The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay — Story, Setting & Ideas

The Abbot's Leopard and the King's Nature

The exordium, attributed to the fictional Abbot Milo, offers a meditation on leopards that Hewlett calls 'pertinent to my matter.' This is not a mere decorative preface. The leopard—a hybrid creature, part lion, part panther—becomes a symbol for Richard himself, whose epithet 'Yea-and-Nay' suggests a divided, contradictory character. The abbot's voice returns in the epilogue, creating a frame that emphasizes interpretation over action.

Hewlett's Richard is not the straightforward Lionheart of legend. The narrator describes him as a man of 'urgent private transports,' and the text dwells on his moods, his silences, and his relationships. In the fleet scene, Richard 'watched out the night, sleeping little, talking none, but revolving in his mind the great deeds to do.' This interiority is the novel's true subject, and the leopard metaphor—a beast of both grace and ferocity—underscores the complexity Hewlett aims to capture.

Women's Ways and the Unspoken

The excerpts give significant space to two women: Jehane the Fair and Berengère of Navarre. Their relationship is rendered through gesture and silence rather than dialogue. After a private conversation in an orchard, 'they kissed at parting; but Jehane neither told Richard, nor did he ask her, why Berengère had lain her cheek upon her bosom.' The narrator dismisses this with 'Women's ways!'—a phrase that both acknowledges and obscures their interior lives.

Jehane is a constant presence, described as a 'still figure sitting apart, elbow on knee, chin in hand—like a Norn reading fate.' She nurses 'her hope and a new and fearful wonder' during the voyage, but her thoughts remain opaque. The novel's psychological interest extends to these women, yet the excerpts suggest their motives are deliberately withheld, left for the reader to infer. This restraint contrasts with the narrator's voluble commentary on Richard.

A Self-Conscious Narrator and the Limits of Chronicle

The narrator of Book II openly acknowledges what he will not describe: 'of these and all such things I must be silent if I am to make a good end to my history.' He lists the fleet's journey, the king's galley Trenchemer, the prayers and vows, then dismisses them. This is a deliberate rhetorical strategy, foregrounding the act of selection and the impossibility of complete chronicle.

Hewlett's narrator also distinguishes himself from classical epic: 'Differing from the Mantuan as much in sort as degree, I sing less the arms than the man.' The reference to Virgil signals a departure from martial epic toward character study. Yet the narrator's voice is not consistent; it shifts from the abbot's scholarly tone to a more intimate, almost gossipy register. This instability may be intentional, reflecting the novel's concern with the gap between public legend and private truth.

Readers approaching The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay should expect a work that resists easy categorization. It is neither a straightforward historical novel nor a pure romance, but a hybrid that uses medieval setting to explore psychological conflict. Pay attention to the framing devices—the abbot's prologue and epilogue—and to the narrator's asides, which often undercut the action. The title's 'Yea-and-Nay' is a clue: this is a novel of ambivalence, not certainty.

Reading how Hewlett steps inside Richard’s restlessness, I remembered curling up with old St. George for England as a child, feeling that same ache of a hero caught between what the world demands and what his own heart whispers. Both books left me quieter afterward, as if I’d witnessed something private, not just legend. St. George for England — Reading Notes holds that tenderness too.