The year 1399 stands as a watershed in English history, a moment when the tectonic plates of political legitimacy shifted beneath the nation’s feet. It was the year a king, Richard II, who believed his authority flowed directly from God, was unseated not by a foreign invader or a rival claimant with an unassailable right, but by the sheer force of political will, military power, and baronial consensus. This was not a succession; it was a usurpation, an action that tore the fabric of primogeniture and redefined the English monarchy. The return from exile of Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, and his subsequent seizure of the throne was a constitutional earthquake, a revolution cloaked in the language of tradition, whose aftershocks would be felt for a century to come. To understand this monumental event, we must first examine the reign that made it possible, the flawed and autocratic rule of Richard II.
The Seeds of Discontent: Richard II’s Tyranny
Richard of Bordeaux had ascended the throne as a boy of ten in 1377, the grandson of the formidable Edward III. His early reign was beset by challenges, most famously the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, but as he reached his majority, a particular vision of kingship emerged. Richard cultivated an exalted, almost mystical conception of his office. His court was a centre of unprecedented lavishness, and he demanded a level of deference that bordered on the imperial. He was the first English king to demand the title ‘your majesty’. This aloofness and adherence to a strict, theoretical divine right set him on a collision course with a powerful and battle-hardened nobility accustomed to a more consultative role in government, a tradition hard-won since Magna Carta.
The first major crisis erupted in the late 1380s with the Lords Appellant, a group of powerful magnates who sought to curb the king’s power and purge his court of perceived corrupt favourites. Among these Appellants were the king’s own uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester; Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel; and Thomas de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. Crucially, a younger member of this group was the king’s cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, then Earl of Derby and son of the immensely wealthy and influential John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Though the Appellants succeeded in 1388, Richard never forgave them. For nearly a decade, he bided his time.
In 1397, Richard struck back with chilling precision. In what has been called his ‘tyranny’, he arrested Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick. Arundel was executed after a show trial; Warwick was condemned but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on the Isle of Man; and Gloucester was taken to Calais, where he was murdered, almost certainly on the king’s orders. This brutal revenge sent a wave of fear through the English aristocracy. Richard had demonstrated that rank and kinship offered no protection from his wrath.
Henry Bolingbroke navigated these treacherous years with skill. He had even sided with the king against his former co-Appellants in 1397, earning the title Duke of Hereford. Yet the atmosphere of suspicion remained. The final act of the prelude to 1399 came a year later. A festering dispute between Bolingbroke and another former Appellant, Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, culminated in a planned judicial duel at Coventry in September 1398. At the very last moment, as the two armoured dukes prepared for combat, Richard II intervened. Citing the need to prevent civil strife and the shedding of noble blood, he banished both men. Norfolk’s exile was for life; Bolingbroke’s was for ten years. It was a demonstration of royal power, but it would prove to be a catastrophic miscalculation.
A Fatal Miscalculation: The Lancastrian Inheritance
While in exile in Paris, Henry Bolingbroke remained a potent figure. He was not just any nobleman; he was the heir to the Duchy of Lancaster, a vast and semi-regal collection of lands, castles, and rights that made its duke the wealthiest man in England after the king himself. His father, John of Gaunt, was an elder statesman, a steadying influence on his tempestuous nephew, Richard. As long as Gaunt lived, the Lancastrian inheritance was secure.
On 3 February 1399, John of Gaunt died. From his exile, Henry Bolingbroke expected to inherit his father’s title and immense patrimony. Richard II had, before his cousin’s departure, given his word that his inheritance would be safe. The king, however, saw an opportunity. He was planning a major and costly military expedition to Ireland to pacify the rebellious province, and he was desperately short of funds. On 18 March 1399, with the assent of a cowed council, Richard issued a decree that changed the course of history. He cancelled the legal documents that would have allowed Bolingbroke to claim his inheritance from abroad and extended his cousin’s exile from ten years to life. The vast estates of the Duchy of Lancaster were seized by the Crown.
This was an act of political suicide. It was not merely an attack on an exiled rival; it was a fundamental assault on the principle of hereditary property rights that formed the bedrock of the entire aristocratic order. If the king, on a whim, could disinherit the premier duke of the realm, then no nobleman’s lands, titles, or legacy were safe. The chronicler Adam of Usk noted that this act "offended the hearts of all the magnates and people of the realm." Richard had alienated his natural supporters and given every landowner in England a reason to fear him. He had handed Henry Bolingbroke a cast-iron justification—a casus belli—to return, not simply as a wronged individual, but as a champion for the rights of the whole propertied class. In late May 1399, confident his realm was secure, Richard II sailed for Ireland, leaving his kingdom vulnerable and his enemies emboldened.
The Return of Lancaster: An Invasion by Invitation
With Richard absent, the path was clear. Encouraged by the exiled Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel (brother of the executed Earl), Henry Bolingbroke prepared his return. His voyage from Boulogne was a gamble, his initial force numbering only a few hundred followers. Around the end of June 1399, he landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire, a port on the Humber estuary now lost to the sea.
From the outset, Bolingbroke’s campaign was a masterclass in political theatre and propaganda. He did not declare his intention to seize the throne. Instead, he maintained that he had returned for one sole purpose: to reclaim his rightful inheritance, the Duchy of Lancaster, and to restore justice to a kingdom misgoverned by corrupt councillors. This moderate and legalistic claim was brilliantly effective. It transformed his invasion into a quest for justice and drew disaffected nobles to his banner.
The first and most crucial allies to join him were the powerful Percys of Northumberland—Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland, and his famously martial son, Sir Henry Percy, known as 'Hotspur'. The Percys dominated the north and felt slighted by Richard. Their adherence gave Bolingbroke’s cause immediate and formidable military credibility. As he marched south from Yorkshire, his support snowballed. Men flocked to him at Doncaster, Pontefract, and Leicester. The regent left in charge of the kingdom, the king’s elderly and indecisive uncle, Edmund, Duke of York, proved utterly unequal to the task. His own forces deserted him, and he eventually submitted to his nephew at Berkeley Castle. Within weeks, Henry Bolingbroke, the disinherited exile, was the de facto master of England.
The Lincolnshire Connection: A County Chooses its Side
For the Barony of Brattleby and the wider county of Lincolnshire, the Lancastrian crisis was not a distant affair. The Duchy of Lancaster was the single greatest landholder in the county. Its power emanated from the great Honours of Bolingbroke, Lancaster, and Richmond, which controlled a vast web of manors, tenants, and local influence. Henry Bolingbroke himself had been born at Bolingbroke Castle in the Lincolnshire Wolds in 1367; he was a native son.
When Richard II seized the Lancastrian lands, he was seizing direct control of a significant portion of Lincolnshire’s economy and power structure. Manors like Waddington, Sutton, and Ingoldmells, and the Soke of Bolingbroke, all fell into royal hands. For the local gentry—the Skipwiths, the Tailboys, the Dymokes—who held lands from or near the great Duchy holdings, Henry’s return was a moment of critical decision. To support the regent, the Duke of York, was to support a king who had violated the most sacred customs of land tenure. To support Bolingbroke was an act of rebellion, but it was also a vote to restore a familiar and powerful local landlord whose interests were intertwined with their own.
While specific records of the Brattleby estate's allegiance are scant, its lords would have been acutely aware of the power vacuum. The speed of Bolingbroke’s success suggests there was little to no organised resistance in Lancaster-dominated counties like Lincolnshire. The men of Lincolnshire who were returned as Knights of the Shire to the pivotal parliament of 1399, Sir John Bussy and Sir John Rocheford, had been associated with Richard II's regime (Bussy, in fact, was one of Richard's most hated councillors and was executed at Bristol by Bolingbroke in July). Their fate demonstrates the swift and brutal transfer of power. Following Bussy’s execution, the county’s loyalties swung decisively behind its native duke. Henry’s cause was their cause; a threat to the Duchy of Lancaster was a threat to the stability and property of Lincolnshire itself.
From Conway to the Tower: The King at Bay
Richard II returned from Ireland in late July to find his kingdom lost. He landed in Wales, hoping to rally support, but his army melted away. He soon found himself isolated and trapped in Conway Castle, a beleaguered king with no kingdom to command. It was here that the Earl of Northumberland met him, acting as Bolingbroke’s envoy.
The exact nature of this parley is debated by historians, clouded by partisan chronicle accounts. The Lancastrian narrative holds that Richard agreed to surrender his crown voluntarily. The more compelling pro-Ricardian account, found in the French Chronique de la Traison et Mort de Richart Deux, claims that Northumberland swore a false oath in a chapel, promising Richard that if he accompanied him to London, he would retain his kingship and only a handful of his councillors would be tried. Trusting the Earl’s solemn vow, Richard left the safety of Conway’s walls, only to be ambushed by a detachment of Bolingbroke’s soldiers and taken prisoner.
Whatever the truth, the outcome was the same. Richard was conveyed to London as a captive, subjected to public humiliation along the way. Mobs jeered the man they had once been forced to revere. On 2 September 1399, he was incarcerated in the Tower of London, the same fortress from which he had once ruled in splendour. The stage was now set for the final act of this political drama: the legalisation of the usurpation.
A Parliamentary Revolution: Forging a New Legitimacy
Henry Bolingbroke was too astute to rule by conquest alone. A crown won solely by the sword could be lost by the sword. His claim needed the sanction of legality, tradition, and consent. The solution was a revolutionary use of Parliament.
On 29 September, a delegation visited Richard in the Tower and, through a combination of threats and persuasion, coerced him into signing a deed of abdication. The document stated that he was resigning his crown willingly due to his own unworthiness to rule. The next day, 30 September 1399, Parliament assembled in Westminster Hall. This was no ordinary session. It was an assembly convened in King Richard’s name, which would proceed to depose him and crown another.
First, Richard’s "voluntary" abdication was read aloud. This alone was not enough. To ensure Richard could never again claim legitimacy, a long and detailed list of thirty-three "Articles of Deposition" was recited. These constituted a formal indictment of his reign, accusing him of a litany of crimes: murdering the Duke of Gloucester, extorting money, ruling arbitrarily without regard for the law, elevating his own will above the good of the realm, and declaring that "the laws were in his own mouth." The articles painted a picture of a quintessential tyrant, thereby justifying his removal for the salvation of the kingdom.
With the throne now symbolically and legally vacant, Henry Bolingbroke rose from his seat. In a moment of profound significance, he made his claim not in French, the language of the court, but in English, the language of the people:
"In the name of Fadir, Son and Holy Gost, I Henry of Lancastre chalenge this Rewme of Yngland, and the Corone with all the Membres and the Appurtenances; als I that am disendit be right lyne of the Blode, comyng fro the gude lorde Kyng Henry the thirde, and thorghe that right that God of his grace hath sent me, with helpe of my Kyn, and of my Frendes to recover it; the which Rewme was in poynt to be undone for defaut of Governance, and undoyng of the gude Lawes."
This claim was a brilliant, if legally dubious, fudge. It deliberately mixed three justifications: 1. Right of Blood: His mention of descent from Henry III was a veiled and weak attempt to suggest a superior bloodline, bypassing the acknowledged heir by strict primogeniture, the eight-year-old Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, who was descended from Edward III’s second surviving son, Lionel of Antwerp. Bolingbroke descended from the third, John of Gaunt. 2. Right of Conquest: The phrase "God of his grace hath sent me... to recover it" was a nod to his military victory, a trial by battle sanctioned by divine providence. 3. Right by Acclamation/Good Governance: The most potent element was the claim that he was saving a realm on the "poynt to be undone for defaut of Governance." This presented him as the saviour of the political community, a man acting with the support of his "Kyn and of my Frendes" (the entire political nation represented in Parliament).
The assembly erupted in acclaim. The rule of succession had been broken. Legitimacy, for this moment, was not found in the sanctity of bloodline but in a pragmatic combination of military force, aristocratic backing, and parliamentary sanction. Henry Bolingbroke was led to the empty throne by the two archbishops and became King Henry IV.
The Legacy of Usurpation
The revolution of 1399 established a dangerous and powerful precedent: a king who alienated his great magnates and flouted the laws of the land could be deposed. The Lancastrian dynasty was founded not on an undisputed right, but on an action—a parliamentary and military coup. Henry IV’s reign would be plagued by the consequences of this original sin. Rebellions, led by his former allies the Percys and the Welsh prince Owain Glyndŵr, sought to unseat him. He lived and ruled under the constant fear captured by Shakespeare’s famous line, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."
The ghost of Richard II, who died—or more likely was starved to death—in Pontefract Castle early in 1400, and the superior genealogical claim of the Mortimer line, would not go away. This inherent instability in the Lancastrian title was a ticking time bomb. Half a century later, it would explode into the catastrophic civil wars we now call the Wars of the Roses, as the House of York, which had absorbed the Mortimer claim, rose to challenge the House of Lancaster. The action of 1399, in its attempt to solve the problem of one tyrannical king, had sown the seeds of a conflict that would drench the kingdom in blood for generations. It was a stark lesson that when the established rule is broken, the consequences can echo for a century.
Sources & Further Reading
Primary Sources:
Chronicon Adae de Usk, A.D. 1377-1421. Edited and translated by E. M. Thompson. London, 1904. (Provides a contemporary, at times eyewitness, account of the events). The Kirkstall Abbey Chronicles. Edited by J. Taylor. Thoresby Society, 1952. (A northern, Lancastrian-leaning perspective). Chronique de la Traison et Mort de Richart Deux Roy Dengleterre. Edited by B. Williams. English Historical Society, 1846. (A French source, highly sympathetic to Richard II). Rotuli Parliamentorum; ut et Petitiones, et Placita in Parliamento [Rolls of Parliament]. Vol. III. London, 1783. (Contains the official record of the deposition and Henry IV’s accession). Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Richard II, Vol. 6: 1396-1399*. HMSO, 1909. (Documents the king’s actions, including the seizure of the Lancastrian estates).
Secondary Sources:
Given-Wilson, C. The Hagnaby Chronicle and the Deposition of Richard II. In The English Historical Review, Vol. 129, Issue 538, June 2014, pp. 521–547. Given-Wilson, C. (trans. & ed.). The Chronicles of the Revolution, 1397-1400: The Reign of Richard II. Manchester University Press, 1993. Harriss, G. L. Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461. Oxford University Press, 2005. (An excellent overview of the period’s political and constitutional framework). Mortimer, Ian. The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King. Jonathan Cape, 2007. (A highly readable and detailed biography focusing on the psychology of the usurpation). Saul, Nigel. Richard II. Yale University Press, 1997. (The modern standard biography of Richard II, offering a balanced view of his reign and downfall). Somerville, R. History of the Duchy of Lancaster, Vol. 1: 1265-1603. London, 1953. (The definitive source for the administration and extent of Lancastrian estates, including those in Lincolnshire). The Victoria History of the County of Lincoln*. Vol. II. Edited by William Page. Archibald Constable & Co., 1906. (Provides background on medieval landholding and religious houses in the county).