and finery in the stone walls of the white chamber. At one end of the chamber the young

twenty-one-year-old Richard is sitting on his raised throne. On his right are a raid

the prelates, the churchmen of the realm. On his left are all the secular lords. The atmosphere

was nervous and expectant. The king is visibly uncomfortable and worried.

The great doors into the chamber are flung open. Five men stride into the room. They're

wearing cloth of gold, a display of their power and their wealth. These are great magnates

of the realm. Their arms are linked in solidarity as they stride towards the king.

Welcome everyone to the history of England, episode 125, a Qzatio. These men are the

Duke of Lancaster, the Earl's of Derby, Warwick, Arondle and Notty. They are the lords of

Pellant. They'd come to publicly accuse or appeal the men around the king who they

claimed had usurped his authority and led him astray. They really, it was the king they

blamed. So how had we got to this pretty pass? Last time we'd covered a few years of

Richard's reign and frankly things weren't going terribly well. It's tense out there,

very tense. In Richard's court after the arrival of Anne of Bohemia, really things had

once seen very gay and very continental. Anne had brought a load of exotic people with her

from Central Europe. Everyone had been wearing fitted clothes, silly pointy shoes and hats

that Bob Dylan would have been proud of. There's been Eastern European ladies wandering

around playing music and dancing. Richard had even invented something called the pocket

hankerchief, which was an exciting development in the world of personal hygiene. I have always

been deeply grateful for the concept of a bit of material always on hand for all kinds

of cleaning tasks, noses clearly, but also glasses, but the added benefit of a thin

veneer of snot, spillages of tea, oil dipstick wiping and so on. Truly one of the great inventions.

...