Henry VI
Page 8
The beginning of the reign saw Duke Humphrey repeatedly thwarted. Cheated, as he believed, of his right to exercise supreme power in England, he was for a time prepared to transfer his ambitions to the continent. The opportunity arose because of the presence in voluntary exile in England of the heiress Jacqueline, countess of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland, a protégée and pensioner of Henry V, whom he had also made godmother to the infant prince. Originally Henry V had sought to marry her to John duke of Bedford, a fine opportunity to extend English influence into the Low Countries, but her overlord the duke of Burgundy, who had similar ambitions, had contrived to marry her to the duke of Brabant, her first cousin and his vassal, whose duchy bisected her territories, with Hainault to the south and Holland and Zeeland to the north. The validity of this marriage remained in doubt for several years until Pope Martin V finally declared it binding on 9 January 1428, but meantime this satisfactory political and strategic arrangement for Burgundy turned out to be a marital disaster for the high-spirited, independent-minded Jacqueline. In England she found a kindred spirit and champion in Duke Humphrey, fell in love with him and married him under a papal dispensation, obtained from the discredited antipope Benedict XIII. In October 1424 Gloucester, now styling himself count of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland, left with his wife and an English army to conquer her inheritance. His uncle Bishop Beaufort, made chancellor in July 1424, consequently took his place as principal councillor in England. In February 1425 Beaufort was given an extra salary, indicating that Humphrey’s early return to England was not anticipated.38 Humphrey’s conquest of Hainault was suddenly cut short when, early in March, Philip duke of Burgundy issued a challenge to fight him in single combat, rather than slaughter their subjects in public war. It was to make arrangements for this contest, which he eagerly accepted, to be held on St George’s Day, 23 April 1425, that Humphrey suddenly and unexpectedly returned to England. Needless to say his brother the duke of Bedford and Burgundy’s ally took urgent steps to prevent such a foolish act of bravado in pursuit of a quarrel which was endangering the unity of their joint war effort in France. The pope forbad it and the English parliament, at Bedford’s direction, declined to finance it.39
The parliament which opened at Westminster on 30 April 1425 had been intended as a demonstration of the harmony and success of the new reign. Henry was again brought to the capital in state for the occasion. Taken from his mother’s carriage at St Paul’s by Gloucester and his great-uncle Exeter, set upon his feet at the West door, he walked into the choir where he was ‘borne up and offered’. Afterwards, ‘set upon a courser’, he rode through Cheapside and London to Kennington. On the appointed day he was seated on the throne in the Painted Chamber at Westminster to hear his Beaufort great-uncle and chancellor preach on the text ‘Glory, honour and peace to every well-doer’,40 giving thanks for his peaceful accession to both kingdoms, for the God-given victory over the French which Bedford had won at Verneuil on 27 August 1424, and for his subsequent further conquests in France.41 The serenity of Beaufort’s opening sermon was in fact illusory. He later claimed that a number of reliable persons before, during and after the parliament warned him that Westminster was unsafe for him since Gloucester intended him actual bodily harm. Beaufort became unpopular in the capital because, as chancellor and principal councillor in Gloucester’s absence, he was considered personally responsible for certain legislation passed in this 1425 parliament. It granted the first levy of tonnage and poundage of the reign on native merchants, but only on condition that restrictions were put on the movements and activities of alien merchants, a condition which the council over which Beaufort presided did not then enforce. It also made attendance at the annual general chapters and assemblies of masons a felony, on the grounds that they were defeating the statute of labourers which it further ordered to be strictly enforced. For these, or other reasons, a crowd on the wharf near the Crane Inn in the Vintry threatened to throw the bishop into the river ‘to have taught him to swim with wings’, and he was slandered and threatened in placards which also threatened alien merchants. Beaufort claimed that Gloucester, after his unexpected return, encouraged the unrest in the city and the defiance of parliament’s enactments.
The most specific bone of contention between them was that the duke found himself prevented from lodging in the Tower, on Beaufort’s orders. He could thus accuse him of usurping the authority of the whole council, of attacking the rights of the Protector and Defender of England and insulting the honour of the City of London to boot. Beaufort had indeed instructed the governor of the Tower, Sir Richard Wydeville, to keep Gloucester out and officiously justified this action on the grounds that in anticipation of possible disturbances in the city, and because prisoners accused of treason, felony and lollardy were confined therein, the council had commissioned Wydeville to mount a special guard there42 and to admit no one ‘stronger than himself’.
It was at the end of October that their differences culminated in an armed confrontation, ostensibly in a contest to secure custody of the king. The bishop, from his inn in Southwark, had at his command many men from the shires, Lancashire and Cheshire being specially mentioned, and possibly some of the king’s household, then at Eltham. The duke, as Protector of England, summoned to his aid the mayor and three hundred armed men from the city, together with the apprentices of the Inns of Court. The confrontation took place, inevitably, on London Bridge, but fortunately neither party could cross either bridge or river. The archbishop of Canterbury and the king’s cousin Prince Peter of Portugal,43 then in London, came between them and due to their persistent, energetic mediation they were both persuaded to disperse their forces. But the repercussions of such an irresponsible display by the young king’s two most powerful princes of the blood in England could hardly fail to have serious consequences. On 5 November Gloucester celebrated a somewhat vainglorious triumph over his uncle Beaufort, parading Henry through the streets of London together with Prince Peter, many lords and the mayor and aldermen in state and subsequently returning him to Eltham. The bishop for his part on All Hallows Eve, in desperate haste and in fear of his life, so he alleged, penned a letter from Southwark to Bedford in France imploring him to come home post haste to prevent a pitched battle and to restrain his unscrupulous brother.
The four-year-old boy may well have been completely unaware of the significance of his ceremonial ride with his uncle Gloucester through London on 5 November 1425. At Leicester in the following May he can scarcely have failed to comprehend something of this acrimonious family feud. Beaufort retired to Merton, to await Bedford’s arrival. It was early January 1426 before they entered London together, escorted by the mayor and city dignitaries to separate lodgings in Westminster palace and abbey. A city en fête to receive him, and exceptionally lavish presents, do not appear to have won Bedford over to approval of their role in the affair. For all their generosity to him they ‘had but little thanks’. London was considered no suitable venue for the urgent reconciliation which Bedford had to bring about between his uncle and his brother. A council meeting fixed for St Albans could not obtain Gloucester’s presence. Go-betweens, a powerful committee of arbitration, failed to bring him to Northampton and finally only the most solemn command brought him to a full parliament before the little king himself at Leicester.44
Here, on his throne in the great hall of Leicester castle on Monday 18 February 1426, in an atmosphere of crisis, with both Gloucester and Beaufort given strict instructions to limit and control their retinues, and all men forbidden to carry arms, Henry heard his great-uncle Beaufort once again open parliament with a sermon on the text: ‘Children listen to your father. Do what I tell you if you wish to be safe.’45 As recorded on the roll, this was no more than an introduction to the outline of a legislative programme, but it can hardly have been interpreted by his hearers otherwise than as a personal plea for their support. The king was then removed from the scene and his uncle Bedford was formally appointed his commissioner. The commons in
the assembly well appreciated the dangers. They took an unusually long time to present their Speaker and when they did so on 28 February they formally expressed their disquiet at dissensions among the lords, who were all constrained to take a special oath to allay their fears. In the king’s absence a commission of ten lords spiritual and temporal then completed the terms of an arbitration. Having failed to bring the recalcitrant pair together in a great council, either at St Albans or Northampton, Bedford now at last had the satisfaction of presenting them both before his nephew in full parliament on 12 March. Here the child heard the archbishop of Canterbury recite a lengthy denial on oath from his great-uncle that he had ever attempted to deprive his grandfather King Henry IV of the governance of the realm or that he had ever plotted to assassinate his father King Henry V. Such was the alleged ancient history which Gloucester raked up in his efforts to get his uncle convicted of treasonable activities against the crown. If the roll is to be believed, no mention was now made of the recent charge of attempting to seize the king’s person at Eltham in October, or of depriving Gloucester of his rightful pre-eminence in the land. But the whole arbitration did turn out to be conducted with Gloucester appearing as accuser and Beaufort as defendant. Through Bedford, Henry was then made to declare his acceptance of his great-uncle’s declaration of innocence. Gloucester also, with feigned good grace, solemnly affirmed that he would take Beaufort at his word and believe that malicious persons unnamed had misled his uncle about his own intentions: ‘Beal Uncle, sithen ye so declare you such a man as ye say, I am ryght glad that hit is so, and for suche I tak yowe.’ As instructed they then shook hands.
By his disingenuous use of conciliar authority to humiliate Gloucester during his own brief months as head of the council, Beaufort had in fact put a stop to his own political career. Duke Humphrey had already tried to impose his dismissal from the chancellorship upon Bedford as a prerequisite for any reconciliation,46 and he was now relieved of it. On 16 March in the abbey of St Mary de Pratis Henry himself handed the great seal of silver to John Kemp, bishop of London and elect of York.47 Also removed from office at the same time was Beaufort’s colleague, the treasurer, John Stafford, bishop of Bath and Wells, who was replaced by Sir Walter Hungerford. With the complicity of Treasurer Stafford, Beaufort had been gaining a stranglehold on the chief sources of government finance. He held priority assignments on the major part of the customs and subsidies paid at the ports, the country’s only regular national tax, and he had also taken the crown jewels in pawn at his own gross undervaluation.48 Supreme political influence, coupled with the status of chief creditor of the state, might have made him invincible, but for the unexpected return of Gloucester from Hainault and the resultant open quarrel between them which necessitated the appeal to the superior authority of Bedford. During his brief spell as chief councillor Beaufort had contrived to avoid the redemption of the jewels due at Christmas 1424 and Easter 1425 and had put the national finances even further into his debt. It is true that no accusations on the score of these financial manipulations were made against him at this time, when it was supposed that he would disappear from English politics for good, but they were not overlooked. Duke Humphrey kept them in reserve for future use.49 On 14 May 1426 at Leicester the council, headed by Bedford and Gloucester, granted their uncle, euphemistically described as the king’s ‘humble chaplain’, formal leave to go on a long-delayed pilgrimage. Once outside England, in St Mary’s church at Calais on Lady Day 1427, Bedford gave his blessing to his alternative papal ambitions by placing on his head the Cardinal’s Hat which the pope bestowed on him nearly ten years earlier, but which Henry V in his lifetime and, subsequently, the opposition of Archbishop Chichele, had hitherto prevented him from receiving.
Collapse of conciliar rule under the stress of this quarrel between these two overmighty princes of the royal blood had thus been averted by Bedford’s intervention. His personal prestige and authority as the first adult representative of the kingship, heir presumptive and victor of Verneuil, acting through the institutions of council and parliament, had thus happily proved sufficient to restore unity in the body politic and in the person of the young king. Summoned to adjudicate and assume supreme control by one party when their quarrel got out of hand, he had in effect temporarily taken upon himself the powers of regency in England which had been denied to his younger brother. His solution was to remove his uncle from the scene, free to pursue his alternative ambitions in the church, and to leave his brother to the council, whose authority he had thus reinforced and could do so again if required. While lacking the drive and magnetism of Henry V he, at least, had inherited the vital qualities of kingship. His reestablishment of the authority of the crown was publicly demonstrated on Whit Sunday 1426 in the closing session of the Leicester parliament, when he prematurely knighted Henry and he, in his turn, was made to dub some thirty-eight new knights, led by the fourteen-year-old Richard duke of York.50 New accords on council conduct, backed by Bedford and agreed by Gloucester, were settled at Reading in November. These now amounted to no less than twenty-nine articles.51 A final tripartite family bond and mutual pact, sealed between the king’s two uncles and his mother, to defend and further his interests, left Bedford free to return to France.52
Duke Humphrey had thus experienced a vicarious triumph over his uncle, but not to the increase of his own authority. His fundamental loyalty to his nephew need not be doubted, but he still hankered after the position in the governance of the realm which Henry V’s will had intended for him. What had appeared to be the public trial of his uncle at Leicester had probably generated views in some quarters that his powers as Protector and Defender of the kingdom and principal councillor of the king were in fact greater than had hitherto been allowed for. At any event in the autumn of 1427, soon after the beginning of a new parliament, with both Bedford and Beaufort out of the country, he again publicly raised the issue on the grounds that differing opinions were being expressed thereon and that he was entitled to a new and public declaration and definition. To emphasize his grievance he openly declared that he would go on strike and absent himself from the parliament, thus making the conclusion of its business impossible, until his position had been clarified. Abstention produced no response, and when on 3 March 1428 he reappeared and demanded a reply, the lords spiritual and temporal had a careful answer ready. Through the mouth of the archbishop of Canterbury they reminded him how in the first parliament of the reign his claims to the governance of the kingdom had been rejected and his present title devised to ‘ease and appease’ him and to keep peace and tranquility. His attendance at parliament, they declared, was as duke of Gloucester only; in it his powers were no greater than they would be when the king attained his majority. They ‘marvelled with all their hearts’ that he should not be content with the so recent declaration of his authority and power to which he, along with his brother Bedford, had subscribed, especially since the king had now so far grown in person, wit and understanding since those powers had originally been granted to him, and would take upon himself the exercise of his full royal authority within a few years. The two archbishops, nine bishops, four abbots, the duke of Norfolk, the earls of Huntingdon, Stafford and Salisbury and eight other lords, then set their hand to a formal document requiring him to be content with this affirmation and to obey the king’s writ summoning him to the parliament.53 Thus, in spite of the absence of Bedford and Beaufort, Duke Humphrey proved unable to shake off the superior control of the collective council over the government of the kingdom. Influence over Henry himself was not yet a factor in the governance of the realm. Henry was still in the overall care of his mother in the spring of 1428, but new arrangements were about to be made to take account of his natural development. The view that he was ever removed from his mother’s care because of her association with Owen Tudor, although an act of parliament was passed in 1427 or 1428 prohibiting marriage with the queen dowager without royal licence, has no foundation. 54 Easter 1428 they spent together at
Hertford where French players and dancers are recorded as performing before them and on Easter Sunday Abbot John Wheathampstead of St Albans officiated at the castle. On the Friday of Easter week the court moved to the abbey, staying there for nine days until St Alphege’s Day (19 April).55 Fundamental changes in Henry’s lifestyle were pending as he approached the age of seven. He was about to be provided with an all-male entourage and a male governor.
Already on 8 May 1428 Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick was referred to as the king’s ‘master’ when four knights of the body and four esquires of the body were summoned to take up duties about Henry’s person at 100 marks and 50 marks salary a year respectively, each knight to have board and lodgings for himself and for two personal esquires in attendance. At the same time Wallingford and Hertford castles were appointed as the king’s summer residences and Windsor and Berkhamsted for the winter.56 Henry had already been given his own doctor from Easter 1427.57 The appointment of Warwick as his governor or tutor, now that Henry had reached the appropriate age, was quite a natural choice. Warwick owed everything to the House of Lancaster. As son and heir of the appellant earl of 1387, who had been condemned to forfeiture and life imprisonment by Richard II in 1397, he had succeeded to the restored earldom at the age of nineteen, in 1401, entirely as a result of the triumph of Henry’s grandfather. He was a prominent soldier, a diplomat at the Council of Constance and a king’s councillor from 1410, a patron of the poet John Lydgate,58 and regarded as outstanding for his fluent French. The recital of his numerous qualifications by the council in his patent of appointment on 1 June 1428 – loyalty, knowledge, wisdom, good breeding, prudence and discretion – matched the almost universal praise of contemporary chroniclers. They disprove the other image of the rigid martinet, which seems to have been based solely on his presence at the trial and execution of Joan of Arc four years later. It is true that some evidence survives of a range of miniature swords and a suit of armour ‘to learn the king to play, in his tender age … that the Earl of Warwick made for the king’,59 but this was part of Henry’s essential training. Skill and bravery on the battlefield were universally recognized as vital attributes for a fifteenth-century king, even by the most pacific writers of the age.60 No king could hope to do without them.