Agincourt

by Juliet Barker

  As Henry had undoubtedly intended, his willingness to discuss peace lulled the Armagnacs into a false sense of security. Throughout the entire period of the negotiations, they also derived additional hope from the presence in Paris of Edward, duke of York, who was believed to favour an Armagnac alliance and the marriage with Catherine of France. The duke was actually on his way home from Aquitaine, but he lingered for five months in Paris, where he was assiduously courted and fêted by his Armagnac hosts. No expense was spared and the duke even received substantial sums of money due to him from the Armagnac princes after Clarence’s abortive expedition of 1412.24 Unfortunately for them, they had overestimated the duke’s influence at the English court; more seriously, they had also misjudged Henry V’s intentions.

  The apparently favourable progress of negotiations between the English and the Armagnacs caused alarm and consternation in the Burgundian camp. John the Fearless’s situation had become increasingly desperate after his failed siege of Paris and his subsequent flight to Flanders. As the Armagnac army swept into the heartland of his territory in the summer of 1414, he knew that if he was to obtain English support, he would have to raise the stakes. He therefore sent ambassadors to England, empowering them to repeat the offer to Henry V of one of his daughters in marriage, but also to arrange an offensive and defensive alliance between the two countries. The terms he proposed were that, on request, each of them should supply the other with five hundred men-at-arms or a thousand archers for three months without payment; that the duke would help Henry to conquer the territories of the count of Armagnac, Charles d’Albret and the count of Angoulême; and that the duke and the king would mount a joint campaign to conquer the lands of the dukes of Orléans, Anjou and Bourbon and the counts of Alençon, Vertus and Eu. It was also suggested that neither party would make an alliance with any of these dukes or counts without the consent of the other and that the Anglo-Burgundian alliance would be aimed against all except the king of France, the dauphin, their successors, the duke’s close family, including his brothers, Antoine, duke of Brabant, and Philippe de Nevers, the king of Spain and the duke of Brittany.25

  These were tempting terms for Henry and he had no hesitation in appointing envoys to discuss them. Henry, Lord Scrope, and Sir Hugh Mortimer, who had just returned from arranging the king’s marriage with Catherine of France, now found themselves simultaneously arranging his marriage with Catherine of Burgundy.26 They were joined on this embassy by three of Henry’s most trusted servants, Thomas Chaucer, Philip Morgan, a lawyer and future bishop of Worcester, and John Hovyngham, an archdeacon of Durham, who was the workhorse of most of Henry’s diplomatic missions.27 These ambassadors clearly suspected that the Burgundian terms were unworkable and that the feudal loyalty that the duke owed to the king of France would, in the field, take precedence over his convenient alliance with the king of England. Where, then, would that leave an English army in the midst of a campaign against the Armagnacs? Scrope and his fellow envoys were not reassured by the equivocal replies they received to their questions. The most startling aspect of the proposed alliance, however, was not mentioned in the official account of the negotiations. Henry had actually given his ambassadors full powers “to seek, obtain and receive the faith and liege homage of the duke of Burgundy, for himself and his heirs, to us and our heirs, and to receive him as our vassal.” Such homage could only have been given if Henry had persuaded the duke to renounce his allegiance to Charles VI and recognise his own title as the true king of France. Duplicitous and treacherous though John the Fearless undoubtedly was, his quarrel was not with Charles VI himself, but with the men surrounding him, and he was not yet prepared to betray his sovereign for an English alliance.28

  Even without homage, the duke of Burgundy’s offers considerably strengthened Henry’s bargaining position with the Armagnacs. He was now able to take a discernibly sterner tone, referring to Charles VI as “our adversary of France” and demanding the restoration of his just rights and inheritances. It is even possible that he considered that the moment had now come when he could launch his invasion of France. At some point in the spring of 1414, Henry had called a meeting at Westminster of the great council of the realm, consisting of all the senior members of the aristocracy and the Church, to discuss and approve a resolution to go to war. Far from slavishly backing the idea, the lords of the great council delivered something of a reproof to their king, urging him that he should “in so high a matter begin nothing” except what was pleasing to God and would avoid the spilling of Christian blood. They urged him to negotiate further, to moderate his claims and to ensure that if he had to go to war it should only be because all other reasonable avenues had been exhausted and he had been denied “right and reason.”29

  Henry responded by appointing yet another embassy, this time a high-profile one, led by Richard Courtenay, bishop of Norwich, Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham, and Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury. On their arrival in Paris, Courtenay made the now customary claim for the throne of France, but then, almost in the same breath, acknowledged that this was unacceptable to the French and offered to compromise: Henry would accept Normandy, Touraine, Anjou, Maine, Brittany, Flanders and a fully restored duchy of Aquitaine in full sovereignty, together with the lordship of Provence, the one million six hundred thousand crowns outstanding from the ransom of Jean II of France and two million crowns as dowry for the Princess Catherine. The Armagnacs, who had heard most of this before and regarded it simply as an opening gambit in the diplomatic game for Catherine’s marriage, responded by repeating the offer they had made in 1412 of an enlarged Aquitaine (though the thorny question of homage was left unaddressed), plus a dowry of six hundred thousand crowns.30

  These were generous terms so far as the Armagnacs were concerned, but they were derisory compared to what Henry had claimed. It was this disparity—combined with some highly effective English propaganda—which led to the famous incident of the tennis balls. As told by Shakespeare, the dauphin responded to Henry’s demands by mocking his supposedly wild youth and sending him some tennis balls to play with, prompting Henry’s defiant reply:

  When we have match’d our rackets to these balls,

  We will, in France, by God’s grace, play a set

  Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.31

  In fact, the dauphin, who was almost ten years younger than Henry, had nothing to do with these negotiations and was actually away from Paris campaigning against the duke of Burgundy when the embassy took place. Had he really sent tennis balls, especially to Henry V, who was notoriously prickly on the subject of his dignity, the insult would have been a major diplomatic incident and brought the negotiations to an abrupt end. This simply did not happen. Nevertheless, the tennis balls story found its way into some contemporary chronicles, and all English sources are unanimous in describing the French as mocking Henry’s claims and ridiculing the king himself; the ambassadors, according to one chronicler, “were treated with derision.”32 This was all patently untrue, but it was a convenient fiction that would whip up anti-French sentiment and help justify the English invasion of the following year.

  The Peace of Arras in September 1414 put a temporary stop to hostilities between the Armagnacs and Burgundians and for the time being ended the duke of Burgundy’s need for military assistance. The terms of the military alliance that he had proposed to Henry were quietly dropped, though negotiations continued and the duke’s behaviour during the build-up to the battle of Agincourt suggests that he had given at least a tacit assurance that he would do nothing to hinder the English invasion. He would not be the first or last to hope that foreign troops would destroy his enemies for him.

  The same high-powered English embassy, led by the bishops of Norwich and Durham but with the substitution of the king’s half-uncle, Thomas Beaufort, earl of Dorset, for the earl of Salisbury, returned to Paris in February 1415. Once again, they were received with great honour, and took their place in the public celebrations to mark
the Peace of Arras. They attended feasts, watched Charles VI (despite his madness) joust against the count of Alençon, who had just been created a duke, and, more significantly, saw a friendly joust between Charles, duke of Orléans, and the duke of Burgundy’s brother Antoine. A few days later, they were also present to observe the performance of a challenge by three Portuguese knights against three French; as the Portuguese were long-term allies of the English, they were led into the field by the earl of Dorset, who then had the mortification of watching them being defeated.33

  Despite the festivities, the serious business of the embassy was not neglected. The French were convinced that Henry V’s territorial demands were simply posturing and that the marriage would go ahead and resolve everything, not least because the English ambassadors now agreed to discuss the two questions separately. The English made some show of compromise, reducing their demand to a million crowns for Princess Catherine’s dowry, but the French refused to rise above eight hundred thousand and were not prepared to make any more concessions. The English declared themselves unable to agree to such terms without further authorisation (the standard diplomatic excuse for bringing negotiations to an end) and returned home empty-handed.34

  Henry V had not expected any other outcome. Four days before the French made their final offer, he had summoned the mayor and aldermen of London into his presence at the Tower and informed them that he intended to cross the sea to recover his rights by conquest.35

  It had always been unlikely that Henry would achieve all that he wanted in France through diplomacy alone. It is impossible to guess what concessions would have been enough to buy him off, but the marriage with Princess Catherine was certainly an indispensable condition: it was the only way that Henry could ensure that any lands he acquired in France would pass to his heirs by right of inheritance, as well as by legal treaty or conquest. As the son of a usurper himself, he understood all too well the necessity of securing the legitimacy of his future line. Though he also entertained (simultaneously) proposals of marriage with the daughters of the duke of Burgundy, the king of Aragon and the king of Portugal,36 these were never anything more than a polite detour along the road to diplomatic alliance.

  What territorial concessions would have satisfied him? An enlarged Aquitaine, restored to the boundaries set by the Treaty of Brétigny, which had been the goal of his predecessors, was clearly not enough. The Armagnacs offered him this in the summer of 1414—as did John the Fearless, implicitly, with his proposal to assist Henry in conquering the lands of the count of Armagnac, Charles d’Albret and the count of Angoulême.37 Henry seems to have taken this restoration for granted. His ambitions were, instead, focused on creating a cross-Channel empire centred on Calais, and expanding westwards and southwards into Normandy and eastwards into Picardy and western Flanders. An English dominion of this size on French soil and flanked on either side by two friendly powers, Brittany and the Burgundian-controlled Low Countries, would have enormous strategic value. It would allow the English complete control over both the Straits of Dover and the Channel, safeguarding the merchant shipping of England and her allies and opening up potential new markets in the north of France. It would also give Henry command over the two most important waterways of France, the rivers Seine and Somme, enabling him to restrict the flow of goods and travellers into the interior at will. Finally, it would also place a further barrier, beyond the Channel, between France and Scotland, two ancient allies that were united in their enmity to England.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SCOTS AND PLOTS

  Scotland had always been regarded as the French back door into England. The “auld alliance” between the two countries had been mutually beneficial. The French could rely on the Scots invading England from the north whenever the English themselves attacked France; the Scots, on the other hand, were able to maintain their own independence because the English were so preoccupied with their French ambitions. Unlike the Welsh, the Scots were very much part of the European chivalric tradition and could match the English tactic for tactic; their mercenaries were as active and as feared as English ones. The porous nature of the border between England and Scotland made it virtually impossible to police effectively, so if Henry was to make any sort of intervention in France, he needed to ensure that the border was secure and that the Scots stayed at home.

  Although English kings had from time to time demanded homage from Scottish kings, Scotland at this time was an independent kingdom with its own monarchy and parliament. Like England and France, it had suffered from the incapacity of its kings and the mutually destructive power struggles between its magnates. Relations with England had deteriorated since the accession of Henry IV, who had begun his reign by demanding that Robert III do homage to him as king of England and by invading Scotland as far as Edinburgh. On 14 September 1402 Harry “Hotspur” Percy had inflicted a crushing defeat on the Scots at the battle of Homildon Hill. Seven Scottish magnates were killed and twenty-eight captured, including Murdoch, earl of Fife, the son and heir of the duke of Albany, the de facto regent of Scotland.1

  Murdoch was handed over to Henry IV, but Percy had refused to surrender his other most valuable captive, the earl of Douglas. When Percy himself had raised the standard of revolt against Henry IV in 1403, he made an alliance with the Scots and Douglas fought on his side at the battle of Shrewsbury, where he was again captured and joined Murdoch as the king’s prisoner. Though negotiations for Douglas’s ransom continued fitfully for a number of years, he did not obtain his freedom until 1409, and then it was only by the shameful expedient of breaking his parole, “contrary to knightly honour,” and refusing to return to his English prison. (Having sworn to serve Henry IV and his sons for the rest of his life, he promptly broke this oath also.) The more honourable, if perhaps more foolish, Murdoch remained a prisoner in England for the rest of Henry IV’s reign.2

  When the second Percy rebellion failed in 1405, Hotspur’s father, the earl of Northumberland, fled to Scotland with his eleven-year-old grandson Henry Percy. The boy was sent to St Andrews to be brought up with James Stewart, the son and heir of the king of Scotland, who was the same age. At the beginning of 1406, the dying king, fearing that his son’s life was all that stood between the duke of Albany and the Scottish throne, decided to send James to France. The boy was hidden on board the Maryenknyght, a merchant ship from Danzig carrying wool and hides, and sailed from North Berwick. Unfortunately for him and for Scotland, the Maryenknyght was captured off the Yorkshire coast by Norfolk pirates, and the heir to the throne of Scotland joined the heir of the duke of Albany and the earl of Douglas in an English prison. He was to remain there for the next eighteen years.3 Henry IV now held all the cards.

  Robert III died within a few days of his son’s capture and although the captive James was recognised as king by the council-general of Scotland, his uncle, the duke of Albany, was appointed governor of the kingdom and set about converting it into his personal fiefdom. In his negotiations with England, Albany’s aim was to obtain the release of his own son, Murdoch, earl of Fife, and leave James in captivity, though he could not do this too overtly for fear of alienating those loyal to the new king. A five-year truce was finally agreed in May 1412 and preparations were put in train for the release of James and Murdoch the following spring. All these arrangements were stalled by the death of Henry IV in March 1413.4

  During the last few weeks of Henry IV’s life, bills had been circulating in London alleging that Richard II, the king whom Henry had deposed and murdered, was still alive and would return from Scotland to reclaim his throne. Immediately after his coronation, Henry V ordered the arrest of the chief conspirators, including the man who had put his name to the bills, John Whitelock, a former yeoman of Richard II’s household, and Sir Andrew Hake, a Scottish knight, who had been involved in a plot against Henry IV in 1399.5

  The conspirators had taken sanctuary in Westminster Abbey—an additional insult to Henry V, whose coronation took place in the Abbey church w
hile they were there. Sanctuary was supposed to be inviolable,6 affording the protection of the Church for forty days to anyone seeking refuge, and the sanctuary at Westminster was the holiest of holies. (It was a moot point whether the Whitelock conspirators could be forcibly removed or not, but there were more subtle ways of obtaining the desired result: in an earlier, similar case one malefactor was arrested when he left the sanctuary of St Mary Somerset in London to use a privy a hundred yards away.7)

  In June 1413, and within days of a second set of Whitelock’s bills appearing on church doors in London, the conspirators were arrested and found themselves in the Tower. Much to Henry V’s fury, Whitelock escaped before he could be sent for trial and was never recaptured. Hake and another of the conspirators were set free on terms which suggest that they turned king’s evidence and were perhaps to be employed as double agents. The only real casualty of the whole affair was the unfortunate prison warden who had helped Whitelock escape: he was drawn, hanged and quartered as a traitor, and his head was posted on one of the Tower gates as a warning to the rest of the prison staff that dereliction of duty would not be tolerated.8

  The Whitelock affair, like Oldcastle’s revolt, had been nipped in the bud by Henry V’s prompt and decisive actions, but it confirmed the dangers of allowing people to believe that Richard II might still be alive. Before the end of the year, therefore, Henry had arranged that Richard’s body, which had been interred in the Priory church of the Black Friars at King’s Langley, should be reburied in Westminster Abbey. It had been Richard’s own wish that he should be buried in the tomb he had erected in the choir of the Abbey for himself and Anne of Bohemia, his beloved queen who had pre-deceased him. Now Henry arranged that the body, placed in a new coffin on a bier draped with black velvet, should be carried the twenty miles from Langley to Westminster. With characteristic parsimony, he borrowed the banners he had had made for his own father’s funeral at Canterbury Cathedral for the procession, but otherwise the obsequies were performed as lavishly as Richard himself had laid down in his will. The corpse was escorted by a crowd of bishops, abbots, knights and esquires, and received at the Abbey by Henry himself, who ordered that four tapers should burn continually at the tomb and that there should be a weekly dirge, requiem mass and distribution of money to the poor in Richard’s name. This ceremonial reburial, carried out with all due honour and splendour, was widely applauded as an act of personal piety on the part of the new king, in which he had tried to make amends for his father’s usurpation and murder of Richard II.9 This was undoubtedly true. It was also just as true that the very public display of the king’s corpse, over the course of the several days that it took for the funeral procession to wend its way to Westminster, was calculated to prove, once and for all, that Richard II was dead. His ghost would not be laid so easily, but it was already beginning to sleep more quietly.