The New Murrey and Blue blog

As I may have mentioned (cough, cough) before, I have two favourite kings, Richards II and III. This post concerns the former. Mainly.

“….The treasure roll [see top left] of Richard II, compiled in 1398/9, offers a rare insight into the magnificence of a late medieval English king. The roll, unknown until it was rediscovered in the 1990s, describes in exceptional detail the crowns, jewels, and other precious objects belonging to the king and to his two queens, Anne of Bohemia and Isabelle of France….”

The site to visit about this is here Richard II’s treasure: the riches of a medieval king (history.ac.uk). It soon takes you roaming through photographs and descriptions, and makes me long to have encountered the king in his full regalia. Richard was known as a “second Absalom” and (by the standards of his day) was definitely a very handsome man. To the point of being beautiful. How he must have shone and dazzled. And how splendid he would have been, even in day-to-day garb. Wonderful. But of all the delights in the roll, only the crown of Anne of Bohemia (the Munich crown, illustrated on book cover above) survives for certain today.

Photographs of this crown (see the book cover top right) show it to be very delicate and exquisite, and it would surely have made Anne feel lovely when she wore it. The site describes it thus: “….the only object in Richard II’s inventory which certainly survives today. It now consists of a circlet of twelve hinged plaques and six large and six small fleurons. Each of the twelve fleurons fits into a separate plaque. The larger fleurons have two prongs like a tuning fork, the smaller a single prong. It could have been dismantled for travelling or storage. As described in Richard II’s inventory and again in November 1399, it was incomplete. There were only eleven plaques in the circlet, although there were twelve fleurons. Twelve fleurons need twelve plaques. To achieve a symmetrical effect, large and small fleurons must alternate. The crown seems therefore to have been unwearable in 1399….”

By 1399 Anne wouldn’t have cared a jot about its wearability because she passed away in the summer of 1394, aged only 28, leaving Richard (around the same age) broken-hearted and inconsolable. Theirs had been a great love match. Richard II is often lampooned as being more fond of his own sex than the opposite sex, and his marriage was chaste. But this isn’t so. See my post https://murreyandblue.org/2019/01/06/did-anne-of-bohemia-die-of-leprosy/. He’d been faithful to her and was lost when she’d gone. His bed must have been a lonely place, and although he was to remarry, it remained a lonely place because his new queen was a French child princess, Isabella of Valois. As he badly needed an heir, this choice of wife was very odd. But he wanted peace with France, and perhaps he was still too overwhelmed with grief for Anne. We’ll never know.

His reign came to a savage end when his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, by then Duke of Lancaster, invaded England, wrong-footed Richard and captured him. Richard died—read was murdered—at Pontefract Castle. When he drew his last breath cousin Henry had already been crowned King Henry IV.

If Anne’s crown is the only object in the treasure roll known for certain to still exist today, it means that the majority of treasures have been destroyed, stolen and kept secretly in private collections, lost altogether or copied. What a tragedy. But better a copy than nothing at all, and here are three items that appear in the above link:

For much more about the image of St Michael, please see my previous article Exchanged treasures at celebrations of Richard II’s second marriage…. – murreyandblue.

If only we still had everything in the roll. Wouldn’t it be wonderful? But we must be satisfied with what we do have. Hard as even that is to accept.

Richard III was another king who’d lost his beloved queen, also named Anne. He’d also lost his only legitimate child and was killed by a Lancastrian usurper named Henry. Richard III was only thirty-two when he died, and like Richard II he was a very lonely man at the end. It’s hard to imagine how he felt on that last fateful day at Bosworth.

The one treasure we do have of him is his Book of Hours. I was moved to tears when it was brought in during his funeral service. Here was something that had been very personal to him. He’d even written in it on his birthdate. It was a treasure that truly belonged there with him that day.

This image of his entry in the book of hours is taken from https://monumentoffame.org/2013/10/11/books-and-their-owners-ii-the-hours-of-richard-iii/.

Two kings, very different treasures.