ABSTRACT
Richard II’s minority ended effectively in 1380, when the last of the ‘continual councils’ which had been in charge since 1377 was dismissed.1 There were nineteen more years left of his reign, after that, and it proved to be a stormy and unhappy one. It was also a crucial period in the history of England in the later Middle Ages. Events that it witnessed were to have a direct influence on English politics for the best part of a century after Richard was dead. The years of his personal rule may be divided for convenience into two periods. The first culminated in a crisis, which began with the impeachment of the chancellor, Michael de la Pole, in the autumn parliament of 1386, and ended with a purge of the royal court and the courtiers in the ‘Merciless Parliament’ of 1388. The second period also culminated in a crisis, which began in 1397 when Richard carried out a systematic purge of his enemies of 1388, and ended in 1399 when the most important of them to survive, Henry Bolingbroke, deposed him.
