In the turbulent twilight of the fourteenth century, England stood on a precipice. The reign of Richard II, a king whose concept of monarchy was as absolute as it was brittle, was entering its final, fatal phase. At the heart of the crisis that would engulf the nation were two men, first cousins bound by blood and divided by ambition: Richard of Bordeaux, the anointed king, and Henry Bolingbroke, a son of Lincolnshire and heir to the vast Duchy of Lancaster. The story of how one man’s personal grievance and politically-mandated exile escalated into a full-blown revolution is a masterclass in medieval power politics. It is a tale not only of kings and dukes, but of broken promises, the sanctity of inheritance, and the critical miscalculation that cost a king his crown. For the magnates and common folk of Lincolnshire, whose fortunes were so intimately tied to the Lancastrian affinity, this was not a distant courtly drama; it was a seismic event that would reshape their world and place their native son upon the throne of England.
The Seeds of Discord: King and Cousin
The relationship between Richard II and Henry Bolingbroke was complex from the outset. Born only months apart in 1366-67, they were the last male scions of the great Plantagenet king, Edward III. Richard was the son of the heroic Black Prince, and Henry the son of the immensely powerful and wealthy John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. While Richard ascended to the throne as a boy of ten in 1377, Henry grew into his inheritance as the most eligible and accomplished nobleman of his generation. Born in his family’s mighty fortress of Bolingbroke Castle in the Lincolnshire Wolds, Henry was, in name and spirit, a product of the county. He was a celebrated jouster, a seasoned crusader who had fought with the Teutonic Knights in Lithuania, and a charismatic figure who enjoyed genuine popularity.
Their paths first diverged dramatically during the crisis of 1387-88. A young King Richard, chafing under the guidance of his magnates, had surrounded himself with a coterie of unpopular favourites, most notably Robert de Vere, Duke of Ireland. This provoked a powerful faction of nobles, who styled themselves the "Lords Appellant," to take up arms against the king’s circle. Among them were the king’s uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, and the Earls of Arundel and Warwick. Significantly, two junior members joined their cause: Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, and a 20-year-old Henry Bolingbroke, then Earl of Derby. At the Battle of Radcot Bridge in 1387, they routed the king’s forces and, in the ‘Merciless Parliament’ that followed, purged Richard’s court, executing or exiling his closest friends. Richard was utterly humiliated. He was forced to acquiesce, but he would neither forgive nor forget.
For the next decade, a tense peace prevailed. Richard, seemingly chastened, ruled with greater consensus. Following the death of his beloved queen, Anne of Bohemia, in 1394, however, a darker, more autocratic side of his personality emerged. In September 1397, his revenge for the events of a decade prior was finally exacted. Gloucester was arrested and murdered in Calais, Arundel was beheaded, and Warwick was exiled. Yet Bolingbroke and Mowbray, the two surviving Appellants, were not only spared but elevated. Mowbray became Duke of Norfolk, and Bolingbroke Duke of Hereford. By promoting them, Richard created a climate of intense fear and suspicion. He had demonstrated that he was willing to destroy even the most powerful men in the realm, and he now held the past transgressions of Bolingbroke and Mowbray over their heads like a Sword of Damocles.
The Quarrel of the Dukes
The breaking point came just months later. In December 1397, as Henry Bolingbroke was riding from Brentford to London, he was intercepted by Thomas Mowbray. What followed was a conversation that would change the course of English history. According to Bolingbroke’s later testimony, a fearful Mowbray warned him that despite their recent promotions, they were both marked men. Mowbray claimed the king and his inner circle were plotting to annul the pardons granted after Radcot Bridge and that they would "undo" them for their past opposition. "We are on the point of being destroyed," Mowbray allegedly declared.
Whether Mowbray was genuinely afraid, attempting to entrap Bolingbroke, or simply indiscreet, we will never know. Bolingbroke, however, saw his peril. To stay silent was to risk being implicated in a new conspiracy; to speak out was to betray a fellow nobleman. He chose the latter, perhaps seeing it as the only path to self-preservation. He reported the conversation to his father, John of Gaunt, who promptly informed the king.
When confronted at the Shrewsbury Parliament in January 1398, Mowbray vehemently denied the accusation. He threw down his gauntlet, the traditional challenge to a trial by combat, calling Bolingbroke a liar and a traitor. With one man’s word against another’s and no other witnesses, Richard II decreed that God should decide the matter. A judicial duel was set for 16 September 1398, at a specially prepared site at Gosford Green, near Coventry. The stage was set for one of the great chivalric spectacles of the age.
A King’s Judgement: Banishment, Not Battle
The scene at Gosford Green was one of immense pomp and tension. The elaborate lists were constructed, and thousands flocked to witness the resolution of this high-stakes aristocratic feud. Chroniclers like Jean Froissart provide a vivid picture: Richard II seated on a magnificent throne, surrounded by the great lords of the realm, while the two combatants, resplendent in their heraldry, made their final preparations. Bolingbroke, representing the House of Lancaster, was composed and confident. Mowbray, on the other hand, was reportedly pale and agitated.
As the heralds sounded the charge and the two dukes prepared to spur their horses, the king suddenly threw down his warder—the ceremonial baton—signalling a halt to the proceedings. He then delivered a stunning and arbitrary judgement. After a supposed two-hour consultation with his council, Richard announced that to prevent a feud between two such mighty houses and avoid the shedding of noble blood, both men would be banished.
The sentences, however, were strikingly unequal. Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, was exiled for life. Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, was banished for ten years. The crowd, which had overwhelmingly favoured the popular Bolingbroke, was shocked. It seemed a gross injustice; Bolingbroke had, after all, brought a potential treason to the king’s attention and was prepared to defend his honour. Richard’s decision was a bald assertion of absolute royal authority, untethered from the due process the duel was supposed to represent. He was demonstrating that he, not God or chivalric custom, was the final arbiter of justice.
Crucially, however, Richard made one solemn and public promise. He gave Bolingbroke his royal word that, should John of Gaunt die during his son’s exile, Henry’s rights of inheritance to the vast estates of the Duchy of Lancaster would be fully protected. Attorneys could act on his behalf to take possession of the lands and revenues. Appeased by this, and with his sentence later reduced to six years, Bolingbroke accepted his fate. His departure from London was an extraordinary event. As the Adam of Usk chronicle records, he was accompanied by a vast throng of tearful citizens, who lamented his departure and cursed the king’s cruelty. It was a potent demonstration of where popular loyalties lay, a warning Richard failed to heed.
The Fatal Error: Disinheritance and the Duchy of Lancaster
Henry Bolingbroke went into exile in Paris, where he was received with honour at the French court. Back in England, his father, the aged John of Gaunt, was fading. On 3 February 1399, Gaunt died at Leicester Castle. This was the moment of truth for Richard II, a test of his honour and his political wisdom. He failed it spectacularly.
Disregarding his solemn oath made at Coventry, Richard, with the assent of his compliant council, made a catastrophic decision. On 18 March 1399, he declared that Henry Bolingbroke's sentence was now extended to perpetual banishment. Furthermore, the king cancelled the letters patent that allowed Bolingbroke's attorneys to claim his inheritance. The entire Duchy of Lancaster—a colossal portfolio of castles, manors, and revenues that made its duke a quasi-king in his own right—was confiscated by the Crown.
This was Richard’s fatal error. It was an act of breathtaking political folly that had implications far beyond the personal ruin of Henry Bolingbroke. By dispossessing a magnate of his rightful, legally-enshrined inheritance, Richard had attacked the very foundation of the feudal social order. Every landowner in England, from the mightiest earl to the smallest country knight, now had cause to feel insecure. If the king could arbitrarily seize the Duchy of Lancaster, whose property was safe?
Nowhere was this shock felt more acutely than in Lincolnshire. The Duchy was not some abstract legal entity; it was the dominant landlord and power broker across vast swathes of the county. The Honour of Bolingbroke alone, centred on Henry's birthplace, comprised dozens of manors and fees. The Lancastrian administration, based out of castles like Bolingbroke and Lincoln, employed hundreds of retainers, bailiffs, and stewards. These men – knights and gentry of the county – formed the core of the ‘Lancastrian affinity’, a network bound by loyalty and self-interest to the duke. When Richard II seized the Duchy, he was not just disinheriting a distant cousin; he was threatening the livelihoods, status, and property of the entire Lincolnshire gentry. Loyalties that had been a cornerstone of the social fabric were instantly dissolved, and a powerful cohort of local leaders was suddenly alienated from the Crown, their future now tied inextricably to the restoration of their exiled lord. The king’s action transformed what had been a personal quarrel into a constitutional crisis over the security of property itself.
Flush with Lancastrian cash, Richard made his second great mistake. In late May 1399, he departed for a major military campaign in Ireland, confident that he had neutralised his greatest rival and secured his kingdom. He left his vacillating and unpopular uncle, the Duke of York, as regent. The kingdom, stripped of its king and seething with discontent, was left dangerously exposed.
The Return of the Avenger
From his exile in Paris, Henry Bolingbroke watched and waited. Richard’s seizure of his inheritance had given him the perfect casus belli. He was no longer a disgraced nobleman but the righteous champion of property rights, a man wronged by a tyrant who had broken a sacred oath. He began to gather support, most notably from the exiled Thomas Arundel, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who provided ecclesiastical legitimacy for his cause.
Around 4 July 1399, while Richard was bogged down in Ireland, Henry and a small band of followers—perhaps no more than a few hundred men—landed at Ravenspur, a now-lost port on the Yorkshire coast. His stated aim was a masterstroke of political propaganda. He announced that he had not come to claim the throne, but merely to reclaim his rightful inheritance: the Duchy of Lancaster.
This moderate and legalistic claim was brilliantly effective. It allowed discontented nobles to support him without immediately committing treason. The first and most crucial magnates to join him were the powerful Percys of Northumberland—Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and his famous son, Sir Henry ‘Hotspur’. The Percys, who dominated the north, also felt threatened by Richard’s autocratic behaviour and saw in Bolingbroke’s return a chance to curb the king’s power and advance their own interests.
With the Percys at his side, Bolingbroke’s progress south became a triumphal procession. His small band of exiles swelled into a formidable army as knights and nobles from across Yorkshire and the Midlands flocked to his banner. The local levies raised by the regent, the Duke of York, proved utterly unreliable; men deserted in droves to join the popular duke. The grievances simmering across England—over punitive taxes, the seizure of lands, and the king’s tyrannical style—now erupted in a wave of support for the returning hero. For the gentry of Lincolnshire, this was the moment to reaffirm their allegiance to their natural lord. Bolingbroke marched through his own heartlands, gathering strength, his cause acquiring an unstoppable momentum.
From Duke to King: The Usurpation
By the time Richard II finally managed to sail back from Ireland in late July, it was too late. He landed in Wales to find his kingdom had all but deserted him. His army melted away, his key supporters were captured, and he found himself isolated and hunted. He took refuge in Conwy Castle, where he was met by the Earl of Northumberland, acting as Bolingbroke’s envoy. Through a series of false promises—that Richard would retain his crown if only Henry could have his lands and the office of High Steward—Northumberland lured the king out of the safety of the castle and into an ambush.
Richard was taken as a prisoner to Flint Castle, where the famous confrontation with his cousin took place. According to one chronicle, as Bolingbroke approached, he bowed low two or three times. “My lord,” Richard asked, “I am returned. You must now aid me to govern it.” Bolingbroke replied coolly, “My lord, I am come before my time, but I will tell you why. Your people complain that you have ruled them harshly for twenty-two years. If it pleases God, I will help you to rule them better.” The pretence was over.
Richard was escorted to London, publicly humiliated along the way, and imprisoned in the Tower. The fiction that Henry had only come for his duchy was abandoned. A revolution was underway. Bolingbroke’s council, filled with lawyers and theologians, now worked to find a legal justification for the unprecedented act of deposing an anointed king. On 29 September 1399, a delegation presented Richard with a document of abdication, which he was forced to sign. The next day, in Westminster Hall, the throne of England sat empty. A list of thirty-three articles of accusation against Richard was read out, detailing his tyranny and his violations of the laws of the realm. Parliament formally accepted his deposition.
Then, Henry Bolingbroke rose from his seat, made the sign of the cross, and staked his claim to the throne "by right of conquest, by right of birth, and by the king's own resignation." His dynastic claim was weak—the legitimate heir by primogeniture was the young Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March—but in that moment, backed by an army and popular acclaim, it was possession that mattered. The assembly roared its approval. The Archbishop of Canterbury led him to the empty throne. Henry of Bolingbroke, the exiled Duke of Lancaster and son of Lincolnshire, was now King Henry IV of England.
Conclusion: An Uneasy Crown
The exile of Henry Bolingbroke was far more than a personal misfortune; it was the essential prelude to his revolution. Richard II’s handling of the affair reveals a fatal combination of arrogance and political ineptitude. By first stopping the duel to assert his authority, and then breaking his solemn oath to seize the Lancastrian inheritance, he managed to simultaneously alienate his most powerful subject and the entire English nobility. The confiscation of the Duchy of Lancaster universalised Bolingbroke’s private grievance, transforming him into a symbol of resistance against a king who no longer respected the fundamental laws of property and inheritance.
The exile provided Henry with the physical and political space to plot his return, building alliances and formulating a public justification for his invasion. When he landed at Ravenspur, he returned not as a humbled petitioner, but as an avenging champion whose cause resonated deeply with a disaffected nation. His profound connection to Lincolnshire and the wider Lancastrian heartlands gave him a secure and loyal power base, turning his campaign into a groundswell of popular support.
Yet the crown Henry IV seized in 1399 would lie uneasy upon his head. His usurpation, born of exile and opportunism, shattered the principle of divinely ordained succession and set a dangerous precedent. The remainder of his reign would be plagued by rebellions—from Wales, from the resentful Percys, and from others who saw hypocrisy in the new king’s rule. The shadow-sm of the deposed and murdered Richard II would hang over the House of Lancaster, a ghost whose legacy would ultimately fuel the dynastic bloodshed of the Wars of the Roses a half-century later. The revolution of 1399 began with a private quarrel and a journey into exile, but it ended by creating a new dynasty and sowing the seeds of decades of future conflict.
Sources & Further Reading
Primary Sources: Adam of Usk. The Chronicle of Adam Usk, 1377-1421. Edited and translated by C. Given-Wilson. Oxford University Press, 1997. Froissart, Jean. Chronicles. Translated by G. Brereton. Penguin Classics, 1978. (Offers a colourful, though not always reliable, chivalric perspective). The Kirkstall Abbey Chronicles. Edited by J. Taylor. Thoresby Society, 1952. (Contains a northern perspective on the usurpation). Chronique de la traïson et mort de Richart Deux, roy Dengleterre. Edited by B. Williams. English Historical Society, 1846. (A French account, hostile to Bolingbroke). The Rolls of Parliament (Rotuli Parliamentorum). Volume III. Records the official proceedings of the deposition parliament.
Secondary Sources: Bean, J. M. W. The Estates of the Percy Family, 1416-1537. Oxford University Press, 1958. (For understanding the power of the Percys). Brown, A. L. "The Reign of Henry IV," in Fifteenth-Century England, 1399-1509. Edited by S. B. Chrimes, C. D. Ross, and R. A. Griffiths. Manchester University Press, 1972. Castor, Helen. The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors. Faber & Faber, 2010. Given-Wilson, Chris. Chronicles of the Revolution, 1397-1400: The Reign of Richard II. Manchester University Press, 1993. (An excellent collection and analysis of primary source material). Harriss, G. L. Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461. Oxford University Press, 2005. Mortimer, Ian. The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King. Jonathan Cape, 2007. Saul, Nigel. Richard II. Yale University Press, 1997. (The definitive modern biography of the king). Somerville, Robert. History of the Duchy of Lancaster, Vol. 1: 1265-1603. Chancellor and Council of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1953. (Essential for understanding the Lancastrian estates, including those in Lincolnshire). Victoria County History of the County of Lincoln. Vol. 2. Edited by William Page. Archibald Constable & Co., 1906. (Provides background on the major feudal landholdings in the county).