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Robbins Library Digital Projects > TEAMS Middle English Texts > Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger > Chronology of Events Relating to Richard the Redeless & Mum and the Sothsegger

Chronology of Events Relating to Richard the Redeless & Mum and the Sothsegger

c. 1330

1337



1348–49

1351

1353

1363

1366

1367

1368–74

1376





1377–81

1377



1378

1381–85

1381

1382





1384

c. 1386

1386







1387






1388









1389

1390




c1390–95   






1391–93


1392


1393




1394




1394–95

1395





c. 1395

1396

1397












1398






1399





















1400



c. 1400





1401





1402




1403




1403–09

1404



1405

1407–09


1407

1408

1409

1410

1411


1413

1414

1415
 		 Birth of Langland

Earliest English sumptuary law (restricted clothing according to class)

Hundred Years’ War begins

Great Plague

First Statute of Provisors (allowing English crown patronage in ecclesiastical preferment)

First Statute of Praemunire (antipapal legislation)

Sumptuary laws restricting clothing and food according to specific estates

Birth of Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, later Henry IV

Birth of Richard of Bordeaux, later Richard II (reigned 1377–99)

Piers Plowman A-text

Death of Edward, the Black Prince, Richard of Bordeaux’s father (8 June)

Good Parliament at Westminster (Commons, with Peter de la Mare as
spokesman, draft 146 articles of complaint against the king’s councillors,
including the chamberlain, Lord Latimer, who is executed)

Piers Plowman B-text

Death of Edward III

Richard crowned king in July

Great Schism, with rival popes in Rome and Avignon

Piers Plowman C-text

Great Rising (Peasants’ Revolt)

William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, and a London Council
condemn twenty-four of Wyclif’s propositions (ten as heretical and fourteen
as erroneous)

Statute against Itinerant Preachers

Death of Wyclif

Death of Langland

Robert de Vere, Richard’s favorite, Earl of Oxford and Marquis of Dublin
(1385), created Duke of Ireland

Wonderful Parliament: Duke of Gloucester challenges Richard’s “evil
ministers”; succeeds in ousting the chancellor, Michael de la Pole, and others
from office. A commission is established to reform (and in effect to rule) the
government

De Vere abandons his royal wife, Philippa de Coucy, for a Bohemian lady in
waiting, outraging the dukes of Gloucester and Lancaster

Lords Appellant, led by Henry Bolingbroke and including the Duke of
Gloucester, challenge the Earl of Oxford at Radcot Bridge; Richard II takes
refuge in the Tower of London

Merciless Parliament (Westminster; February): Robert Tresilian, Chief
Justice of the King’s Bench, Nicholas Brembre, former Mayor of London,
and Thomas Usk executed, along with four chamber knights, including Simon
Burley, Richard’s tutor

Battle of Otterburn or Chevy Chase (Scots defeat the English): 5 August

Third Statute of Laborers in Cambridge Parliament, September (concerned
with vagrancy)

Richard II comes into his majority; rules in his own right

Statute of Livery and Maintenance (forbids retaining private armies and
identifying badges)

Statute of Provisors (reiterating and expanding 1351 statute)

Chaucer’s ecclesiastical satires written (The Friar’s & Summoner’s Tales)

Jack Upland

William Woodford’s reply to Jack Upland (Responsiones ad quaestiones
LXV)

Trial of Walter Brut, Lollard sympathizer, before Bishop Trefnant. In 1393
Brut is executed

Richard II’s quarrel with Londoners (moves Exchequer, Common Bench, and
Chancery to York)

Great Statue of Praemunire (asserts king’s right to bestow benefices in
England)

Rising in Cheshire

Hilary Parliament (quarrel between Lancaster and Arundel about Cheshire
rising)

Death of Queen Anne

Richard II’s first expedition to Ireland

Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards (Lollard Manifesto) affixed to doors of
Westminster and St. Paul’s

Cheshire yeomen and archers enlisted as King Richard’s household troops;
given badges with emblem of the White Hart

Piers the Plowman’s Crede

Richard II marries Isabella of France, age 7

Death of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, while imprisoned at
Calais, in the custody of Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham

Westminster Parliament. John Bushy appointed as speaker of the Commons.
Four points of treason determined. Arrest and execution of Richard FitzAlan,
Earl of Arundel; banishment of Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. At
Richard’s instigation, this Parliament created what Walsingham called the
“duketti” (the “little dukes”), including the Earl of Derby (to Duke of
Hereford); the Earl of Rutland (to Duke of Aumale); the Earl of Huntingdon
(to Duke of Exeter); and the Earl of Nottingham (to Duke of Norfolk).

Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, impeached and exiled

Shrewsbury Parliament (accedes to king’s wishes especially as regards
burdensome taxation)

King Richard interrupts judicial duel at Coventry: Henry of Hereford
(“Bolingbroke”), versus Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk; Bolingbroke
banished for ten years (later commuted to six)

Death of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (3 February)

Henry of Hereford’s banishment extended to life; Lancastrian estates
confiscated

Richard II’s second Irish expedition, leaving the Duke of York as regent

Henry of Hereford returns from banishment in Paris together with the exiled
former Archbishop, Thomas Arundel (early July). Hereford moves quickly
through England to Berkeley Castle, where he forced York to yield, and then
marched to Bristol, executing Sir John Bushy and Sir Henry Green, two of
Richard’s ministers

Deposition of Richard II by decree of parliamentary elements: lords spiritual
and temporal (29 and 30 Sept.); accession of Henry of Lancaster as Henry IV;
beginning of Lancastrian rule

Richard II moved in secret from the Tower to Leeds Castle and then
Pontefract (October)

John Gower attaches the Tripartite Chronicle to Vox clamantis

Death of Richard II (February)

Death of Geoffrey Chaucer (25 October)

Richard the Redeless

The Plowman’s Tale (Chaucerian apocrypha)

There Is a Busch That is Forgrowe (On King Richard’s ministers)

Hilary Parliament (10 January–10 March) that paralleled Arundel’s drafting
of legislation on heresy (De haeretico comburendo) that sanctioned the
burning of heretics

William Sawtry, Lollard, burned at Smithfield for heresy

Battle of Homildon Hill: Henry Hotspur defeats the Scots

Rumors circulate — spread in part by friars — that Richard II is still alive;
friars hanged on Tyburn for the treasonous report

Henry IV marries Joan of Brittany (February)

Battle of Shrewsbury (Henry IV and loyalist forces defeat the Percies;
Hotspur killed)

Mum and the Sothsegger

Parliament levies taxes of two tenths and two fifteenths because of rebellions
and for defense and maintenance of the realm; parliament also refuses to
subsidize aliens in Henry’s and Joan’s households

Revolt of Northumberland Percies fails; Archbishop Scrope executed

Archbishop Arundel’s Constitutions (regulations drafted with Lollardy and
the suppression of Oxford University in mind)

Arundel’s examination of William Thorpe, heretic

Death of John Gower

Archbishop Arundel’s Constitutions promulgated

Burning of John Badby, Lollard heretic (5 March)

Oxford board releases list of 267 heresies at the University; Oxford
University compelled to submit to authority and discipline of Arundel

Death of Henry IV; accession of Henry V

Failure of Oldcastle Rising

Battle of Agincourt (English defeat French)
 


Go To Richard the Redeless: Introduction