1415: Henry V's Year of Glory

by Mortimer, Ian

  There was a problem, however. Cardinal Zabarella was the most junior cardinal. He could not bring himself to read these words. His nerve gave way. After he had read the less contentious parts of the decree, and the prelates realised he was not going to read the above lines, a huge argument broke out. In the end it was decided to reconvene to discuss the matter at greater length in a week’s time.

  There are bureaucratic nightmares in all political arenas and ages – but few compare with those of the medieval church.

  Sunday 31st: Easter Sunday

  After forty-six days of Lenten fasting, the joy of Easter Day can barely be imagined. Late the previous night the Tenebrae – which had been sung each night since Wednesday – were sung for the final time. The candles in the chapel were extinguished one by one and then the final candle was put out. In the darkness the priest struck a new flame with a flint and dry moss, and used it to light the great paschal candle – the immense candle that marked the coming of Easter. Early in the morning on Easter Day the spiritual celebrations started, with the opening of the sepulchre: a miniature tomb in which the figure of Christ was laid. Anthems were sung, and the crucifix and host were carried around the chapel in procession. All the figures of saints in the chapel, which had been veiled throughout Lent, were now unveiled to look on the glory of the risen Christ.55

  The feast that ensued was a true celebration. Eggs, which had been forbidden throughout Lent, were brought to the chapel and blessed – a custom that may be the origin of our modern Easter egg ceremony. Everyone who could afford it was now able to indulge in meat-eating again. The scale of the royal feast Henry would have presided over late that morning may be gauged from the fact that in 1403 his father spent £160 2s 10d on his household expenses on Easter Day, compared to about £50 on a normal day.56

  In Cheshire – the home of the finest English longbowmen – the day was marked with archery competitions.57 It being both a Sunday and a feast day, men would have practised their archery up and down the country. This was in line with Edward III’s order of 1363, which had been reinforced by legislation passed by Richard II in 1388 and Henry IV in 1410. Longbows had been crucial in Edward III winning the battles of Halidon Hill (1333), Sluys (1340) and Crécy (1346), and practice was essential if England was to continue the tradition of dominance in archery. Years of experience were required for archers to draw the powerful 6ft longbows back to their ear – a draw weight of 120–170lbs – and control the arrow sufficiently well to hit a man-sized target 220 yards away. But how many Cheshire men shooting at the butts today anticipated that the long-maintained Sunday tradition was shortly to be put to the ultimate test?

  April

  Monday 1st

  THE CELEBRATIONS OF Easter, like those of Christmas, remind us that although medieval life was ‘nasty, brutish and short’ it was many other things as well. The joys of feasting, drinking, dancing, music and storytelling were every bit as significant for medieval people as the constant presence of death. The annual rhythms of light and dark, food and music, love and faith, make that ‘nasty, brutish and short’ generalisation a somewhat blinkered, morbid view of medieval existence. Easter, just like Christmas, was a period of exuberance and fun as well as religious drama. Following Easter Day there was Hocktide: a two-day period of merrymaking. Its chief characteristic was the practice of ‘hocking’ or capturing members of the opposite sex and holding them to ransom for a fee. On Mondays women set out in groups on the streets of towns and in the lanes of villages to capture men. On Tuesdays the custom was reversed: men captured women. In some places it was only married women who were allowed to take a role in tying up the trapped men; in others it was just maidens. Perhaps it was because the men had more money than the women – or perhaps the frisson of being tied up by women appealed to something in the medieval male imagination – but much more money was raised for the church coffers by the women.1

  Henry was not the sort of man to engage in such frivolities. Not only was the court almost totally devoid of women, his serious nature and religious conviction did not incline him to join in such japes. But whether he had any other sort of fun on this day is unrecorded. It seems to have been rather a case of business as usual. Among the grants made today we may notice one of £40 yearly to Nicholas Merbury, the master of the ordnance.2

  Another gift made this day was the apparently unremarkable sum of 40 marks yearly granted to Sir Ralph Rochford, in return for surrendering Somerton Castle to the king.3 As later events show, Henry wanted Somerton Castle back so he could give it to his brother, Thomas, duke of Clarence. This in turn causes us to pause. Clarence was notable by his absence on several royal occasions in the first half of this year. At the meeting at the Guildhall on 14 March, when the king’s other brothers, together with the duke of York and the archbishop of Canterbury, had all met the Londoners, Clarence was the only duke not present. At several council meetings both his brothers were present but Thomas was not.4 As we have seen, relations between Henry and Thomas had never been warm, and had verged on hostility; but it looks as though Henry had reassessed their relationship, and realised that he needed to keep his brother and heir apparent close.

  Also today Henry finalised the foundation of his new Carthusian priory at Sheen. He paid the prior of the great Charterhouse of Mount Grace £100 for copying books that would be required in the new priory.5 And he saw the priory’s foundation charter sealed, making the priory dependent on Mount Grace.6 Its endowment was to be drawn from the lands of recently confiscated alien priories, including those of Ware, Lewisham and Hayling, and the substantial grant of £400. Originally the estates of these alien priories had been given to friends and family; so Henry had to compensate those from whom he now clawed them back. These compensatory grants were also made today. Queen Joan, Henry’s stepmother, received 1,000 marks annually for her loss of income from the priory of Ware and other religious houses.7 Sir John Rothenhale was granted £100 annually in compensation for the alien priory of Hayling and its estates.8

  The foundation charter gives further details about Sheen. On a site of about ninety-three acres, forty monks were to live like hermits in separate cells, these being arranged around a large quadrangle, two hundred paces (about 350ft) on each side. The scale of the church was similarly ambitious: at over 100ft in length, the nave was twice as long as that of any other Charterhouse yet built in England.9 The monks were to say prayers every day for the king’s health during his lifetime and to sing Masses for his soul after his death. They were also to sing Masses for the souls of Henry’s parents and ancestors, and ‘for the peace and quiet of the people and the realm’. As for the name of the priory, Henry liked his works to have grandiose names – as we have seen with respect to ‘the Monastery of St Saviour and St Bridget at Syon’. Sheen Priory was to be known formally as ‘The House of Jesus of Bethlehem at Sheen’.10

  It appears that today Henry also resolved the future of the third of his new monasteries, the Celestine house on the other side of the river. Surprisingly, although the building was already well underway, he scrapped the project entirely. He granted the land to his trustees, Thomas Beaufort, Sir Henry Fitzhugh, Sir John Rothenhale and Robert Morton, together with the Celestines’ endowment from various alien priories.11

  The land intended for the Celestines amounted to a triangular shape of about thirty-one acres on the north side of the Thames, adjacent to the land granted to Syon Abbey. From this we can see that Henry’s original plan had been for a trinity of three monasteries and a manor house – two monasteries on the north side of the river and Sheen Manor and Sheen Priory on the south. Sitting on either side of the river like this they formed part of a larger architectural scheme. Anyone being rowed up the Thames would have passed several series of imposing royal and ecclesiastical buildings on the way. First, the visitor would have seen the Tower of London opposite Southwark Abbey (now Southwark Cathedral). Next, three miles upstream, the Palace of Westminster and the royal mausoleum at Westminster Abbey wo
uld have come into view, opposite Lambeth Palace. Twelve miles further on, the visitor would have arrived at this splendid arrangement of three monasteries and Sheen Manor. The effect of such a three-stage royal progress along the river would have been stunning. Foreign ambassadors passing by these buildings would have been impressed, especially if they were travelling on to Windsor Castle further up the Thames.

  Henry’s contribution to this stately progress was not to be quite so grand. The three Celestine monks whom Richard Courtenay had brought back from France refused to swear homage to a king who was determined to make war on their own kingdom. Nor could they accept the means whereby Henry intended to fund them – from the estates confiscated from French abbeys. So the negotiations fell apart.12 The three monks stayed in England for a few more months but their land was taken away from them.13 Henry’s notorious pride had been pricked by the peace-loving vegetarian French monks, and he tore up his plans for a Celestine foundation to spite them.

  *

  A clergyman was making his way furtively through the streets of Constance. Jerome was a short, stout man, with a broad thick black beard.14 He knew the dangers of being caught. He knew that his fellow radical theologian, Jan Hus, was already in prison. Beneath his cloak Jerome carried a placard. It stated that Jan Hus taught and preached the truth, and that all the charges against him had been made out of enmity. At an opportune moment, he placed the placard in a prominent place and hurried away. He left Constance that same day, seeking refuge in a priest’s house in the forest outside the city. Unfortunately he left his sword behind at the house in St Paul’s Street where he had stayed the previous night. It was handed over to the authorities.

  Jerome continued to preach his interpretation of the relationship between Man and Christ. He told those whom he met at the priest’s house that the council of Constance was a school of Satan and a synagogue of all iniquity. He insisted that no one there could refute Jan Hus’s prodigious learning, nor his own. In this way he announced himself. So the Church authorities pondered, and sent out people to find the man who had come amongst them, stirring up further trouble.15

  Thursday 4th

  Henry’s anticipated debts to the mayor and aldermen of London required him to respect their generosity. He could hardly ask for massive loans from them and almost immediately follow up that request by prohibiting them from employing the carts and boats necessary for their own building projects. He issued a licence for the mayor to maintain four boats and four named boatmen, and four carts and four named carters, to carry stone into the city for the rebuilding of the Guildhall. The men, carts and boats would be free from impressment during the forthcoming campaign.16

  The official commission to Richard Clitherowe and Reginald Curteis to hire ships from Holland and Zeeland was finally issued today. The diplomatic agreement necessary for their mission had been conducted the previous year, the money had been handed over to them at the end of February, but not until 18 March had the first commission been drawn up. And when it was, it named Richard Clitherowe and Simon Flete (not Reginald Curteis) as Henry’s shipping agents.17 Such bureaucratic errors – and there were doubtless many similar minor slips of which we are unaware – did not make the task of preparing for war any easier.

  *

  Pope John XXIII today wrote this letter to the prelates at Constance:

  John, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to all the faithful of Christ who shall see this present letter greetings and apostolic benediction. Let it be known to you all that we were driven by the fear that can beset even the constant man to leave the city of Constance and go to the town of Schaffhausen believing that there we could accomplish everything that would promote the peace and union of the Holy Church of God … But through the agency of the enemy of the human race such difficulties obstructed us there that on Friday of Holy Week, after celebrating Mass, we were compelled to leave in the height of a violent storm because of these fears, in order that we might find a place and a time both plainly suitable and secure for the general council, where and when it might be safe to come.

  Although death is considered the crowning terror of all, we dread neither it nor any of the serious dangers that threaten us so much as the chance that Pedro de Luna and Angelo Corario, previously styled Benedict XIII and Gregory XII by their obediences, may seize this occasion to allege the force put upon us and may retract their intention of resigning the right that they claim to the papal office, and that thus the achievement of peace and union in the Church may suffer delay. Our supreme desire is to press towards that true and salutary achievement, and so far as in us lies, we shall omit nothing nor slacken our efforts to bring about that peace and union. Dated at Laufenburg in the diocese of Basel, 4 April, in the fifth year of our pontificate.18

  The hypocritical meaning was clear. Far from working towards the unity of the Church, John XXIII was actively trying to prolong its divisions. Although he had promised to resign, he was still insisting that the prior resignation of the other two popes was a prerequisite. He counted the mere possibility that Benedict XIII and Gregory XII might not fulfil their resignation promises as enough of a fear to drive him from Constance. In reality he feared nothing but losing his own authority, status and power.

  Saturday 6th

  Henry today granted custody of the ‘temporalities’ (secular income) of the see of St David’s to the newly appointed bishop, Stephen Patrington.19 This means that he had received news from Constance that Patrington had been confirmed as the next bishop by John XXIII. If the messenger bearing this news had set out from Constance within a couple of days of the formal appointment there (on 1 Febraury), then we can be sure that Henry would now have been aware of events there up to and including Candlemas.20 He would have heard that the English were sitting as a nation in their own right, and that the bishop of Salisbury had preached sermons in Latin before the whole council. He would have heard that Jan Hus had been arrested and was to be charged with heresy, and so would the arch-reformer, the late John Wycliffe. He would have heard about Cardinal Fillastre’s memorandum – that the council of Constance had a greater authority than any pope – and that the envoys from Sweden had secured the second canonisation of St Bridget. No doubt that last news gave him cause for satisfaction, in view of his recent foundation of ‘The Monastery of St Saviour and St Bridget at Syon’. Less welcome would have been the news that the emperor wanted Henry to continue to negotiate with the French, and was even prepared to come in person to England to mediate between the two kingdoms.

  *

  At Constance itself Emperor Sigismund was enthroned in his imperial robes, a witness to the fifth plenary session of the council. The archbishop of Rheims had said Mass. Now Cardinal Orsini, who was presiding, invited the bishop of Posen to read the final version of Sacrosancta. Cardinal Zabarella simply looked on.

  In the name of the Holy and Indivisible Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen. This holy synod of Constance, constituting a general council … does hereby ordain, ratify, enact, decree and declare the following:

  First it declares that … it has power directly from Christ, and that all persons of whatever rank or dignity, even a pope, are bound to obey it in matters relating to faith and the end of the schism and the general reformation of the Church of God in head and members.

  Further it declares that any person of whatever position, rank or dignity, even a pope, who contumaciously refuses to obey the mandates, statutes, ordinances or regulations enacted or to be enacted by this holy synod … shall, unless he repents, be subject to condign penalty and duly punished, with recourse if necessary to other aids of the law …21

  And with that, the council’s obedience to the pope was set aside. A page had turned in the divine script. No one quite knew what the consequences would be.

  Sunday 7th

  Henry grew impatient as the day of his great council approached. Just as he had been short-tempered with the Celestines, to the detriment of his own religious building program
me, so now he showed a similar short temper with the French. The duke of Berry had suggested to the English ambassadors at their last meeting that a French embassy should come to England to discuss the peace. The English had had no choice but to agree with this. But where were the French ambassadors now? ‘We still have not heard news of the arrival of this embassy, nor do we know the names of those who will be part of it, even though the terms of the truce between us are about to expire,’ wrote Henry to the French king.22 Although only nine days had passed since hearing of the proposed embassy, Henry demanded that the ambassadors come ‘without delay’.23

  Henry’s letter repeatedly protested that he was a seeker of peace. ‘May there be peace during our reign’ he said in his preamble. He went on:

  We bring glory upon ourselves through knowing that, ever since the day we took possession of our throne … we have been quickened by a living love of peace, out of respect for Him that is the author of all peace, and we have worked hard with all our forces to establish a union between us and our people, and to put an end to these deplorable divisions that have occasioned such disasters and caused the shipwreck of so many souls in the sea of war. This is why we have repeatedly and most recently again sent our ambassadors to your serenity for, and touching, this important concern of peace.24

  The repetition throughout the letter of the word peace amounted to a rhetoric that actually said nothing but assailed the reader with the implications of the very opposite. Henry’s very insistence on peace was bellicose.

  On the same day as he sent the letter to the French king, Henry sent a writ to all the sheriffs of all the counties in England in which he repeated his instructions to the sheriffs of London of 22 March. All those knights, esquires and yeomen who held their estates by grant from Henry or his predecessors were to hasten towards London ‘for urgent causes now moving the king’. They were to assemble there on 24 April – a date chosen to allow them to march to Southampton in time for the planned muster on 8 May.