Was Richard II the Hankie King?
Richard II is a little-known British king sandwiched between Richard the Lionheart and Richard III, who murdered his nephews. What Richard II is known for is far less volatile. How are we to explain this curious inability to say little by way of describing Richard II? Whereas the first Richard is remembered for his lust for heroic deeds in battle, epitomizing the ideal of the medieval chivalry, Richard of the third kind is considered the archetypical villain, immortalized by Shakespeare as that “poisonous bunch-backed toad.”
But what of Richard II? Apart from his one shining moment in life — that is, in suppressing the Peasant’s Revolt in 1381 — this Richard is perhaps best remembered for the consequences following his death. Because of tyrannical policies in the later years of his reign, Richard II was forcibly deposed from the throne by his usurping cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, who in the process established a new royal line, the Lancastrians. Even the poetic Richard, immortalized in Shakespeare’s eponymous play, with its celebrated lines from Act II, scene I: “This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle, …This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea“ has done little to advance awareness of the real Richard II.
It has long been thought that the deposition and murder of King Richard II was a personal tragedy, and that "Richard's personality -- his natural or inherited character considered apart from the important actions of his life -- was the chief cause of his downfall." In a more particular sense these characteristics -- his aesthetic sensibilities -- contributed to his invention of the pocket handkerchief.
Did Richard II invent the handkerchief?
The notion that Richard II was the inventor of the handkerchief first came to light in 1931 in an article by Maude Violet Clarke on "Forfeitures and Treason in 1388," Fourteenth Century Studies, ed. L.S. Sutherland and May McKisack (Oxford, 1937). In the course of considering a "Book of Forfeitures," a volume listing inventories of "the plate, garments, and household stuff' in the possession of Robert de Vere, Michael de la Pole and others condemned in the Merciless Parliament of 1388, Clarke was especially struck by the considerable quantities of costly household items such as richly decorated beds, expensive chapel furnishings, and elaborately embroidered vestments owned by many of those appealed of treason. Reflecting on all this Clarke observed that: “The long lists of expensive garments, especially those of Burley, Salisbury, and de Vere, illustrate the splendour of the court, condemned by monastic writers as luxurious and unprofitably gay. In no list, however, is there any imitation of the special refinement of the king, who just before this time bought from his tailor handkerchiefs -- parvis peciis factis ad liberandin domnino regi ad portandum in manu suo pro naso suo tergendo et mundando. suo pro naso suo tergendo et mundando (translation: small pieces of linen made to be given to the lord king for blowing and covering his nose.)
In a discursive note, Clarke appended the following interpretation, suggesting in the process the Richard II had most likely invented the handkerchief: “Account of Walter Rauf, king’s tailor. The entry quoted comes at the end of a bill for sheets. The elaborate description indicates a special order and it is evident that there was still no word to describe what the king required.”
How have Clarke's conjectures been received? Although most scholars have accepted Clarke's thesis -- albeit rather unquestioningly -- some have remained somewhat skeptical of its validity. It has been thought in some quarters that, so far from inventing the handkerchief, Richard II either adopted an already existing practice, perhaps of an earlier English court, or merely copied the handkerchief from some continental court, most likely the French. In the opinion of historian Bertie Wilkinson, Richard's "true emblem was the handkerchief he adopted, not the sword which he never successfully employed." Similarly, John Gardner argues that "Richard's love of the arts, his marriage to a sexually unthreatening child, his use of the new French handkerchief, became to hostile rumor mongers’ proofs that, like Edward II, he was homosexual."
Supportive evidence
How accurate are these views? We may begin by considering whether Richard II may have copied the handkerchief from either an earlier English or a contemporary French court. Against this idea, it is important to present three relevant points at the outset. First, the orders for handkerchiefs in Richard II's great wardrobe accounts represent the earliest known recorded references of their type. Second, there exists no evidence to show that handkerchiefs were known to any earlier courts, either English or continental. Certainly, nothing like these references appears earlier in England. As far as the continent is concerned, there is no evidence that handkerchiefs were either known or used in any continental court before or during the reign of Richard II.
After canvassing most of the European courts in quest of novelties of fashion, nowhere does an expert on medieval fashion [Stella Mary Newton] refer to the invention or even the use of handkerchiefs as an item of fashion. Third, and perhaps more importantly, it does not appear that the handkerchief was known in any French courts in the 14th century. Nowhere in recent studies of the reigns of the French monarchs Charles V and Charles VI -- not even in a detailed description of fashions in the court of the latter -- is there any reference to the use of handkerchiefs.
There is more. Perhaps the best argument against Richard's adoption of a French invention concerns the language of Richard's earliest order for handkerchiefs. It bears repeating that the stilted and somewhat strained wording of Richard's earliest request for handkerchiefs suggests originality in the absence of any other known word for this device. As Clarke originally observed, it seems evident that the clerk who recorded early orders had no knowledge of any word for "handkerchief," and so was left to hammer out his own definition of what the king had ordered. Surely, if there had been a French word for “handkerchief” antecedent to Richard's earliest order, either Richard, well-known for his reading knowledge of French, or Richard's tailor, would have used the French word to describe what Richard wanted, rather than resorting to the long-winded, yet simplistic, "little pieces of linen made for giving to the lord king...”
It is one thing to demonstrate the unlikelihood that Richard II borrowed the handkerchief from another court; but it is something else again to prove that the handkerchief most likely sprang from Richard's own mind. As it turns out, there exists considerable evidence -- some of it circumstantial and some of it based on record-sources -- to support Clarke's original conjecture that Richard II was more likely than not the inventor of the handkerchief. One of the more convincing ways of proving Richard II's invention of the handkerchief is to explore his motives: why would Richard wish to design and implement such a device?
Principle evidence relates to elements of the king's character and personality. Everything that we know of his refined tastes and delicate preferences suggests a personality that would develop a similar interest in inventing a novel device for nasal cleanliness. More to the point, it is well known that Richard II was greatly interested in personal hygiene and cleanliness, not to mention personal comfort. His remodeling of the royal palace at Sheen between 1384-88 incorporated 2,000 painted tiles "for the King's bath," large bronze taps for hot and cold water, and -- most noteworthy novelties -- fireplaces and personal latrines in all rooms.
Richard II embraced fashion
Particularly illuminating for our purposes, however, are illustrations of Richard's personal interest in, and expenditures on, exotic fashions in dress. One of Richard's contemporary critics noted that "he was prodigal in his gifts, extravagantly splendid in his entertainments and dress … and too much devoted to luxury. ..." In similar fashion, the poet of Richard the Redeless complains about conspicuous consumption in dress that was all the rage in Richard’s court. [Mum and the Soothsegger (Richard the Redeless), ed. M.Day and R. Steele, Early English Text Society, o.s., 199 (London, 1936]. Beyond these well-known examples, research in the British Public Record Office among Richard's great wardrobe and other accounts has turned up numerous additional and previously unknown illustrations of Ricardian opulence in dress. Especially revealing are a series of garments that Richard ordered made for his personal use by his tailor Walter Rauf, not coincidentally the fabricator of Richard's handkerchiefs. During the years 1384-86, the very period when Richard first ordered handkerchiefs from Rauf, royal requests for exotic garments of all kinds climbed steeply, including tunics, gowns, stockings, and coverchiefs. that eluded Clarke's keen eye.
We may never have absolutely, incontrovertible proof that Richard II invented the pocket handkerchief. Nevertheless, from all that has been presented in this study it seems reasonable to conclude that Clarke's original conjecture comes closer to the truth than even she may have realized. The invention and introduction into his fashion -- conscious court of a pocketable piece of linen cloth to be used for nasal cleanliness is of a piece with Richard's aesthetic sensibilities, his penchant for personal hygiene, and his demonstrated love of novelties of fashion and extravagant dress. In addition, the handkerchief represents Richard's earlier attempts to design an emblem of distinction similar to the later adoptions of the badge of the white hart in 1395, or the broomcod collar (heraldic badge introduced by Charles VI) in 1396.
In the final analysis, then, Richard II should "go down to history as the inventor of the pocket handkerchief." And this in turn gives new credence, for better or for worse, to contemporary and post-contemporary insinuations that Richard II truly was “Richard the Redeless.”
