Radcot Bridge played a part in the course of 14th-century English history, writes CHRIS KOENIG

Canoeing about upstream from Radcot, near Witney, way back in the 1960s, I remember meeting a stonemason working on the bridge over the River Thames. He told me that cars were a menace and that he never went in them himself.

As someone who had been camping out over a Bank Holiday weekend and had managed to see hardly another human being, let alone a car, his remark struck a chord with me.

It must be one of the oldest bridges spanning the Thames, containing as it does a Gothic niche for a holy statue. The stonemason told me that the statue, stolen during the Reformation, had commemorated the battle, but I neglected to ask him which.

He meant, of course, the Battle of Radcot Bridge of December 16, 1387, which decided the course of history during that unhappy century.

In the course of the battle, Robert de Vere, ninth Earl of Oxford, defeated by Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, made his horse leap over the parapet and into the cold river. He shed his heavy armour and sword (found later by his enemies who presumed him drowned) and escaped, eventually, to France.

He was condemned to death in his absence by the aptly named Merciless Parliament.

Lord Oxford was the favourite, and possibly homosexual lover, of poor Richard II who heaped lands and titles upon him. He became Marquess of Dublin for life and also Duke of Ireland.

His defeat at Radcot Bridge meant that Richard's power was temporarily taken from him by his uncle, Thomas of Woodstock - so called as he was born in 1355 at the royal hunting lodge of Woodstock that stood near the present Blenheim Palace. Richard II was the son of the Black Prince - Edward Prince of Wales - who was also born at Woodstock in 1330, and whose residence, when in England, was at Wallingford Castle.

The Black Prince, incidentally, was the first Englishman with the rank of Duke. He was granted the Duchy of Cornwall.

Richard was crowned when only ten years old upon the death of his grandfather, Edward III, and de Vere, just five years older than the king, attended as Lord Great Chamberlain of England.

Robert de Vere lived in exile together with Michael de la Pole, whose English residence had been at Ewelme. He, too, had incurred the wrath of Richard's powerful enemies, many of whom had enjoyed power during the king's minority.

Richard, to some extent, turned the tables on Thomas of Woodstock in 1397 when the latter was murdered in Calais by Nicholas Colfox, a 'Lollard' follower of the Oxford academic John Wyclif, who believed that the Catholic Church needed root and branch reform.

Robert de Vere was killed by a wild boar in 1392. Richard had his body brought back to England three years later and organised an elaborate funeral at Earl's Colne, Essex, which annoyed his enemies to such a degree that it contributed to the king's downfall. He was imprisoned at Pontefract and died on February 14, 1400.

As for that stonemason, he must be long dead, but I always think of him when I take the old packhorse route across Radcot Bridge. For centuries it carried Cotswold wool to Southampton for export.