The King Who Lost His Crown: Richard II, Royal Tyranny and the Lancastrian Revolution (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798190316896)

A BOY KING. A HUMILIATED MONARCH. A CROWN TAKEN BY FORCE.

Richard II inherited the English throne at ten years old, carrying the prestige of Edward III and the Black Prince into a kingdom weakened by war, taxation and political mistrust.

At fourteen, Richard confronted the Peasants' Revolt and displayed extraordinary courage at Smithfield. Yet the king who survived popular rebellion would later face a more dangerous challenge from within England's ruling elite.

As Richard promoted trusted favourites and asserted his personal authority, Parliament and the great magnates struck back. The Lords Appellant defeated the king's supporters, destroyed his political circle and subjected the realm to the executions and exiles of the Merciless Parliament. Richard recovered control, but he never forgot the humiliation.

A decade later, the king took revenge.

Former enemies were arrested, condemned or killed. Financial bonds and confiscations created a government increasingly sustained by fear. When Richard exiled Henry Bolingbroke and seized the vast Lancastrian inheritance, he transformed a dispossessed nobleman into the leader of a national opposition.

THE KING WHO LOST HIS CROWN follows Richard II from his childhood accession and the crisis of 1381 through the Lords Appellant, the Merciless Parliament, the royal revenge of 1397 and the Lancastrian Revolution of 1399.

Drawing upon medieval chronicles, parliamentary records, government documents, literary evidence and modern scholarship, Gordon J. MacKenzie examines how a legitimate and anointed king destroyed the political support needed to keep his crown.

This is Book Two of THE LAST PLANTAGENETS, a ten-volume history of England from the Peasants' Revolt to Bosworth and the end of Plantagenet rule.