhill, both dated 17 August: the first, enrolled in the close rolls, was a royal command to proceed to Dover and then to Calais in the company of the earl of Nottingham, Thomas Mowbray;23 the second is the commission already mentioned, namely, the separate order to hold a col- loquium with the imprisoned Gloucester. As it turned out, the full story-and the real chronology-behind these commissions was revealed only later, in 1399. In the new king's first parliament, Rickhill was himself arrested and brought back before the assembly to defend his account of Gloucester's confession. This time, when questioned by Walter Clopton, the chief justice of the King's Bench, Rickhill

22 Annales Ricardi Secundi et Henrici Quarti, regum Angliae, in Johannis de Trokelowe et Henrici de Blaneforde ... Chronica et Annales, ed. Henry Thomas Riley, Rolls Series 28/3 (London, 1866), p. 206: "Auditis dictorum dominorum captionibus atque detentionibus, in universitate communi per totum regnum, factus est luctus publicus, non secus quam si jam regnum esset per manus hostium destruendum. Tarita spes omnium in illis fuit reposita, et praecipue in Duce Gloverniae, quod, illo vivente et valente, putabant feliciter regnum posse interius gubernari, et exterius ab hostibus praeser- vari." Further evidence of the disturbance caused by the arrests, and particularly by the arrest of Gloucester, is found in an appointment listed in CPR 6:241, dated 15 July 1397: "Appointment of the mayor and sheriffs of London-reciting that the king having, with the assent of Edward, earl of Rutland, Thomas, earl of Kent, John, earl of Huntingdon, Thomas, earl marshal and of Nottingham, John, earl of Somerset, John, earl of Salisbury, Thomas, lord le Despenser, and William Lescrope, under-chamberlain, caused Thomas, duke of Gloucester, Richard, earl of Arundel, and Thomas, earl of Warwick, to be arrested, and with the same assent and the assent of John, duke of Lancaster and steward of England, Edmund duke of York, and Henry, earl of Derby, after they repaired to the king's person, caused the said duke and the rest to be detained in safe custody-to arrest all adherents of the said duke and the rest, who are going from place to place within the city and its suburbs, sowing evil words and inciting the people against the king, and imprison them until further order. By K."

23 CCR 6:161.

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86 Murder, Lies, and Storytelling

spun a remarkable tale.24 On Wednesday, 5 September 1397, in the middle of the night ("le Mesqerdy proschein devaunt le feste del Nativite nostre Dame, a dimy noet"), Rickhill was served with the first commission only, dated three weeks prior (17 August), to travel to Calais with Thomas Mowbray. This commission gave no indication of why Rickhill was traveling to Calais, but he nonetheless obeyed, "the said William not knowing what he was supposed to do at Calais."25 Rickhill and Mowbray traveled separately; and when they arrived at Calais two days later, on Friday, Mowbray delivered to Rickhill the second commission for the colloquy with Gloucester on the next day. Of this commission, Rickhill declares, he had absolutely no prior knowledge; and he says that he marveled greatly at it because, as he said to Mowbray, the duke of Gloucester was already dead, as it had been

publicly announced ("notifie") both in Calais and in England.26 There has not come to light any specific documentary confirmation of this sup-

posed early announcement of Gloucester's death; but such an announcement or rumor has some strong indirect support, and it makes perfect sense in the light of subsequent events.27 Notwithstanding his surprise, Rickhill was told by Mowbray that the duke was in fact still alive. And so, following the instructions of his backdated commission, Rickhill proceeded with remarkable caution. He refused to visit the duke without the presence of witnesses. When he finally came into Gloucester's audience, he read the commission aloud and made two requests of the duke: first, that the duke not be "displeased" with him "because the said message was personally commanded of the said William"; and second, that the

24 Rickhill testified on 18 November 1399. For the following excerpts from RP, pp. 430-32, see

Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution, pp. 221-23; and Tait, "Did Richard II. Murder the Duke of Gloucester?" pp. 199-201 and following.

25 RP, p. 431. Here the "Record and Process" gives another copy of the commission enrolled in the CCR followed by "Le dit William nient sachant ceo que deust faire a Caleys, ne d'autre covyn ne mal." Rickhill was ordered to be at Dover on Thursday the sixth, where he met Mowbray. They proceeded to Calais on Friday the seventh, where Rickhill stayed "en la maison d'un Lumbard, Brokour des Leynes, le dit William nient sachant tout temps de ceo q'il deust faire illoeqes, come il voleit

respoundre devaunt Dieu." The interview with Gloucester was the next day, Saturday the eighth. 26 RP, p. 431. Here the "Record and Process" gives yet another copy of the commission recorded in

the parliamentary record of 1397 (RP, p. 378) and in the CPR, followed by "De quele Commission, ne del matier contenuz en ycell', le dit William n'avoit nul conisance devaunt la monstrance de ycelle, come le dit William voloit respondre devant Dieu; ne par quele cause la Commission feust fait, ne par quelle cause il feust envoie illoeques. Et le dit William disoit adonques a le dit Count Mareschall [i.e., Mowbray], que'le dit Duc de Gloucestre feust mort, & luy merveilla grandement de la dite Commis-

sion, a cause que la Mort le dit Duc feust notifie a tout le poeple, si bien a Caleys come en Engleterre." 27 Tait's evidence (pp. 208-10) from Dugdale and from Gregory's chronicle that Gloucester was

announced to have died around St. Bartholomew's Tide (either 25 or 26 August) is not clearly decisive: see Stamp, "Richard II and the Death of the Duke of Gloucester," pp. 250-51, who notes that various escheat inquisitions give Gloucester's date of death as 15 September 1397. Other records noted by R. L. Atkinson, "Richard II and the Death of the Duke of Gloucester," English Historical Review 38

(1923), 563-64, give the official date of death as 9 or 10 September 1397 (i.e., the day after his

confession), and other records noted by Wright, "Richard II and the Death of the Duke of Gloucester," pp. 277-78, seem to indicate that Richard jumped his own gun and began proceedings to confiscate the "former" duke's property on 7 September 1397-the same day the unsuspecting Rickhill was

crossing the Channel to Calais. Wright concludes that "having given out Gloucester as dead before Rickhill saw him, Richard could not well disclose the date of his confession and the true date of death even to a parliament overawed by military force" (p. 278).

Murder, Lies, and Storytelling duke write down what he wished to say and that he show it to him as required by the commission and, most importantly, that he keep a copy of it for his own records.28 Rickhill observed a rigorous protocol, and a copy of the confession was retained by the duke. When Rickhill attempted to return to see Gloucester the next day, he was refused entrance. After asking Mowbray for another audience with the prisoner, he was eventually rebuffed. Nonetheless, he secured promises from witnesses who would testify to his good performance of his commissioned duties. He departed on the following Tuesday (11 September) and delivered the commission and the confession "complete with the said nine articles" ("ensem- blement ove les ditz noefs articles") to the king on Sunday, 16 September, the day before the opening of Parliament. Rickhill also requested an exemplification of the document (i.e., an officially registered copy) because, as he said, "he feared that his message might be changed or amended, or the writing damaged or erased."29 And as the story concludes-not in Rickhill's voice but in the anony- mous voice of the 1399 parliament roll itself-Richard's fuller strategy becomes clearer:

Et en le dit Parlement tenuz a Westminster l'an vynt & primere, partie des ditz articles que plesa au Roy feust lue, & partie des ditz articles que feurent encontre l'entent & le purpos du Roi ne feurent pas luez, ne conuz. Et outre ceo, partie des ditz articles que seuront a l'entent & purpos del dit Roy feurent proclamez en chescun Countee d'Engleterre, Qe le dit Duc les ditz articles ensi proclamez les avoit confessez & conuz devaunt William Rikhyll, Justice. Et ceo feust grand durete fait a dit William de luy nomer Justice en le cas, pur ceo que le dit William par force del dite Commission ne porta nul Record, ne nul Record purroit porter, eyns soulement un Messager, come pleinement piert par la dite Commission.

(And in the said parliament held at Westminster in the twenty-first year [i.e., 1397], the portion of the said articles [of the confession] that pleased the king were read, and the portion of the said articles that were opposed to the intent and the purpose of the king were not read, nor known. And in addition to this, the portion of the said articles that were to the intent and purpose of the said king were proclaimed in each county of England, and [it was proclaimed] that the said duke had confessed and known the said articles, so proclaimed, before William Rickhill, justice. And there was a great wrong done to the said William in calling him a "justice" in this case, because the said William bore no testimonial authority [Record] by the power of the said commission, nor could he bear any testimonial authority, but [was] rather only a messenger, as plainly appears by the said commission.)30

We must bear in mind that this is also an after-the-fact account, but the story it tells is both independently verifiable and plausible. Now the strange emendations

28 RP, p. 431: "Et adonques le dit William pria le dit Duk deux prieres en presence des ditz Johan Lovetot, & Johan Lancastre; l'un que le dit Duk ne voleit estre displese que la dite Message feust comande a la persone de dit William: l'autre que le dit Duk voleit mettre en escript ceo q'il voloit dire & monstrer a dit William, solonc la purport de mesme la Commission, & de prendre & retenir devers

luy une copie d'icelle; & que ceo serroit fait per bone advys & deliberation del dit Duk." 29 RP, p. 432: "Et le dit William pursua d'avoir la dite exemplification, par cause q'il soi douta que

son Message serroit change ou amenuse, ou l'escripture befile ou rase; laquele exemplification le dit William monstra en cest present Parlement desouth le Grand Seal du Roy."

30 RP, p. 432.

87

88 Murder, Lies, and Storytelling become explicable, and the curious secrecy surrounding Rickhill's mission takes on a much more sinister aspect. The doctored English confession was presented not only to Parliament but also to the country as a whole, and in the process the testimonial authority, or Record, of Justice Rickhill was put up for display and public consumption. But two years later-and in a different "record"-Rickhill exploited all of his prudent precautions in order to keep himself from being con- demned-which, as it turns out, he successfully did.31

Indeed, such preparations and comprehensive preemptive measures are remark- able even for a man of law who was well practiced in handling documents, but they are readily understandable if we surmise that William Rickhill knew he was taking the confession of a proverbial dead man walking. The precise reason for the incongruent dating of Rickhill's commissions remains unclear.32 Perhaps Rich- ard originally intended to solicit Gloucester's confession earlier, after 17 August, but delayed. Or perhaps, as Mowbray supposedly confided later, Richard had ordered his uncle's death earlier, but Mowbray declined to carry out the command until September;33 but then the rationale behind soliciting a confession in the first place is unclear. The division of the orders into two commissions-the one to go, the other to talk to the soon-to-be-dead duke-clearly indicates a plan to keep the commissionee, Rickhill, in the dark about his mission until it was too late to spread word; and the late arrival of the confession on the day before the opening of Parliament probably did not give Richard much time to figure out what he wanted to do with it. But other details (e.g., Richard's allowing Rickhill to have an exemplification of the full document; the premortem announcements and legal proceedings against Gloucester) would seem to indicate a real lack of planning. It is this combination of calculation and negligence that makes the events of the affair so difficult to determine from a purely political point of view.

When viewed in the light of other demands, however, the events are more un- derstandable, if not any more palatable. However clumsily it was handled, several needs were satisfied by the clandestine murder of Gloucester and the posthumous publication of his admission of guilt. With his uncle's death Richard exacted re-

31 RP, p. 432. In the end of his testimony Rickhill produces the exemplification, appeals to the testimony of the witnesses in Calais, and asks that the exemplification be compared with the copy of the confession retained in Calais; he also swears that he made no alterations to the document and that he did nothing without the presence of witnesses, nor anything beyond what he was ordered to do. Ultimately Rickhill is excused by the Lords in Parliament, and Walter Clopton declares, "Qe le dit William soit pleinement excusez & acquitez touchant ceste matire perpetuelment en temps a venir."

32 One possible reason for the two-week delay in the delivery of the commissions is the simple fact that letters patent took, on average, about two to three weeks to deliver: see James F Willard, "The

Dating and Delivery of Letters Patent and Writs in the Fourteenth Century," Bulletin of the Institute

of Historical Research 10 (1932-33), 1-11. But as Willard notes, when haste was necessary, the interval could be shorter; and given that Rickhill was a resident of Kent, he was much closer to London than many of the letter recipients in Willard's samples and hence could have received letters patent much sooner than the average. Even accounting for the delay, there still remain the facts of the curious division of the commission into two separate commissions and the odd hour of the first commission's delivery-as Rickhill said, "in the middle of the night."

33 See Saul, Richard II, p. 379. This admission came out in Bagot's testimony in 1399 and was

purportedly made by Warwick to Bagot in spring 1398. See RP, pp. 452-53; Chronicles of London, ed. C. L. Kingsford (Oxford, 1905), pp. 52-53; and Goodman, The Loyal Conspiracy, pp. 68-69.

Murder, Lies, and Storytelling

venge upon the man most responsible for the execution of his beloved tutor and courtier Simon Burley, and he did so in a manner reminiscent of that prior murder in its grimness and severity. The confession also gave Richard the documentary evidence he needed to solidify his claim to Gloucester's forfeited estates and hold- ings. But ultimately we should not underestimate the strength of Richard's desire for confession, for abject abasement pure and simple. In the proceedings against the other two appellants, only Warwick's groveling saved his life. Walsingham records that after Warwick's appeal the king said to him, "Your confession is dearer to me than the value of all of the lands of the duke of Gloucester and the earl of Arundel."34 Conversely, Arundel sealed his own fate by his steadfast refusal to acknowledge any culpability whatsoever. Instead he argued strenuously with the king and his accusers.35 But Richard's desire for confession also reveals a profound ambivalence. The king wanted Gloucester and the other appellants to confess fully and unreservedly to the offenses done to his majesty; and in the case of Warwick, Richard also demonstrated his ability to be moved by a sufficient display of penitence. In the case of his uncle, however, Richard intentionally put Gloucester in a position where even such a display would have done him no good-indeed, where it did him no good. Gloucester was almost certainly dead by the time Rickhill left Calais (which is probably why Rickhill could not go back to see him), and anything the confession contained would have been too little, too late. So instead Richard found it necessary to emend the unsatisfactory confession and remove the most pleading parts, which were probably the parts nearest to what he really wanted to hear. But such pleading might also have generated sym- pathy for the duke and perhaps have made it more difficult for Richard to confis- cate his property. Thus we can sense that Richard wanted confession, but at the same time he didn't want it; and so it enters into the record fitfully, peripheral and late, but central and, supposedly, prior.

From this analysis, another observation emerges that has gone largely unre- marked in this specific connection but that has been often noted about the totality of the grim events of 1397: namely, the production of the confession also helped to satisfy the overwhelming stress on theatrical production that governed the par- liament itself and that governed the manipulation of documents and legality. The acts of the Revenge Parliament were consciously staged as reenactments. The ap- pellants of 1397 were dressed in robes resembling those of the 1388 appellants; the procedures were modeled on the 1388 procedures; and as the duke of Lan- caster made clear during the trial, the justice meted out then was being meted out

34 Annales Ricardi Secundi, p. 220: "Post pusillum, Rex, detersa facie,-'Per Sanctum Johannem Baptistam,' ait, 'Thoma de Warwico, ista tua confessio carior est mihi quam valor omnium terrarum Ducis Gloverniae et Comitis Arundeliae.'"

35 Arundel's spirited self-defense is a prominent feature of most chronicle accounts of the Revenge Parliament: see The Chronicle of Adam of Usk, 1377-1421, ed. and trans. C. Given-Wilson (Oxford, 1997), pp. 25-33; Annales Ricardi Secundi, pp. 214-16; Continuatio Eulogii, in Eulogium histori- arum sive temporis, 3, ed. F S. Haydon, Rolls Series 9/3 (London, 1863), pp. 374-75; Historia vitae et regni Ricardi Secundi, ed. George B. Stow, Jr. (Philadelphia, 1977), pp. 142-44.

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again.36 Central to this reproduction was the mock legalism and sham legitimacy so prominent in the proceedings of 1388. Thus in 1397, in addition to everything else, Richard kept up appearances and proper procedure by ordering the produc- tion of the duke of Gloucester, whose supposed death was already public knowl- edge. When the man himself could not be produced, in his place Richard produced a confession, formally composed and read by a proper authority.

For all formal purposes this confession was the clear and unmistakable voice of the dead duke. But in another sense that voice was profoundly ambiguous, and Richard's remarkable exploitations of ambiguity must be appreciated in order to understand the significance of the document itself. During the same parliament Richard announced that he would pardon all those who had participated in the events of 1386-88 except for those who were named in a list of fifty names- names that only he knew and that he refused to divulge when asked to do so by the Lords and Commons.37 This McCarthyite tactic had its desired effect: people flooded into the Chancery and paid handsomely to acquire new pardons just in case their names were on this dreaded list.38 Far from hurting his position, the king's demurral gave him even more power because only he knew who was counted guilty or innocent, and the nebulous list served to draw his opponents out into the light. In a similar way, the ambiguity surrounding the death of Gloucester-he died between about 20 August and 21 September, maybe sooner, maybe later-was not so much a liability as a channel for power. Only Richard (and, presumably, his henchmen) knew the truth about Gloucester's death, and he was the one controlling all of the documentation and legal procedure. The other nobles and lesser men who were active in the tumultuous days of 1386-88 thus had good reason to fear. They, too, might disappear, and their patrimonies might be confiscated to the Crown if the words of their own self-condemnation were produced and legitimated on some ambiguous legal instrument. As with the list of names, such a passive power was a potent tool; and with a few changes, Gloucester's confession could reinforce that power by presenting him condemning himself from some unknown prior time and from beyond the grave. When viewed in this light we can see why an English confession, presentable to all and compre- hensible by all, would have been an almost irresistible temptation to Richard. His manipulation of representations also included-indeed, necessitated-his theat-

36 In the Continuatio Eulogii John of Gaunt is recorded as saying to Arundel, "Quia parliamentum te accusavit, meruisti damnari sine responsione secundum legem tuam" (p. 374), i.e., according to the

legal precedent of the 1388 proceedings. Earlier in the account Richard also overtly compares his actions to those of the appellants in 1388 when he tells Gloucester, "Illam gratiam habebis quam praestitisti Symoni de Burley, cum Regina pro eo coram te genuflecteret" (p. 372). On the "deliberate imitation of the procedure of the Merciless Parliament," see Saul, Richard II, pp. 378-81, and

McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, pp. 479-83. 37 RP, p. 347. The record of the parliament begins with the statement that the king will issue "une

generale Pardon a ses liges, forspris certeins pointes limitez par le Roy, sauvant la suite de partie; forspris cynqant persones queux plerra a Roy nomer, & touz ceux que serront empeschez en cest

present Parlement." The question of pardons comes up later, RP, pp. 359 and 369. The ominous list and the requirement for pardons at a cost are also mentioned in The Chronicle of Adam of Usk, pp. 20-21. See Saul, Richard II, p. 377.

38 The abuse of the pardons was one of the charges brought against Richard at his deposition: see Barron, "The Tyranny of Richard II," pp. 6-10, for an analysis of Richard's procedure and motives.

90

Murder, Lies, and Storytelling rical manipulation of documents, and through them, of the law-a lesson that he had himself learned by seeing its success a decade prior.39

And finally, it is also necessary to see how the manipulation of justice was tantamount to the manipulation of a justice. Not only were the facts of the con- fession altered; the official voice of the confession, Rickhill's, was tacitly deployed in order to provide the personal veracity so essential to Richard's purposes. It was this manipulation that galled Rickhill in his later testimony of 1399: his person and his title as a justice were deployed in a context detrimental to both but also in a way that he could not avoid-given that he was, in fact, the commissioned servant of the Crown. In making his defense in 1399, Rickhill glossed over perhaps the most troubling aspect of his earlier involvement in the affair, an aspect that has gone unremarked by Tait and other historians who have investigated the events. From Rickhill's own admission we know that the copy of the confession presented in Parliament and subsequently circulated throughout the country was the false one, the shorter, emended confession. But as the wider documentary record attests, not only was this the version of the document that received Rick- hill's passive endorsement; it was also the version that he himself read out loud in Parliament, and in 1397 he defended this confession, in the highest court of the land, as the ipsissima verba of the duke of Gloucester.40 Rickhill was manipulated not simply by having his name and authority improperly attached to a document for which he could bear no legal testamentary authority; Rickhill himself enacted it by acting it out, by giving it his voice. Rereading his later 1399 testimony, we can note how Rickhill subtly removes himself from the reading of the confession in 1397-the confession "was read out" ("feust lue")-and thus passes over his active role in its representation before Parliament. Nonetheless, the noticeable stress placed upon the actual voiced reading of the document (first by Gloucester and then by Rickhill) emphasizes the performative aspect of the law in the context of both oral and literate demands. A written instrument or record implied a certain legitimacy and authenticity, but its oral recitation (unavoidably recorded in the

39 See McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, p. 483: "[I]t was as much legal necessity as dramatic instinct which drove Richard to parody the arrangements of 1388 by organizing a group of magnates to present an appeal and by securing a subservient Speaker to initiate impeachments. Parliament, in

short, could be manipulated, but the forms of legality had to be respected." To modify this slightly, I

might say that Richard's stroke of genius was to seize upon, and improve, the combination of "legal necessity" and "dramatic instinct" that the 1388 appellants had already successfully exploited.

40 RP, pp. 378 and 379. The RP states impersonally that the confession "was read" ("fuist lieu"), but Rickhill's proper reading of the confession is implied by the parliamentary record and is indepen- dently confirmed by Usk, who was present, as he says, at each day of the parliament. The Chronicle

of Adam of Usk, p. 32: "Item die Martis sequente Ricullus, iusticiarius domini regis de Hybern' oriundus, legit certas confessiones inscriptis redactas supradictis prodicionibus emissis, asserendo eas esse dicti ducis confessionis, per ipsum emissas ac eiusdem ducis manu scriptas." Walsingham, writing secondhand, also describes Rickhill's recitation and adds the later-revealed fact of the confession's alteration. Annales Ricardi Secundi, p. 221: "Sub hiis diebus, Rex, ut omnem suam posset complere malitiam in Ducem Gloverniae, misit Calesiam quemdam Justiciarium, dictum Willelmum de Rikille, Hibernicum natione, qui requireret a dicto Duce, nunquid fecisset equitationes contra Regem etc., et scriberet quaecunque Dux in hac materia fateretur, Regique referret, et Parliamento, quaecunque de dictis verbis Ducis Gloucestriae comperisset. Factum fuit quod ipse renunciaret verba Ducis, sed in alia sententia quam Dux intenderat, nec esset conveniens testificatio sua."

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Murder, Lies, and Storytelling written record) was necessary for its felicitous performance. In both forms the processes of legality were vulnerable to manipulation.41 And so, in 1399, Rickhill found himself in a double bind: drawing attention to his previous recital of the confession would indict his own prior probative value not simply as a justice but as the voice of justice itself in the oral component of the legal ritual, and it might very well undermine his current testimony as well. He chose instead a strategy common, at all times and places, to bureaucrats placed under the gun: he put it in the passive voice and elided over the dilemmas of his own agency.

Thus we can see that what resulted from the 1397 commission was not simply a case of professional misrepresentation, nor, as has been made clear from the historical record, was it a simple example of false documentation in the larger scheme of Richard's planning against the Lords Appellant. Deeper and more pro- found was Richard's uncanny awareness of the fungibility of legal forms and authority in the person who bears those forms and authority and who gives them voice. We should hardly be surprised by this, given Richard's well-attested aware- ness of his own value as both the source and the sign of regal authority. Naturally when he needed to manipulate the law in a similar way, he arranged for a man of the law to carry out his commission and to act out the role scripted for him. The presence of a justice implied that justice must be present; and Rickhill apparently was unable to say otherwise, even as he read out and testified to a document he knew to be false.

2. RICHARD'S ABDICATION

We will come back to the question of why Richard apparently felt that he could manipulate William Rickhill in this manner, since the rationale for having com- missioned him in the first place is only partly clear from the official record. During the parliament of 1397 and immediately afterward, in the years usually counted as the period of Richard's tyranny, the successful performance of the murder and confessional hoax must have only reinforced his sense of ascendancy-it must have seemed fitting that he could control not only men's lives but also their voices, both written and spoken.42 Ironically, Richard would himself suffer a similar fate, in part because he had presumed to alter the official record: in the "Record and Process" of 1399 he was accused of manipulating the parliament roll of 1397. Although the charge does not specifically refer to the misrepresentation of

41 As noted by Jesse M. Gellrich, Discourse and Dominion in the Fourteenth Century: Oral Contexts

of Writing in Philosophy, Politics, and Poetry (Princeton, N.J., 1995), p. 180: "The law was vulnerable to appropriation [in the Merciless Parliament of 1388] because literacy itself was still uncertain about the relation of oral and written channels of language. We may note this vulnerability, for instance, in the conflict between the validation of documents presumed in the records of parliament and the sworn oaths or oral covenants presumed by various individuals." A similar vulnerability to appropriation was obviously exploited by Richard in 1397 and, as I shall show, by Henry in 1399.

42 On Richard's exalted notions of kingship, see Saul, Richard II, pp. 238, 385 and passim, and Simon Walker, "Richard II's Views on Kingship," in Rulers and Ruled in Late Medieval England: Essays Presented to Gerald Harriss, ed. R. E. Archer and S. Walker (London, 1995), pp. 49-63.

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Murder, Lies, and Storytelling Gloucester's confession, it must have added fuel to the fire.43 In this as in so many other things, Richard displayed a combination of clumsiness and cunning, and it is worth noting that the only reason why we are now able to see through the dark glass of the deception is that Richard was followed by an usurper who was de- termined to reveal all of his misrepresentations. But if Henry wanted to expose Richard's machinations, he also learned from them. He produced his own set of misrepresentations that survived as official record, to which we can now turn our attention.

As previously noted, the tidy and long-held chronology of the Lancastrian rev- olution has been heavily revised in modern historiography. Now the triumphant progress of Henry Bolingbroke-his steady march across England to the fateful encounter with the abandoned and effectively defeated king, and Richard's later formal deposition-seems less an inevitable outcome than a chancy and impro- vised chain of events. The impression left by the "Record and Process" of 1399 is, of course, quite otherwise. According to the official version of events, Henry was camped at Flint Castle while Richard was himself camped a short distance away in the castle at Conway in north Wales. Sometime around 15-16 September, Henry sent a deputation to the king consisting of Thomas Arundel, the archbishop of Canterbury (who had returned from exile with him), and Henry Percy, the earl of Northumberland. According to the official record, it was to this deputation that King Richard, "being then at liberty" ("in sua libertate existens"), offered his abdication on account of his own admitted "inability and insufficiency" to govern the kingdom ("de sui Inhabilitate & Insufficientia confessatis").44

The formal process of deposition followed shortly thereafter. After he had been transported back to London and put in the Tower, Richard was visited on 29 September by a delegation, made up of "representatives" from all the spiritual and temporal estates, which presented him with a formal declaration of his ab- dication, the "Renunciation and Cession," which had been written for him.45 Richard asked to study the document for a while, and so he was left alone to read it. When the committee later returned, Richard announced "with a happy face" ("vultu hillari") that he was ready to read out and to sign the abdication "ac- cording to the promise he had made" at Conway ("secundum Promissionem per

43 The eighth deposition charge (RP, p. 418, section 25) charges that the king, in seeking to devolve parliamentary authority onto a smaller council devised for his purposes, altered the roll to make it look legitimate:' "Et ut super factis eorum hujusmodi aliquem colorem & auctoritatem viderentur habere, Rex fecit Rotulos Parliamenti pro voto suo mutari & deleri, contra effectum concessionis

predicte." On the evidence that Richard did in fact alter the records, see J. G. Edwards, "The Parlia-

mentary Committee of 1398," English Historical Review 40 (1925), 321-33. 44 RP, p. 416 (for this and the following excerpts from RP, pp. 416-24, see also Given-Wilson,

Chronicles of the Revolution, pp. 168-89): "Qualiter idem Rex alias apud Conewey in North Wallia in sua libertate existens, promisit Domino Thome Archiepiscopo Cantuariensis, & dicto Comiti Nor- thumbriensis, se velle cedere & renunciare Corone Anglie et Francie & sue Regie Magestati, ex causis

per ipsum Regem ibidem de sui Inhabilitate & Insufficientia confessatis, & hoc melioribus modo & forma quibus facere poterit prout peritorum consilium melius duxerit ordinandum; Idem Rex coram dictis Dominis & aliis superius nominatis ad hoc benigne respondens, dixit, Se velle cum effectu per- ficere quod prius in ea parte promisit."

45 Contrary to the chronology given by the "Record and Process," it is likely that Richard had already been visited the day before, 28 September, by the delegation, or by a version of it.

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Murder, Lies, and Storytelling eum ut premittitur factam"). Richard was told that somebody else could read out the abdication for him in order to save his strained voice; "nevertheless the king himself willingly, as it appeared, and with a happy face" ("Idem tamen Rex gra- tanter, ut apparuit, ac hillari vultu") took the document and read it out loud himself "distinctly" ("distincte") and in its entirety. Then he signed it "with his own hand" ("se subscripsit manu sua propria").46 Following this performance of his own renunciation, Richard supposedly stated his preference that Henry should succeed him to the throne, and he supposedly indicated that preference by giving him his signet ring.

On the next day Richard's abdication was read to the gathered assembly, "first in Latin and then in English" ("primo in Latinis verbis, & postea in Anglicis"). The formal declaration of renunciation and cession was immediately accepted by the estates "unanimously and without dissent" ("unanimiter & concorditer"). Nonetheless, "so that every scruple and sinister suspicion should be removed"

("pro omni scrupulo & sinistra suspicione tollendis"), a long list of charges was then read in order to make clear the reasons why Richard was worthy of depo- sition. (The list of thirty-three charges follows in the "Record and Process.") After this, finally, with the abdication and the accusations having been read, the com- mission formed for the deposition of the king was requested by the gathered estates to pass judgment, which they did, "just as it had been observed in similar cases

by the ancient custom of the said kingdom" ("prout in consimilibus casibus de

antiqua consuetudine dicti Regni fuerat observatum"). The actual sentence of

deposition is then recorded, which includes references in its text to Richard's in-

sufficiency, his voluntary resignation, and to his many perjuries, cruelty, and crimes

("Perjuriis multiplicibus, ac Crudelitate, aliisque quampluribus Criminibus dicti Ricardi").47

This would seem to be all that was needed, and for all practical purposes, it was. Following the verdict of the commission, the throne stood as empty figura- tively as it already was literally.48 But just before Henry of Lancaster's challenge for the throne, the "Record and Process" refers to one last act in the process of the deposition. The estates requested that members of the deposition committee return to Richard and renounce all homage and fidelity to him, "so that nothing which ought to be done should be left undone" ("ut nichil desit quod valeat aut

46 RP, p. 416: "Et postquam idem Rex cum dictis Duce & Archiepiscopo Cantuariensis colloquium habebat ad partem, vultu hillari hinc inde inter eos exhibito prout circumstantibus videbatur, tandem dictus Rex, accercitis ad eum omnibus ibidem presentibus, dixit publice coram illis, Quod paratus erat ad renunciandum & cedendum secundum Promissionem per eum ut premittitur factam. Sicque incon-

tinenti, licet potuisset ut sibi dicebatur ab aliis Cessionem & Renunciationem, in quadam Cedula

pergameni redactam, per aliquem Deputatum organum vocis sue fecisse pro labore tam prolixo lecture

vitando, Idem tamen Rex gratanter, ut apparuit, ac hillari vultu, Cedulam illam in manu sua tenens dixit semetipsum velle legere, & distincte perlegit eandem; necnon absolvit ligeos suos, renunciavit, &

cessit, juravit, & alia dixit & protulit in legendo, & se subscripsit manu sua propria, prout plenius continetur in dicta Cedula, Cujus tenor sequitur, in hec verba." Following this, the text of Richard's formal abdication appears in its entirety.

47 For the preceding excerpts from the "Record and Process" see RP, pp. 417 and 422. 48 On the importance of the rituals for establishing the "emptiness" of the throne, see Paul Strohm,

England's Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399-1422 (New Haven, Conn., 1998), esp. pp. 202-14.

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Murder, Lies, and Storytelling debeat circa premissa requiri").49 The "procurator" chosen to deliver the renun- ciation was William Thirning, justiciarius, who spoke the following text to the deposed Richard on the next day (Wednesday, 1 October):50

LES Paroles que William Thirnyng parla a Monsieur Richard nadgairs Roy d'Engle- terre, a le Toure de Loundres, en sa Chambre, le Mesqerdy prochein apres le fest de Seint Michell l'Archaunchell', s'ensuent:

SIRE, it is wele knowe to yowe, that ther was a Parlement somond of all the States of the Reaume for to be at Westmynstre, and to begynne on the Teusday in the morne of the fest of Seint Michell the Archaungell that was yesterday, by cause of the whiche sommons all the States of this Londe were ther gadyrd, the whiche States hole made thes same Persones that ben comen here to yowe nowe her Procuratours, and gafen hem full auctorite and power, and charged hem, for to say the wordes that we sall say to yowe in her name and on thair behalve; that is to wytten, the Bysshop of Seint Assa for Ersbisshoppes and Byshoppes; the Abbot of Glastenbury for Abbotes and Priours, and all other men of holy Chirche Seculers and Rewelers; the Erle of Gloucestre for Dukes and Erles; the Lord of Berkeley for Barones and Banerettes; Sir Thomas Irpyngham, Chaumberleyn, for all the Bachilers and Commons of this Lond be southe; Sire Thomas Grey for all the Bachilers and Commons by north; and my felawe Johan Markham and me, for to come wyth hem for all thes States. And so, Sire, thes wordes and the doyng that we sall say to yowe is not onlych our wordes bot the wordes and the doynges of all the States of this lond and our charge and in her name. And he answerd and sayd, that he wyst wele that we wold noght say bot os we were charged. Sire, ye remembre yowe wele, that on Moneday in the fest of Seint Michell the Archaungell, ryght here in this Chaumbre, and in what presence, ye renounsed and cessed of the State of Kyng, and of Lordesship and of all the Dignite and Wirsshipp that longed therto, and assoiled all your lieges of her ligeance and obeisance that longed to yowe, uppe the fourme that is contened in the same Renunciation and Cession, which ye redde your self by your mouth, and affermed it by your othe and by your owne writyng. Opon whiche ye made and ordeyned your Procuratours the Ersbysshopp of York, and the Bysshopp of Hereford, for to notifie and declare in your name thes Renunciation and Cession at Westmynstre to all the States and all the Poeple that was ther gadyrd by cause of the sommons forsayd; the whiche thus don yesterday by thes Lordes your Procuratours, and wele herde and understonden, thes Renunciation and Cession ware pleinelich and frelich accepted and fullich agreed by all the States and Poeple forsayd. And over this, Sire, at the instance of all thes States and Poeple ther ware certein articles of Defautes in your Governance redde there: and tho wele herd and pleinelich understonden to all the States forsaide, hem thoght hem so trewe and so notorie and knowen, that by the Causes and by mo other, os thei sayd, and havyng consideration to your owne Wordes in your owne Re- nunciation and Cession, that ye were not worthy, no sufficeant, ne able, for to governe for your owne Demerites, os it is more pleinerlych contened therin, hem thoght that was

49 RP, p. 422: "VOLENTES autem preterea dicti Status, ut nichil desit quod valeat aut debeat circa premissa requiri, superinde singillatim interrogati, Personas easdem prius Commissarios nominatos constituerunt Procuratores suos conjunctim & divisim ad resignandum & reddendum dicto Regi Ri- cardo Homagium & Fidelitatem prius sibi facta, & ad premissa omnia hujusmodi Depositionem & Renunciationem tangentia si oportuerit intimandum."

50 This transcript is taken from RP, p. 424, with reference to the text in the parliament roll, Public Record Office C65/2. In the edited RP, the last sentence ("And he answerd and seyd .. .") is separated from the rest and independently numbered; but in the roll itself the entire text forms a single paragraph. A complete translation is provided by Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution, pp. 187-88.

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Murder, Lies, and Storytelling resonable and Cause for to depose yowe, and her Commissaries that thei made and ordeined, os it is of record ther, declared and decreed, and adjugged yowe for to be deposed and pryved, and in dede deposed yowe and pryved yowe of the Astate of Kyng, and of the Lordesship contened in the Renunciation and Cession forsayd, and of all the Dignite and Wyrsshipp, and of all the Administration that longed ther to. And we, Procuratours to all thes States and Poeple forsayd, os we be charged by hem, and by hir autorite gyffen us, and in her name, yeld yowe uppe, for all the States and Poeple forsayd, Homage liege and Feaute, and all Ligeance, and all other bondes, charges, and services that longe ther to. And that non of all thes States and Poeple fro this tyme forward ne bere yowe feyth, ne do yowe obeisance os to thar Kyng.

And he answerd and seyd, That he loked not ther after; Bot he sayde, that after all this he hoped that is Cosyn wolde be goode Lord to hym.

Once again, the text of an odd English document calls for some comment. The

language, while easily comprehensible, is at times noticeably stilted. There are occasional translated legalisms (e.g., "it is wele knowe to yowe" and "remembre

yowe wele" translate Latin memorandum clauses and Anglo-Norman fait a re- membrer), and toward the end (especially in the sixth and seventh sentences) the

syntax gets increasingly Latinate in its complexity. At the same time, this formality is offset by the document's overall directness and personal voice. The speaker quickly moves from the impersonal third-person plural ("thes same Persones that ben comen here ... and gafen hem ... and charged hem ...") to refer to himself and his companions in the first person ("we sall say ... my felawe Johan Markham and me.... And we, Procuratours .. ."). The speaker also refers directly and

repeatedly to his addressee ("ye remembre.... ye renounsed.... ye redde ..."). The reported speech of Richard's answers and the repeated direct address ("Sire ... And so, Sire ... And over this, Sire ...") also combine the elements of a

directly quoted and an indirectly reported event; it is both a transcript and a

summary. And last, the document is also a story, a narrative that must recapitulate the history and conditions of its own felicitousness in order to fulfill its purpose. The document recalls its own generation and development; it provides a brief account of the charges against Richard; and it finishes with the definitive pro- nouncement of its own conclusions. Indeed the report is a tidy Aristotelian whole

consisting of a beginning, middle, and end and a past, present, and future. Thus, fundamental to our understanding of the document's purposes is the observation that it tries to present both a formal and a personal voice, legal and quasi-literary, the voice of the law combined with the particular voices of the two men involved, Thirning and Richard.

With these things in mind we can therefore see this second English document as another kind of confession as well-an admission of something done-al-

though this time it is a confession to, and not from, the subject in question. Like Gloucester's confession, this arresting stretch of English reveals the very anxieties it labors to conceal. These anxieties are again centered on the questions of proper form and legality; and as with Gloucester's confession, there survive other versions of this same document, which bring into doubt the tidy story it tells.

We can begin to unpack these anxieties by once again paying attention to the

particularized speaking voice the document presents. Although all the "estates" of the realm were represented on the deposition committee and although members

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Murder, Lies, and Storytelling of that committee were in turn made "procurators" for the purpose of renouncing homage to Richard, we hear only from William Thirning, the chief justice of the Common Bench. And although Thirning clearly identifies each member of the delegation and the distinct segment of the estates that each member represents (even the geographical distinctions of north and south), the justices themselves, Thirning and Markham, are not identified with any estate. Instead they are rather ambiguously aligned with the group as a whole and with the nation as a whole, "for to come wyth hem for al thes States." As with the commission given to Rickhill in 1397, in one sense it is obvious that the presence of the justices was meant to imply that proper legal procedure was being followed and that the au- thority of the recording documents was unimpeachable. As a supposedly unlo- calized figure of impartial legal authority, Thirning was the logical choice to pro- vide the final report-and the final voice-for what was in fact the most prejudicial and un-impartial act possible.

However, that "impartial" voice is remarkably cautious in certain key points. We can note the gingerly ambiguous way Thirning refers to the assembly that has deposed Richard. Although he states at the beginning that a "parliament" was summoned, he never explicitly refers to the deposing authority as a parliament; instead it is consistently referred to as a meeting of the "States of the Reaume" and the "States of this Londe," and later, even more nebulously as "all thes States and Poeple." To an uncritical modern eye it might seem like a parliament by another name, as it apparently was seen by many of the chroniclers who referred to it as such. But for Justice Thirning and his contemporaries the question of the identity of the body accepting the sentence of deposition-and, circularly enough, it was also the body that granted authority to the deposition commission in the first place-was quite a serious matter.51 Thirning chose his words carefully be- cause it seems that, whatever it was, the assembly that met on 30 September 1399 was not a parliament.52 We might think of the assembly as a meeting of an "Estates General" along a French model, but there is no indication that they thought of it as such, especially when the more formal institution of Parliament was already well established. But identifying the assembly as a parliament does not appear to be a viable option either. According to every contemporary idea and practice of parliamentary authority, a parliament could not exist without a king; but a king was the one thing this assembly was set to demonstrate that it did not have.53

s1 The functional identity of the deposition assembly has been analyzed in a series of articles: see Gaillard Lapsley, "The Parliamentary Title of Henry IV," English Historical Review 49 (1934), 423- 49 and 577-606; H. G. Richardson, "Richard II's Last Parliament," English Historical Review 53

(1937), 39-47; and B. Wilkinson, "The Deposition of Richard II and the Accession of Henry IV," English Historical Review 54 (1939), 215-39. See also James Sherborne, "Perjury and the Lancastrian Revolution of 1399," pp. 144-47.

52 See Wilkinson, "The Deposition of Richard II and the Accession of Henry IV," pp. 234-39, for a close analysis of Thirning's terms and their implications.

53 On this point see particularly Wilkinson, "The Deposition of Richard II and the Accession of

I-enry IV," pp. 220-21: "The idea of a parliamentary deposition involves a conception of Crown and

parliament as two distinct entities which is contrary to all that we know of their constitutional relations in the fourteenth century or for long after.... Parliament was, in 1399 as throughout the later four- teenth century, the king discussing, treating, and judging, together with the commons and the lords.

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Murder, Lies, and Storytelling Summoned as a parliament, convened as something else, and then dismissed and reconvened a week later as Henry's first parliament, the body that presided over the deposition of Richard II had a de facto functional identity as a revolutionary assembly.54 Even taking into account problematic precedents and "ancient cus- toms" (referring no doubt to the deposition of Edward II), such an assembly is, by definition, illegal or extralegal.55 It is therefore all the more striking that the chief justice was made to be its spokesperson, and Thirning's careful words and

self-exculpatory preface imply his awareness of the shaky legal ground upon which he was standing.

That ground appears even less stable when we inspect the list of procurators Thirning provides as evidence of the delegation's licit authority. Here, too, he

displays noticeable circumspection in what he chooses to include. He carefully identifies the members of the later renouncing delegation, but he passes over the

composition of the more important prior deposing delegation, which had received the actual "Renunciation and Cession" from Richard on the previous Monday (29 September). This prior group is recalled but not specified: Thirning says sim- ply, "Ye remembre yowe wele ... ryght here in this Chaumbre, and in what pres- ence, ye renounsed and cessed of the State of Kyng." On these two delegations, the "Record and Process" lists five overlapping members: Lord Berkeley, Thomas

Gray, Thomas Erpingham, and William Thirning and John Markham.56 There would therefore appear to be a fair amount of shared personnel between the delegations and the deposition committee proper; and again the presence of jus- tices before, during, and after the actual deposition is a point passively but un- ambiguously conveyed by the official record.

But as G. O. Sayles has shown, there are some serious incongruities between the members listed by the official "Record and Process" and those listed by other contemporary documents, incongruities that call into question whether Thirning was in fact present at all during the course of the deposition.57 In the ancillary documents reviewed by Sayles-documents that may have been the primary sources for the "Record and Process"-the justices are not listed as members of either the deposing delegation or the renouncing delegation. Sayles transcribes two

There was no place for the constitutional idea that parliament could judge or depose the king." More recent analysis has tended to confirm this position: see Ronald Butt, A History of Parliament: The Middle Ages (London, 1989), pp. 447-48: "[S]ince the king was central to Parliament, it was hardly credible that Parliament, in its capacity as a high court, could be used to depose him. It had no life without him." Also see, very generally, George O. Sayles, The King's Parliament of England (New York, 1974), pp. 109-36.

54 On this point see particularly Lapsley, "The Parliamentary Title of Henry IV," pp. 429-31 and

following; Lapsley notes (p. 431 n. 2) that the Lords' Report of 1820 identified the assembly of 30

September 1399 as a convention of estates. 55 Wilkinson, "The Deposition of Richard II and the Accession of Henry IV," p. 236: "Partly, the

terminology of the 'record and process' may have been due to a natural hesitation to define too closely the part played by the various elements present on 30 September, united in what was, at bottom, an unconstitutional act."

56 RP, pp. 416, 422, and 423-24. 57 G. O. Sayles, "The Deposition of Richard II: Three Lancastrian Narratives," Bulletin of the In-

stitute of Historical Research 54 (1981), 257-70. See also Given-Wilson, "The Manner of King Rich- ard's Renunciation: A 'Lancastrian Narrative'?" for analysis.

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Murder, Lies, and Storytelling short texts that amount to press releases about the events of the deposition. The first (Sayles's document A, the "Stowe" manuscript text) is a short account of the deposition in Latin; the second (Sayles's document B), titled "La manere de la renonciacione del Roy Richard," is a longer account in French. Both were prob- ably produced prior to the actual composition of the parliament roll, and both were apparently used by chroniclers as sources for their own accounts. In neither document does Thirning (or Markham) appear as a member of the deposing del- egation, and in "La manere de la renonciacione" neither justice appears among the committee members delegated to renounce homage (this later delegation is not treated in the Latin account).58 There are other irregularities in the lists of person- nel such that we might be led to conclude that these accounts are simply inaccurate and that the justices' names were dropped from the lists. But significantly, Adam Usk's Chronicon also agrees with the shorter accounts in this point: Usk's roster of the deposing delegation matches the "Record and Process" except that it also excludes the justices.59 As in the parliament of 1397, Adam Usk was present during the events of 1399. His account bears the authority of an eyewitness who was both well aware of the significance of the events and well experienced in legal matters. As Sayles comments, the absence of Thirning in Usk's account "would be a very remarkable omission if, in truth, Thirning played any part at all in Richard's deposition, much more if he played the prominent part ascribed to him in [the 'Record and Process']."60 Since Usk was himself a lawyer, it is reasonable to expect that he would make note of any prominent role played by another man of the law. But as Sayles concludes, "[T]he difficulty, of course, vanishes if, as seems highly probable, the role played by Thirning is imaginary, the invention of a propagandist."61 Sayles points out that in "La manere de la renonciacione" there is no mention of any attendant legal authority; and we can also note that at the point in the record where Thirning might have been expected to mention his own prior attendance with the deposing delegation, he does not do so. Instead he simply says to Richard, "You remember who was here"-with no hint at all that he was there.

The strong version of this thesis-that Thirning was never present at all and that his role in the deposition is entirely fictitious-was entertained by Sayles but not definitively argued. What seems more likely is a scenario echoing the situation

58 Sayles, "The Deposition of Richard II," pp. 260-62. Regarding the first delegation of 29 Septem- ber, Wilkinson, "The Deposition of Richard II and the Accession of Henry IV," p. 219 (text and

especially n. 1), makes the even bolder suggestion that the deposing commission itself may have been

entirely fictitious: "It is by no means certain, however, that this deputation ever functioned, in the form recorded in the Rolls: it is certainly hard to understand why, if it did, it did not figure in the assembly of 30 September as well, and why it was superseded by another committee, elected in this assembly to convey the news of his deposition to Richard II."

59 See The Chronicle of Adam of Usk, pp. 63-71, for Usk's account of the events of the deposition (the list of the deposing delegation is on p. 66). Usk made a particular point of noting his own direct involvement in the proceedings, calling himself a notator instead of a compilator of the recorded events

(p. 62); he also notes that he was a member of the panel advising Henry how to proceed legally with

removing Richard from the throne. Usk's account does not mention the renouncing delegation of 1 October.

60 Sayles, "The Deposition of Richard II," p. 263. 61 Ibid.

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Murder, Lies, and Storytelling of Rickhill in 1397 in some important ways that would account for Thirning's reticence. The final clue in this documentary quandary comes from the Stowe

manuscript and from the chronicle records, specifically from Thomas Walsingham and the "Monk of Evesham," the unknown author of the Vita Ricardi Secundi. These texts record a set of riders or reservations that Richard apparently tried to attach to the "Renunciation and Cession" before signing it but that did not make it into the official record. In the Stowe manuscript the text of Richard's renunci- ation is recorded in full, but it is followed by this protestatio, or "declaration," which the Vita Ricardi Secundi reproduces almost verbatim:62

Protestacio regis Ricardi ante resignacionem Premissa protestatione quod noluit nec intendebat renunciare carecteribus anime sue

impressis a sacra unccione. Item quod reservavit redditus, terras et tenementa per ipsum empta et perquisita de domino Ricardo Scrope pro obitu suo et aliorum apud West- monasterium faciendo et in usu etc. Item voluit et declaravit quod renunciavit regimen regni, ita quod, quantum in eo fuerat, dominus Henricus, dux Lancastriae, proximo sibi succederet in regno.

(The declaration of King Richard before resignation: He [said] first in declaration that he did not wish or intend to renounce the marks set

upon his soul by sacred unction; likewise, that he reserved the profits, lands, and holdings purchased by himself and acquired from Lord Richard Scrope for the making of his own obit and others at Westminster, in use [and enjoyment]; and likewise he desired and declared that he renounced the command of government [regimen regni], so that, as far as he was able, the lord Henry, duke of Lancaster, should succeed him next in govern- ment.)

Hints of the second and third of these reservations-Richard's desire to retain his obit lands and his wish that Henry should succeed him "in government" ("in regno")-appear in the parliament roll. Henry did eventually grant Richard his death-endowment property, and he played up Richard's supposed preference for his succession. But the first and most significant declaration-that Richard did not consider himself to be relinquishing the sacred "marks" of his royal anoint- ment-severely qualifies the other declarations and casts an entirely different light on Richard's supposedly voluntary resignation. Apparently, Richard was willing to resign only the "regimen regni," the "rule of the kingdom," or loosely, the "run of the government," not his fundamental identity as God's anointed and true king. In other words, Richard was declaring that he was willingly placing himself under another regency such as he was under when he acceded in 1377 and such as was forced upon him again in 1386. Richard would still be king; he just would not be

62 This text of the protestatio is from the transcript of the Stowe manuscript by Sayles, ibid., p. 266; see also H. G. Wright, "The Protestation of Richard II in the Tower in September, 1399," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 23 (1939), pp. 154-58, for a transcript and discussion; the comparable text is in Historia vitae et regni Ricardi Secundi, p. 159: ". .. premissis cum protestacione, quod noluit nec intendebat renunciare carectis anime sue impressis. Item etiam quod reseruauit sibi redditum, terras et tenementa, empta et perquisita de domino Ricardo le Scroop pro obitu suo et aliorum apud West- monasterium faciendo, et in uisu [sic], uoluitque et declarauit, quod, in quantum in ipso fuit, quod dominus Henricus, dux Lancastrie, proximo succederet sibi in regno."

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ruling, leaving the actual work of government to another.63 It is in this sense that Richard wished for his cousin Henry to "succeed" him in a transfer of the regimen, possibly as the head of another conciliar body. Whatever the case, he clearly re- serves to himself the sacred identity of anointed sovereign. Indeed, according to this and to the account of "La manere de la renonciacione," Richard argued that he was unable to renounce his status as king and that it was absurd that anyone should suggest otherwise.64

Obviously, if this was Richard's perspective on the matter, it could scarcely be characterized as a free and full renunciation of kingship. The survival of this version of Richard's renunciation would severely complicate the necessary steps for a licit deposition since the first requirement was the king's abjuration of his own authority. It also seriously complicates the official record's cheery story of a

happy Richard unreservedly fulfilling his prior promise, the one given at Conway, to step down from the throne. Ironically enough, one of Henry's most willing ecclesiastical propagandists, Thomas Walsingham, provides further evidence that Richard indeed objected to his deposition on the grounds of the sacramental per- manence of his anointment. But even more strikingly, Walsingham's account also indicates that the text of Thirning's declaration to Richard, like Rickhill's text of Gloucester's confession in 1397, was later altered before it was officially recorded. In his Latin chronicle Walsingham records the entire English text of the renunci- ation of homage. Following the English text, taken verbatim from the "Record and Process," comes a brief extension of the scene between Thirning and Rich- ard:65

Ubi vero Dominus Willelmus Thernyng dixit ei quod renunciavit omnibus honoribus et dignitati Regi pertinentibus, respondit quod noluit renunciare spirituali honori charac- teris sibi impressi, et inunctioni, quibus renunciare nec potuit, nec ab hiis cessare; ubi vero idem Willelmus Thernyng recitavit sibi quod confessus fuerat in suis propriis renun- ciatione et cessione quod non fuerat dignus, sufficiens, neque habilis, ad gubernationem, ille dixit,-Non sic, sed quia non placuit populo gubernatio sua. Tunc idem W[illelmus] replicavit sibi, dicens quam simpliciter hoc dictum fuerat in dictis cessatione et renun- ciatione, et sub qua forma ipsa sua confessio, renunciatio, sive cessio, scripta fuit. Ille audiens, vultum ostendit hilarem, rogans ut pro eo taliter procurarent, ne victu honori- fico destitueretur.

(However, when Lord William Thirning said to him that he had renounced all the hon- ours and dignity pertaining to a king, he replied that he did not wish to renounce those special dignities of a spiritual nature which had been bestowed upon him, nor indeed his anointment; he was in fact unable to renounce them, nor could he cease to retain them. And when William Thirning replied to this that he had himself admitted, in his own Renunciation and Cession, that he was not worthy, or adequate, or able to govern, he said that this was not true, it was simply that his government had not been acceptable to the people. But William replied by telling him that this had clearly been stated in the

63 This is the interpretation put forward by Wright, "The Protestation of Richard II," pp. 156-63. 64 See "La manere de la renonciacione del Roy Richard ..." transcribed by Sayles, "The Deposition

of Richard II," p. 267. A translation is provided by Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution, pp. 163-67.

65 Annales Ricardi Secundi, pp. 286-87. This translation comes from Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution, pp. 188-89.

101

Murder, Lies, and Storytelling aforesaid Cession and Renunciation, and reminding him of the form in which this con- fession of his had been written down there. Hearing this, the king simply smiled and asked to be treated accordingly, and not to be deprived of the means with which to sustain himself honourably.)

As far as we know, Walsingham was not present at the deposition proceedings.66 The only plausible source for this short continuation of the exchange between

Thirning and Richard is a fuller version (or an alternative version) of the report of the deputation assigned to renounce homage, a version presumably circulated

prior to editing for inclusion in the "Record and Process."67 Although this addi- tional paragraph maintains some of the pleasing fictions of the deposition as a whole (most notably Richard's "vultum hilarem" yet again), it also unmistakably indicates that Richard did not cease to think of himself as an anointed king and therefore did not completely renounce his status. Such a detail belies just about

everything that supposedly comes before it. It strongly hints that the text of the "Renunciation and Cession" was neither read nor understood by Richard; it con- tradicts his supposed willingness to completely renounce the kingship; and it goes against his supposed abdication promise of several weeks before. Without these "facts," the already questionable legitimacy of the entire process would lose even its thin veneer of legality. And as for Thirning, even in this extended dialogue he makes no mention of any personal witness to the provenance or legal probity of Richard's "Renunciation and Cession." When Richard objects to the document's

implications, Thirning refers solely to the text of the document, to its clarity ("sim- pliciter") and to the form ("sub qua forma") of its composition. There is no indication whatsoever that Thirning himself can attest as a witness to the truth of Richard's abdication or to the document produced from it, even though he was

supposedly present when it was signed. Instead the justice simply refers to the document itself, and he tacitly admits-in what comes across as a profoundly uncomfortable moment even in this dry account-that this is all he can do.

Indeed the irony of the situation is also profound. A helpless king and a ma-

nipulated justice met one another across a set of official documents of dubious

authenticity, but these documents derived all of their authority, whether they liked it or not, from those very men, and there was little or nothing that either of them could do about it. Again, it is not simply an issue of historical propagandizing that is at stake. Rather, as Richard himself makes explicit and as Thirning must have been equally aware, the proceedings were fundamentally about roles, Rich- ard's role as the anointed sovereign-or, less grandly, as a merely deposable king-and Thirning's role as the voice and vehicle of "justice." From our per- spective we can also see that, once again, a justice has been impressed into duty as a simple messenger and reporter. Despite appearances otherwise, Thirning, like Rickhill before him, indirectly reveals that he bears little or no true testamentary authority in the matter of his commission. And also like Rickhill's account of

66 On Walsingham's accounts of the events of 1397-99 and his use of sources, see Gransden, His- torical Writing in England, pp. 139-44.

67 The additional information also suggests that the original language of Thirning's report was not T7rWnlich

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Gloucester, the actual text of his report appears to have been altered to better fit the political needs of its commissioner. From all of this evidence, then, a more

plausible scenario emerges for making sense of Thirning's role in the proceedings. Thirning almost certainly was present and active in the events surrounding the deposition in the assembly of 30 September, and he almost certainly did in fact head up the delegation to relinquish homage to the deposed Richard. In addition to this, Thirning rendered the judgment against the appellants of 1397 when the

assembly reconvened as Henry's first parliament.68 However, his role on the actual deposition committee is much less certain; and given the absence of corroborating evidence where such might reasonably be expected, it seems unlikely that he played a major part on this tribunal, if indeed he played any part at all. Nonetheless there is also evidence that his legal opinion was sought on the general matter of the

deposition-sought, but also easily ignored.69 And as for the key meeting of 29 September, when Richard actually signed whatever document was prepared for him, Thirning was almost certainly not present. Indeed it seems altogether unlikely that any persons attended other than clear partisans of Henry's, for only in such baldly partisan company could Richard be compelled to accept a version of a document so clearly manipulatable against his own core interests. The English account of Thirning's delegation to Richard thus acts as a documentary anchor

point for implying his prior presence-and the prior presence of his legal author-

ity-in the more important events that preceded it; and as Walsingham's transcript proves, it, too, was circulated and reproduced for public consumption.

But in the wash of documents put out during and immediately after the events of the deposition, it also appears that a fuller version of Thirning's account (and of the actual text of the "Renunciation and Cession") was produced and then withdrawn when Henry realized its potentially incriminating implications. Rich- ard's confession-and we can note that Thirning refers to it as such-was, like Gloucester's, subjected to a bit of tail-end editing; and Thirning's account was

similarly shorn of any reservations of regality before inclusion in the rolls. As with Gloucester's edited confession, the presence of an English version of Thirning's

68 RP, pp. 451-52: the trial of the 1397 appellants began on 29 October, and the judgment against Edward, duke of Aumale; Thomas, duke of Surrey; John, duke of Exeter; John, marquis of Dorset; and Thomas, earl of Gloucester, was passed on 3 November. See also Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution, pp. 213-19. Prior to this, on 17-18 October, a trial was held and a sentence of execution was passed on one John Hall, a former valet of Norfolk, for the death of Gloucester.

69 Again it is Walsingham who provides the detail, found in no other account, that when Henry considered claiming the throne by right of conquest, Thirning advised against it because it would

necessarily follow that Henry was claiming complete control over his subjects' properties: Annales Ricardi Secundi, p. 282 (Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution, pp. 186-87): "Proposuerat namque vendicasse regnum per Conquaestum; sed hoc omnino prohibuit Dominus W[illelmus] Ther-

nyng, Justiciarius; quia tali occasione commovisset bilem totius populi contra eum; eo quod visum fuisset populo, si sic vendicasset regnum, quod potuisset quemlibet exhaeredasse pro votis, leges mu-

tasse, condidisse novas, et veteres annullasse; et per consequens nullus securus fuisset de sua posses- sione." Although essentially a question of legal rights, Thirning's reply to Henry is notable as a polit- ically astute bit of counsel. But it must also be noted that, setting aside Henry's arguable claims via lineage, his ultimate claim to the throne did rest upon the fact of his conquest.

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report becomes more understandable in the context of these suppressed parts.70 There were other motivating factors as well, such as the shadowy precedent of Edward II's deposition in 1327. But the apparent need to include in the official record the extraneous exercise of renouncing fealty and homage to Richard was motivated by the larger need, repeatedly and variously expressed in the "Record and Process," to "bear away every scruple and sinister suspicion" and to maintain the show of "unanimity and concordance" of everyone involved. Since the con- fession was an easily comprehensible document that effectively told the whole story as a legal fait accompli, it seems likely that Henry (or his partisans) could hardly resist the simple task of refitting the document to better suit the story they wished to tell.

This need for proper appearances was, again, fundamentally legal, even as the law was being manipulated in a fundamentally showy way. The revolution, as K. B. McFarlane notes, "could not be made to look regular-revolutions defy such attempts-but by a certain amount of judicious manipulation it could be made to look less irregular, less illegal."71 The result of this need to respect the forms of legality is another document displaying some remarkable tensions: it answers an objection that cannot be explicitly raised (the objection that Richard had not and could not renounce his kingly status) by fulfilling a desire that could not truly be fulfilled on account of the very conditions of its expression. Like the voice of Gloucester sequestered at Calais, Richard's own voice had to be produced and manipulated but still personalized and authenticated as the words of the one man who could not be allowed to speak. And so for a second time the manipulation of justice necessitated the manipulation of a justice, Thirning, whose own brief appearance in 1397 can be seen as a chiastic counterpoint to Rickhill's reappear- ance in 1399.72 Like Rickhill, who was the final voice of Gloucester, a voice that was simultaneously pre- and postmortem, Thirning provides the authenticating voice-the voice, in the pitiful and (falsely) final phrase, "he hoped that is Cosyn wolde be goode Lord to hym"-for the last words of Richard, the now legally dead king. This was the last time "Richard" would be heard in any public assem- bly in England. His own physical death would follow in a matter of months, shrouded in a timeless uncertainty that can only remind us of the fate of his uncle.

70 As H. G. Wright explains, "The Protestation of Richard II," p. 158: "This objection on Richard's part probably explains the double process completed by Thirning, the Chief Justice. If the Act of Resignation [i.e., the "Renunciation and Cession"] produced by Henry were Richard's free deed, the latter had given back to all men their oath of fealty and homage, and that was enough; but Thirning went to the Tower and retracted the homage and fealty of all men from Richard. This latter act is explicable in the light of Richard's protest-that he was still king, and that fealty and homage were still due to him and not to Henry."

71 McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, p. 55. 72 RP, p. 358. In 1397 both Thirning and Rickhill were asked to give their legal opinion on the

controversial "questions to the justices" of 1387 regarding the potential sentence of treason against those who restrained the king in 1386. Thirning responded with cagey ambiguity: "Qe declaration de Traison nient declarez appertient a Parlement: Mes s'il feusse Seigneur ou Piere de Parlement, s'il eust este demandez il voudroit avoir dit en mesme la manere."

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3. CONCLUSION: THE ROLE OF (A) JUSTICE

A close and contextual reading of these texts thus reveals some local examples of what has been called the "suppressed unease" of the official record as a whole, and it offers strong evidence for the now well documented strategies of manipu- lation practiced by Richard and Henry.73 But for the present purpose of analyzing these records in their literary form and political environment, it is necessary to return to the two men who have emerged, perhaps surprisingly, as the central players in the parallel legal dramas of 1397 and 1399: not Richard and Henry, but Rickhill and Thirning. In the complex amalgam of the documents' legal, po- litical, and personal demands, and in the combination of literate and oral practices that were still fundamental to the practice of the law, the actual persons and voices of the justices were, like the documents they produced, both peripheral and cen- tral, superfluous yet indispensable.

In the cases of both men, their conflicted roles were defined by their status not simply as justices but as commissioned justices. The records pertaining to the duties and persons of the justices in later fourteenth-century England are remark- ably rich; but they can be, as Richard Green has recently explained, quite opaque to our understanding.74 What is clearly important to any understanding of the position of the various classes of justices-justices of assize and gaol-delivery, justices of the peace, justices of oyer et terminer and of special inquiry, and the positions of the justices who sat on the central courts of the King's Bench, Ex- chequer, and Common Pleas-is the fact that a justice was specifically commis- sioned for that role by royal writ. This rather simple observation, that justices were commissioned by the Crown, masks the long history of struggle and nego- tiation between central authority and local courts in matters of legal practice.75 It also tends to obscure the interesting and varied functions of the justices, which were quite different from what we think of today as the jobs of a judge.

These functions and duties are made clearer by a closer look at Thirning and Rickhill, about whom a fair amount of documentation has come down to us.76

73 The phrase comes from Frank Grady, "The Lancastrian Gower and the Limits of Exemplarity," Speculum 70 (1995), 555; see also Strohm, "Saving the Appearances" and England's Empty Throne.

74 See Richard Firth Green, "Medieval Literature and Law," in The Cambridge History of Medieval

English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge, Eng., 1999), pp. 407-31. Green specifically dis- cusses the difficulty in reading and interpreting the records of the Year Books on pp. 409-10.

75 For a summary see "Courts and the Court System," in Medieval England: An Encyclopedia, ed. Paul Szarmach et al., Garland Reference Library of the Humanities 907, Garland Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages 3 (New York, 1998), pp. 217-19. See generally Anthony Musson and W. M. Ormrod, The Evolution of English Justice: Law, Politics, and Society in the Fourteenth Century (London, 1999); J. H. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History, 3rd ed. (London, 1990), pp. 1-62 and passim; S. F C. Milsom, Historical Foundations of the Common Law (London, 1969), pp. 1-25; and Alan

Harding, A Social History of English Law (Gloucester, Mass., 1973), pp. 13-58 and 59-73. Also see

generally Daniel R. Coquillette, The Anglo-American Legal Heritage (Durham, N.C., 1999), pp. 147-

81; and Paul Brand, The Origins of the English Legal Profession (Oxford, 1992). 76 Both Rickhill and Thirning have entries in the Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Leslie Ste-

phen and Sidney Lee, 22 vols. (London, 1885-1901; repr. 1949-50), 16:1149-50 and 19:621-22. The same information can be found in two references by Edward Foss, The Judges of England, 4

(London, 1851), pp. 174-76 and 209-12; and Biographical Dictionary of the Judges of England (London, 1870), pp. 558 and 653-54. Also see Sir John Sainty, The Judges of England, 1272-1990: A List of Judges of the Superior Courts (London, 1993), pp. 43-44, 47, 57-58, and 67.

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Both men followed the normal path of advancement in their legal careers. William Rickhill was Irish and settled in Kent, and he is first listed as a serjeant of law in 1384. William Thirning, probably from Huntingdonshire, had been a pleader since 1370, and the two men's careers developed more or less in tandem through the reign of Richard II. After Thirning was appointed a justice of the Common Pleas in 1388, Rickhill pled cases before him until 1389, when he, too, was raised to a judgeship (to take the place of William Burgh, who was removed from office in the Merciless Parliament).77 Thirning was appointed the chief justice of the Common Bench in 1396, and both he and Rickhill remained on the Bench of Common Pleas until their deaths.78 As serjeants at law and then as justices of the Common Bench, Rickhill and Thirning were members of a very elite group.79 There were only five justices of the Common Pleas by this time, including the chief justice and four junior or puisne justices, and their economic and social status was on a par with the high nobility.80 As chief justice, Thirning was regularly served with an individual summons to Parliament.81 A small but telling detail of the status of the justices is the well-known fact that as a sign of their office they wore white silk coifs on their heads, which they were not required to remove even in the presence of the king.82 As the highest men of law in the land, who determined cases in the highest regular court of the realm, Thirning and Rickhill quite literally did not have to take their hats off for anyone, even to the lord who commissioned their services. But their status by no means insulated them from the vagaries and occasional dangers of politics. As Edward Foss noted, Richard's reign saw the murder of two justices by the rebels of 1381, the execution of a third (Chief Justice Robert Tresilian), and the banishment of almost the entire bench by the Merciless Parliament.83

The duties of justices were not limited to their service specifically on the central courts of King's Bench and the Bench of Common Pleas. Normal judicial functions were augmented by a wide-ranging array of separate special commissions whose records are listed primarily in the patent rolls (and to a lesser extent in the close

77 Transcripts of cases argued by Rickhill before Thirning survive in the Year Books for these years: see the Year Books of Richard II, 11 Richard II (1387-88), ed. Isobel D. Thornley (London, 1937); 12 Richard II (1388-89), ed. George F Dreiser (Cambridge, Mass., 1914); and 13 Richard II (1389- 90), ed. T. F. T. Plucknett (Cambridge, Mass., 1929).

78 Rickhill died sometime after 1407 (the year of the last recorded fines levied by him), Thirning after May 1413 (the date of his last patent of office). Rickhill's eldest son William was returned as a member of Parliament for Kent in 1420.

79 See J. H. Baker, The Order of Serjeants at Law, Selden Society, Supplementary Series, 5 (London, 1984), for the definitive treatment of the order. The creation of both Thirning and Rickhill as serjeants is listed on p. 158. See also Harding, A Social History of English Law, pp. 172-75.

80 See Baker, The Order of Serjeants at Law, pp. 42-66. Maurice Keen, English Society in the Later Middle Ages, 1348-1500 (London, 1990), p. 9, notes that in the graduated poll tax of 1379, the

charge for justices of the Bench (five pounds) was greater than that of earls (four pounds); only dukes were charged more (ten marks). Serjeants at law were charged the same as barons (twenty shillings).

81 CCR 6:74, 205, and 521. 82 On the robes of office of a justice see Baker, The Order of Serjeants of Law, pp. 67-83, for

discussion and illustrations. 83 Foss, The Judges of England, 4:1-4; see also Saul, Richard II, pp. 183-84 and 191-95; and

McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, pp. 457-58.

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rolls).84 In their capacity as commissioned agents of the king's justice, Thirning and Rickhill appear to have been extraordinarily busy men. In the calendars of the patent rolls, both justices are listed for literally scores of special commissions over the course of Richard's reign. Of these commissions, several types were part of the normal workload of itinerant judicial proceedings. For example, Rickhill and Thirning both regularly served as justices of the assizes in various counties (judicial proceedings usually regarding property) and as justices of gaol-delivery (local judicial review and proceedings in criminal cases); and both justices were regularly listed on commissions of justices of the peace, where their names appear with some of the greatest magnates of the realm.85 Occasionally Rickhill and

Thirning served on the same commissions, and they undoubtedly had a close

working relationship in the wider applications of the law.86 Such judicial functions might include deciding cases of outlawry, felony violence, and the seemingly in- numerable cases of forcible entry; matters of inheritance and property, both ec- clesiastical and secular; labor disputes and the enforcement of labor laws; and

reviewing the decisions (referred to as the "Record and Process") of other courts, such as guild courts, to decide the licitness of their proceedings.87 Other regular commissions move away from what we normally regard as matters of law proper, or at least the realm of the law that today we might think would be normally handled by judges. For example, Thirning and Rickhill were also regularly ap- pointed (as were high nobles) to commissions de walliis et fossatis, that is, "con-

cerning walls and ditches" in various counties, to review their upkeep and repair,

84 On the commissions granted to justices of the peace, their scope and powers, see Bertha Putnam, Proceedings before the Justices of the Peace in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Edward III to Richard III (London, 1938), pp. xx-xxxv. See also Richard W. Kaeuper, "Law and Order in Four-

teenth-Century England: The Evidence of Special Commissions of Oyer and Terminer," Speculum 54

(1979), 734-84. 85 See, for just one example, CPR 5:434-41, where on the patents for commissions of the peace and

oyer et terminer issued on 22 October 1393 and immediately following, Thirning is listed on ten county commissions out of forty-one counties, frequently serving with the duke of Lancaster; Rickhill served on eight commissions. For 1392-94 there are at least twelve certificates listing Thirning in cases of

gaol-delivery. 86 For example, Thirning and Rickhill served together on commissions of oyer et terminer concerning

felony assault (3 July 1392, CPR 5:166) and murder (22 December 1392 and 6 February 1393, CPR 5:234 and 238); on a commission de walliis et fossatis in Middlesex (26 October 1398, CPR 6:441); on a commission oyer et terminer regarding offenses committed at the duke of Lancaster's lordship at

Knaresburgh (10'March 1390, CPR 4:269-70); on a commission of inquiry concerning a complaint brought by the bishop of London (12 June 1391, CPR 4:443); on a commission of gaol-delivery (24 February 1388, CPR 3:467); and on a commission to determine the holdings of a deceased man (4 July 1383, CPR 2:349). Rickhill and Thirning are not listed on the same commissions very frequently; experienced judges were needed for a wide range of functions, and so they were spread out as efficiently as possible with fairly little overlap.

87 For various examples of such commissions, see CPR 1:423 (a commission to Rickhill to investigate a robbery in Kent); 2:72, 138-39, and 244-46 (commissions to both Rickhill and Thirning to act as

investigators following the uprising of 1381); 3:387; 4:52 and 61 (commissions to review the record and process in London guildhall trials and proceedings); 4:217 and 340 (commissions to investigate the withdrawal of customary services by bondmen); 4:55, 56, 133, and passim (commissions regarding forcible entry and assault); 5:81 (regarding an inheritance); 6:3, 136, 169, 247, 390, 544, 586, and

passim (pardons of outlawry for failing to appear at legal proceedings), and so on, which are only a fraction of the total volume of commissions to both men over the period 1377-99.

Murder, Lies, and Storytelling

as well as to commissions for the upkeep of local defenses, "mills, stanks, and weirs," and the upkeep of highways and bridges.88 One particularly succinct ex-

ample is a commission listed in the calendar of the patent rolls, issued at West- minster on 10 December 1391, when Thirning was a puisne justice:

Commission to William Thirning, Thomas Thornburgh, Robert Spanby and Richard Walyngford to enquire by whom the high street both in la Barnet and in St. Albans within the liberty of the abbot of St. Albans in the counties of Middlesex and Hertford has been choked with filth and the deposit of timber, trunks, etc., so that numbers of persons have fallen there with their goods and equipage, and to cause the same to be cleansed and the nuisances removed.89

Not only was a justice regularly commissioned to sit on the highest court and committees and to decide some of the weightiest matters of the realm's law; he could also be commissioned to figure out who was supposed to pick up the trash.

Obviously, we need not imagine Thirning in his judicial regalia poking around in the rubbish of the high street in St. Albans (he probably had deputies for that). And although the calendar record of this commission looks a bit strange to modern

eyes, it makes perfect sense in context. It concerns the status and upkeep of the

king's roads; the commission was probably issued in direct response to complaints for redress where none could be had locally; and whoever was found at fault by the committee undoubtedly was made to pay a fine that went directly into royal coffers. Indeed, such extraordinary judicial commissions (heirs to the trailbastons and eyres) were the source of great revenue to the Crown and the target of com-

plaints.90 From our perspective (as we try to discern a forest from these trees), commis-

sions like this help to demonstrate not only the wide variability of judicial func- tions but also the basic assumptions of judicial competence upon which they were based. The extraordinary commissions on which men like Rickhill and Thirning served regularly were called commissions oyer et terminer, that is, commissions "to hear and to determine" (audiendo et terminando) the facts of a particular case; and these cases could pertain to just about anything. "Hearing" meant an

inquiry or a hearing much in its modern sense, and "determining" could encom-

pass rendering an enforceable decision or simply reporting a determination to the

88 For examples from the later years of Richard's reign, see CPR 6:241 (a commission to Thirning dated 14 July 1397 for the repair of a bridge in Bedford), p. 309 (20 November 1397, a commission to Thirning de walliis et fossatis also including the duke of Lancaster), p. 441 (de walliis et fossatis); note that these commissions came after Thirning was chief justice. For Rickhill, see CPR 6:369-71 (16 and 20 June 1398, commissions for the survey of weirs), 6:441 and 5:165 and 432 (1 July 1392 and 2 March 1394, regarding the upkeep of a road), 5:294 (8 May 1393, commission de walliis et fossatis), and so on. One of Rickhill's earliest commissions in Richard's reign (CPR 1:629, dated 15 February 1381) was to survey the ports in Kent, to oversee repair and construction of piles and trenches, and to compel local labor and contributions to the cost; see also CPR 2:136, a commission to Rickhill (20 March 1382) to take care of the repair of a bridge over the Medway River in Kent.

89 CPR 5:77. 90 In the absence of regular taxation, the sale of justice via writs and the exaction of legal fines were

among the Crown's most lucrative sources of income; see Putnam, Proceedings before the Justices of the Peace, pp. xxxviii-xlvii. See also Kaeuper, "Law and Order in Fourteenth-Century England," for a detailed account of the abuses of commissions oyer et terminer in the years 1272-1377.

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Murder, Lies, and Storytelling Crown for the consideration of sufficient action or redress. In every case, the role of a justice was to make a truthful and accurate determination and to report it thus. Justices were, in effect, commissioned truth tellers, which is also to say that they were commissioned truthful storytellers. It is in this more general sense that a justice was assumed to embody, in his person and in his deliberative capacity, something of a personification of justice, an extension of the sovereign's royal capacity as the font of justice, and of truth, for the realm.91 The role of a justice thus also necessarily encompassed a conflation of roles that today we normally think of as separate. He could be, in the company of a commission, an official investigator, legal determiner, and decision renderer all in one. And as the Crown's particular brand of justice spread wider and increasingly eclipsed other sources of judicial redress (such as baronial courts and local courts), the importance of this kind of hearing and determining grew as well. Whether the case at hand had to do with dirty streets, broken bridges, a disputed inheritance, breaking and assault, a rebellion of bondmen, the placement of a mill, a broken ferryboat, an audit of customs duties, murder, a jailbreak, determining a common pasture, arson, re- viewing the process of a legal action, settling an ecclesiastical property dispute, shipwrecked goods, insurrection, counterfeiting and false coining, or any of the quotidian duties of assize, gaol-delivery, and legal review on the commissions of the peace,92 it was the overall duty of a justice to get the story-the formula repeatedly used in commissions described the commissioners and jurors as men "per quos rei veritas melius sciri poterit" ("through whom the truth of the matter will be able to be better known")-and to act as the voice of justice in making a determination.

It is by recognizing this capacity of the justices as truth tellers of the realm that we can, with the oversight of historical hindsight, make better sense of why both Richard and Henry wanted to exploit particular justices in their efforts to rewrite the political truth of the events in the assemblies of 1397 and 1399. The extraor-

dinary commissions under which Rickhill and Thirning served had, as a founda- tional assumption to be exploited, the cultural faith that something like the truth could and should be represented in the person and voice of a judicial official. Indeed, that was their job. But in both cases, as we have seen, the truth tellers or bearers of testamentary authority were in effect being used as mere mouthpieces and messengers. Thus the fissure between the man and his role was exposed, particularly in the case of Rickhill. Indeed, Rickhill's later objections have as their unstated premise an outrage that he was manipulated for the purposes of telling an untruthful story, a half-truthful and thus misrepresentative account of his meet-

91 In this and what follows I use the word "truth" with reference to all of its remarkable complexity in this period, as has been recently demonstrated by Richard Firth Green, A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England (Philadelphia, 1999). See especially chap. 1, "From Troth to Truth," pp. 1-40, and chap. 6, "Truth and Treason," pp. 206-47.

92 These examples are drawn from commissions either to Rickhill or to Thirning or both: CPR 5:357-58 (broken bridges); 5:81 and 4:515 (disputed inheritance); 4:55-56 (breaking and assault); 2:358 (rebellion); 2:201 (mill); 4:519 (ferryboat); 4:57-58 and 439 (customs audit); 5:165 and 234 and 4:132 (murder); 6:157 (jailbreak); 3:387 (pasture); 4:210 (arson); 6:159 (legal process); 6:57

(property dispute); 5:237 and 239 (shipwrecked goods); 5:444 (insurrection); 5:354 and 6:512 (false coining).

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Murder, Lies, and Storytelling

ing with Gloucester. But from Richard's perspective it must have seemed (or at least he may have rationalized) that he was not fabricating a lie so much as he was improving upon the product of his own commission, making it more truthful by stripping it of distracting or useless details-and, in the process, making it a better story. The same justification may well have occurred to Henry with Thirn-

ing's report, and certainly the story it was apparently revised to tell bore better witness to the particular truth that Henry wished to convey. Indeed it became the story that was more or less accepted as truth for over five hundred years.

In that regard it is both trivial and yet revealing to note that William Rickhill, while he was still a serjeant, served as a commissioned justice of the peace with another famous storyteller, Geoffrey Chaucer. In 1385 Chaucer was associated with the commission of the peace and oyer et terminer for Kent with Rickhill, and that commission was renewed for both men in June 1386.93 In May 1387 Chau- cer's name is also listed right after Rickhill's as a member on a special commission ad inquirendum investigating the abduction of a minor.94 Both Rickhill and Chau- cer served on the Kent commission of the peace until Chaucer was removed in July 1389; and about one year later, in October 1390, Rickhill was a justice of the Common Bench when he was appointed to investigate the robberies Chaucer suffered while he was clerk of the King's Works.95 As residents of Kent and as frequently commissioned servants of the Crown, Rickhill and Chaucer undoubt- edly knew one another (and certainly Chaucer knew of Thirning) as both men traveled in overlapping professional circles. William Rickhill may have been among the class of urban professionals and educated men-like Ralph Strode, John Gower, Peter Bukton, Philip de la Vache, Henry Scogan, and Thomas Hoc- cleve-who shared an interest in courtly poetry, just as these men and Chaucer shared more than a passing interest in the law.96 We can only guess what Chaucer thought when in the years 1397 and 1399 he saw his old associate Rickhill being ever more deeply embroiled in the unfolding political events.

Of course, any suggestion that Rickhill may have been close to a Chaucer circle can only be speculative. But having analyzed the legal documents of the confession and abdication recorded in the parliament rolls, we can see how the institutional function of a commissioned justice was, in some ways, very much like that of a commissioned poet. Enjoined to produce, record, and bear testimony to a partic- ular story, Rickhill suffered the indignity of having his "literary" product tampered

93 Chaucer Life-Records, ed. Martin M. Crow and Clair C. Olson (Oxford, 1966), pp. 348-63. 94 Ibid., pp. 375-83 (the case of Isabella Hall, daughter of William Hall). 95 Ibid., pp. 477-89. As Crow and Olson note (p. 487), "The commission [to investigate Chaucer's

robbery] was of considerable strength, including William Rickhill, a judge of the Common Pleas, and William Brenchley, then a justice of assize and a king's serjeant and afterwards a judge of the Common Pleas, both of whom had been among Chaucer's fellow justices of the peace in Kent. ..." Since Rickhill was not at the time a justice of the peace for Surrey (Brenchley was: see CPR 4:341), where the robbery apparently occurred, his interest in the case may have had a personal element. The trial of Chaucer's accused assailants eventually took place before Walter Clopton, the chief justice of the King's Bench and also a former associate of Chaucer's on the Kent commission of the peace.

96 For Chaucer's professional and artistic involvement with the law, see, in addition to the Life Records, Joseph Hornsby, Chaucer and the Law (Norman, Okla., 1988); and Margaret Galway, "Geoffrey Chaucer, J.P. and M.P.," Modern Language Review 36 (1941), 1-36.

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Murder, Lies, and Storytelling with by the lord who commissioned it. As far as we can tell, the same sort of revision was also practiced upon Thirning. In a very real way their voices of the art of law were as much manipulated as the voices of Gloucester and Richard; and like an artist whose work may earn the approval or suffer the opprobrium of its royal audience, the role of a justice was, in a functional sense, to produce a story whose "truths" would be pleasing to the one who was paying to hear them.97 For justices, as for poets, speaking truth to power was not always an easy task, especially when that power also controlled the very conditions of the truth's legal record.

This conclusion is not intended to be cynical so much as critical, and a further critical conclusion can be drawn by reassessing the manner in which the events of 1397 and 1399 are represented today. The language of drama is virtually un- avoidable; and when it comes to the "Fall of Richard II," historiography almost becomes a kind of drama criticism. In this analysis I have self-consciously used the language of roles and literary representation. In his indispensable edition of primary texts, Chris Given-Wilson also provides a "dramatis personae" as well as a division of the texts into three "parts" that are like the acts of a tragedy.98 Caroline Barron remarks offhandedly-but entirely accurately-that "Richard was brought to London and lodged in the Tower to await his walk-off role in Henry's play."99 And in his recent, magisterial biography, Nigel Saul ends with the unavoidable reference to Shakespeare's Richard, concluding about the real Richard that "certainly in the theatre of medieval monarchy there was no keener actor than Richard. His tragedy was that he mistook the illusion of the stage for the reality of the world around him."'100 Such references could easily be multiplied from historians and literary critics alike, and each is surely appropriate. From Creton to Shakespeare and beyond, the forms of drama have provided the frame- work for understanding the remarkable sequence of events that unfolded at the end of Richard's reign because those events were undeniably dramatic and literary, a case of life imitating art-or at least, a case of a life filling out some of the artistic forms that undoubtedly guided its development and self-understanding.

Indeed, there is an element of inevitable self-fulfillment in Adam Usk's portrait (later repeated by Holinshed and Shakespeare) of the dejected Richard seeking solace in the exempla of "sad stories of the death of kings," so that now, historical writing cannot help but make a similar use of literary-historical forms.101 But given the scope and the style of the documentary distortions that have been analyzed here-the artful manipulations of people and publications, of roles and of official records-I would suggest that an alternative literary model for characterizing the

97 On this see also the conclusions reached by Kaeuper, "Law and Order in Fourteenth-Century England," pp. 781-84.

98 Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution, pp. v-vi and xvi. 99 Barron, "The Deposition of Richard II," p. 143. 100 Saul, Richard II, p. 467. A similarly tragic-dramatic finish is reached by McKisack, The Four-

teenth Century, p. 498: "[Richard's] failure was a personal tragedy; but his success would have been the tragedy of a nation."

101 The Chronicle of Adam of Usk, pp. 62-65. Usk tells how Richard, in an episode of self-pity, recounts "the histories of those who had suffered such fates, from the time when the realm was first inhabited" ("Et recitauit historias et nomina uexatorum a primeua regni inhabitacione").

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Murder, Lies, and Storytelling events of 1397 and 1399 can be found in a model as old as drama itself, although one with a new name: the model of a media event. In our modern world a media event is not simply an event reported by the media. Rather, it is an event that is itself shaped by the capacities and formal expectations of the media that will be making that event public and thus possible in the first place. A media event is an event "staged" to the means and by the means of its own dissemination. And so today we have politicians who intentionally speak in sound bites and who both manipulate and are manipulated by polls; press releases that imitate the form of news, and news that derives from and imitates press releases; and so on, in both public and private life. With this model in mind, we can look back at the events of 1397 and 1399 as a remarkable equivalent. As the parliamentary records make clear, the forms of the events ("sub qua forma") derived from the physical medium of documentary practices and from the institutional medium of the law, both of which proved to be profoundly manipulatable, as all media are, but not completely flexible. The missteps and oversights of both kings-the multiple different copies of exemplified documents, the differing historical accounts that escaped Henry's revisions-demonstrate both precociousness and awkwardness in what we might call today the spinning of their respective coups. This is not to argue that the events themselves were not about real political power and, at times, very real violence. But in their wake it is remarkable how historians, from Clarke and Galbraith to Sayles, Barron, and Given-Wilson, have had to become historical media critics in order to tease out a more likely story-one is hesitant to say a true story, as the historians themselves are the first to admit. The artful but awk- ward manipulations practiced by Richard and Henry also necessarily included manipulating the men who mediated between the Crown and its execution of the law, indeed whose very voices, identities, and professional roles were defined as the living media of justice. It is in this sense as well that the "Fall of Richard II"- and, correspondingly, the "Rise of Henry IV"-can be understood fundamentally as media events and thus as literary events, events deriving their claims to legiti- macy from the realms of law and documentation, which were, in practice and in person, not very far at all from the realms of artful distortion and half-truths we charitably call "literature."

Matthew Giancarlo is Assistant Professor of English at Yale University, P.O. Box 208302, New Haven, CT 06520-8302 (e-mail: matthew.giancarlo@yale.edu).

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