1415: Henry V's Year of Glory

by Mortimer, Ian

  Portrait of Henry V, painted on wood c. 1520. Although this is a later image, it is probably a copy of a lost original. All the other portraits of the king are based on it.

  Henry’s father, Henry IV. The relationship between these two deeply religious, fiercely proud men was often difficult – due as much to their similarities as their differences.

  Henry V’s stepmother, Queen Joan. In the year 1415 Henry showed her great respect. Later he accused her of being a witch and confiscated her income.

  Thomas, duke of Clarence. Henry’s brother – just one year younger – was a ruthless and reckless warrior, and Henry’s greatest rival.

  John, duke of Bedford. The third of the four brothers. An intelligent, pious and capable man. Henry entrusted the keepership of the realm to him in 1415.

  Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. The fourth and youngest brother, and arguably the most cultured. He fell to the ground at Agincourt, whereupon Henry stepped over him to protect him.

  Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester and chancellor of England. Henry’s uncle and one of his most trusted confidants.

  Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury. He shared Henry’s zeal for the reform of the Church and, in particular, the extirpation of Lollardy.

  Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, and his wives. Henry depended on him for the security of the north. The effigy on the right represents Joan Beaufort, Henry’s aunt.

  Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, and his wife Beatrice. One of Henry’s closest friends, he became treasurer on Henry’s accession. He contracted dysentery at the siege of Harfleur and died shortly after returning to England.

  Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. Another of Henry’s closest friends, a diplomat and a military commander. He led the English embassy to the council of Constance.

  London in 1483. Charles, duke of Orléans, is shown writing poetry in the Tower of London during his long captivity there (1415–1410). London Bridge and Old St Paul’s can be seen in the background.

  Westminster Hall. A place for great feasts and royal bureaucracy. A marble throne used to be on the daïs at the far end.

  Westminster Palace. In the seventeenth century the chapel royal was used by parliament. However, the skyline was largely unchanged from 1415.

  The Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund, king of Hungary. Without his leadership the council of Constance would not have met, let alone been successful.

  The Cathedral of Constance in 1819. Here the plenary sessions of the council of Constance were held. Here too Jan Hus was defrocked prior to his execution on 6 July.

  The rue Vieille du Temple, Paris, where John the Fearless murdered the duke of Orléans on 23 November 1407. The rue des Blancs-Manteaux, along which the murderers fled, is by the no-entry sign on the far left; the rue des Rosiers is by the no-entry sign on the near right.

  La tour Jean sans Peur, Paris. John the Fearless built himself a bed chamber and bathroom high above the ground, supported on massive stone columns, so he would be safe from assassination at night.

  John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy. His achievements were few and his acts enormously divisive; but almost everything he did was surprising.

  Charles VI, king of France. He reigned for more than forty years but suffered from a mental illness, allowing ambitious members of the royal family to vie with each other for power.

  The keep of the Château de Vincennes, near Paris. A royal residence, largely rebuilt by Charles V. On 31 August 1422 Henry V died in a house at the foot of the great tower.

  The duke of Berry, Charles VI’s uncle. One of the wisest of the French royal dukes, he presided over the peace negotiations in Paris in 1415, even though he was seventy-four – unusually old for the middle ages.

  View from the top of the keep of Portchester Castle, Hampshire, showing the harbour where the king’s fleet gathered. Henry was at the castle from 29 July until he embarked for France on 7 August.

  Harfleur. The River Lézarde used to run both through and around the town, where there was a fortified naval base. St Martin’s Church was badly damaged in the siege that began on 17 August.

  On the march from Harfleur to Calais, Henry had to pass several defensible towns and castles, such as this one, at Arques (now Arques-la-Bataille).

  Thomas, Lord Camoys, who commanded the English left wing at Agincourt, and his wife, Elizabeth Mortimer. She was the aunt of the earl of March and the widow of Henry ‘Hotspur’ Percy.

  Sir Thomas Erpingham. A veteran commander at Agincourt, Erpingham gave the dramatic signal for the English army to advance.

  Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, who died at the siege of Harfleur. Like other important casualties, his body was boiled and his clean bones sent back to England for burial.

  The battlefield of Agincourt. This is the view towards Maisoncelle from the road a little way south of the supposed site of the French mass grave. The English would have drawn up across the horizon, near the trees in the distance.

  The view from the left-hand side of the English position in front of Maisoncelle, looking north towards the position of the French army. The cross marking the site of the supposed French mass grave is in the small clump of trees in the centre.

  Calais, from a drawing of 1535–50. Henry’s numerous preparations for provisioning the town in early 1415 suggest that the embarkation of the army here was planned from the outset.

  This letter from Henry, concerning the duke of Orléans and the security of the north of England, is widely believed to be in the king’s own hand.

  Notes

  Prologue

  1. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings, p. 133. It is worth noting that McFarlane did not specify what he meant by ‘greatness’ or ‘the greatest man’.

  2. McFarlane wrote ‘the historian cannot honestly write biographical history: his province is rather the growth of social organisations, of civilisation, of ideas’ (quoted in Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, v).

  Introduction

  1. Vaughan, John the Fearless, pp. 44–8.

  2. Vaughan, John the Fearless, pp. 71–2.

  3. Vaughan, John the Fearless, p. 85. The guidebook to La tour Jean sans Peur, Paris, suggests that it was not actually the duke’s bedchamber. The reasons it gives are that the tower is small, and not of the expected ducal grandeur. The chamber beneath the duke’s is described today as the equerry’s chamber. However, Vaughan’s statement, based on the building accounts, is explicit: the principal room was indeed designed for John’s personal safety at night. The fifteenth-century chronicler Monstrelet also states specifically that he built this tower to sleep in at night. The two chambers are supported on huge stone pillars, rising twenty-five feet or so above the first-floor guard chamber, and reached only by an extremely elaborately carved stone staircase, which incorporates several of the duke’s heraldic badges. The wonderful staircase ceiling suggests strongly that, although this was a small chamber, it was intended to be seen by the duke. The whole edifice amounted to a lordly stone box supported sixty feet above the walls of Paris. And as the tower was constructed in 1408–9, after the murder of Orléans and John’s return to the city, I suspect that the extraordinary design, incorporating so much empty space, was a means of preventing the duke being attacked in his bedchamber by the use of fire. The tower is illustrated in the second plate section of this book.

  4. Allmand, Henry V, p. 48. There had been earlier embassies appointed to negotiate with Burgundian ambassadors – e.g. those of 3 July 1406 and 29 November 1410 (Hardy, Syllabus, pp. 556, 566) but these seem to have been for the defence of Calais and the local truce. See Nicolas (ed.), Privy Council, ii, pp. 5–6 for the instructions to the ambassadors appointed on 29 November 1410.

  5. Fears, esp. p. 322.

  6. Fears, p. 337; Allmand, Henry V, p. 48.

  7. Monstrelet, i, pp. 18–19. Although the then duke of Burgundy (Philip the Bold) was excepted by Louis in this agreement, this was only with regard to Louis’ part of the bargain. In other words, Henry would have stil
l been liable to help Louis against John the Fearless’s father even though Louis was not bound to help Henry against the duke of Burgundy.

  8. Fears, pp. 114, 134–5, 155.

  9. Hardy, Syllabus, ii, pp. 567–8. An extension of the truce in Flanders was sealed on 27 May 1411.

  10. In support of this it should be noted that on the same day that Henry appointed the ambassadors to treat with the Burgundians at Calais he granted safe conduct for ambassadors of the king of France to come to England. See Syllabus, ii, p. 566. See also p. 567, where redress of injuries with ambassadors from Burgundy and France are simultaneously authorised on 27 March 1411.

  11. Curry, Agincourt, p. 26.

  12. Fears, p. 339; Nicolas (ed.), Privy Council, ii, pp. 19–24.

  13. Given-Wilson (ed.), PROME, 1411 November (Introduction) states the fleet sailed in September. Curry, Agincourt, p. 27, states that the force was sent to meet the duke of Burgundy at Arras on 3 October.

  14. Allmand, Henry V, pp. 48–9. It is perhaps significant that the name of the duke of Berry was removed from the 1 September instructions to the ambassadors to treat with John the Fearless, removing any requirement for the English to fight Berry on John’s behalf. See Nicolas (ed.), Privy Council, ii, pp. 21–4.

  15. Fears, p. 338. The consensus view on intervention in France in 1411 is specified in Allmand, Henry V, p. 48; Curry, Agincourt, p. 27.

  16. In Fears, p. 341, I stated two thousand English archers and eight hundred men-at-arms were at St-Cloud. However, recent research suggests that the expedition consisted of just one thousand men (200 men-at-arms and 800 archers). See Tuck, ‘The Earl of Arundel’s Expedition’, p. 232. See Curry, Agincourt, p. 29 for further variations on the number.

  17. Fears, p. 345.

  18. Hingeston (ed.), Royal and Historical Letters, ii, pp. 322–5; Curry, Agincourt, p. 31.

  19. Fears, p. 347. They were built at Ratcliffe in the Thames, according to Wylie, Henry V, ii, p. 372.

  Christmas Day 1414

  1.I have presumed that Henry held his Christmas feast in 1415 in Westminster Hall, where the marble seat stood. It is entirely possible that he held it instead on a smaller scale, in the White (or Lesser) Hall, to the south. However, as Christmas was one of the three traditional crown-wearing occasions, and given Henry’s attitude to traditional kingship, I suspect that Westminster Hall was the actual venue.

  2. For Christmas rituals in the medieval royal household, see Hutton, Rise and Fall, chapter one.

  3. The problem is dealt with in full in Mortimer, ‘Richard II and the Succession’; Fears, Appendix Two. A simplified overview appears in Mortimer, ‘Who was the rightful king in 1460?’

  4. Fears, pp. 190–1.

  5. The spice-plate is mentioned in Henry’s inventory. See PROME, 1423 October, item 31 (the inventory of Henry V), entry no. 8. It is described as ‘the great gold spice-plate, set with a balas ruby in the mouth of the eagle on the fruitlet of the said spice-plate’. It had twelve balas rubies and sapphires around the fruitlet, six pearls and four pendant pearls in the beaks of four eagles, and 229 pearls and twenty-four balas rubies and sapphires around the cover. It also had twenty-four clusters, each of four pearls and a diamond, around it, and an eagle with a sapphire in its beak in the bottom of the basin of the spice-plate. Around each of the feet were four large pearls, four balas rubies, four sapphires and 112 pearls. The whole object was worth £602 5s.

  6. This impression of ‘innocence’ is not a contemporary description but my own impression, based on studying the English portrait of Henry in the Royal Collections.

  7. Hutchinson, Henry V, p. 72; McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings, p. 124.

  8. Woolgar, Senses, p. 138.

  9. For the slashed sleeves, see the portrait of Henry V in the Royal Collection; for Henry wearing a high-collar gown, see the image of Hoccleve presenting his The Regement of Princes to Henry (BL Arundel MS 38, fol. 37); for long sleeves with rich linings see the same image and also the image of Jean de Galopes presenting his translation of Bonaventura’s Life of Christ to Henry (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 213 fol. 1r.). For a hanseline worth £151 belonging to the king, see Henry’s inventory in PROME, 1423 October.

  10. Wylie, Henry V, i, p. 191.

  11. Wylie, Henry V, i, p. 190.

  12. Wylie, Henry V, i, pp. 200–1. Both the earl of Ormonde and Bishop Courtenay attested to this separately.

  13. Wylie, Henry V, i, p. 195.

  14. Wylie, Henry V, i, p. 201.

  15. Wylie, Henry V, i, p. 188.

  16. Barker, Agincourt, p. 39. For the exhortation to look the lord directly in the face as a matter of good manners, see Furnival (ed.), Babees Book, p. 3.

  17. Although he did empower negotiators to treat with the king of Aragon and the duke of Burgundy for his marriage to their daughters, these seem not to have been serious offers, as the Aragon negotiators were men of relatively low rank. The marriage to the duke of Burgundy’s daughter was negotiated while Henry was still prince; the marriage negotiated when he was king was to Katherine of France.

  18. His promises to consider no other marriage but to Katherine are in Foedera, ix, p. 140 (18 June 1414), p. 166 (18 October 1414), pp. 182–4 (4 December, extending promise to 2 February 1415).

  19. Writing by the king survives in all three languages. It is not proven that he spoke Latin, but it is probable, given that he chose to write in it. According to Allmand in ODNB, Henry V could speak Latin.

  20. Allmand states in ODNB that the fifteenth-century story of his residing at Oxford under Beaufort’s care in 1398 is unsupported.

  21. ‘No one expected him to become king’, wrote Professor Allmand in his Henry V (1992), p. 8. Since that work was written, Edward III’s entailment to the throne, made in 1376, has been brought to light by Professor Bennett. This makes clear that Henry IV believed rightly that he was likely to succeed to Richard II’s throne if Richard should die without children. By September 1386 Richard had been married for over four years and his wife had not conceived. With regard to Henry V’s date of birth on 16 September 1386, see Mortimer, ‘Henry IV’s date of birth and the royal Maundy’, pp. 568–9, n.7. By the time Henry V was six, Richard II had been married for more than ten years without progeny. There was therefore every reason to suspect that Henry IV would indeed inherit the throne, in line with Edward III’s entail; and, if not Henry IV, then one of his sons, presumably the eldest, Henry V. Therefore his father and grandfather – at the very least – expected him to inherit.

  22. For example, Henry IV executed the archbishop of York in 1405 as well as other prelates in later years. Henry V was in opposition to the archbishop of Canterbury in religious and political affairs in the last years of Henry IV’s reign.

  23. For Henry’s devotion to the Trinity and to the English saints, see Allmand, Henry V, pp. 180–1. For Edward III’s devotion to the English saints, see Perfect King, p. 60. For Edward III’s devotion to the Virgin Mary, see Perfect King, pp. 111–12. For Henry IV’s devotion to the Trinity, see Fears, pp. 196–7.

  24. Allmand, Henry V, p. 33.

  25. Wylie, Henry V, p. 189.

  26. Curry, Agincourt, p. 33; Allmand, Henry V, p. 32.

  27. Harriss, ‘The King and his Magnates’, quoting Kingsford (ed.), First English Life, p. 14.

  28. For sorcery at the English court, see H. A. Kelly, ‘English kings and the fear of sorcery’, Mediaeval Studies, 39 (1977), 206–38.

  29. PROME, 1423 October, item 31, entries 107 and 700.

  30. When the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of Winchester, and two of the king’s brothers flattered the mayor of London by giving him the seat of honour in the Guildhall, the prelates were seated on the mayor’s right and the brothers on the mayor’s left. See Riley, Memorials, pp. 604–5.

  31. DL 28/1/6 fol. 24r.

  32. Barker, Agincourt, p. 45.

  33. Barker, Agincourt, p. 45.

  34. This is noted by Waurin, as stated in Jenny Stratford’s ar
ticle on John in ODNB.

  35. This quotation is from G. L. Harriss’s article on Humphrey in ODNB.

  36. March witnessed just over half of the royal charters in 1414–16 and, by the reckoning of his own accounts, was in Henry’s company in 1414 (ODNB), so was very probably there that day.