thing.’ This was probably in 1392–3 (. Mayer, Gower's Beziehungen zu Chaucer und K. Richard II, 1889). Froissart in 1395 presented him with a richly bound copy of his love poems. Chaucer was high in his favour for a time, but subsequently allowed to fall into poverty. Richard's expenditure was not always misdirected. He almost rebuilt Westminster Hall, as the numerous representations of his arms, and those of Edward the Confessor, and his device of the white hart, testify. He left a large sum to complete the reconstruction of the nave of the abbey church, which he had begun. His interments of Bishops Waltham and Waldby there began the practice which has made it a national mausoleum. Even Richard's enemies admitted that the church owed him some gratitude. The Franciscans supplied martyrs in his cause, and the Benedictines were not insensible of the special favour he showed them. He completed in 1385 Lord Zouch's Carthusian foundation at Coventry dedicated to St. Anne, and assisted the Duke of Surrey in that of Mountgrace, near Northallerton. Croyland Abbey and the Dominican friary at King's Langley assigned him the honours of a founder. According to the Monk of Evesham, Richard was of the common height; but his bones, when examined in 1871, were found to be those of a man nearly six feet high. His yellow hair, thick and curling, fell in broad masses on either side of his face, which was round and somewhat feminine; his complexion was white, but frequently flushed. The double-pointed beard often worn at the time was represented in his case by two small tufts on the chin. His moustaches, which were small and sprang from the corners of the mouth, accentuated the weary and drawn look which begins to appear on his face as early as 1391, and is so striking in the effigy on his tomb. His skull was much distorted behind, and was of less than average capacity.
Besides the admirable effigy on his tomb, taken from the life in 1395 (engraved in George Hollis's ‘Sepulchral Effigies’ and elsewhere), illuminations and other representations, Sir George Scharf enumerates seven portrait paintings, only two of which, however, can claim first-rate importance. The earlier is the well-known diptych by an unknown Italian or Bohemian artist, apparently painted to commemorate Richard's confirmation of Bishop Spenser's crusade in 1382. The young king appears kneeling and in profile. It is at Wilton House, and was engraved by Hollar in 1639, and chromolithographed by the Arundel Society in 1882. Some nine years later (1391) is the full-length tempera portrait showing Richard enthroned, more than life-size, which hung in the choir of Westminster Abbey until its removal to the Jerusalem Chamber in 1775. It is figured, as freed from later accretions in 1866, in Scharf's ‘Observations on the Westminster Abbey Portrait of Richard II’ (reprinted from the ‘Fine Art Quarterly,’ 1867). Authentic representations of Richard's appearance in the last year of his life are afforded by the beautiful illuminations in Harleian MS. 1319 of Creton's metrical history made by 1402 (Archæologia, xxviii. 88). They are all reproduced in outline in vol. xx. of ‘Archæologia,’ and most of them in colour, but less accurately, in Strutt's ‘Regal Antiquities.’
[The Rolls of Parliament are very full for the reign; the Records of the Privy Council Proceedings (ed. Nicolas) begin, though as yet incomplete, and the first volume (1377–81) of a full Calendar of the Patent Rolls has just appeared. To these documentary sources must be added Rymer's Fœdera (orig. edit.), Devon's Issue Rolls, and the Ancient Kalendars of the Exchequer. The fuller St. Albans Chronicle, included down to 1392 in Walsingham's Historia Anglicana, and from 1393 in the Annales Ricardi II, printed with Trokelowe, both in the Rolls Series, supplies the most detailed history of the reign. The Vita Ricardi II, by a monk of Evesham (ed. Hearne), follows it pretty closely down to 1390, but then becomes independent, and gives the best account of the parliament of 1397–8, from which, or a common source, Adam of Usk (ed. Maunde Thompson), though an eye-witness, appears to have copied. But he has elsewhere many details peculiar to himself, and there is internal evidence (p. 21) that he wrote earlier than his editor supposes. The Leicester Chronicle (to 1395) of Knighton (or his Continuator), edited by Lumby in the Rolls Series, supplies a valuable independent account, embodying original documents. The Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum (Rolls Ser.), written after 1404, is anecdotic, and rather wild in its dates. All the above have a Lancastrian bias. With them may be classed Langland's Richard the Redeless (ed., with Piers Plowman, by Skeat), Gower's Chronica Tripartita, and the later additions to his Vox Clamantis and Confessio Amantis, probably made after 1399. Hardyng (ed. 1812), a retainer of the Percys, is more impartial; but the only English authorities decidedly favourable to Richard are Maidstone's poem on his reconciliation with London in 1392, the first dedication to Gower's Confessio, and the fragment of a Cheshire Chronicle in the Appendix to the Chronique de la Traïson. Gregory's Chronicle (Camden. Soc.), Fabyan (ed. 1811), and the Continuation of the Croyland Chronicle (ed. Fulman, 1684) give incidental help. Froissart (ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove) is better informed than usual about the rising of
