1415: Henry V's Year of Glory

by Mortimer, Ian

  When Henry IV had claimed to be king of England as the male heir of Henry III he had claimed the throne of France also, even though Henry III had never been king of France. The English claim to the French crown had been inherited in 1328 by Edward III through his mother, Isabella, last surviving child of Philip the Fair. It was thus demonstrably the case that it could be inherited through a female, and so legally it should have passed to the heir general of Edward III (not the heir male). This was Edmund Mortimer again. Regardless of the merits of Edmund’s claim on the throne of England, his claim on that of France was immeasurably stronger than Henry’s. In reality there would have been little or no value in the Mortimer family laying claim to the throne of France – they could not have enforced it – but the right of inheritance should have passed from Edward III to his second son, Lionel; and then to Lionel’s only child, Philippa; and then to her children, the Mortimers. It was a double embarrassment that many men saw Henry’s claim to the throne of England as based on a half-truth, and his claim to that of France as based on an outright lie.

  On such things did men brood, and think, and whisper darkly, even at Christmas, with holly around the hall and the bright chandeliers burning above them.

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  If you could have been there that day, standing before Henry V as he ate, what would you have seen? A thoughtful-looking man of twenty-eight, seated at a linen-covered table, with his brothers, other great lords, and bishops dining on either side of him. He had a long face, a straight nose, and a broad forehead. The scar of an old arrow wound disfigured his right cheek. Despite this, there was a certain innocence about his expression, a vestige of the earnestness of boyhood.6 He had thick brown hair, cut short at the sides and the back, and hazel eyes. His ears were small, his neck thick and manly, his lips full and red, and his chin modest with a slight cleft. As for his physique, he was above average height, slim and athletic. He loved hunting and was an excellent shot with a crossbow. To his contemporaries he was tireless, his energy and determination being sufficient to power his lithe figure longer than his fellow huntsmen.7

  He was conscious of his appearance. In his household you would have found several mirrors, as well as golden musk balls and a pomander – the former to hold perfume and the latter to sweeten the air and help prevent him breathing in noxious vapours.8 Unlike most of his royal predecessors he was clean-shaven, like a priest. In this he took after the king whom his father had deposed – Richard II – who had knighted him at the age of thirteen. He wore several rings, and a Lancastrian livery collar over his shoulders, and a golden crown. His clothing was, of course, every bit as splendid as you would expect: kings had to dress the part in rich velvet cloth and ermine-trimmed robes. Whether wearing a high-collared, loose-sleeved long gown, or a gold-embroidered hanseline (very short tunic), his clothes were elegant and rich. Sleeves were slashed to reveal golden linings, or hugely extended to show elaborate embroideries within the cuffs.9

  As you continued to look at Henry, you would have seen that this careful outward display had nothing to do with boyish showing-off. The man was not a fop. He spoke very little, although always paying close attention to the speaker. There was nothing about him that was easy-going or even particularly joyful; there was no frivolity in his personality. When he did say something, his words were succinct and well chosen, and he tended to deliver them in ‘a low tone of voice’.10 A monk of Westminster Abbey described him as ‘devout, abstemious, liberal to the poor, sparing of promises – but true to his word, once given; a quick, wide-awake man, though at times reserved and moody, intolerant of laxity in priests, chivalrous towards women and rigid in repressing riot and crime’.11 His closest friends claimed that he never took a mistress or slept with a woman after becoming king.12 According to a chronicler who was personally acquainted with his youngest brother, Humphrey, Henry’s youthful experimentation with the fair sex was renounced as sinful upon his accession.13 The chronicler Thomas Walsingham, who attended court at this time, wrote that Henry was suddenly transformed at his coronation into a new man in gravity, honesty and moderation.14 Adam Usk described him as ‘upright … full of wisdom and virtue’.15 Indeed, the words that most accurately reflect the man’s character are ‘circumspect’, ‘fastidious’, ‘solemn’, ‘conscientious’, ‘firm’ and – apart from a deep pride – ‘virtuous’.

  His pride was probably his greatest weakness. When his honour was impinged he could suddenly become very angry. He allowed no one to look him in the eye – even though it was normal behaviour for men to look at their lords directly – and he could be roused to anger by anyone who dared to do so, even to the point of sacking an officer for looking at him in a manner that he found disrespectful.16 Such pride inevitably affected his judgment. Pride had contributed to the volatility of his relationship with his father, especially after his father had overlooked him for the command of the expedition to France in 1412. Another example of pride getting the better of him was his determination to obtain a French bride. In 1400 the French royal family had refused to allow Henry’s father to arrange a marriage between Henry and Isabella of France, the young widow of Richard II. Henry himself never seriously entertained any marriage other than with a French princess. After being rebuffed with regard to Isabella’s hand, he sent ambassadors to negotiate his marriage with first one of her sisters, and then another.17 When he declared he would marry no one but Katherine of France, in June 1414, she was twelve, less than half his age, and he had never seen her or spoken to her.18 In all his negotiations, union with a daughter of the king of France – any daughter, it did not matter which – was a key objective. It was as if he was determined to reverse that original slight to his dignity. To him, marriage was not a matter of love. It was a matter of pride.

  Henry was a sophisticated, educated man. He had had only a limited opportunity to benefit from his highly educated mother, Mary Bohun, who had died when he was not quite eight. But his father, who could read and write in English, Latin and French, intended that all his children should be similarly literate.19 So young Henry had been brought up to be a polymath, and taught grammar, logic and rhetoric – perhaps under the tutelage of his uncle, Henry Beaufort, chancellor of the University of Oxford.20 He also learnt music, just as his father and mother had done, playing the harp and singing. From the age of seven or eight he had a military tutor, and learnt to emulate his progenitors in jousting, horsemanship and wielding a sword. He was keen to use English as well as French in daily conversation, writing letters in English and commissioning translations of French and Latin books. Although it is often said that Henry was not born to be king, by the time of his birth – on 16 September 1386 – his father deemed his chances of succession very good indeed, and gave him an education fitting for a prince.21

  The older men at that feast would have left you in no doubt that Henry V was every inch his father’s son – intellectually, linguistically and musically. Father and son had much in common spiritually, too. Both were fervent in their beliefs and sufficiently confident in their personal religion that they could challenge church leaders when necessary.22 Both men were ardent supporters of the Trinity: the mystical union of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost that bound many of the senior members of European nobility into a spiritual compact. In this they followed the by-now legendary eldest son of Edward III – Edward of Woodstock, known today as the Black Prince – who had died on Trinity Sunday 1376 and had been buried in the Trinity Chapel in Canterbury Cathedral. Henry IV had been buried alongside him. Henry V was keen also to publicise his devotion to the English saints, St Edmund and St Edward the Confessor, as well as St George and the Virgin Mary – all of whom had been the subjects of Edward III’s devotion in his wars against the Scots.23 He was also inspired by St Bridget, St John of Bridlington (his special patron), and St John of Beverley, under whose banner English kings had often marched against the Scots.24 It was said that he heard Mass three times a day, and conducted no other business when in his oratory.25 One could say
that Henry’s religion was traditional and nationalistic, but, if so, then the tradition in question was that of the most serious personal commitment to the Catholic saints, and the nationalistic aspect was not just a means to a secular end but a spiritual one, too.

  The scar on Henry’s face was a legacy from the battle of Shrewsbury twelve years earlier. That was arguably Henry’s true education – armed campaigning and military leadership. From 1400, when he was just fourteen, the responsibility of putting down the revolt of the Welshman, Owen Glendower, was partly delegated to him. In this he was assisted by Henry Percy, known as ‘Hotspur’. But in 1403, Hotspur and his uncle, the earl of Worcester, rebelled. They raised an army in the hope of joining forces with Glendower, and marched to Shrewsbury. Young Henry held the town while his father led a hastily gathered army to relieve him and to attack the rebels on the English side of the River Severn. It was the first time on English soil that two armies of English longbowmen had faced each other. The battle was terrifying. Three thousand men ran away at the start. Many others were torn to pieces by the clouds of arrows in the first few minutes. The king’s vanguard was destroyed, the earl of Stafford was killed. Henry and his father both put themselves into the thick of the fighting, and Henry himself was struck by an arrow in the face. It penetrated to a depth of six inches below his right eye, but he refused to leave the field of battle. His father eventually prevailed, leading his army to victory, killing Hotspur in the course of the battle, and capturing and beheading Worcester.

  After his recovery from his arrow wound, Henry increasingly assumed responsibility for the defence of Wales. It was a testing period. Glendower’s successes meant that more men deserted the English cause. Henry’s own chamberlain at Chester, John Trevor, bishop of St Asaph, joined the revolt. Although the king led annual expeditions into Wales, normally in conjunction with Prince Henry, the Welsh were too manoeuvrable, and evaded battle each time by retreating into the mountains. After the English had withdrawn, they would emerge again and devastate the borders and lands of English loyalists. Thus fewer and fewer Welshmen contributed to Henry’s income and more and more Englishmen were in need of protection. There was a financial strain as well as a military one; and this led to a shortage of men to garrison the Welsh castles as well as a lack of soldiers in the field. The castles of Harlech and Aberystwyth fell to the Welsh in 1404. Henry’s first victory, at Grosmont, in March 1405, was a rare English success. Only with the battle of Usk later that year did the tide turn: Glendower’s brother was killed and one of his sons was captured. By 1407, when Henry laid siege to Aberystwyth, the Welsh revolt was losing strength. The following year Aberystwyth was recaptured, and the year after that Harlech was retaken.

  What had the conflict taught Henry? Obviously he had acquired certain leadership skills, and had come to understand an army’s needs in the field. Equally obviously there were the military and strategic lessons of fighting a protracted campaign. But there were more subtle lessons too. Henry saw for himself that, while battles might be won by courageous men and teams of well-organised archers, wars required high finance. He had lost Aberystwyth and Harlech in 1404 because he had not been able to maintain large enough garrisons. Even more importantly, in Wales he discovered his own fallibility. At Aberystwyth in 1407 he had been on the point of re-taking the castle when he made a serious mistake. He agreed to allow the Welsh to have free entry and exit from the castle for a full month in return for bringing Owen Glendower and a Welsh army to do battle with him at the end of October.26 But he did not allow sufficient time for an English army to be gathered. Glendower appeared, found no army to fight, and was able to reinforce the castle. Henry achieved nothing except to cast doubt upon his own judgment. Aberystwyth was recaptured the following year by men acting in Henry’s name, not by Henry himself.

  There were two further lessons that the Welsh wars had taught him, and they are both essential to an understanding of him as a man. The first was an awareness of his position in relation to God. The battle of Shrewsbury was not just a fight between a king and a rebel lord; it was a battle to determine in the eyes of God whether Henry’s father had been right to depose Richard II and take the throne. If it was not God’s will, then it would have been Henry IV’s death that would have been commemorated by the church built on the battlefield. As it was, Hotspur was killed, and the king had given thanks to God for the victory. But the divine judgment had also contained a warning – in the arrow that found its way deep into Henry’s face – and Henry himself was unlikely to forget it. Every time he saw men looking at his scar he must have been conscious of it. When his men won the battle of Grosmont in March 1405, he was quick to attribute the victory to God’s will, not his own leadership. In 1408, after his failure at Aberystwyth, he set off on a pilgrimage to the shrines of St John of Beverley and St John of Bridlington. In Henry’s mind there was no difference between the pursuit of military objectives and the enactment of God’s will. If religion was a way to attain a military advantage, then victory was a means of demonstrating God’s blessing.

  This combination of nationalistic pursuits and the enactment of divine will, wrapped together in the person of the king, was hugely powerful. It permitted Henry and his father to justify their claim to the throne of France even though it had no basis in law. They could claim the French title on the basis that it was God’s will – for God could over-ride and overrule the law. The only problem was that one had to take risks to invoke the approbation of the Almighty – to put oneself to the test, to show that God really did favour those who claimed to be acting in His name. No coward could claim to be exercising the will of God.

  The other important lesson from the decade of conflict in Wales was that of the importance of loyalty. As far as medieval kings were concerned, loyalty was the cardinal virtue. One chronicler noted that Henry, when trying to reassure his father that he would protect and love his brothers, stated that he would not fail to execute justice on them, as if they were ‘the worst and simplest persons’, if they were not loyal to him.27 He had good reason to place a high value on loyalty. In January 1400 he had experienced the treason of the Epiphany Rising, when certain lords loyal to Richard II had attempted to kill Henry’s father as well as Henry himself and his three brothers. The subsequent rebellions against his father merely confirmed Henry’s perceptions of his vulnerability. Hotspur had been Henry’s lieutenant prior to his revolt in 1403, and the earl of Worcester had been his governor. How could men such as these take arms against him? How could men like Bishop Trevor, his chamberlain at Chester, desert him for Glendower? His closest friends became more important to him than ever. Those with whom he served in Wales – men such as the duke of York, the earls of Arundel and Warwick and Richard Courtenay, – became the closest and most trusted friends he ever had.

  For these reasons, had you been looking into the eyes of Henry V on Christmas Day, 1414, you would have added another word to that list. In addition to ‘circumspect’, ‘fastidious’, ‘conscientious’, ‘solemn’, ‘firm’, ‘proud’ and ‘virtuous’, you would have added ‘intense’. The man was vulnerable, and had repeatedly been made conscious of the fact – from the arrow in his face in 1403 to the tactical blunder of 1407, his sacking as regent in 1411, and the public questioning of his trustworthiness in 1412. His succession to the throne did not make him any less vulnerable, quite the reverse. His safety now rested upon his ability to command his friends and his continued enjoyment of God’s blessing. At any moment he could be betrayed, or even murdered, or fall from God’s grace through some unfortunate turn of events, as his father had done in his protracted sickness. It is not surprising, therefore, to find signs of worry and superstition at his court. Among his possessions we find such things as a triacle (a container for an ointment to protect against poison), and rings and crosses containing relics of saints. He took astrology very seriously – he possessed several astrolabes for charting the position of the stars. The idea of sorcery haunted him, as it did many of those i
n and around the late medieval court.28 In the prince’s palace at Westminster was a seat hanging worked with the inscription, Je vous ayme loialment (I love you loyally), as if the emphasis on loyalty somehow made it more substantial.29 At his court there was a sense that everything good, noble, virtuous and worth loving hung by a slender thread, and might vanish in an instant.

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  As Henry sat dining at the high table in Westminster Hall, he would have been surrounded by family, friends, lords, bishops, servants and other members of the royal household. On his left would have been his three brothers.30 First of these was Thomas, duke of Clarence, the next-in-line to the throne. He was only a year younger than Henry, having been born in the autumn of 1387. The two boys had grown up together, staying with their mother in childhood and, following their mother’s death in 1394, with their grandfather, John of Gaunt. By 1398 Thomas had been singled out as his father’s favourite son, his name appearing high on the list of recipients of Henry IV’s New Year presents (while Prince Henry’s name does not appear at all).31 It is possible that their rivalry developed at this time, and perhaps was even caused by their father’s favouritism. When their father was exiled by Richard II in October 1398, the two boys were separated: Richard II took Henry with him to Ireland, and knighted him there. Thomas was left behind in England – and had to wait until his father’s coronation in 1399 for his own knighthood.

  In 1401, the fourteen-year-old Thomas was appointed King’s Lieutenant of Ireland. The intention was that he should be educated in the tough environment of a war zone, like his older brother at the same age. Although restricted to Dublin for much of the time, Thomas soon developed as a military commander of remarkable courage and ferocity. Four years later – and now an admiral – he ravaged the coast of France. In 1408 he returned to Ireland to fight in Leinster. By this time his martial career was beginning to outshine that of his elder brother, and their rivalry resurfaced. After Thomas returned to England in 1409, Prince Henry accused him of neglecting his Irish duties, and urged him to give up his Irish position. Thomas refused, and further irritated his brother and Henry Beaufort when, in 1410, he obtained papal permission to marry the widow of his uncle, John Beaufort (Henry Beaufort’s elder brother). The king further compounded the breach between his rival sons in 1412, when he created Thomas duke of Clarence and appointed him commander of the expeditionary army to aid the Armagnacs, passing over Prince Henry in the process.