With these oft quoted prophetic lines of verse, Shakespeare ensured that Richard II’s end would not be forgotten, even by those who did not make a habit of reading the history of dead kings. At a distance of nearly two hundred years from the events that are the subject of his play, Shakespeare moved (and still moves) his audience to feel sorry for Richard, a sentiment that I doubt was shared by many of the king’s contemporaries, even by those who remained staunchly loyal to their king. For it seems that only two of the chronicles that narrate Richard’s fall from power do so with unmistakable pathos. Jean Creton, a Frenchman who was an eyewitness to the events, describes Richard in his ‘Metrical History’ as ‘humbled and miserable’ and a ‘pity to behold’ when the king was surprised by the earl of Northumberland while making his way from Conway to Rhuddlan in August of 1399. ‘I know in truth I am lost’, says Richard upon seeing Northumberland’s forces amassed on the road. And the author of the Cronique de la Traison et Mort de Richart Deux Roy Dengleterre describes the knight who dealt Richard his ‘death-blow’ as weeping beside the royal corpse, crying ‘Alas! What is it that we have done? We have murdered him who has been our sovereign lord for the space of twenty-two years.’ In the case of the Traison et Mort, this sorrow is purely a work of fiction, for the story of Richard being slain by a gang of armed knights is uncorroborated by any other account, and scholars have given far more weight to the various chronicle accounts of Richard starving to death at Pontefract.