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

by Mortimer, Ian

  ‘You have said openly that he lives, and so you have excited and stirred the people against me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tell the truth as it is in your heart’, insisted Henry. ‘If you saw King Richard and me fighting on the battlefield together, with whom would you fight?’

  ‘In truth, with him, for I am more beholden to him.’

  ‘Do you wish that I and all the lords of the realm were dead?’

  ‘No’, replied the friar.

  ‘What would you do if you had the victory over me?’

  ‘I would make you duke of Lancaster’, replied the friar.

  ‘Then you are not my friend’, declared Henry angrily.20

  At his trial in June, John Bernard of Offley (Hertfordshire) claimed that he had been ploughing near his home when William Balshalf of Lancaster told him that Richard was alive and well and living in Scotland, and would return to England to meet his loyal supporters near Merevale Abbey (Warwickshire) on 24 June.21 The recipient of this news promptly gathered more supporters, showing just how dangerous unsubstantiated rumours could be.

  Henry continued to question the friars in person. One told him to his face that Richard would return and fight Henry ‘as it is prophesied’.22 Henry did not need to be reminded that the Prophecy of the Six Kings declared that the fifth king – Richard, the lamb – would lose his kingdom to a ‘hideous wolf’; but he would fight back and recover his lands. Unlike the friar in this case, Henry knew for certain that Richard was dead, and that the prophecy could not come true. Even so, it was plain that those who hated him would just say that he was the sixth king – the mole or ‘moldewarp’ – under whom (according to the prophecy) the kingdom would be wrenched apart in three warring factions. He could not win.

  Henry kept in mind his coronation oath to rule justly for all. He took pains to stress that he did not wish to punish men for being simple or naïve. He wrote to the sheriffs commanding them to announce that the king would not punish those who repeated the rumour, only those who started it.23 He was as good as his word. He pardoned one Robert Westbroom of Bury St Edmunds for circulating rumours of Richard’s survival because he had merely heard ‘such lies and innocently repeated the same’.24 John Bernard of Offley was likewise pardoned (after he had defeated Balshalf in judicial combat).25 Other men were more dangerous. Sir Roger Clarendon was the illegitimate son of the Black Prince, and thus a half-brother of Richard II. Outlawed for murder in 1398, he had never been entertained at court by Henry.26 He therefore had nothing to lose from opposing the regime, and may have been expected to take a leadership role during the hoped-for uprising. In the event, he was eliminated at an early stage. On 19 May Henry ordered him to be arrested, as well as a clerk, John Calf. Four days later, Clarendon, his esquire and valet were imprisoned in the Tower. They all protested their innocence but were found guilty of treason, and hanged.27

  On 1 June, Henry held another revealing interview.28 A Franciscan had betrayed a fellow friar of Leicester, who was planning to meet ten of his companions near Oxford on Midsummer’s Eve and to go in search of Richard. One of these was an older man, Roger Frisby, a master of divinity. On investigation, two of the friars could not be found, but the remaining eight and Frisby were brought bound to London. When presented to him, Henry saw that some of them were young and illiterate. ‘These are uncouth men, without understanding’, he observed. Then, turning to Frisby, he said, ‘you ought to be a wise man. Do you say that King Richard is alive?’

  Frisby gave a straight reply. ‘I do not say he is alive, but I say that if he is alive, he is the true king of England.’

  ‘He resigned’, retorted Henry.

  ‘He resigned against his will, in prison, which is against the law.’

  ‘He resigned with good will’, Henry insisted.

  But Frisby remained firm. ‘He would not have resigned had he been free, and a resignation in prison is not free.’

  ‘He was deposed’, said Henry.

  ‘When he was king, he was taken by force and put into prison, and despoiled of his realm, and you have usurped the crown.’

  Henry must have been startled at Frisby’s effrontery, but still he continued the debate. ‘I have not usurped the crown, I was chosen by election.’

  ‘The election is nothing, if the true and lawful possessor be alive’, said Frisby. Then he added the words guaranteed to anger the king. ‘And if he be dead, then he is dead by you, and if that be so, you have lost all right and title that you might have had to the crown.’

  Shocked, Henry roared back, ‘By my head, I shall have your head!’

  ‘You never loved the Church’, declared Frisby as Henry’s men set hands on him, ‘but always slandered it before you were king and now you shall destroy it.’

  ‘You lie’, Henry replied, as his men dragged the priest away to the confines of the Tower.

  ‘We shall never cease to hear this clamour of King Richard until the friars are destroyed’, said a knight at Henry’s shoulder as the master was removed.

  Henry seems to have agreed. When the master of the Franciscans came before him to plead mercy for those of his order, and assured Henry that he had directed his brethren not to speak ill of the king, Henry did not trust him. Referring to the eight friars – who were repeatedly tried until a jury could be found to condemn them – he replied in memorably chilling words: ‘They will not be chastised by thee, and therefore they will be chastised by me.’29

  *

  Glendower had been greatly heartened by the capture of Lord Grey of Ruthin. In June he led a strike into the heart of the Mortimer lordship of Maelienydd. On 22 June 1402 at Bryn Glas, a hill near Pilleth, he defeated an army led by Sir Edmund Mortimer, uncle of the earl of March.30 After the battle the Welsh women had gone to the dead bodies of the English and cut off their genitals, stuffing them into the dead men’s mouths, and they cut off their noses and shoved them up their anuses.31 Even worse (in the eyes of Henry’s contemporaries), the corpses were not given a Christian burial. Henry had little choice but to do what he had already done twice: to take an English army and impose his authority where it mattered most, in Wales itself.

  To his credit, he did not delay. On 25 June he wrote to the council telling them of Mortimer’s capture and his determination to lead an army in person. The same day he issued an order summoning forces to assemble at Lichfield. Five days later he wrote another letter announcing the defeat of four hundred Scotsmen by George Dunbar and Hotspur at Nesbit Moor, but requiring that the council attend to the threat of twelve thousand Scotsmen now massing on the border, near Carlisle. By 5 July he was at Lichfield, coordinating preparations. He ordered Hereford, Ludlow and Chester castles to be fully provisioned, and Leominster to be fortified. In the course of planning he seemed to have decided to enhance his campaign and to invade with three armies, his largest offensive yet.

  The plan was for the three armies to set out on 27 August and spend two weeks ravaging Wales.32 One was to muster at Chester (led by the sixteen-year-old prince of Wales), one at Hereford (led by the earl of Stafford) and one at Shrewsbury (led by Henry in person). Henry did all he could to ensure that this campaign would end the Welsh revolt. He toured the Midlands rapidly, issuing orders and trying personally to direct as many things as he could.33 No arms were to be transported into Wales, under pain of death. Command of the Southern Marches – from Wigmore – was entrusted to the earl of Stafford. The Marches north of Wigmore were placed in the keeping of the earl of Arundel, and the towns most vulnerable to a Welsh attack, such as Welshpool and Ludlow, were properly defended.

  It was said that Henry had more than one hundred thousand men under orders that September.34 Although contemporaries were very poor at assessing such large numbers, this exaggeration in proportion to their usual figures suggests that it was far larger than any army hitherto seen in the region. The village of Llanrwst was destroyed by Henry’s forces. Yet still he failed to bring Glendower to heel. In fact, Henry’s third campa
ign was less successful than both of his earlier ones. As before, when the English approached, the Welsh disappeared into the mountains. It was rumoured that Glendower had a magical stone, coughed up by a raven, that allowed him to become invisible. The reality was that the Welsh forces had the advantage of knowing the terrain, and were able to withdraw and disband long before the English scouts could find them. The local men and women fled, unwilling to be pressed into serving as guides for the English. One William Withiford, who did serve, was murdered by Glendower as soon as the English withdrew. Still the campaign might have served as a demonstration of English force, like Henry’s earlier marches, had not the weather intervened. On 7 September torrential rain began to lash down, threatening to sweep the army away. The winds were so strong that men despaired of their lives. Henry himself, sheltering in his tent one night, was almost killed as the whole structure, poles and all, was blown down on top of him. Walsingham commented that, if he had not been sleeping in his armour, he would have been crushed. Several days of rain and gales disheartened the men and made further military progress impossible. Henry had also to bear in mind that he had summoned a parliament to meet at Westminster on 30 September, and his presence there was essential, for he desperately needed more money. So, when the two weeks of the campaign were up, the English returned to England, to dry their wet clothes and bathe their armour-chafed arms and legs.

  It was a dismal moment, coming on top of so many other disappointments. But as Henry rode back to London to attend parliament, he heard great news from the north. The Scots had attacked, as he had expected, and had met an English army in battle at Homildon Hill on 14 September. The English commanders that day had been the earl of Northumberland, Hotspur and the Scottish earl of March (George Dunbar). The English archers had done their worst, and volley after volley of arrows had ripped apart the Scottish army. The remainder either fled, were captured or slaughtered by hand. Among the prisoners were eighty Scottish lords and knights, including the earl of Douglas and Lord Murdoch Stewart, son of the duke of Albany. In addition, thirty French knights had been fighting with the Scots, and were captured or killed. Last but by no means least, among the prisoners was Sir Adam Forrester, the Scottish negotiator who had tricked Henry into leaving Scotland in 1400, an act of duplicity which the king had not forgotten.35 Henry ordered that no prisoners should be ransomed without his permission but should instead be brought to him at Westminster.

  *

  When Henry’s third parliament gathered on 30 September, it was without his uncle, Edmund, duke of York. Edmund had died, at the age of sixty-two, on 1 August. He had not been close to Henry during Richard’s reign, but he seems to have reassessed his position after Richard murdered his brother in 1397. From then on he seems to have been increasingly sympathetic to Henry, eventually playing a major role in undermining resistance in 1399. As the most senior of all the magnates, he had subsequently provided an important stabilising element in the establishment of Henry’s regime. Thus there was a political as well as a personal loss for Henry, who had few close friends among the higher nobility.

  The chancellor opened proceedings on 2 October. He reminded people of how God had sent Henry for the salvation and recovery of the realm, and how He had miraculously delivered their Scottish enemies to them as prisoners. He spoke about the schism in the Church and how the Holy Roman Emperor himself had written to Henry ‘as to the most powerful king in the world’ to heal the discord between Rome and Avignon. He outlined the challenges facing the government in respect of the Scottish war, the rebellion in Wales, the conflicts in Ireland, and the safe-keeping of Calais and Gascony. Henry was left facing the irony of being compared to ‘the most powerful king in the world’ on the one hand and having all his strategic shortcomings listed on the other.

  Henry’s problems largely stemmed – as before – from his financial situation. The treasury was empty and the loans he had taken out recently were larger than ever. With this in mind he deputed officers to explain to the commons how much taxation he required. The commons warily replied with a request that they might consult a committee of lords. Henry agreed, equally warily stating that he did not intend to set a precedent. The committee he named included his most trusted friends: the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of London, Lincoln and St David’s, the earls of Somerset, Westmorland, Worcester and Northumberland, and the lords Roos, Berkeley, Bergavenny and Lovell. It is not difficult to gauge his priorities: on the one hand he desperately needed cash but, on the other, he could not afford to grant too many liberties.

  The only good news Henry had to celebrate was the arrival of the Scottish prisoners. On 20 October the earl of Northumberland led Lord Murdoch Stewart and the other captives, including Adam Forrester, into the White Chamber, where Henry was enthroned. At the door to the chamber they were forced to kneel. Halfway across the room they were forced to kneel again. They had to kneel a third time as they approached the king. With Forrester cowering before him, Henry could afford to remind the Scotsman of the trick he had played on him two years earlier. In the course of the conversation Forrester suggested that Henry might now arrange a final peace. Henry responded calmly that ‘the last time he had been in Scotland, the said Sir Adam, by many white lies and subtle promises, had suddenly caused him to leave’. If he had known Forrester then as well as he knew him now, he declared, ‘he would not have left Scotland so readily’. He left Forrester and the other Scotsmen sweating on their knees for a few moments more. Then he told them that he would spare their lives, and invited them all to dinner. He had not forgotten the benefits of mercy.

  One Scottish prisoner, the earl of Douglas, was noticeable by his absence. He had been wounded in five places and had lost an eye at Homildon Hill, but he did not die of his injuries, and was fit enough to fight another battle within the year, so it was probably not his physical health which kept him away from Westminster. The most likely explanation for the earl’s absence lies in Hotspur’s attitude towards Henry. Hotspur was increasingly resentful towards the king for not reimbursing him his expenses upon demand. His letters had assumed an increasingly arrogant tone over the last eighteen months, and the lucrative offices which Henry had given him and his family had not soothed his temper. Most of all, his brother-in-law, Sir Edmund Mortimer, had been a prisoner in the mountains of Wales for the last six months, and Henry had not even tried to ransom him. Henry had agreed to help raise the ransom for Lord Grey of Ruthin, but not Mortimer. Perhaps he suspected that Mortimer might have given himself up too easily into the clutches of the Welshman. Either way, it did not bode well for the restoration of good relations with Hotspur.

  The parliament of 1402 was not nearly so bruising as that of 1401. All the same, some hard questions were raised about finance. The commons asked where Richard’s great treasure had gone: John Ikelington, Richard II’s clerk and the custodian of £44,000 of the hoard, was examined and acquitted. The money, it turned out, had all been given to the Percy family to defend the Scottish border. Another tough question was why Henry had appointed his personal friend, Henry Bowet, as treasurer. Was this not a return to his personal style of government, exercised through personal friends, about which parliament had warned him the previous year? Henry managed to resist a demand to examine his officers, but was forced to sack Bowet and replace him with a more experienced man.36 Guy Mone, bishop of St David’s and Richard II’s treasurer in 1398, was given the unenviable task of righting the royal finances. Only after this, and after agreeing to a large number of petitions against the Welsh, against the friars and against the foreign priories, was the tax granted on the last day of the parliament (25 November 1402).

  *

  In late August, while he had been dashing around the Midlands, preparing to lead his three armies into Wales, Henry had received a letter from his estranged friend, Louis, duke of Orléans, the brother of the French king. It was stupefying.

  I, Louis … am writing to tell you that, with the aid of God and the blessed Trinity,
in the desire which I have to gain renown, which you in like manner should feel, considering idleness the bane of lords of high birth who do not employ themselves in arms … I propose that we should meet at an appointed place, each of us accompanied by one hundred knights and esquires … there to fight each other until one of us surrenders, and the victorious man may do with his prisoners as he pleases … I propose (after hearing your intentions) to be at my town of Angoulême, accompanied by the aforesaid number of knights and esquires. Now, if your courage be such as I think it is, for the fulfilment of this deed of arms, you may come to Bordeaux, when we may depute properly qualified persons to fix on a spot for the combat …37

  Not surprisingly, Henry did not immediately respond. After all, what was Louis thinking of, challenging a king to a duel? But – as with his interrogations of the friars – Henry was unable to ignore a good argument; he was determined to have the final word. And where a point of honour was concerned, Henry knew that it had to be the one whose honour was impugned who answered the challenge. Ten days after parliament broke up, he sent a reply:

  We write to inform you that we have seen your letter, containing a request to perform a deed of arms, and from the expressions contained therein, we understand that it is addressed to us, which has caused us no small surprise for the following reasons. First, on account of the truce … in which you yourself are a party. Second, on account of the alliance that was made between us at Paris, which you swore to uphold in the presence of our well-beloved knights and esquires, Sir Thomas Erpingham, Sir Thomas Rempston and John Norbury, to whom you gave letters, sealed with your great seal, reciting this treaty of alliance …

  Since you have seen fit, without any cause, to act contrary to this treaty … we therefore inform you that we have annulled the letter of alliance received from you, and henceforth throw aside all love and affection towards you, for it seems to us that no prince, lord, knight or any person whatsoever ought to demand a combat from him with whom a treaty of friendship exists. In reply to your letter, we add that considering the very high rank in which it has pleased God to place us, we are not bound to answer any such demands unless made by persons of equal rank with ourselves. With regard to what you say, that we ought to accept your proposal to avoid idleness, it is true that we are not as often employed in arms and honourable exploits as our noble predecessors have been; but all-powerful God may, when he pleases, make us follow their steps, and we, through the indulgence of his grace, have not been so idle but have used our time to defend our honour …38