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King Richard's Faire 2002 - August 31st through October 20th
Last Updated January 23, 2003

The 21st Season of Merriment, Mayhem Magic
King Richard's Faire is a vivid recreation of a 16th century English marketplace at festival time. Actors, dancers, puppeteers, jugglers, minstrels, mimes, magicians and musicians perform each weekend for the favor of his Royal Highness, King Richard and his Queen, Katherine.

King Richard I History
Richard I, the Lion-hearted, spent much of his youth in his mother's court at Poitiers. Richard cared much more for the continental possessions of his mother than for England - he also cared much more for his mother than for his father. Family considerations influenced much of his life: he fought along side of his brothers Prince Henry and Geoffrey in their rebellion of 1173-4; he fought for his father against his brothers when they supported an 1183 revolt in Aquitane; and he joined Philip II of France against his father in 1188, defeating Henry in 1189.

Richard spent but six months of his ten-year reign in England. He acted upon a promise to his father to join the Third Crusade and departed for the Holy Land in 1190 (accompanied by his partner-rival Philip II of France). In 1191, he conquered Cyprus en route to Jerusalem and performed admirably against Saladin, nearly taking the holy city twice. Philip II, in the meantime, returned to France and schemed with Richard's brother John. The Crusade failed in its primary objective of liberating the Holy Land from Moslem Turks, but did have a positive result - easier access to the region for Christian pilgrims through a truce with Saladin. Richard received word of John's treachery and decided to return home; he was captured by Leopold V of Austria and imprisoned by Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI. The administrative machinery of Henry II insured the continuance of royal authority, as Richard was unable to return to his realm until 1194. Upon his return, he crushed a coup attempt by John and regained lands lost to Philip II during the German captivity. Richard's war with Philip continued sporadically until the French were finally defeated near Gisors in 1198.

Richard died April 6, 1199, from a wound received in a skirmish at the castle of Chalus in the Limousin. Near his death, Richard finally reconciled his position with his late father, as evidenced by Sir Richard Baker in A Chronicle of the Kings of England: "The remorse for his undutifulness towards his father, was living in him till he died; for at his death he remembered it with bewailing, and desired to be buried as near him as might be, perhaps as thinking they should meet the sooner, that he might ask him forgiveness in another world." Richard's prowess and courage in battle earned him the nickname Coeur De Lion ("heart of the lion"), but the training of his mother's court is revealed in a verse Richard composed during his german captivity:

"No one will tell me the cause of my sorrow why they have made me a prisoner here. Wherefore with dolour I now make my moan; friends had I many but help have I none. Shameful it is that they leave me to ransom, to languish here two winters long."

Once more, Azodnem dons his dark brooding hood,
and ventures into the woods.

Mabelyn.com in her famed medieval dress.

Do not step on the grass. Do not feed the Jason.

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All photographs © 2002 Robert Mendoza, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

King Richard II Facts

Richard II (AD 1377-1399)

Born: 6 January 1367 at Bordeaux, Gascony
Murdered: 14 February 1400 at Pontefract Castle, Yorkshire
Buried: Westminster Abbey, Middlesex

Parents: Edward, Prince of Wales - "The Black Prince" - and Joan, the "Fair Maid of Kent"
Siblings: Edward of Angouleme

Crowned: 16 July 1377 at Westminster Abbey, Middlesex
Abdicated: 29 September 1399

Married: (1st) 14 January 1382 at St. Stephen's Chapel in the Palace of Westminster, Middlesex; (2nd) 4th November 1396 at Calais
Spouse: (1st) Anne daughter of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor & King of Bohemia; (2nd) Isabella daughter of Charles VI, King of France
Offspring: None
Named Heir: His cousin, Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March

Contemporaries: Wat Tyler; Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford; Michael de la Pole; Richard FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel; Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick; John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester; Henry Bolingbroke (Henry IV), Earl of Derby; Geoffrey Chaucer

King Richard II History
Richard II, born in 1367, was the son of Edward, the Black Prince and Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent. Edward was but ten years old when he succeeded his grandfather, Edward III ; England was ruled by a council under the leadership of John of Gaunt , and Richard was tutored by Sir Simon Burley. He married the much-beloved Anne of Bohemia in 1382, who died childless in 1394. Edward remarried in 1396, wedding the seven year old Isabella of Valois, daughter of Charles VI of France, to end a further struggle with France.

Richard asserted royal authority during an era of royal restrictions. Economic hardship followed the Black Death, as wages and prices rapidly increased. Parliament exacerbated the problem by passing legislation limiting wages but failing to also regulate prices. In 1381, Wat Tyler led the Peasants' Revolt against the oppressive government policies of John of Gaunt. Richard's unwise generosity to his favorites - Michael de la Pole, Robert de Vere and others - led Thomas, Duke of Gloucester and four other magnates to form the Lords Appellant. The five Lords Appellant tried and convicted five of Richard's closest advisors for treason. In 1397, Richard arrested three of the five Lords, coerced Parliament to sentence them to death and banished the other two. One of the exiles was Henry Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV . Richard travelled to Ireland in 1399 to quell warring chieftains, allowing Bolingboke to return to England and be elected king by Parliament. Richard lacked support and was quickly captured by Henry IV.

Deposed in 1399, Richard was murdered while in prison, the first casualty of the Wars of the Roses between the Houses of Lancaster and York.

King Richard I Facts

Richard III (1483-5 AD)

King Richard III History
Richard III, the eleventh child of Richard, Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, was born in 1452. He was created third Duke of Gloucester at the coronation of his brother, Edward IV. Richard had three children: one each of an illegitimate son and daughter, and one son by his first wife, Anne Neville, widow of Henry IV's son Edward.

Richard's reign gained an importance out of proportion to its length. He was the last of the Plantagenet dynasty, which had ruled England since 1154; he was the last English king to die on the battlefield; his death in 1485 is generally accepted between the medieval and modern ages in England; and he is credited with the responsibility for several murders: Henry VI, Henry's son Edward, his brother Clarence, and his nephews Edward and Richard.

Richard's power was immense, and upon the death of Edward IV, he positioned himself to seize the throne from the young Edward V. He feared a continuance of internal feuding should Edward V, under the influence of his mother's Woodville relatives, remain on the throne (most of this feared conflict would have undoubtedly come from Richard). The old nobility, also fearful of a strengthened Woodville clan, assembled and declared the succession of Edward V as illegal, due to weak evidence suggesting that Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was bigamous, thereby rendering his sons illegitimate and ineligible as heirs to the crown. Edward V and his younger brother, Richard of York, were imprisoned in the Tower of London, never to again emerge alive. Richard of Gloucester was crowned Richard III on July 6, 1483.

Four months into his reign he crushed a rebellion led by his former assistant Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who sought the installation of Henry Tudor , a diluted Lancaster, to the throne. The rebellion was crushed, but Tudor gathered troops and attacked Richard's forces on August 22, 1485, at the battle of Bosworth Field. The last major battle of the Wars of the Roses, Bosworth Field became the death place of Richard III. Historians have been noticeably unkind to Richard, based on purely circumstantial evidence; Shakespeare portrays him as a complete monster in his play, Richard III. One thing is for certain, however: Richard's defeat and the cessation of the Wars of the Roses allowed the stability England required to heal, consolidate, and push into the modern era.