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

by Mortimer, Ian

  *

  In normal circumstances the loss of Harlech would have resulted in Henry leading a short, punitive expedition. He had led such a campaign every year of his reign to date. But this time there was no money. The cash in the hands of the war treasurers was consumed in paying for the defence of the seas and for the troops with the prince. So, when Glendower held his first ‘parliament’ at Machynlleth that summer, and had himself crowned Owen IV, prince of Wales, there was nothing Henry could do to stop him. There was no money even to pay the wages of the troops already stationed in South Wales. Predictably, Prince Owen took advantage of this English inaction. The villages around Shrewsbury were attacked. On 20 August the town of Kidwelly was captured and burned by the Welsh. Rumours reached the English court of a substantial French fleet gathering at Harfleur to support Glendower. It was becoming apparent that the January 1404 parliament had made a grave mistake in trying to improve government by financially tying the king’s hands.

  Henry was in a very difficult position. He could simply have sacrificed Wales, and done nothing, blaming parliament for everything. But that would have been breaking his coronation vows, and counter to everything for which he had returned in 1399. It would have done nothing to encourage his son, the prince, who was pawning his own goods in order to keep an army in the field to defend Herefordshire.13 Henry had to do something, even if it involved summoning another parliament and going through the whole damaging process again. On 26 August that was precisely what he decided to do, issuing writs on that day for parliament to assemble at Coventry in October. No lawyers were to be summoned this time, because it was said they spent too much time dealing with their own business and not enough with the more important matters of state. It has thus been known historically as the Unlearned Parliament.14 That is a misnomer; it was a more serious assembly than many others of the reign, for it was concerned exclusively with meeting the threats from France and Wales. Lawyers who wanted to present their own petitions could wait until the dangers had passed.

  On 29 August Henry held a meeting of his council at Lichfield.15 The French fleet gathering at Harfleur was discussed, and letters were sent out to the leading maritime men of Devon, including John Hawley of Dartmouth, Philip Courtenay of Powderham, Peter Courtenay (the earl of Devon’s son) and Henry Pay (another notorious Devon privateer), instructing them to resist the expected armada. The council confirmed that, as Henry could not afford to raise an army to defend Wales, he should not attempt a campaign. Until parliament gave him enough money to do otherwise, he himself was to remain on his estates at Tutbury.

  Meeting in such circumstances, the leaders of the commons might have been expected to acknowledge the deep flaws in their experiment in royal control and readily grant the necessary taxation. They did no such thing. A bitter dispute ensued, in which two forms of raising money were discussed at length. The first involved the confiscation of the temporalities – the secular income – of the entire Church. Needless to say, the commons were more than happy to think that the clergy could be forced to give up a proportion of their wealth to dig the nation out of a financial hole. But equally unsurprisingly the proposal gave rise to several sharp and impassioned speeches from Archbishop Arundel, who persuaded the commons at length to give up on the plan. Instead a petition was put forward whereby Henry would rebuild the ancient inheritance of the Crown, taking back into his hands everything – annuities, fees, castles and lands – that had been granted since the fortieth year of Edward III’s reign, which ended on 24 January 1367. To this Henry replied in person, in English – the first time a king is recorded as replying to a parliamentary petition in English. He thanked the commons for their proposal, and agreed to put it into practice as soon as practicable. He promised that a commission would be set up to examine which grants made since January 1367 should be confirmed and which should be revoked. He did not agree to the resumption of annuities, but with regard to lands, fees and castles, he ordered that those with grants since 1367 should present their documents for inspection to the commission by 2 February 1405.16

  To the commons it seemed at last that the king was taking action to increase royal income, and on this basis they agreed to an exceptionally generous tax. This amounted to two tenths and fifteenths, as well as a renewal of the wool subsidies for two years, and a five per cent income tax on the lords with annual incomes over five hundred marks (£333 6s 8d). Three weeks later, the convocation of the clergy in the province of Canterbury agreed to a subsidy of one and a half tenths, a generous grant which no doubt reflected Archbishop Arundel’s relief at the Church not having its temporalities confiscated. By the end of November, Henry could be confident that he had the means to do what he considered to be his main responsibility as king: to defend the realm.

  *

  As Christmas 1404 approached, it seemed that the tide had turned. At last Henry had the money for the military expeditions which parliament felt were necessary and which he himself felt obliged to lead. Although the cash was in the hands of two war treasurers, Sir John Pelham and Lord Furnival, both men were Henry’s friends.17 Henry himself was happily married again, one daughter was married and the other betrothed; his elder sons were performing well in their respective duties, and his half-brothers John and Henry Beaufort were providing a sound base for his kingship among the magnates and prelates. His brother-in-law Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, had a firm grip on the north of England and was siring nephews and nieces for Henry by the dozen (literally). To cap it all his sister Elizabeth was pregnant with a child by her new husband, Sir John Cornwaille, Henry’s jousting friend. But the fundamental problem had not gone away. Indeed, it could be said that Henry had made a grave mistake in the parliament of October 1404. The promise he had made to the commons – to resume control of the ancient royal inheritance – was one he could not keep without alienating the recipients of these grants. These included many of the supporters on whom he relied, especially those Lancastrian retainers who held his head above water in parliament. In short, Henry had made a promise he could not keep. When political leaders start to break their promises, they very quickly destroy any trust the political classes have in them.

  Nor was that the limit of Henry’s problems. As he and Joan spent Christmas 1404 at Eltham Palace, he may have been the subject of yet another assassination attempt. It is difficult to be certain of the details, but two months later Lady Constance Despenser (the widow of the earl of Gloucester killed during the Epiphany Rising) accused her brother, the duke of York, of attempting to assassinate Henry at Eltham. She claimed that the duke’s assassins were planning to scale the walls of Eltham Palace, or would ambush him on the road.18 What is not in doubt is that, shortly afterwards, the duke was complicit in a plot to seize Edmund and Roger Mortimer, the two heirs to the Mortimer claim to the throne. Henry certainly blamed him, as he imprisoned him for ten months. Thus, even if the Eltham assassination attempt was a complete fiction invented by Lady Despenser, we now come to the seventh plot against Henry in just over five years.

  When Henry had come to the throne in 1399, he had wisely taken the precaution of securing the two young Mortimer boys, and placing them in royal custody at Windsor. Their claim to the throne, through Edward III’s son Lionel, was arguably superior to his own, as was that of their uncle (the Edmund Mortimer who had married Glendower’s daughter in late 1402). Although it would have been difficult to resurrect it after Henry’s accession, particularly because of their youth (they were born in 1391 and 1393 respectively), they remained the most potent dynastic rivals to Henry. In fact their potency was enhanced by their youth; they might yet turn out to be good leaders, and so their cause was worth championing. Although Henry had had Richard II starved, he was never going to have two innocent boys murdered in cold blood simply on account of their claim to the throne. But he could not afford to let them fall into the wrong hands.19 With their uncle Edmund in support of Glendower, the potential for another plot against him on behalf of the Mortimers was
something of which he was acutely aware.

  In February 1405 the Mortimer boys were still at Windsor, in the care of Lady Despenser. With her assistance, a locksmith made duplicate copies of the keys to their chamber. At midnight, on or about 13 February, one Richard Milton took the duplicate keys and led them from the chamber in which they were sleeping.20 He was joined by Lady Despenser, her eight-year-old son, Richard, and an esquire called Morgan. Together they fled into the night, riding westwards for Abingdon and then South Wales, where her tenants were already in arms.

  That night the king had been at Kennington, twenty-three miles away from Windsor. The disappearance of the Mortimer boys was discovered early in the morning of the 14th. The king set off immediately, sending his half-brother John Beaufort and a small group of men ahead to ride through the night. He reached Windsor that same evening. The following morning, before he left the castle, he dictated a letter to his secretary with news for the council:

  At six o’clock this morning the king’s half-brother and others who rode before the king met a man who said that Lady Despenser and the March children have fled by Abingdon. The king’s men are going after them, but if they can escape they will take the road to Glamorgan and Cardiff. They have with them an esquire called Morgan, who according to his wife, is going to Flanders and France as part of the plot. If he is in London, try to capture him; also send to all the ports to prevent him getting a passage. Written in haste on Sunday morning at Windsor Castle.21

  Henry himself added the words at the bottom of the page, ‘we pray you to think of the sea’, and signed it with his initials, ‘HR’. So rapid had been his reaction since learning of the Mortimers’ escape at Kennington that he had abandoned almost all his household, even his signet ring. It was the only time in his entire reign that he acted without his personal seal.

  Henry was lucky. His advance party was able to ride ahead along the Cardiff road at breakneck speed and catch up with Lady Despenser and her young charges. They caught sight of them in a wood near Cheltenham and launched themselves into an attack. Several of Lady Despenser’s men were killed and the rest fled. Lady Despenser herself was arrested, and the precious Mortimer boys were taken back into custody. Lady Despenser was sent to Westminster immediately, where she accused her brother of treason before the royal council. She challenged him to a duel, hoping that someone would fight for her. One William Maidstone offered to do so, but the duke was not given the chance to respond. Instead he was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower.22 As for the locksmith who had made the keys, he was made an example to others. First his hand was cut off, and then his head.

  *

  Although Henry did not realise it at the time, the escape of the Mortimer boys was potentially more dangerous than the mere escape of rival heirs to the throne. Two weeks after the failure of the plot to seize the Mortimers, their uncle negotiated an agreement with Owen Glendower and the earl of Northumberland. This was straightforward in one respect: each man promised to defend the others and to give them warning of any impending dangers. But then it added, ‘if it appears to the three lords with the passage of time that they are indeed the persons of whom the prophet speaks, between whom the government of Great Britain ought to be divided and partitioned, then they will strive … to ensure that this is effected’.23

  There is no doubt what this means. The Prophecy of the Six Kings states that the sixth king after John (i.e. Henry IV) would be the last. He would be a ‘moldewarp’ (a mole) and he would have a rough skin like a goat. Early in his reign,

  a dragon shall rise up in the north which shall be full fierce, and shall move war against the moldewarp, and shall give him battle upon a stone. This dragon shall gather again into his company a wolf that shall come out of the west, that shall begin war against the moldewarp on his side, and so shall the dragon and he bind their tails together. Then shall come a lion out of Ireland that shall fall in company with them, and then shall England tremble … the moldewarp shall flee for dread, and the dragon, the lion and the wolf shall drive him away … and the land shall be partitioned in three parts: to the wolf, to the dragon and to the lion, and so it shall be for evermore.24

  Clearly, the earl of Northumberland saw himself as the dragon from the north, Glendower as the wolf from the west and Edmund Mortimer the lion out of Ireland. Edmund was the grandson of Lionel, Edward III’s third son and for several years governor of Ireland, and the Mortimer family were among the largest English landowners in Ireland. If they could drive away Henry, the land would be theirs to divide between them. They even made an arrangement as to where the borders were to run. Northumberland was to have twelve northern counties, Glendower all of Wales and a fair portion of the Midlands (the area bounded by the rivers Severn, Trent and Mersey). Edmund Mortimer was to have the rest of England.25 Edmund’s own claim to any form of kingship was, of course, subsidiary to that of his nephews; and it is unlikely a man who was a mere knight by birth could ever have been accepted as a king of southern England, especially when he himself was not the heir. His nephew, on the other hand, had a genuine claim to the throne and was an earl twice over, being the earl of March and Ulster. It goes to show how important the recapture of the elder Mortimer boy was in February 1405. If he had escaped, the ground would have been clear for the Glendower-led rising to have been accompanied with a revolt in southern England in the young earl’s name and a Percy-led revolt in the north. The last of these was already in the planning; the Mortimers’ claim on the south was the one piece of the jigsaw missing.

  For Glendower, this agreement (known as ‘the Tripartite Indenture’) was a means to an end, a bargaining chip. Much of the English land he supposedly coveted in this agreement had been threatened or actually destroyed by his forces, especially parts of Herefordshire and Shropshire. He could always give up his claim to these at a later stage, if such a negotiated settlement with the Mortimers was required. His principal interest remained Wales, and there he seemed stronger than ever. Two of the four Welsh bishops – St Asaph and Bangor – now joined his cause. He planned to hold his second parliament that August at the mighty Harlech Castle, a fitting surrounding to his emerging court, to which representatives from France and Scotland were again invited.

  As Glendower’s boldness grew, so too did Henry’s resolve. It is interesting to see these two leaders battling independently for their respective causes. As individuals they had much in common. Neither man was born to rule, yet both had glorious ancestries and were connected to prophecies of greatness. Both were intelligent and had a much higher standard of education than most of their contemporaries. Both were spiritually devout and yet prepared to manipulate the Church to suit their political aims.26 Both were fervent nationalists and believed force should be used to advance the nationalist cause. Both courted foreign approval for their novel forms of government, and both were the subject of assassination attempts.27 But, most strikingly, both were incredibly resilient, able to weather defeat and opposition and to come back, time and time again, pressing for the higher goal. They each had their difficulties, the waves of good and bad luck, popular appeal, widespread criticism and distrust, but their determination was similarly absolute. Now, as Glendower raised the bar of resistance, Henry leaped to the challenge. And this time he had the funds to take an army into Wales and hammer the Welsh harder than ever.

  Directly after the recapture of the Mortimer boys, Henry had returned to Westminster. From there he went to Berkhamsted, where he received a letter from his eldest son, dated 11 March 1405, announcing that he had that day defeated a force of eight thousand Welsh rebels who had burned part of the town of Grosmont.28 Exultant, Henry went to St Albans and announced to a great council his intention to ride against the Welsh the following month. Provision was made for reinforcing the castles in Wales with two thousand men. Plans were made for a double attack on Wales, with the prince leading an army of five hundred men-at-arms and three thousand archers into North Wales while Henry led a similar army into South Wales
.29 It was reminiscent of the three-pronged attack planned against Glendower in 1402, and designed to end the Welsh rebellion once and for all.

  As soon as the 1405 Garter feast had been held at Windsor, Henry rushed towards the mustering point, reaching Worcester on 3 May. There he waited a week, before moving on to Hereford. News was coming in from all over his dominions. The troublesome count of St Pol had attacked the English-held town of Marck, near Calais, with several thousand French, Genoese and Flemish troops on 12 May. The small garrison abandoned the town and retreated into the castle, which the count then proceeded to besiege. At Calais, the English saw the chance of a quick expedition to relieve the garrison. On 15 March, Sir Richard Aston took a force of seven hundred men, including two hundred archers, against the assailants, backed up with twelve cartloads of arrows.30 Once again, English archery proved devastating; fifteen French knights were killed, nine hundred prisoners were taken, and the count of St Pol fled to Saint-Omer without his armour.31 When Henry heard the news of the relief of Marck, he declared it a miracle and ordered all the bishops in England to give thanks for the victory.32