1415: Henry V's Year of Glory

by Mortimer, Ian

  For contemporaries, one of Henry’s most obvious failures was a lack of respect for basic chivalric codes. Something of the spirit of chivalry, as well as its shining armour, was sullied by the mud of Agincourt. The massacre of the prisoners is just one of many instances; another, equally significant at the time, was that so many lords were killed; normally codes of honour ensured that great lords were ransomed, not butchered like cattle. From the French point of view, there was also Henry’s behaviour at the siege to consider. Henry threatened the people of Harfleur with the law of Deuteronomy, not a chivalric or honourable end to the siege. Like the Black Prince at Limoges, he threatened to massacre women and children. At Agincourt he failed to give a Christian burial even to the fallen Englishmen; only the bones of the two dead lords were taken home for burial. At Calais he failed to live up to the code of honour which de Gaucourt and d’Estouteville expected: they had fulfilled their oaths in turning up to pay their ransom; and they reasonably expected Henry to honour his side of the bargain; but he did not. Henry’s refusal to pay his men for the last eight days of the expedition was similarly dishonourable, as was his failure to provide food for the archers when they reached Calais. At the end of the year, we cannot see Henry V in 1415 in a chivalric light. He regarded the common Englishman in his army as little more than a chattel, and the French men-at-arms as enemies of God, to be treated according to God’s law, not the laws of chivalry. Only the most important Frenchmen were held in any esteem by him – because they represented the magnitude of his triumph.

  Another of Henry’s more significant failures was incremental debt. As this book shows, the royal council was aware that he was not financially secure enough to go to war in February 1415; and the budget in June confirmed their impression. And yet he plunged the crown into even greater debt, and even pawned the Crown Henry. Most of the crown in question was not redeemed until 1430.18 Historians writing in the afterglow of McFarlane’s view of Henry have tended to gloss over such failings. One scholar has gone so far as to remark that there was ‘no opposition’ to Henry’s repeated requests for extraordinary taxation from parliament.19 However, as a closer look reveals, prior to Agincourt there was indeed opposition: in the parliament of November 1414 as well as the York convocation of January 1415; it was rather that the opponents were overruled on both occasions, not that there was ‘no opposition’. Similarly it is said that Henry’s officers managed to ‘mobilise’ £131,000 for the Agincourt campaign, with the implication that he should be congratulated for his fiscal resourcefulness. Yet Henry achieved this in the most underhand way. Many items pawned in 1415 were never redeemed in his lifetime. Many debts were never repaid. Many lords were not reimbursed for their troops’ wages for several years. All of these effectively constituted short-term loans, repayable when Henry deemed it desirable, but more often than not, he did not deem it desirable in his lifetime. Of the 25,000 marks he undertook to pay for his father’s possessions, he only paid 6,000; and he himself ‘died almost as insolvent as his late father had been’.20

  The negative accounting of Henry’s year would not be complete without raising the fundamental point of his entire war policy. Just in terms of loss of lives and the heavy ongoing costs, there are good reasons to say that it was a bad strategy as well as a needless one. First, as the mottoes displayed in London on his homecoming reveal, Henry’s campaign led to an anti-French rhetoric which was deeply divisive. Whereas in November 1414 some Members of Parliament had argued against war, in November 1415 the French had become ‘those who afflict us … those who hate us’ and Henry was described as England’s saviour from such people. This was the result of propaganda. The reality was that the English had not needed saving, and they would have benefited more from peaceful cooperation with France rather than the ensuing hostility that Henry fomented and which lasted decades.

  There was a more subtle and damaging implication to this incitement to hate the French, and it is probably the most negative thing one can say about Henry V. The main reason to re-start the war in 1415 was to prove the right of the Lancastrians to occupy the throne of England. However, by making the legitimacy of the Lancastrian dynasty subject to winning victories over the French, Henry mortgaged his future and that of his descendants. They had to be successful – always – for if there was a failure, it would immediately raise the question of whether the Lancastrians still enjoyed God’s approval. What Henry had thus started was a war which he could not possibly win, and which would lead to many deaths, including his own and that of his brother, Thomas. It was a fight against fate; and thus a fight against time, for, sooner or later, the French were bound to win a battle or two. And those victories would cast doubt over the legitimacy of the Lancastrians to govern England, as well as France. It is no coincidence that, soon after the war justifying the legitimacy of the Lancastrian dynasty had been lost in France, it shifted on to English soil and became a civil war – the Wars of the Roses.

  ACCOUNTING FOR 1415: ACHIEVEMENTS

  Professor Curry’s assertion that ‘for every bad thing one can say about Henry V, there are dozens of good things to say in his defence’ is difficult to put into practice for the year 1415. In fact there seem to be relatively few ‘good things’ one can say about him in this year, especially when trying to defend him against the charges of cruelty, overwhelming pride, high-handedness, incurring crippling debts, ignoring chivalric codes of honour, and mortgaging the future of his entire dynasty. However, the legend of Henry V is not without a basis in reality. What one needs to do is to get away from the day-by-day details of the year, stop criticising him for every niggling failure, and picture the man’s vision and achievements in relation to his time. And when we do that, we can say a number of positive things about him.

  Many of these positives can be summed up in the word ‘unity’. Almost all the domestic rifts which had existed at Christmas 1414 had been healed by the end of the year. Questions over the legitimacy of the Lancastrian dynasty had been emphatically answered at Agincourt – for the time being, at least. Moreover, in the organisation and prosecution of the war, he galvanised the various forces and groups of the kingdom and gave them a common political purpose. At the same time he gave many of them a common spiritual purpose in the eradication of heresy and the defence of the Church. Such unity England had not known in the reigns of Richard II and Henry IV. It thus constitutes a considerable achievement.

  The key to the unity of the kingdom was domestic peace between the magnates. Edward II’s entire reign had been wrecked by divisions between the great men of the realm. Richard II’s had likewise been greatly disturbed, and Henry IV’s was one long disturbance from beginning to end. But Henry managed to reconcile most of the disaffected families – the Hollands, the Despensers, the Mortimers, the Percys – and those individuals who refused to accept this reconciliation were forced to keep quiet by the consequences of the earl of Cambridge’s plot. At the same time, Henry calmed the possible divisions within his own family by managing his relationship with his brother Thomas in a satisfactory way, and keeping the peace between Thomas and his uncle Henry Beaufort.

  Henry’s relations with the clergy were similarly enhanced and strengthened. The prelates of both convocations, ever mindful of threats in parliament to remove their temporal income, saw Henry as a strong defender of the Church. In his deeply pious and moral lifestyle – even endowing and building new monasteries – they saw an example of how lords should behave. They also found him willing to continue the campaign against Lollardy for as long as it took to extirpate heresy. In this respect 1415 was particularly important, for the burnings of Claydon and Gurmyn were among the last martyrdoms to take place during this early phase of Lollardy. Inquisitions continued to be held into Lollard practices but increasingly the supposed heretics were absolved of their crimes. Henry was thus seen by the clergy as winning the battle against Lollardy, acting in collaboration with Archbishop Chichele, who issued an order against Lollards in July 1416, and the new pope Mar
tin V, elected in 1417, who similarly issued a bull against followers of Wycliffe. After Oldcastle had been captured, brought to trial and burnt at the stake in 1417, it was many years before anyone else was burnt for Lollardy. The clergy also acknowledged the divine signal in his victory at Agincourt, and Henry’s religious propaganda reinforced his image as a man of God. Although there had been opposition to Henry’s subsidy in the York convocation of 1415, it did not resurface after he had proved himself as a ruthless oppressor of heretics and a victor on the field of battle.

  Parliament likewise was won over by Henry in 1415. Whereas in November 1414 the Speaker, Thomas Chaucer, had had great difficulty in persuading parliament to voice support for the war, and had only elicited the grant in order to defend the realm, the atmosphere in the parliament of November 1415 was euphoric. From this it is evident that Henry pleased the majority of his people. The antagonism which had existed between parliament and the king in the reign of Henry IV was clearly a thing of the past. At the same time Henry’s victory pleased the Londoners, who saw themselves in a partnership with the victorious king, claiming that London was ‘the city of the king of justice’ on his return. This was the very opposite of the suspicion and hostility with which the men of the capital and the king viewed each other in the reign of Richard II.

  As the foregoing passages show, Agincourt was the key to his success. Had he lost that battle as originally reported, he would be regarded today as a self-deluded failure. But he did not lose, and the symbolism of that victory was all-important. Agincourt has been described as a ‘singularly unproductive victory – from the strategic point of view’, but that view is limited in its exclusively secular character. Agincourt delivered the unity of the magnates, clergy, parliament and Londoners in support of the king, and so was of immense strategic value.21 Symbolic victories demonstrated God’s approval, and thus the likelihood of future successes. Agincourt guaranteed Henry’s unrivalled tenure of the throne and permitted him to raise more money to send future expeditions to France, culminating in the conquest of Normandy. Had he not won such a decisive victory, his standing in England would have been lower, and his authority to command the kingdom’s forces would have been commensurately reduced.

  This hints at another of Henry’s achievements in 1415: the completion of the restoration of the royal dignity. The previous thirty years had seen the standing of the monarchy in England sink very low – so low that Richard II was deposed in 1399 by overwhelming popular consent. But the new royal family found it almost impossible to recover the dignity of Edward III’s time. The rivalry between Henry IV and Richard II continued even after Richard’s death, with faked signet letters from him being circulated and a series of rebellions and assassination attempts mounted against Henry IV and his family. The question of Lancastrian legitimacy never went away; and after Henry IV fell ill, the royal dignity sank so low it became a subject for parliamentary discussion. The king was too feeble, too indebted and too vulnerable to reverse the situation. Prince Henry himself directly contributed to the decline of the royal dignity, by trying to arrange his father’s abdication. Had that happened, people would have looked on the kings of England as not being kings for life but only for as long as their heirs and parliaments would permit them to occupy the throne. Edward II had been forced to abdicate by parliament in favour of his son; Richard II had been deposed in parliament in favour of his cousin. If Henry IV had also been dethroned, people would have questioned whether his successor was king by the will of God or by the will of parliament.

  Henry V’s accession did not automatically bring this situation to an end. The pro-Richard II protest in Westminster Abbey at the time of his accession, Sir John Oldcastle’s rising, and the earl of Cambridge’s plot all served to demonstrate that Henry had to do something to restore the royal dignity; he could not just expect it to happen. But he did do what was required. He made good the things his father had left undone, such as reburying Richard II in his rightful place and commissioning the completion of Westminster Abbey. He remedied the shortcomings of royal foundations, such as the collapsing fabric of St Werbergh’s church in Chester and the discipline of the Dominican nuns of Dartford. And he set an example of a king who was hardworking, pious, well-read, intelligent, attentive to justice and the public weal, courageous and, most of all, victorious. England could be proud of its king in December 1415.

  Henry also raised England’s prestige abroad. In fact, he arguably managed to exceed his great-grandfather Edward III in this respect, for his enhancement of English standing was twofold: spiritual as well as military. At Constance he ensured that the English were recognised as a nation in their own right, and maintained a firebrand spokesman there in the bishop of Salisbury. His influence was felt in many aspects of the council’s work, from laying down the law on Wycliffe and heresy to the reform of the Church and the papacy. He made Sigismund aware of his desire for there to be close ties between himself and the Holy Roman Empire, and did what he could to demonstrate this affinity to the rest of Christendom. This policy paid off in 1416 when Sigismund came in person to London, was inducted into the Order of the Garter, and agreed a treaty with Henry. All Europe could see the honour bestowed on Henry, and on England.

  The military achievement of Agincourt was of even greater significance in enhancing England’s international standing. Whether we approve or not, in the fifteenth century success in battle remained the benchmark of divine approval and chivalric dignity. Henry could break all the chivalric codes he wanted, but he would still be respected by knights and men-at-arms throughout Europe because he had been successful in battle. He had deliberately set out to emulate Edward III’s greatest victories, and he had succeeded; he thus recovered not only the royal dignity in England, but also reinstated English dignity internationally. England was no longer riven by domestic disputes between magnates, or between the king and the Londoners. It was a kingdom that could put forth an army and defeat the French in battle. And if Henry could defeat the French, the greatest military kingdom in Christendom, then he could defeat anyone.

  Finally we come to the most lasting and greatest achievement of Henry V in 1415: inspiring a legend. Today his achievements have long been undone or rendered irrelevant. The symbolic value of Agincourt had little practical value after his death, and the war increasingly became a greater liability than an opportunity, until the English were finally thrown out of Gascony in 1453. Henry’s policy towards Lollards was temporarily successful; but he could not control people’s changing beliefs. In reality he lost the battle against the followers of Wycliffe on 6 July 1415, when Jan Hus became a martyr at Constance and inspired the whole world – including eventually Martin Luther, whose ninety-five theses would trigger the Protestant Reformation 102 years later. But nevertheless, Henry’s legend lives on, and he is still considered a great king, even though we live in a world that normally condemns nationalist leaders for starting wars in order to strengthen their domestic political position. Like Jan Hus, Henry V’s actual achievements have become less important than his inspirational qualities, which have proved enduring.

  In England, of course, Henry’s legend has sometimes obscured the real man. Winston Churchill wrote lyrically about him being the founder of the English navy, and being the first English king to use the English language in his letters – forgetting or not realising that Edward III had commanded a considerably larger navy than Henry, and both Edward III and Henry IV had done much more to encourage the use of the English language. Other pseudo-achievements are still pinned on to Henry as a result of contemporary English chroniclers being in such awe of him, and striving to stress his achievements to the point of exaggeration. That they place the numbers of French troops at Agincourt in excess of sixty thousand, and in some cases over a hundred thousand, is a case in point. But we do not need to twist the statistics or invent facts to portray Henry as a single-minded, courageous and inspiring king. His story in 1415 is somewhat like that of Richard I on the Third Crusade. We
do not need to believe that crusades were justifiable to appreciate the admirable qualities that the man displayed in the face of adversity. Indeed, we may deplore crusades, and equally disapprove of Henry’s recommencement of the war in France; and yet still we may admire the courage and resolution of a man who set out to achieve something, and encouraged men to follow him, and was prepared to risk his life for what he believed was right.

  Henry V’s claim to greatness today thus lies predominantly in the legend that he inspired. Shakespeare’s ‘Henry’ might have preserved little of the cruelty and ‘scourge of God’ character of the real Henry, and the playwright certainly imbued his hero with more charm than the real Henry possessed, but we should not forget that Shakespeare was sufficiently inspired by Henry V to create a masterpiece: a sequence of four history plays that culminated in the triumph at Agincourt. Indeed, in that sense, the legend of Henry V really does live on, for Shakespeare’s character has developed into a more important cultural figure in the modern world than the real Henry V. There are many biographies of Henry V, and there are many books on Agincourt: but there are even more on the Shakespeare play, Henry V. Thus, as a leader of men engaged in a struggle against overwhelming odds, he has come to have meaning for the whole English-speaking world. And although it could be argued that the historical Henry does not deserve the credit for inspiring Shakespeare, it is fair to say that without that seed of greatness, the great work of literature would not have grown.

  Let us not pretend, then, that Henry was perfect, nor that he was without blood on his hands. Harfleur, Agincourt, the executioner’s block at Southampton, and the fires of Lollardy – his achievements were born out of fear, luck and pride: dirty, bloody. The truth is that in life, as opposed to legend, there are no golden-boy champions; there are only men and women. Some of them achieve great things, some inspire poets to write great works lauding their achievements, but in reality they are all prone to weaknesses and criticism. In this light, the question of whether Henry V was ‘the greatest man to rule England’ is absurd. Greatness itself is absurd: an undefinable and distorting chimera. We should perhaps think rather in terms of the ‘least flawed’ ruler. Was Henry the least flawed man ever to rule England? No, he was deeply flawed. But did he achieve something extraordinary despite this, in spite of his weaknesses and his mistakes? Undoubtedly, yes. That is what gives us hope.