The great battles of the dynastic struggle, known as the ‘Wars of the Roses’, between the Houses of Lancaster and York in the second half of the fifteenth century are well known to most people with an interest in British history. But while Bosworth Field and Towton, Tewkesbury and Barnet, may be familiar, less well known is the desperate conflict of the early years of the same century, when the new Lancastrian dynasty, headed by King Henry IV – in the eyes of many of his reluctant subjects stained with the blood of the deposed and murdered Richard II – fought a merciless struggle for survival against a host of enemies at home and abroad. For almost a decade the issue remained in doubt. These years saw a war to the death between the new dynasty and its erstwhile supporters, the powerful Percy family (the ‘Kings of the North’), a Scottish invasion, and the astonishing string of victories – almost realizing his dream of an independent Wales – won by that master of guerrilla warfare, Owain Glyn Dwr. The climax of the struggle, and the moment when King Henry came closest to death in battle, occurred on 21 July 1403, on Shakespeare’s ‘bloody field by Shrewsbury’. The battle (the first in which the famed English archers turned their missiles on each other) horrified contemporaries with its ferocity.
This book aims to bring the story of these dramatic years, and the colourful personalities – Kings Richard and Henry, the ruthless and devious Henry, Earl of Northumberland and his son, the impetuous Hotspur, the future King Henry V, and the charismatic and mysterious Glyn Dwr, before a wider audience. As ever, my thanks are due to ert Harding, Christopher Summerville and the rest of the team at Pen and Sword. And to Louisa Livingstone for her excellent maps, as well as the staff of the Sydney Jones Library, University of Liverpool, the British Library and Denbighshire County Libraries.
John Barratt
Henllan, May 2009.
The chain of events that would eventually climax in Shakespeare’s ‘bloody field by Shrewsbury’ began almost thirty years earlier with the death, worn out by war and disease, of Edward the Black Prince, the able and popular son of King Edward III, likewise now approaching his end. As a result, on the king’s death in 1377, the English throne passed to the Black Prince’s 10-year-old son, Richard, and in practice, for some years to come, to three ‘continual councils’. Considerable power also lay in the hands of Richard’s uncle, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.
Richard’s accession was greeted with considerable popular enthusiasm, and in 1381 his position was strengthened by the cool head he displayed during the crisis of the Peasants’ Revolt. He promised pardon to the rebels but this pledge was promptly broken (it remains unclear whether Richard made his original promise in good faith). The episode was an early lesson in the cynical realities of medieval politics, which Richard fully absorbed.
As Richard grew towards manhood it was clear to the increasingly concerned members of his council, and the leading English nobility, that the king was both headstrong and determined to exert his own authority. He increasingly ignored the views of leading magnates, such as the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Arundel and the Duke of Gloucester. Instead, Richard turned to his circle of favourites. These were mainly young and inexperienced men, chief among them Richard de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and Michael de la Pole, who Richard created Earl of Suffolk and made Chancellor of England. Rumours grew of a homosexual relationship between Richard and de Vere, adding to the growing concern and distrust felt by many towards the king.
Shakespeare and History
William Shakespeare’s King Henry IV: Part One was probably written in 1596-1597, as part of his cycle of plays charting the fifteenth-century struggle for the crown he commenced with his King Richard II in the previous year. Shakespeare took most of his historical information for the play from the extremely popular ‘Chronicles’ of Tudor historian Raphael Holinshead, and repeats his inaccuracies. He also takes a number of historical liberties for dramatic purposes. First and foremost he makes Hotspur a contemporary of Prince Hal, not of Henry IV, in order to provide a chivalric contrast to the dissolute young prince. The famous ‘Sir John Falstaff’ was originally named after the rebel and Lollard leader, Sir John Oldcastle, but rechristened following protests from the latter’s descendants. In other respects Shakespeare follows the course of history reasonably accurately, and gives a particularly sympathetic portrait of Owain Glyn Dwr, possibly as a compliment to Queen Elizabeth with her partly Welsh ancestry in mind.
Richard’s opponents among the nobility, among them John of Gaunt’s son, Henry Bolingbroke, formed a group known as the Lords Appellant. Among their main grievances were Richard’s plans to end the long-running war with France, where they still hoped for military success and financial reward.
In 1386 the Lords Appellant, through Parliament, called upon Richard to dismiss his unpopular councillors. Richard refused but was told that, as he was still technically a minor, a council of government would be appointed to rule in his name. The furious king reacted by arresting the leading Lord Appellant, the Earl of Arundel, and ordering de Vere to raise an army in the strongly Ricardian county palatine of Cheshire, and then to march on London. But in August 1387, de Vere was intercepted at Radcot Bridge near Oxford by the Lords Appellant, among them Henry Bolingbroke, and quickly routed. Richard himself was briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London, and, possibly under the threat of deposition, forced to accept the demands of the Lords Appellant.
Richard’s circle of advisers were removed from office, some being executed on charges of treason, and others exiled by what was known as the ‘Merciless Parliament’ of 1388. Richard was forced to accept new councillors and, for the moment, was stripped of most of his authority.
The events of 1387-1388 had shocked Richard, although he remained resolute that, sooner or later, revenge would be exacted upon those who had humiliated him. But for the present, he had to tread carefully, and, superficially, appeared to be reconciled with his principal opponents. However, many of the ‘old’ nobility continued to have a low opinion of a king whose interests lay in the world of the arts and culture rather than in war, which had been the main pursuit of his father and grandfather. He was compared ominously with his equally unpopular predecessor, King Edward II, who had been deposed and possibly murdered. Worse, Richard’s few military ventures, such as his Scottish campaign of 1385, had proved humiliating failures, while in 1396 he made a 28-year truce with France, which was widely unpopular.
Meanwhile, Richard was becoming obsessed with a vision of the divine role of monarchy, which also led to him becoming increasingly impatient and intolerant of any attempt to restrict his authority. He revived and extended many aspects of kingship, becoming increasingly arrogant and distant towards his subjects, apart from the new group of favourites with whom he surrounded himself, and whose counsel could be relied upon to be what the king wanted to hear.
By the early 1390s Richard was emphasizing that, in his interpretation, his royal prerogative overrode the wishes and views of his subjects in an increasing number of areas, and reacted harshly to any attempts to challenge him. In 1392 he alienated the citizens of London by depriving them of many of their rights, after they refused to give him a loan. At the same time, his unpopularity also grew as a result of the increasing extravagance, and consequent cost, of the royal court. Richard reneged on promises that he had made to lower the burden of taxation imposed on his subjects. Instead, between 1390 and 1398, Parliament was forced to grant him four and a half subsidies.
By 1397, Richard’s power seemed absolute, although his underlying insecurity and suspicion was emphasized by the recruitment of his notorious Cheshire Guard of archers, whose excesses, albeit at times exaggerated, served still further to increase Richard’s unpopularity. Richard now moved against his old enemies, the Lords Appellant. On the pretext of a plot, which had probably not progressed much further than mutterings of discontent, the king had the principal Lords Appellant – Arundel, Warwick and Gloucester – arrested on charges of treason. After a show trial, Arundel was executed, and his brother, the archbishop of Canterbury, exiled. The Earl of Warwick, imprisoned in the English garrison of Calais, died in mysterious circumstances, almost certainly killed on Richard’s orders, while the Duke of Gloucester, after abject pleas for mercy, was exiled for life. The confiscated estates of the Lords Appellant and their supporters were used to reward Richard’s own adherents.
One complicating factor was that Richard was still childless. There were two possible successors to the throne. The strongest claim lay with the powerful Mortimer family, descended from King Edward III’s brother, Lionel. Until 1398 the Mortimers were headed by Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, but his death left as heir his 7-year-old son, Edmund. Possibly because Edmund’s youth prevented him from being a serious threat to his own position, Richard appeared to favour his eventual succession.
Two Lords Appellant remained. In 1387 both Henry Bolingbroke and Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Norfolk, had been junior members of the group. But this would not be enough to save them from Richard’s vengeance. Furthermore, Bolingbroke, as son of Richard’s uncle, John of Gaunt, had his own claim to the English throne; and as a man with a formidable military record abroad and considerable wealth, influence and popularity at home, was seen by Richard as a serious threat.
Neither Mowbray nor Henry can have had any illusions regarding the danger they were in. It could only be a matter of time before Richard moved against them. In the event, they obligingly toppled each other. According to the version of events that John of Gaunt related to the king, Mowbray approached Bolingbroke in December 1397, warning that Richard’s plan was ‘to do with us what he has done with the others. He wants to wipe clean any trace of our opposition’. On hearing what had happened, Mowbray presented the king with his own version of the conversation, and apparently threw himself on Richard’s mercy – never a bright option. On 19 March 1398, a Parliamentary commission decreed that the dispute should go before the court of chivalry: that is, that the issue be settled by single combat between the disputants.
The Cheshire Guard
With its long tradition of military service to the Plantagenet dynasty and its tradition of breeding hardened military men, Cheshire was a natural choice of recruiting ground when, in 1397, faced by growing domestic opposition, King Richard II decided to recruit a bodyguard loyal only to him. In July, Richard ordered the Sheriff of Chester to muster 2,000 archers for royal service, with the initial task of protecting the temporary hall erected at Westminster for the trial of the Lords Appellant. The force raised was said to include ‘many malefactors out of the county of Cheshire, not gentlemen, but countrymen, cobblers, and other tradesmen’.
Richard now decided to raise a permanent bodyguard from Cheshire. Between September 1397 and 1398, 750 men were retained. They were formed into seven companies, or ‘watches’, each of around 100 men. All their commanders were minor Cheshire gentry, some professional soldiers, some of the men in each company being their own relatives or personal retainers.
The men of the Guard wore Richard’s livery of either the White Hart or a crown. Their loyalty was ensured, not only by regular pay, but by the award of property forfeited by criminals or minor royal offices in Cheshire and elsewhere. The Guard was in constant attendance on the king – at night, one company, armed with large battleaxes – would stand guard over the royal quarters.
As with his other close retainers, Richard was reputedly on close personal terms with the archers of the Cheshire Guard. According to one hostile chronicler
They were on such familiar terms with the lord king that they boldly addressed him in the mother tongue: ‘Dycun, slep sicurly quile we wake, and dred nonst quile we live seftow, for zil thow haddest wedded Perkyn dauzer of Lye [Peter Lye was Richard’s principal Cheshire recruiting agent] thow mun well halde a love day with any man in Chester in ffaith.’ [‘Dickon, sleep soundly while we wake, and dread nothing whilst we live, for as if you had married Perkyn, daughter of Lye, you could well have a love day with any man in [Cheshire] in faith.’]
Like similar units throughout history, the men of the Cheshire Guard acquired a notorious reputation. Among the crimes they were accused of were theft, robbery, rape and murder, for which Richard left them unpunished. There were certainly some instances of crimes committed by members of the Cheshire Guard, but claims that the king deliberately recruited criminals seem unfounded. The Guard was drawn from a wide spectrum of Cheshire society, ranging upwards from men renting their land and only owning a couple of cows, through to reasonably prosperous members of the yeoman class.
It should also be remembered that many of the Guard were professional soldiers, of a type used to enforcing their wishes by violence, but overall there is little evidence to suggest their behaviour was notably better or worse than that of other contemporaries of similar background.
The duel was to take place on 16 September, in Coventry. But as Mowbray and Henry prepared to face each other on the tournament ground, Richard intervened. Mowbray was to be banished from England for life, Henry for ten years.
Richard had disposed of two principal potential opponents. But his actions against Henry were widely perceived as a grave injustice and boosted Bolingbroke’s already significant popularity among people of all social classes.
On 3 February 1399 Henry suffered a further blow when his father, John of Gaunt, died. Six weeks later, Richard announced that Henry was to be regarded as a traitor, all his possessions forfeited, and he himself banished for life.
Richard was so sure of his hold on England that he embarked on a full-scale military expedition to Ireland. He took with him as hostage Bolingbroke’s 12-year-old son, Henry of Monmouth, and most of his own loyalists, leaving his uncle, the Duke of York, to maintain control in England.
It was at this point (if not earlier) that Henry decided to return to England, to regain what he saw as his own. Around 4 July 1399, he landed at Ravenspur on the River Humber in Yorkshire, with around 300 followers.
Although aware of the discontent felt in England towards Richard, Henry was nonetheless taking a desperate gamble. It is unclear what his exact intentions were at this point. But around 15 July, as growing numbers of supporters joined him, Henry could delay no longer in making his objectives clear.
The most powerful of those who had joined Bolingbroke were Henry, Earl of Northumberland, and his eldest son, Sir Henry Percy, better known as ‘Hotspur’. Although the earl had experienced the customary military service associated with men of his rank, he was now over 50 years old, and concentrated on administering and extending the family estates. He seems to have been a canny if unscrupulous individual. Henry Percy’s character was implied by his nickname of ‘Hotspur’ – supposedly given him by the Scots, with whom he was engaged in conflict for most of his life. A contemporary of Henry Bolingbroke, Hotspur was, in 1399, the military leader of the Percy dynasty. He had fought in France and elsewhere in Europe, although it was in the endemic raid and counter-raid of Scottish border warfare that he was best known. A brave and ferocious fighter, Hotspur seems to have had a tendency to impulsiveness, which in 1388, had led to his defeat and capture at Otterburn (see text box). His marriage to Elizabeth, sister of Roger Mortimer, linked the Percys to a family with claims to the English throne.
With huge estates in Yorkshire and Northumberland, the Percys were popularly known as the ‘Kings of the North’. In fact, they were less secure than this title might suggest. Traditionally they held the office of Warden of the East March of the Scottish border, including the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and their own string of castles at Alnwick, Bamburgh, Warkworth and elsewhere. At times the crown also granted them the equally important post of Warden of the West March, with its headquarters at Carlisle.
The Battle of Otterburn 5 August 1388
In 1388 the Scots decided to take advantage of political dissent in England by launching a two-pronged raid across the border into the Northern English counties with the aim of inflicting maximum damage and forcing England formally to recognize Scotland as an independent sovereign state.
The main attack was launched on the West March, south beyond Carlisle, meeting with no serious resistance. The second thrust, on the East March, led by James, 2nd Earl of Douglas, was evidently intended rather more as a diversion. Douglas crossed the border sometime between 28 July and 1 August and, advancing rapidly, drove south, deep into County Durham, burning, killing, and driving off livestock.
The Scottish incursion caught the English off-balance. Although Hotspur was gathering a large force at Newcastle upon Tyne, he was supposed to await reinforcements under King Richard before taking the offensive. But events developed otherwise. Returning northwards, Douglas and his men appeared before the walls of Newcastle, halting to give time for their convoys of looted livestock to gain a head start on the road back to Scotland. There was some skirmishing with Hotspur. According to Froissart, this resulted in a personal encounter between Hotspur and Douglas, in which the Englishman was worsted, losing his lance pennon.
Whether or not this was so, when the Scots resumed their march north on 4 August, Hotspur was determined to pursue them and bring them to battle without waiting for further reinforcements. The Scots had halted at Otterburn, where the day was spent in ineffectual attempts to capture the small castle there. The Scots army probably totalled around 2,400 men, while Hotspur, who had apparently only brought mounted troops with him, most likely had very few more. The English force arrived at Otterburn around 8pm, with roughly an hour of daylight to bring the enemy to battle. The Scots were in two roughly fortified camps. One of them, on marshy ground, was occupied by servants and possibly some rank-and-file spearmen. Separate, on higher ground, was the camp of the nobles and men-at-arms.
Hotspur split his force in two, sending a detachment under Sir Matthew Redman, to attack the servants’ camp on the opposite side from his main force. But eager to gain a decision before nightfall, Hotspur waited neither for Redman to be in position or for stragglers who were still arriving. Though surprised, the Scots servants resisted for long enough for the men-at-arms in the higher camp hastily to arm themselves and join the fray.
The darkness evidently prevented the English from employing archery, and Douglas led a counter-attack against the English flank. The battle quickly became a confused and bloody mêlée, with the Scots gradually gaining the upper hand. Douglas was killed but reinforcements under the Earl of March arrived and made another attack that broke the English. Hotspur was taken prisoner.
Sir Matthew Redman’s detachment was able to make a fighting withdrawal, though a total of 500 English dead were claimed by the Scots.
Hotspur was quickly ransomed, with assistance from the king, and Otterburn had no long-term significance, other than an indication of Hotspur’s inclination to rashness, and the military ability of George Dunbar, Earl of March.
The problem for any monarch was that, if the Percys controlled the entire Scottish border and its resources in fighting men, they would be powerful enough to threaten the crown itself. Richard had never entirely trusted the Percys, whose evidently uncultivated northern ways and accents were regarded as alien in the sophisticated royal court, which heightened the unease of Northumberland and his son. Concerned about their near-monopoly of power in the north, Richard had given the Wardenship of the West March to Richard Neville, and although Sir Thomas Percy, brother of the Earl of Northumberland and a noted soldier and diplomat, was in the service of King Richard, the Percy family was never part of the royal inner circle, and there had recently been rumours that the king suspected them of treacherous intent.
The Percys seldom acted from motives other than self-interest, and their decision to join Henry Bolingbroke soon after his arrival in England was undoubtedly based on a realistic appraisal of his prospects of success. Percy military manpower also provided Henry with the bulk of his army, and left Northumberland and Hotspur in a powerful position to impose their views on Bolingbroke.
This was the background to the famous, and later much-disputed, oath that Bolingbroke swore in the house of the White Friars at Doncaster on 16 July. Its exact terms remain unclear. The Percys would later claim that Henry had sworn not to seize the throne, ‘and if anyone could be found who was more worthy of the crown than he was, he would willingly stand down for him; the duchy of Lancaster was all that he wished for’. Indeed the pro-Percy chronicler, John Hardynge, went further and asserted that Henry intended to allow Richard to retain the throne, under the firm control of himself and the nobility and senior clergy.
All in all, it seems that whatever oath Henry actually swore was intended as a compromise, designed not to frighten off potential supporters by actually spelling out his intent to depose Richard, and probably in deference to the wishes of the Percys, leaving open the question – in the event that Richard was removed – of who should actually succeed him.
It was probably as he marched south – to be met with a groundswell of popular support and a growing flood of defections by Richard’s former supporters – that Henry realized his position to be strong enough to gain the throne by popular acclamation.
Henry and his forces reached Leicester on 20 July. Edmund Duke of York, Richard’s uncle, was at Berkeley Castle, near Bristol. He had failed to muster a significant army and his only hope of countering Henry’s march south would have been if Richard and the army from Ireland had joined him. In any case, York had little enthusiasm for opposing Henry Bolingbroke, who was also his nephew. He made no attempt to oppose Henry’s march south and on 27 July joined him. Bristol itself, where some of Richard’s favourites had taken refuge, fell without a fight and Richard’s captured supporters were arrested and executed.
Richard’s kingdom was rapidly slipping from his grasp, and by the time he and his troops landed at Milford Haven in south-west Wales at the end of July, his cause already effectively lost. Apparently hoping to rally support in the Ricardian heartland of Cheshire, and fearful of betrayal (with good cause), the king abandoned his army and headed for North Wales with a handful of supporters. It was at best a forlorn hope, and with no sign of the hoped-for support, Richard took refuge in Edward I’s great fortress of Conwy Castle.
Henry and his supporters were also heading north, in order to secure control of Cheshire. En route the Percys received what they probably saw as the first instalment of their expected reward, when the Earl of Northumberland, in an act implicit of Henry’s intention to be king (at least in all but name) was granted the Wardenship of the West March of the Scottish border.
Chester surrendered to Henry without resistance. A desperate and despairing Richard sent the Dukes of Exeter and Surrey to Chester, offering to restore Henry to his lands and titles if he would submit and disband his army. It was a proposal that never had the slightest prospect of being accepted and the dukes were summarily imprisoned.
Richard was now without hope. He could, however, have stood siege in Conwy for some time, and Henry needed a quick conclusion before Richard’s supporters elsewhere might rally. Around 15 August he sent the Earl of Northumberland and a body of troops to Conwy with instructions to lure Richard out of the castle and then detain him. Northumberland, with his proven qualities of deviousness and ruthlessness, was an excellent choice for the task. In tactics reminiscent of those employed in Scottish border warfare, Northumberland placed most of his men in ambush under the cover of high ground just east of the River Conwy, then gained an audience with Richard. Northumberland assured him that Henry wanted no more than his inheritance, proposing that Richard and Henry should ride together to London to hold a Parliament at which these proposals would be enacted, and apparently swore an oath to this effect on some holy relics.
Whether or not Richard was convinced, he had little option but to appear to agree, although one version of events has him telling the Earl of Salisbury that he would persuade Henry to march south via Wales, where Welsh supporters would ambush and capture him:
I swear to you, that whatever assurances I may give him, he shall surely be put to a bitter death for this outrage and injury that he has done to us. Doubt it not, there shall be no Parliament held at Westminster on this matter.
If indeed spoken they were words that clearly demonstrated that the conspirators would never be secure while Richard remained on the throne.
In the event, Richard rode east out of Conwy with Northumberland and was secured by Northumberland’s men and taken to Flint Castle. Here, on 16 August, the trapped king saw the full strength of Henry’s army taking up position around the castle. He was clearly doomed and, in despair, apparently refused all food. Henry entered the castle and allegedly assured Richard that he had come as a result of the discontent of the English people with Richard’s rule: ‘I will help you to govern them better than they have hitherto been governed.’
Richard once again had no choice but to agree, and was taken to Chester on the first stage of his journey to London. But there was soon a reminder that by no means all of Richard’s supporters had accepted their master’s fall. On the night of 21 August, one day after the party left Chester, a group of Richard’s supporters – probably men of his Cheshire Guard – made an unsuccessful attempt to free him, and on the 23rd, at Lichfield, Richard made a thwarted effort to escape. For the remainder of the journey he was kept under close guard.
The pretence that Richard might remain king was already fading, and was weakened still further by the furious reception he met from the hostile London crowds as he was taken to confinement in the Tower. Henry, in contrast, received a rapturous welcome.
Even now, however, Henry’s intentions regarding the crown were unclear. It was obvious that his actions up to this point had met with the active support and approval not only of his peers, but also of the majority of people of all classes. Of the other two possible replacements for Richard, Edmund Earl of March was too young, and Edmund, Duke of York, too old to be desirable choices. This left Henry himself, a popular and notable soldier and administrator, in the prime of life. By 10 September the decision had been taken to depose Richard. The delegation headed by the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland sent to persuade Richard to resign the throne initially met with a defiant response, but under continued pressure, he wavered and signed the document of abdication.
On 30 September, in Westminster Hall, after a long list of charges against Richard had been read out, Henry stepped forward to claim the throne amid great enthusiasm from those assembled and from the crowd outside. He was crowned king on 13 October in Westminster Abbey, the Earl of Northumberland, clearly supporting Henry’s accession, carrying the Lancaster Sword at the head of the procession. But it was claimed by some that Hotspur – probably because of his Mortimer connection – absented himself from the ceremony.
There remained the question of what to do with Richard. His leading supporters were detained while their fate was considered. On 27 October the lords and prelates informed Parliament that the exking should be ‘kept under safe and close guard, in some place where there was no coming and going of people; and that he should be guarded by reliable and competent men […] in the most secret manner possible’.
Richard was eventually confined in the Lancastrian fortress of Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire. His leading supporters, while forfeiting any titles or lands gained since September 1397, were released. This would prove to be a grave error.
By the end of 1400 the leading ‘Counter-Apellants’, as they were known, joined by a squire named Richard Maudeleyn – who bore a close resemblance to Richard – were actively conspiring to assassinate King Henry and his four sons, who were celebrating Christmas at Windsor, and to secure London and other major towns, using Maudeleyn to impersonate Richard until the ex-king could be located and released. However, early in January, one of the conspirators, the former Duke of Aumale, betrayed the plot. Henry acted promptly, while, apart from a brief rising by Richard’s supporters in Cheshire, the plotters failed to gain any real support. Some of their leaders, including the Earl of Salisbury, were killed by the townspeople of Cirencester. Around twenty-six others were executed.
The failure of this ‘Epiphany Rising’ sealed Richard’s fate. The rising had demonstrated that there were compelling reasons finally to dispose of Richard and publicly demonstrate him to be dead. But there were also considerations against publicly executing him, if only because ‘king-killing’ might set a dangerous precedent.
The general view among contemporary chroniclers was that Richard was certainly dead by the middle of February 1400, and that he had possibly starved himself to death in Pontefract Castle. It may well be that Richard died of starvation, as his skeleton, when examined in the nineteenth century, showed no sign of violence, and the Percys, who were in an excellent position to know what happened in Pontefract, would claim later that the king had ordered Richard be starved to death – a process that took fifteen days.
But although Richard’s body, its face exposed to public gaze, was exhibited in London before being buried at Kings Langley, King Henry IV was not to exorcize his predecessor so easily. In one form or another, the ghost of King Richard would haunt him for the rest of his days.