In the summer of 1399, King Richard II of England stood at the zenith of his power. His enemies, the formidable Lords Appellant who had challenged his authority a decade earlier, were dead, disgraced, or exiled. Parliament, intimidated into submission, had granted him unprecedented financial and political powers. Clad in the vestments of divinely anointed majesty, Richard governed not as the first among equals, but as an autocrat whose will was law. Yet, within a few short months, this gilded edifice of absolute monarchy would shatter, and Richard, the last direct male-line Plantagenet king, would be a prisoner awaiting a lonely death. The instrument of his downfall was his own cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, a man Richard had exiled and disinherited. This was no mere palace coup; it was a constitutional earthquake born from a latent conflict between the Crown and the nobility, a crisis that exploded with devastating force. For the county of Lincolnshire, and by extension the Barony of Brattleby, this was not a distant political drama. It was a local revolution, for Henry Bolingbroke was not just a duke; he was Harry of Bolingbroke, and his power base lay deep within the Lincolnshire soil.
The Seeds of Conflict: A King's Prerogative and a Baronial Reckoning
To understand the cataclysm of 1399, one must look back to the schisms of Richard II’s reign. Ascending to the throne as a ten-year-old boy in 1377, Richard’s minority was governed by a series of councils dominated by his powerful uncles and the realm’s great magnates. When he came of age, he displayed a concept of kingship starkly different from that of his grandfather, the warrior-king Edward III. Richard cultivated a court of unprecedented splendour and sophistication, centred on an exalted, almost mystical, idea of royal authority. He saw himself as God’s anointed deputy, above the law and beyond the censure of his subjects, however noble.
This view clashed violently with the established political realities of late medieval England. The nobility, whose military and tenurial power was the very framework of the kingdom, expected to be the king’s natural counsellors. They accepted a strong monarch, but one who ruled in concert with them, respected their property, and upheld the common law. Richard’s preference for a close-knit circle of low-born favourites and his seeming indifference to the martial pursuits so beloved by the aristocracy bred deep resentment.
This simmering conflict first boiled over in 1386-88 with the crisis of the Lords Appellant. A powerful group of magnates—including the King’s own uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester; Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel; and Thomas de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick—accused Richard’s favourites of treason and corruption. Acting through Parliament, they effectively seized control of the government, executing several of the King's closest allies. Significantly, two younger men joined their cause: Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, and the King’s cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, son of the immensely powerful John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. While Bolingbroke’s role was less central than that of his elder peers, his participation marked him as an opponent of Richard's burgeoning absolutism. For a decade, Richard was forced to bide his time, nursing a deep and vengeful grievance against the men who had humiliated him.
The Tyranny of 1397: Revenge and the Rule of Fear
The year 1397 saw Richard’s patience expire. In a swift, pre-emptive strike, he moved against the principal Lords Appellant of 1388. The Earl of Arundel was tried before a subservient Parliament and brutally executed. The Earl of Warwick was condemned and exiled to the Isle of Man. Most shocking of all, the King’s uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, was arrested at his castle of Pleshey, spirited away to the royal fortress at Calais, and secretly murdered. The chronicler Adam of Usk records the palpable fear that gripped the nobility, writing that "the whole kingdom was troubled, and all, from the greatest to the least, were in fear of their lives."
To cement his newly won authority, Richard summoned what became known as the "Revenge Parliament." It systematically annulled the acts of the 1388 Merciless Parliament and declared the actions of the Appellants to be treasonous. Furthermore, he compelled leading nobles and parliamentary representatives to sign and seal blank charters, or "ragmans," effectively giving the king a blank cheque to impose fines or seize lands at will. This was a reign of terror, enforced not by a great army, but by the manipulation of law and the creation of an atmosphere of pervasive insecurity.
During this period, Richard rewarded those who had supported his coup, elevating his allies to new ducal titles. Henry Bolingbroke, who had shrewdly avoided Richard’s wrath, was made Duke of Hereford. His former Appellant colleague, Thomas Mowbray, became Duke of Norfolk. Yet this apparent harmony was an illusion. In December 1397, a fateful conversation took place between Hereford and Norfolk. According to Bolingbroke’s later testimony, Mowbray warned him that the king would never forgive them for their past association with the Appellants and would eventually find a way to destroy them both. When Richard learned of this conversation, he summoned both men to explain themselves. At a hearing which descended into mutual accusations of treason, Richard intervened. Rather than a trial, he decreed a trial by combat. But on the appointed day at Coventry in September 1398, just as the two dukes were preparing to fight, Richard halted the proceedings. In a stunning display of royal prerogative, he banished both men from the kingdom: Norfolk for life, and Bolingbroke for ten years.
A Lincolnshire Inheritance: John of Gaunt and the Heart of Bolingbroke's Power
Crucially, Richard gave Bolingbroke a solemn promise, guaranteed by royal letters patent: should his father, John of Gaunt, die during his exile, Henry would be able to claim his vast inheritance by proxy. This was the inheritance of the Duchy of Lancaster, a sprawling collection of lands, castles, and rights that made it a semi-independent palatinate—a kingdom within a kingdom. And its heartland, in many respects, was Lincolnshire.
John of Gaunt was the dominant figure in the county. He held Lincoln Castle itself, the ultimate symbol of royal and military authority in the region. His influence radiated outwards from the great Honour of Bolingbroke, which encompassed dozens of manors and provided him with a vast income and a huge retinue of knights, esquires, and yeomen. Henry himself had been born at Bolingbroke Castle in 1366 or 1367, a fact that forever tied him to the county in the public imagination. The Duchy also controlled the Honours of Lancaster and Tickhill, both of which included extensive lands within Lincolnshire. Families across the county, from the great barons to the minor gentry, were tied to the Duke of Lancaster through bonds of service, lordship, and affinity.
For a landowner near the Barony of Brattleby, located in the Wapentake of Lawress just northwest of Lincoln, the power of Lancaster was an inescapable fact of life. While Brattleby itself was held in this period by lords such as the Lovell family, their local influence was dwarfed by that of the Duke. John, 5th Baron Lovell of Titchmarsh, was a significant national figure in his own right, but his and other local lords' fortunes were inextricably linked to the political climate set by their powerful Lancastrian neighbour. To offend the Duke of Lancaster was to risk political and economic marginalisation within the county. To serve him was to gain access to the kingdom's greatest nexus of patronage. The administration of the Duchy of Lancaster's Lincolnshire estates was a major local industry, providing careers for stewards, bailiffs, and lawyers, and its presence shaped the social and political landscape of the entire shire.
The Fatal Miscalculation: The Seizure of the Lancastrian Estates
On 3 February 1399, John of Gaunt died. The moment of truth had arrived. Would Richard honour his promise to the exiled Henry Bolingbroke? The king, perhaps believing his own propaganda of absolute power, made the single most calamitous decision of his reign. On 18 March 1399, with the assent of his council, Richard II revoked the letters patent granted to Bolingbroke and declared the entire Lancastrian inheritance forfeit to the Crown for the term of Henry’s banishment, which he then extended to life.
The political fallout was immediate and catastrophic. This was not simply an act of personal vengeance against a political rival; it was a fundamental assault on the principle of hereditary right, the very bedrock of the aristocratic social order. If the king could arbitrarily disinherit the greatest duke in the land, what security did any landowner have? Every baron, every knight, every freeholder who held land by inheritance, now had cause to fear. The chronicler Thomas Walsingham captured the mood, stating that this act was "the cause of the king's undoing" (causa finalis destructionis regis). Richard had shown that no man’s property was safe from his whim. He had alienated not just a single family, but the entire propertied class of his kingdom. Compounding his error, Richard then prepared for a military expedition to Ireland to pacify the rebellious province, taking with him the bulk of his loyal retainers and troops. The kingdom, seething with discontent, was left dangerously exposed.
The Return of the Duke: Ravenspur to Chester
In Paris, Henry Bolingbroke saw his opportunity. Stripped of his lands and titles, he was no longer bound by any allegiance. He became the figurehead for all those disaffected by Richard's tyranny. Planning his return, he gathered a small group of followers, including the exiled Thomas Arundel, former Archbishop of Canterbury. At the end of June 1399, while Richard was campaigning in the Irish interior, Henry and his band of followers landed at Ravenspur, a now-lost port on the Yorkshire coast at the mouth of the Humber estuary, a stone's throw from the northern tip of Lincolnshire.
Initially, Henry proclaimed that he had returned only to claim his rightful inheritance as Duke of Lancaster. This was a masterful piece of propaganda. It was a cause the entire nobility could support without being guilty of open treason against the king. Support for him snowballed with astonishing speed. The first to join him were the two most powerful nobles in the north, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and his fiery son, Sir Henry Percy, known as 'Hotspur'. They had their own grievances against Richard and saw in Bolingbroke a vehicle for their ambitions.
From Yorkshire, Henry moved southwards, his army growing daily. In Lincolnshire, the county that was his birthright, support was immediate. Lord Henry Beaumont, a major Lincolnshire baron, was among the first to rally to Bolingbroke’s banner. Other local knights and gentry, many of them formerly of John of Gaunt’s affinity, flocked to join him. The position of men like John, Lord Lovell, who held lands including and around Brattleby, was more complex. Lovell had been a loyal Ricardian, but faced with the reality of Bolingbroke’s unstoppable progress and the universal support he commanded, to remain loyal to an absent king was political suicide. Like so many others, Lovell and his retinue prudently, if belatedly, switched their allegiance to the returning duke. By the time Bolingbroke reached the Lancastrian stronghold of Pontefract, he was at the head of a formidable army. The regent of the kingdom, Richard’s uncle the Duke of York, attempted to raise an army to oppose him, but found his summons ignored; his own men deserted to Henry. The royal regime had melted away.
The Unmaking of a King
When news of the invasion finally reached Richard in Ireland, he returned in haste, landing in Wales in late July. But it was too late. He found his kingdom lost and his supporters gone. After a desperate flight through the Welsh mountains, he was cornered by an army under the Earl of Northumberland. Deceived by promises of a safe negotiation where he would retain his crown if he restored Henry’s lands, Richard agreed to meet with his cousin. He was taken at Conwy Castle, or ambushed on the road from it, and swiftly became a captive. The meeting between the two cousins at Flint Castle was a moment of high drama. According to one account, Henry bowed low, but Richard declared, "Fair cousin of Lancaster, you are right welcome." Henry replied coolly, "My lord, I am come before my time, but I will tell you the reason. Your people complain that you have ruled them harshly for twenty-two years; but if it please God, I will help you to rule them better." The pretence was over. Richard was now a prisoner.
He was escorted to London and lodged in the Tower. The final act was played out in Parliament, which was summoned to meet at Westminster on 30 September 1399. A delegation visited Richard in the Tower, where he was ‘persuaded’ to sign a deed of abdication, renouncing all claim to the throne. In Parliament, his abdication was read out, along with a lengthy list of thirty-three articles of deposition outlining his crimes against the realm. These included the murder of Gloucester, his extortionate taxation, the imposition of the blank charters, and, critically, his declaration that "the laws were in his own mouth and often in his own breast."
Once the throne was declared vacant, Henry Bolingbroke rose and made a formal challenge for the crown, claiming it in English (a significant choice) "through that right that God of his grace hath sent me, with help of my kin and of my friends to recover it." His claim was deliberately ambiguous, based on a mixture of descent (a tenuous link through his mother), right of conquest, and Richard’s own unworthiness. The assembled Lords and Commons acclaimed him as king. On 13 October 1399, Henry IV was crowned in Westminster Abbey. The ceremony was rich with symbolism that reinforced the new Lancastrian reality. Sir John Dymoke of Scrivelsby, a Lincolnshire knight whose family held the manor by serjeanty, performed the ancient role of the King’s Champion. He rode his charger into the coronation banquet in Westminster Hall and issued a challenge to anyone who dared dispute Henry's right to the throne. It was a powerful demonstration that Lincolnshire was now at the very heart of royal power. Richard II, now known simply as Richard of Bordeaux, was spirited away to the Lancastrian castle of Pontefract, where he died in February 1400, almost certainly murdered to extinguish any hope of a loyalist restoration.
A Crown Usurped, A Precedent Set
The deposition of Richard II was a watershed moment in English history. It marked the end of the 300-year-old direct Plantagenet dynasty and the beginning of the House of Lancaster. But its significance ran deeper. The events of 1399 had decisively rejected Richard’s model of continental-style absolutism in favour of a monarchy that was, at least in theory, bound by law and conditional on the consent of the realm’s magnates. Henry IV owed his crown not to God alone, but to Parliament and the powerful nobles who had helped him seize it.
However, in solving one problem, Henry had created another. By deposing an anointed king, he had established a dangerous precedent: that an unpopular or unsuccessful monarch could be removed by force. His own reign would be plagued by rebellions and conspiracies, as former allies like the Percys turned against him, feeling they had been inadequately rewarded for making him king. The "curse" of the Lancastrian usurpation hovered over the dynasty, providing the underlying justification for the Yorkist challenge decades later, which would plunge England into the bloody dynastic conflict known as the Wars of the Roses.
For Lincolnshire, the ascension of Harry of Bolingbroke was a moment of triumph. The county was no longer merely the power base of a great duke; it was the cradle of a king, the homeland of a royal dynasty. The patronage of the Crown now flowed strongly through the channels first established by the Duchy of Lancaster, benefiting the gentry and towns of the shire. The fortunes of the lords of manors like Brattleby became tied not just to a regional magnate, but to the king himself. The explosion of 1399, born of a king’s fatal overreach and a duke’s disinheritance, had not only unmade a king; it had re-forged the political map of England and placed a man from a castle in the Lincolnshire Wolds upon its contested throne.
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Sources & Further Reading
Primary Sources:
The Westminster Chronicle, 1381-1394. Edited and translated by L.C. Hector and B.F. Harvey. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. Adam of Usk, The Chronicle of Adam Usk, 1377-1421. Edited and translated by C. Given-Wilson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Froissart, Jean. Chronicles. Translated by Geoffrey Brereton. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978. (Offers a courtly, though not always precise, perspective). Rotuli Parliamentorum; ut et Petitiones, et Placita in Parliamento [Rolls of Parliament]. Vol. III. London, 1783. (Contains the official parliamentary record of the deposition). Walsingham, Thomas. The St Albans Chronicle: The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, Vol. II, 1394-1422*. Edited and translated by J. Taylor, W. R. Childs, and L. M. Watkiss. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2011.
Secondary Sources:
Brown, A. L. "The Reign of Henry IV." In Fifteenth-Century England, 1399-1509: Studies in Politics and Society, edited by S.B. Chrimes, C.D. Ross, and R.A. Griffiths, 1-28. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1972. Given-Wilson, Chris. The Royal Household and the King's Affinity: Service, Politics and Finance in England 1360-1413. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Given-Wilson, Chris. Chronicles of the Revolution, 1397-1400: The Reign of Richard II. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993. (An excellent collection and analysis of the primary sources). Mortimer, Ian. The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King. London: Jonathan Cape, 2007. Saul, Nigel. Richard II. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. (The modern standard biography of the king). Victoria County History of the County of Lincoln. Vol. II. Edited by William Page. London, 1906. (Provides background on the religious houses and general political landscape of the county). Walker, Simon. The Lancastrian Affinity, 1361-1399*. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. (Essential for understanding the power of John of Gaunt and the Duchy of Lancaster).