In 1396, Richard married for the second time (his first wife, Anne of Bohemia, whom he married in 1382, had died in 1394). The bride was Isabel, the nine-year-old daughter of Charles VI of France, and during the marriage ceremony at Calais Richard made a statement repugnant to all levels of English society. He promised that he would work with the French to depose Pope Urban and have Pope Clement at Avignon recognized as the only legitimate heir to the keys of St Peter. In England, there was outrage, not only among the clergy, who saw themselves abandoned by their king, but also among the laity, who saw it as playing into French hands. Richard cared not a jot. His dowry from the French on marriage was £170,000, enough for him to recruit even more soldiers and take the next step to avenge the deaths of his friends nine years previously. In July 1397, he ordered the arrest of Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick, the senior members of the Lords Appellant. Gloucester was conveyed to Calais and quietly murdered, probably by smothering – he was, after all, the son of a king – while Arundel, Warwick and their adherents were tried before Richard’s equivalent of the Merciless Parliament, with John of Gaunt presiding. In September, Arundel was sentenced to death and executed, while Warwick was awarded life imprisonment. Henry Bolingbroke, Gaunt’s son, had at one stage joined the Lords Appellant, but, although he had been pardoned on the grounds that he had moderated their demands, he was now seen as a potential threat and exiled, banished for ten years.
Opposition grew as Richard’s rule descended into a tyranny of disregard for the laws and customs of the realm and the raising of forced loans to fund ever more extravagance at court. The king insisted that he ruled by God’s will and not by leave of the people and adopted the title ‘majesty’ – never before used by an English king. John of Gaunt had himself raised no objection to the fate of his brother Gloucester, nor to the exile of his son, at least not in public, and, as far as we can tell, he remained a loyal supporter of the crown to the end – although what he might have told his son and how he may have advised him can only be supposition. Then, in 1398, Richard at last got what he wanted and needed in his foreign relations, when a twenty-eight-year truce was agreed with France. But, after John of Gaunt’s death the next year, the king finally went too far: he extended Henry Bolingbroke’s banishment from ten years to life and confiscated the duchy of Lancaster with all its castles, lands and titles. This was the final straw for the magnates, for, if the king could do this to the duchy of Lancaster, whose lands might be next? Unaware, or uncaring, of the reaction in the country to his arbitrary actions, Richard set off for Ireland – that unhappy country was once more in a state of unrest – and Henry Bolingbroke saw his chance. He had spent much of his exile in Paris, and elements of the French nobility were more than ready to help and support him. With only about fifty personal retainers, fellow exiles and men-at-arms, Henry took ship at Boulogne sometime in June 1399, having given out that he was off on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and landed somewhere in the Humber estuary at the end of the month.
As Henry moved through Yorkshire, knights and magnates declared their support for him and joined him with their retinues. At this stage, he does not seem to have had any intention of deposing Richard, only of regaining his Lancastrian heritage and removing Richard’s ‘evil counsellors’. Once the earl of Northumberland and his son, Henry Percy or ‘Hotspur’, came over to him, Henry was assured of the support of the north. With the defection of Edmund, duke of York – the king’s uncle and regent during his absence in Ireland – and the submission of the Ricardian stronghold of Chester without a fight, Richard’s spies knew that the situation was serious. In Ireland, the king was indecisive, and even when ships were found to embark his army, he changed his mind about the port of departure, and the unloading and then loading of men and horses wasted more time. Eventually, Richard landed in Wales and his soldiers began slipping away. With a few trusted advisers he took refuge in Conway Castle, and, when the earl of Northumberland arrived as Henry’s emissary, the king was persuaded to give himself up and was taken to London and lodged in the Tower.
At some stage, probably when the duke of York had gone over to him, Henry elected to aim for the throne itself, rather than just regaining what he considered to be his rightful due. Knowing how duplicitous Richard could be, he presumably decided that he could not risk leaving Richard on the throne plotting revenge, but the question was how to assume the crown in a manner that could be portrayed as legal. The deposition of Edward II was not a true precedent, as he had been replaced by the next in line, his son Edward III. Richard’s immediate heir was not Henry but another cousin, the eight-year-old Edmund Mortimer, fifth earl of March, whose mother Philippa was a daughter of Lionel of Antwerp, Edward III’s second son, whereas Henry was the son of the third son. As the English claim to the French throne was based on inheritance through the female line, Edmund’s claim could not be dismissed on those grounds, and the justices strongly advised Henry against claiming the throne by right of conquest, this being quite the wrong message to send to other potential usurpers. Eventually, on 29 September 1399, Richard’s twenty-two-year reign came to an end when he was persuaded to relinquish the crown to Henry, although there was much legal fudge to justify it. Henry was acclaimed by Parliament and duly crowned on 13 October – he would reign as Henry IV. Richard was despatched to the Lancastrian stronghold of Pontefract.
Sometime in December, a conspiracy to restore Richard was discovered. Of the chief plotters, Salisbury was lynched by a mob in Gloucester, Despenser murdered in Bristol, and Huntingdon caught and beheaded in Essex. As long as Richard lived, he was bound to be the focus for those who opposed the new regime, and, like Edward II’s, his demise would be convenient, and the sooner the better. Only one chronicle suggests that Richard was murdered, by being hacked into pieces; others variously claim that he was starved to death by his jailers, that he deliberately starved himself or that he died of grief. His corpse was removed from Pontefract to London, and, as there were regular stops on the way so that it could be exhibited to the public, the hacked-into-pieces theory can be discounted. Nobody actually dies of grief and, as death by starvation, whether forced or self-inflicted, can take an inconveniently long time, we may reasonably suppose that Richard II was done to death in the usual way when the body of a high-born personage must be exhibited – by suffocation. And, as it was in Henry IV’s interests that Richard should die, we may suppose that he ordered it.
The death of Richard II ended a period of vacillation and weak government which precluded any serious resumption of the campaign to realize the cause of English France. On the face of it, Henry IV – young, healthy, outgoing and popular – was just the man to revive it, but events were to take a different turn and it would be another generation who reignited the flame of English conquest.
King Henry IV from his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral. In a (presumably unintended) touch of irony it is opposite that of the Black Prince, for the death of whose son (Richard II) Henry was almost certainly responsible.
8
REVOLTS AND RETRIBUTION
Henry Bolingbroke had a peripatetic existence as a child: his mother died of plague when he was only a year old; he was lucky to survive the Peasants’ Revolt; he was looked after by a variety of guardians and tutors while his father was away campaigning; and he lived in the households of both his father’s second and third wives. In spite of all this, he seems to have grown into a normal and well-adjusted adult. There can be little doubt that as a young man he exhibited all the qualities of kingship that his cousin Richard, the rightful king, did not have. A champion jouster and an experienced soldier who served with his father in Spain and with the Teutonic knights in Lithuania, he had travelled throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, and he had gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and visited the holy sites. He had learned sufficient guile to side with the Lords Appellant when they seemed to be winning, and to abandon them when it was apparent that they were not. His usurpation of the throne was generally welcomed by the populat
ion and most of the great magnates supported his accession. On the face of it, he should have been a popular and effective king. The problem of a disputed or not entirely legal succession, however, is that it leaves the way open for objectors to the regime, for whatever reason, to claim that it is illegitimate and that the usurper cannot therefore levy taxes, wage war, make land grants, treat with foreign powers or undertake any of the other myriad duties of royal government. Throughout his fourteen-year reign, Henry was plagued by shortage of money, unruly magnates, the Scots, the French, the Welsh and, finally, an uncooperative son.
A shortage of money was something that all English kings had to face most of the time, but it had not escaped the notice of Henry’s subjects that he had inherited not only the vast wealth of the duchy of Lancaster but also that of his wife, Mary de Bohun, co-heiress to the earl of Hereford. Mary gave Henry four sons – the eldest would become Henry V – and two daughters before dying giving birth to Philippa in 1394, with her wealth passing to her widower. All that, added to the income of the crown, should, it was not unreasonably supposed, have been more than sufficient to fund the court and run the country. However, Henry had made large grants of land and money to buy the loyalty of Richard II’s adherents and to reward his own followers, had rather unwisely given the impression that he did not intend to tax harshly (which many took to mean not at all) and, as he had little or no experience of government, was not able administratively to control court expenditure. While Parliament did grant him the customs duties on wool, exports of wool were down significantly and so therefore was revenue from that source. Henry was never able to live within his means, and, as one of his rallying cries had been the repudiation of Richard’s policy of making peace, a resumption of the war with France would entail even more expense.
In France itself, the removal of Richard and his replacement by Henry was regarded with horror. While quite prepared to discommode the English by supporting Henry in his attempt to recover his Lancastrian inheritance, the French court drew the line at his becoming king. They claimed to object to the deposing of a rightful king, but in reality the French were worried that Henry might reject the truce agreed by Richard and that war would follow. France, in any case, was in turmoil. In 1392, Charles VI, the Valois king, had gone barking (literally) mad, the first manifestation being his setting on and slaying members of his entourage, this followed by his wandering around the palace howling like a dog and forming the conviction that he was made of glass. While casual killing and the occasional bark might not matter overmuch, a belief that one is made of glass rather militates against taking the field in battle, or indeed doing anything very much, in case of becoming a breakage. Charles did have periods of lucidity, but these were to become fewer and shorter as time went on. While government theoretically remained in the king’s hands, the real power was exercised by his uncle, Philip, duke of Burgundy, when the king was mad, and by his brother, Louis, duke of Orléans, when he was sane. The two did not get on. Burgundy, who also ruled Flanders, was prepared to come to terms with the English in order to pursue his own interests in France and to protect Flemish trade, whereas Orléans coveted Aquitaine and also had ambitions in Italy (his wife was Italian). Burgundy supported the pope in Rome (as did England and most Flemings), while Orléans supported the Avignon claimant.
Although Henry IV sent emissaries to the French court assuring them that he stood by Richard’s truce – an action that did not find favour with the war party in England – Charles VI and Orléans refused to recognize him as king and were particularly incensed by his refusal to send Richard’s child queen, Isabel, back to France. Eventually, in 1400, she was repatriated but without her dowry, which Henry retained on the grounds that the ransom for Charles’s father, Jean II, had not been paid in full. In fact, Henry could not have refunded the dowry as there was nothing to refund it with. Calais cost a huge amount to run, particularly with piracy in the Channel once more rife, and, when the garrison mutinied because they had not been paid, Henry had to buy them off with cash borrowed from Italian moneylenders. And then, that same year, 1400, trouble flared up once more in Wales.
A land dispute involving a Welsh squire, Owain Glyn Dŵr, and an Anglo-Welsh Marcher Lord, Sir Reynold Grey of Ruthin, a great friend of Henry IV and a member of his council, had not been resolved to Glyn Dŵr’s satisfaction. Glyn Dŵr’s family was of impeccably Welsh origins, being descended from a variety of tribal chiefs, but had regularly married into English or Anglo-Welsh families – his own wife was a Hanmer, from a family that is still to this day influential in the Welsh Marches. Glyn Dŵr had studied law at Westminster and may have accompanied English armies on at least one punitive expedition to Scotland. But the failure of Parliament to support Glyn Dŵr was the catalyst for the most serious uprising in Wales since the conquest by Edward I in 1283. It was the result of long-held and simmering resentment of the harsh taxation policies of both the Marcher Lords and the central government, the preference given to English settlers and the Anglo-Welsh, the lack of career opportunities for local churchmen and administrators, and the unhappiness of local civil servants who had to implement policies with which they did not agree. In a very short space of time, the rebels had gathered an army of sorts, declared Wales independent and Glyn Dŵr Prince of Wales, and demanded the deposition of Henry of Lancaster and the abolition of the English language in Wales. They invaded the border towns, began the usual burning and looting, and occupied those English castles which had been only lightly garrisoned. The rebellion would drag on for another fifteen years and, while never a serious threat to the throne, it did distract the king and divert troops that might have been more profitably employed in France.
Meanwhile, despite the fact that Richard’s body had been displayed in public to show that he really was dead, there were those who believed, or purported to believe, that the ex-king was still alive, and who were prepared to foment trouble in his name or use the possibility that he was still alive as justification for insurrection. Henry faced a number of rebellions or potential rebellions during his reign, but the most serious was that of the Percy family in 1403. Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, had been Henry Bolingbroke’s ally in the deposition of Richard II and, with his son Henry ‘Hotspur’, was responsible for guarding the northern Marches against the Scots. On 14 September 1402, Percy had trapped a Scottish army under Archibald Douglas returning from a raid into England and laden with plunder at Homildon Hill, about forty miles north of Newcastle. The Scots took up a defensive position on the hill in schiltrons – a form of massed phalanx which had been very effective in the days when the English would attack on horseback. The English, true to the now accepted tactical doctrine, stood back and opened the battle with the archers shooting into the schiltrons at a range of 200 yards. They could not miss and there was bloody carnage. Douglas realized that, as his own archers were outnumbered and ineffective, standing still would simply invite wholesale slaughter, so he ordered both his infantry and his mounted cavalry to charge the English. Down the hill they came, but they never met the English infantry. The English archers withdrew at a measured pace, stopping every few yards to loose another volley of arrows. The Scottish schiltrons faltered and then broke, pursued by the English. The numbers engaged on each side and the casualties are obscure, but very large numbers of Scots knights and squires were captured, including Douglas himself, who was blinded in one eye by an arrow.
It was after Homildon Hill that the Percy allegiance began to waver. There had already been arguments about the cost of policing the Marches and how much was paid or not paid to the Percys, and it was said that Hotspur had not been reimbursed for his campaigns against the rebels in Wales. Now there was a major dispute over who should receive the ransom of the Scottish prisoners. In the spring of the following year, the impetuous Hotspur was moving south, ostensibly to join the king in another campaign against the Welsh rebels, when he reached Chester on 9 July and proclaimed that Richard II was alive and that Henry IV was a usurpe
r. Swelled by the enlistment of a party of the famed Cheshire archers, the army now adopted the white hart badge of King Richard. As Hotspur knew perfectly well that Richard was dead, he could not keep up the pretence that he was alive for long, and, as the ranks of the rebel army were being swelled by adherents coming in from the areas around Chester, Hotspur announced that he had discovered that King Richard was in fact dead, murdered by Henry of Lancaster, and that the rightful heir was Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, who was then twelve years old.
Edmund’s claim was derived from his mother, Philippa, who was a daughter of Edward III’s second son Lionel, formerly of Antwerp but since 1362 duke of Clarence. Lionel was, of course, older than his brother John of Gaunt, from whom Henry’s claim devolved, and, although it was weakened by being in the female line, it was a plausible claim nevertheless.69 As well as the accusations against Henry of usurpation and murder, the usual complaints of unjust taxation, public funds being diverted to private use, corruption in high places and evil counsellors were given another airing. At some stage, Hotspur had put out feelers to Owain Glyn Dŵr, and had he been able to join forces with the Welsh – for whom the French had already announced support – then Henry IV’s position would have become precarious indeed. As it was, the sixteen-year-old Henry of Monmouth, the Prince of Wales and future King Henry V, was in Shrewsbury as the commander, in name at least, of operations against the Welsh rebels. He and Hotspur had been friends, campaigning together in Wales, and the prince had learned a great deal from the scion of the Percys. Also on the prince’s staff in Shrewsbury was Hotspur’s uncle, Sir Thomas Percy, earl of Worcester, who on hearing the news promptly took off to join the rebels. If Hotspur’s army was to link up with Glyn Dŵr, they had to get across the River Severn and so headed for Shrewsbury, intending to cross using the two bridges there.
A Great and Glorious Adventure Page 22
