Act One: The Banishment · Richard II.

King Richard II sat in state at Windsor, with his uncle John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, beside him, to hear a quarrel between Gaunt's son, Henry Bolingbroke, and Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. Bolingbroke accused Mowbray of treason: of embezzling money meant for the King's soldiers, and of plotting the death of the Duke of Gloucester — the King's uncle, murdered in prison at Calais. Mowbray called him a liar. Each threw down his glove as a gage of battle. Richard tried to make peace between them — "Let's purge this choler without letting blood" — but neither would yield; and the King appointed a trial by combat at Coventry.

Everyone at court suspected that Gloucester had been killed on Richard's own orders, and that Mowbray had arranged it.

The Duchess of Gloucester, the murdered man's widow, begged John of Gaunt to avenge his brother. Gaunt refused: the King was God's substitute, God's deputy anointed in his sight; if he had caused the death wrongfully, let heaven revenge; he would never lift an angry arm against God's minister.

At Coventry, the two champions came armed into the lists; the trumpets sounded; they were about to charge — and the King threw down his warder, his staff, and stopped the combat. After consulting his council, he banished them both: Bolingbroke for ten years, Mowbray for life. Mowbray, who had served the King all his life, went into exile with bitter grief: he must now forget the English tongue he had learned these forty years. And then, seeing old Gaunt's sorrow, Richard cut Bolingbroke's sentence to six years. "How long a time lies in one little word! Four lagging winters and four wanton springs end in a word: such is the breath of kings," said Bolingbroke. Gaunt knew he would not live six years.

Gaunt tried to comfort his son: "All places that the eye of heaven visits are to a wise man ports and happy havens." Imagine that the King had not banished you, but you the King. "O, who can hold a fire in his hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus?" said Bolingbroke. He would go, but he would be English still: "Where'er I wander, boast of this I can, though banished, yet a trueborn Englishman."

Richard, with his favourites — Bushy, Bagot and Green — talked of Bolingbroke's popularity: how, as he left, he had courted the common people, doffing his bonnet to an oyster-wench, as if England were his by right. Richard needed money for a war in Ireland; he would farm out the royal revenues, and force the rich to sign blank charters. Then came news: old John of Gaunt was dying, and asked to see the King. "Pray God we may make haste, and come too late!"