Greed by any other name

"Think what you will, we take into our hands
His plate, his goods, his money and his lands."

                                                                      Richard II      (II, i)

Shakespeare's King Richard II, always cash-strapped and looking for ways to increase his royal revenues, can't resist the opportunity to seize the inheritance of Henry Bolingbroke, the Duke of Hereford and son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. By the time of his death in 1399 Gaunt had accumulated enormous wealth. Rather than see that wealth pass to Bolingbroke, King Richard has him banished for an internecine dustup with a fellow noble, and tries to grab the goods for himself.

A big mistake: it leads to the king's downfall.

Wealth in late medieval England was measured first and foremost by the ownership of land; the age preceded the ascension of a grasping mercantile class that would eventually demand its place among the higher rungs of the social order. Other trappings of wealth were not to be despised, however. Along with money and various household goods, fine silver "plate" stood in considerable esteem: it was both valuable and easy to show off during meals.

Agecroft Hall's collection includes a mid-seventeenth century English silver salver, its rim decorated with embossed heads of Roman emperors and their wives, interspersed with a stylized mask design. A coat of arms in its center suggests that it was owned by a member of the Anglo-Irish gentry living in Galway. The salver is about 15 inches in diameter, and is raised on a short, flared foot. It also has decoration on its underside.

The royal confiscation of this kind of eye-catching wealth was exactly what Bolingbroke was not willing to put up with. So he took it all back from King Richard, along with the throne itself. As King Henry IV, he'd have his own seditious subjects to deal with, and a prodigal son to add to his woes.