Manhood and Politics in the Reign of Richard II*

Abstract

Amongst English kings Richard II enjoys, with the dishonourable exception of Edward II, perhaps the most unmanly reputation of the later Middle Ages. He is habitually associated with an elaborate delight in clothing and courtly culture, sometimes contrasted with the martial ‘masculinity’ of earlier kings.1 His allegedly unusual concern with ceremonial is seen as the support of ‘absolutist’ ideas,2 and as one aspect of a Francophile and peace-loving nature.3 He has been portrayed as temperamentally opposed to fighting, keeping his distance from chivalric culture.4 Despite a number of dissenting voices,5 Richard’s unmanly reputation has remained largely intact to this day. For his most recent biographer, the king remains a ‘slightly epicene’ character, who was judged severely by his contemporaries perhaps because ‘the chroniclers were measuring him against the manliness of his father, who, in his prime, had been an exceptionally vigorous man’.6 That this...

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