Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

O Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison,
Fatal and ominous to noble peers!
Within the guilty closure of thy walls
Richard the second here was hack’d to death;
And, for more slander to thy dismal seat,
We give thee up our guiltless blood to drink.

Comment

Comment

Henry Bolingbroke landed at Ravenspur on the Humber in June 1399, while Richard was in Ireland. Richard on his return was unable to mount an effective opposition, surrendered in August, and was initially imprisoned in the Tower of London. Anthony Tuck:

Little is known for certain about the rest of Richard’s life. He evidently remained in the Tower for some weeks, but before Christmas 1399 he was taken under escort first to Knaresborough and then to the duchy of Lancaster castle of Pontefract, where he was guarded by two trusted duchy retainers, Sir Robert Waterton and Sir Thomas Swynford. His fate was probably sealed by the Epiphany rising of 1400. The earls of Huntingdon, Kent, and Salisbury, and Sir Thomas Despenser (all now reduced to their former ranks), plotted to seize and murder Henry and his sons, and to restore Richard to his throne. Henry, however, was forewarned of the conspiracy, which received little popular support, and the leaders were seized and executed by townspeople in Bristol, Cirencester, and Pleshey. In February the council ordered that if Richard were still alive he should be ‘placed in appropriate safe keeping’, but if dead he should be ‘shown openly to the people’… Most chroniclers believed that he died on 14 February, but how he died will never be known for sure. The Traison’s story that he was hacked to death by Sir Piers Exton is almost certainly fictitious; three accounts, by John Hardyng, the Whalley Abbey chronicler, and the monk of Evesham, suggest he was deliberately starved to death; while other chroniclers, including Walsingham, describe how he refused food and drink and gradually starved himself to death. On 17 February instructions were given for his body to be transported to London, and on 6 March his obsequies were performed at St Paul’s (Tuck 2009/01/08).

The deed undone in Richard II:

Enter Keeper, with a dish

Keeper

Fellow, give place; here is no longer stay.

KING RICHARD II

If thou love me, ’tis time thou wert away.

Groom

What my tongue dares not, that my heart shall say.

Exit

Keeper

My lord, will’t please you to fall to?

KING RICHARD II

Taste of it first, as thou art wont to do.

Keeper

My lord, I dare not: Sir Pierce of Exton, who
lately came from the king, commands the contrary.

KING RICHARD II

The devil take Henry of Lancaster and thee!
Patience is stale, and I am weary of it.

Beats the keeper

Keeper

Help, help, help!

Enter EXTON and Servants, armed

KING RICHARD II

How now! what means death in this rude assault?
Villain, thy own hand yields thy death’s instrument.

Snatching an axe from a Servant and killing him

Go thou, and fill another room in hell.

He kills another. Then Exton strikes him down

That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire
That staggers thus my person. Exton, thy fierce hand
Hath with the king’s blood stain’d the king’s own land.
Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high;
Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die.

Dies

EXTON

As full of valour as of royal blood:
Both have I spill’d; O would the deed were good!
For now the devil, that told me I did well,
Says that this deed is chronicled in hell.
This dead king to the living king I’ll bear
Take hence the rest, and give them burial here.

Exeunt

(Shakespeare 1956)

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Original

O Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison,
Fatal and ominous to noble peers!
Within the guilty closure of thy walls
Richard the second here was hack’d to death;
And, for more slander to thy dismal seat,
We give thee up our guiltless blood to drink.

53 words.

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• Henry IV (1367-1413) (5), aka Henry Bolingbroke, King of England 1399-1413, son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (third son of Edward III), and Blanche of Lancaster, first English ruler whose mother tongue was English since the Norman Conquest, faced a number of rebellions, including Owain Glyndŵr, the last Welsh Prince of Wales, and the English knight Henry Percy (Hotspur), killed in the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 ·
• History (theatrical genre) (1) ·
• Hunger (9) ·
• Murder (38) ·
• Play (theatre) (6) ·
• 📌Pontefract Castle (6) ·
• 📌Pontefract (19) ·
• Richard II (play) (1) ·
• Richard II of England (4) ·
• Richard III (play) (1) ·
• Shakespeare, William (1564-1616) (14) ·
• Tragedy (2) ·

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