Jean Froissart

Posts in The Copybook credited to ‘Jean Froissart’

Jean Froissart (?1335-1404/10) came to England from Valenciennes, in northeast France. At that time Valenciennes was dominated by the Counts of Hainau(l)t, and when Philippa of Hainault married Edward III of England there in 1328 Froissart followed her over to England and remained for several years at the English court, visiting Scotland in 1365. He left England for the last time in 1395, his sincere love for the country shaken by the governance of Richard II. At his death, he left behind him a Chronicle in French prose full of valuable contemporary testimony to the reigns of Edward III, Richard II and Henry IV, and the events of the Hundred Years’ War.

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The Coronation of Henry IV by Jean Froissart

On October 13th, 1399, Henry Bolingbroke was crowned King Henry IV of England in Westminster Abbey.

The reign of Richard II began with the Peasants’ Revolt, and by 1399 he had done little to win his unhappy people over. He had become both greedy and extravagant, and when the powerful Percy family in Northumberland encouraged Richard’s second cousin Henry Bolingbroke to claim the crown, he won it with only a few hundred men. On Monday October 13th, 1399, Henry was crowned at Westminster Abbey.

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