This study explores the theme of kingship in the English works of the four major Ricardian poets, John Gower, William Langland, the Gawain-poet and Geoffrey Chaucer. Since 1971, when John Burrow defined the late fourteenth century as a distinct literary period, scholars have looked in increasing detail at the relationships that exist between the writers' works, and the comparisons have yielded much to enrich the field of medieval literary studies. It is a period marked by extraordinary political events, a fact that has recently generated work applying new Historicist theory to investigate the impact Richard II's reign had on the poets and their writing. This study, however, concentrates on the texts themselves, and attempts to identify whether, by following the theme of kingship through the work of each poet, a coherent response can be seen that can be called distinctly ‘Ricardian’.