The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King

by Mortimer, Ian

  It is in this light of popular exuberance that we should see Henry stepping forward to claim the throne. Rarely has parliament been so charged with energy. Henry was not only the foremost living victim of Richard’s tyranny, he was the leader who had put an end to it. His reputation as the deliverer of England, which had been growing since he had reached Doncaster, was now at its absolute height. Thus, as much as Richard was now openly derided, Henry was championed. When the bishop of St Asaph declared on the behalf of the representatives of the estates that the throne of England was now vacant, Henry rose from his seat. Standing before the assembly, he made the sign of the cross on his forehead and on his breast, and made a speech in English. The officially enrolled version of this is as follows:

  In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster claim this realm of England, and the Crown with all its members and appurtenances, as I am descended by right line of the blood coming from the good lord King Henry the Third, and through that right, God of his grace has sent me, with the help of my kin and my friends, to recover it; the which realm was at the point of ruin for the default of governance and the undoing of good laws.

  Henry’s exact words are open to question. He probably claimed to be the ‘nearest male heir and worthiest blood-descendant of Henry III, son of King John’.69 He may also have displayed a copy of his own descent from Henry III. But whatever he actually said, the essence of his claim is clear. So too is the approbation with which it was received. He was not only king by strict male inheritance, he was king by election too.70 When the members of parliament were collectively called upon to deliver their judgement as to Henry’s right to be king, they responded with shouts of ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ as enthusiastically as they had done when asked whether they assented to the old king’s resignation.

  Even that collective vote of confidence in him was not enough for those orchestrating this transition of power. Henry’s advisers sought to capitalise on the spirit of the moment by asking for everyone present to affirm their support for the new regime. According to Creton, each man was asked in turn whether he would have the duke of York for his king, or whether the duke of Aumale, or York’s younger son, Richard. To all these alternatives the people said ‘no’: to Henry, they said ‘Yes, we will have no other’.71 Henry seems to have been embarrassed by this demand for such personal demonstrations of loyalty.72 ‘We beg you not simply to speak these words with your mouths if they do not come from your hearts, but to agree to them with your hearts as well as your mouths’, said Henry, adding ‘should it happen that some of you do not in your hearts assent to this, it would be of no surprise to me’. Nevertheless the prelates were all asked by John Norbury whether they agreed with Henry’s claim and, with the possible exception of the bishop of Carlisle, each of them said yes.73 The earl of Northumberland asked the same question of the secular lords, with the same unanimous response.

  There could be no doubt now. The climactic moment had come. The duke of York, the archbishop of York and Thomas Arundel (shortly to be restored as the archbishop of Canterbury) went to Henry, kissed his hands, and led him up to the throne. Standing there, before the gold-covered seat, Henry bent his knee and said a prayer. Rising, he made the sign of the cross on both the front and back of the throne, and then, flanked by the two archbishops, he sat down. It was the visual signal the crowd were looking for, the culmination of the revolution. Inside the hall and out, the people were jubilant, those inside cheering enthusiastically and those outside adding a massive crescendo of support which Henry could not have failed to hear. There was clapping and throwing of hoods in the air. Thomas Arundel, ready with his sermon on God’s approval of Henry’s accession, tried to quieten the crowd but they would not have it. The applause was an outpouring of relief. If this was ‘usurpation’ – as it is usually described – it was the most popular usurpation in English history.

  Arundel finally called for silence, and began to preach his sermon. A flood of biblical lines poured forth, all delivered by a confident and conscientious prelate to an assembly which was awestruck by the events of the day. Significantly, the key theme of the sermon was of the preference for a nation to be ruled by a man and not a boy. ‘It is certain that a child is inconstant in speaking, he easily speaks the truth, easily tells lies; he easily promises with a word but that word he quickly forgets. These things are inappropriate and extremely damaging to a kingdom …’ Perhaps the most telling lines were, ‘When therefore a boy reigns, will alone reigns, and reason is exiled … From this danger we have been freed because a man rules, who rules not as a child but as one perfect in reason.’ No one present could have failed to recognise what Arundel was saying. Richard had been a child when he had acceded to the throne and his rule had been one of will over reason. Edmund Mortimer was also still a child, younger even than Richard had been when he had inherited. The sermon was principally a justification of the pragmatic decision to have Henry as king rather than to follow the common law (allowing female inheritance) or royal successor-designation, and risk another turbulent reign.

  Following Arundel’s sermon, Henry thanked the assembly, and promised them that ‘it is not my will that any man should think that by way of conquest I would disinherit him from his inheritance, his franchise, or any other rights that he ought to have, nor would I put him out of that which he has and has had by the good laws and customs of the realm’. Those who had been office holders under Richard surrendered their marks of office and received them back from Henry, their positions confirmed. Finally Arundel announced that Henry’s first parliament would sit on 6 October, and his coronation would take place on the 13th.

  After years of living in Richard’s shadow – after years of trying to prove himself with a lance, or in crusades and pilgrimages – Henry was king of England. The prophecy which Froissart had heard in 1361 – that the house of Lancaster would inherit the throne – had come true. And more than that, Henry had lived up to his father’s expectations. Looking down from the throne at the empty seat of the dukes of Lancaster, he no doubt realised that a chapter in English history had come to an end. What he could not possibly have realised was what the new chapter would hold. No one had ever done what he had accomplished, so he had no idea what the terrible consequences would be for him and his family. He would have to learn for himself what it was to be a hostage to the mood of the people, especially a people who now knew they had the power to dethrone a king.

  TEN

  High Sparks of Honour

  For though mine enemy thou hast ever been,

  High sparks of honour in thee have I seen.

  Richard II, Act 5, Scene 6

  The day on which Henry was crowned – 13 October 1399 – was one of special significance. It was exactly a year since he had said goodbye to his father for the last time at Dover, and had stepped on board the boat taking him into exile. It also marked the feast of St Edward the Confessor, the saint-king with whom Richard had repeatedly tried to associate himself. It was thus a statement of regal as well as personal importance, and an invocation of the saint’s protection of Henry and his dynasty in the years to come.

  Henry and his advisers knew exactly what they were doing when it came to making him a king. He himself had been close to the ceremonies of royalty all his life, and understood them. In addition, his had been a most unorthodox accession, and so every symbol of kingship – both secular and divine – was employed to underline the correctness of the ceremony. He wore cloth of gold, and made the traditional procession from the Tower to Westminster Abbey on the day of his coronation. He went bareheaded as custom dictated, despite the autumn rain. Six thousand men followed him, it was said, and nine water fountains were made to run with red wine in Cheapside. In Westminster Abbey, seated on the throne, he received the insignia and swore the same four-part coronation oath as Richard had done. It was all scrupulously correct, in line with parliament’s advice that ‘nothing which ought to be done should be left undone’.1

  The ce
remony was not without innovation. Four swords of state were employed, rather than the traditional three. The two swords of justice, ‘wrapped in red and bound with gold straps’, were carried by the earls of Somerset and Warwick. Curtana, the blunt sword of mercy, was held by Henry’s eldest son, Henry.2 But before them all went Lancaster Sword, borne by the earl of Northumberland. Another innovation took place on the eve of the coronation. Henry knighted about fifty men, creating a second royal order of knighthood, the Order of the Bath, in emulation of Edward III’s Order of the Garter, created fifty years earlier.3 To add weight to his family’s royalty, three of the first knights were his younger sons, Thomas, John and Humphrey.

  In the most famous of all these innovations, Henry was anointed with a sacred oil, the oil of St Thomas. Almost a century earlier, the duke of Brabant had brought this oil to England, with the intention that it would be used at Edward II’s coronation. It had supposedly been given to St Thomas Becket by the Virgin, who appeared to him in a dream. She had told Becket that it was for the benefit of the fifth king of England after St Thomas’s time (Edward II) and his successors, to help them fight for God’s Church and recover the Holy Land.4 Despite the duke of Brabant’s good intentions, Edward II had not been anointed with the oil. Instead it had been given to the Black Prince, then sealed in a chest in the Tower and forgotten. It had eventually been rediscovered by Richard II himself. Richard had asked the then archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, to anoint him with it. Arundel had refused, but Richard had kept the oil with him nonetheless and had only parted with it after his capture. That Henry now became the first king to be anointed with this holy oil – lying down in front of the high altar, his clothes being opened in four places to receive it – added divine sanction to his regal promotion.5

  The feast which followed the coronation was a grand affair. The four sword-bearers stood around the king throughout.6 Lord Latimer stood alongside them holding the sceptre; the earl of Westmorland held the rod. Every bow of ceremonial etiquette was rigidly observed. One took place even though it was unplanned. As the duke of Aumale and the young earl of Arundel were dispensing wine to the king, there was an almighty crash and much shouting as a knight rode into the hall in full armour. He was arrayed as if for war, and his horse too was in armour. His name, he announced to all present, was Sir Thomas Dymocke, and he claimed the right by inheritance of his mother, the lady of the manor of Scrivelsby, to challenge to a duel anyone who doubted the king’s right to the throne. No one spoke, even though Sir Thomas rode around the hall several times looking for an opponent. It was Henry himself who brought this display of chivalric fervour to an end, saying, ‘if need be, Sir Thomas, I shall personally relieve you of this duty’.7

  *

  Parliament resumed its session on the day after the coronation. It had previously met on 6 October, when the restored archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, had delivered the opening speech. Henry was a ‘wise and prudent man’, the archbishop had declared. He had been ‘sent by God through his great grace and mercy to govern the realm … and wished to be ruled and advised by the wise men and elders of the realm, for his own advantage and assistance and that of all his realm’.8 These were high ideals indeed, especially as Henry was about to preside over a parliament which included men who had plotted against his life. Therefore it is important to ask what Henry’s intentions as king actually were. How far did he wish to be ruled by the ‘wise men and elders’? What was his vision of his kingship?

  The most important element of Henry’s kingship was his intention to end his cousin’s experiment in autocratic rule. It comes as no surprise to see that one of Henry’s first acts as king was to repeal the proceedings of the Revenge Parliament. This of course reduced the power of the monarch, for it wiped out Richard’s perpetual grant of the wool subsidy. Henry also repealed the judgements on those who had been condemned in the Revenge Parliament, and reinstated the decisions of the Merciless Parliament as lawful and correct, even though he himself had not agreed with all of the verdicts at the time. He annulled the blank charters by which Richard had sought to control the sixteen counties and London, and had them publicly destroyed by the chancellor. All this was expected of him: it was the understanding upon which he had been welcomed back to England.

  Henry’s plans for governing in future (as opposed to undoing the wrongs of the past) may be connected back to the oath he swore at Doncaster, and in particular his policy of not levying direct taxation in peacetime. Through Sir Thomas Erpingham and the earl of Northumberland, he assured the prelates of his intention not to levy taxes except in times of war. Unlike Richard, Henry would ‘live off his own’, as he put it: from the revenue of customs duties, the royal estates, the royal treasury and his own great Lancastrian inheritance.

  At the same time as promising the prelates that he would not levy taxes, he promised them that he would not tolerate heresy. This religious dimension to his vision of kingship is in keeping with everything we know about his religious orthodoxy prior to his accession: from his washing paupers’ feet on Maundy Thursday to his journey to Jerusalem. But his very accession enlarged his spiritual conviction. As Arundel had proclaimed, it had been by God’s grace that he had redeemed England from Richard’s rule. In fact, his personal crisis in 1398–9 seems to have brought out the sense of the divine particularly strongly in him, marked by a number of references to the Trinity. The peace treaty he had sealed with the duke of Orléans in France earlier in the year had been agreed ‘in the name of the Almighty and the most holy Trinity’.9 The motto he gave to his new order of chivalry – Tria juncto in uno (‘the three joined in one’) – was a direct reference to the Holy Trinity. Occasionally he ended his letters not with a wish that the Almighty would keep the recipient in good health but that ‘the Blessed Trinity would grant you joy and health always’.10 Others wrote to him with this same salutation, including his lifelong friend Richard Kingston, his sons Henry and John, his half-sister Catalina, and his future wife, Joan of Navarre.11 Later in life he continued to make his devotions to the Trinity, and to incorporate images of the Trinity into his buildings. Parliamentary petitions were offered to him ‘in honour of the Trinity’.12 Most significantly of all, he requested to be buried at Canterbury Cathedral and was laid to rest alongside his uncle and fellow Trinity follower, the Black Prince, in the Trinity Chapel. Indeed, he may have originally been attracted to the Trinity precisely because it had been famously sponsored by the Black Prince, a chivalric hero.13 Whatever the reason for it, such particular and consistent devotion to the Trinity points to a firm and pious outlook, underlined by his declaration against heresy.

  These elements of Henry’s kingship – the determination to rule in conjunction with the great men of the realm, taxation only in wartime, religious orthodoxy, and the establishment of a chivalric order – are all reminiscent of Edward III’s kingship. Even the language in which he made his speeches – English – harks back to Edward III’s use of English to stir up nationalist sentiment. These parallels between Henry in October 1399 and Edward III are not a coincidence. By 1399, Edward III’s reign had come to be seen as a golden age, being peaceful at home and glorious abroad: everything which Richard II’s reign was not.14 Hence we find Henry likened to his grandfather out of hope as well as the obvious parallel between their knightly virtues. Edward III’s epitaph in Westminster Abbey recorded that he was ‘the undefeated warrior, a second Maccabeus’. When Arundel preached Henry’s virtues to the people, he described him also as ‘another Maccabeus’.15 Similarly, Edward III’s epitaph states he was ‘a merciful king, the bringer of peace to his people’. On the day of the coronation, Adam Usk overheard Henry promising Archbishop Arundel that he would ‘strive to rule his people with mercy and truthfulness in all matters’.16 As will be seen, mercy was perhaps the most pronounced of all the elements of Edward III’s kingship which Henry now adopted for his own, and it was present from the start.

  In this light of modelling his reign on tha
t of Edward III, it is no surprise to see that Henry’s vision of kingship included warfare. Just as Edward III had won great victories in France and Scotland, so Henry promised to win them too. As it happened, the Scots attacked Wark Castle during the parliament, taking advantage of the fact that the wardens of the Marches (the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland) were both at Westminster. The Scots seized the wife and family of Thomas Grey and held them to ransom, and destroyed Wark, in contravention of the truce. Shortly after this, on 10 November, Henry received a letter from the king of Scotland, Robert III, refusing to acknowledge him as king and loftily declaring that past breaches of the truce should be discussed at Haddenstank, a point well within English territory, as if that was now the official border.17 Henry’s reaction was uncompromising. In an emotional speech to the lords on 10 November, Henry declared his intention to lead an army against the Scots.18 As for the war with France, although his initial move was to make peace, and to secure that peace through a marriage between one of his sons and Isabella, when that hope foundered he stated his warlike intentions in a speech during a procession through London. ‘I swear and promise to you that neither his highness my grandfather King Edward, nor my uncle the prince of Wales, ever went so far forward in France as I will do, if it please God and St George, or I will die in the attempt.’19

  As a result of all this, we have a clear picture of Henry’s vision of his kingship at the outset of his reign as that of a pious and conservative leader, merciful to his people, leading them in victorious battles overseas, maintaining peace at home, working with parliament and facilitating the economic prosperity of the nation. This innate conservatism goes a long way to explain why Henry was so popular at his coronation, in the wake of the radically individual Richard. His ideas about kingship were familiar to all: reminiscent not only of Edward III but also of the Old Testament kings: ‘merciful to their people and terrifying to their enemies’. Yet this was a form of kingship whose most vivid colours had already begun to fade. An early fifteenth-century king could not hope to impose spiritual orthodoxy on his people and avoid controversy. Lollardy had affected the religious outlook of the Church in England too much for there to be complete unity ever again. Similarly, it was increasingly hard to equate overseas warfare with economic prosperity at home. Overseas wars cost a lot of money, and that meant direct taxation. Victories over the French, Scots and Spanish still had their place (as shown at Agincourt in 1415), but such conflicts were difficult to justify economically. The mechanics of war were changing too, with guns and longbows replacing the massed charge of knights, so that chivalry had lost much of its purpose. Lastly, the relationship between king and parliament had changed. Whereas Edward III had been forced to work closely with parliament, Henry unwittingly compromised himself at the outset, in declaring his objective of cooperating with parliament as a matter of principle (a position from which he later had to withdraw). Therefore, although Henry’s vision reflected the greatest form of kingship then known, it was already out of date. Even if he managed to satisfy a few or all of his competing priorities for a short while, he could not continue to do so for long. It sounded magnificent to his people, and resounded in parliament, but it was much easier to announce than to perform.