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

by Mortimer, Ian

  We do not have to look far to see why the council made this decision. When the commons in the 1410 parliament had granted one and a half tenths and fifteenths, they had stipulated that this tax was to be spread over three years, thus amounting annually to just half of a tenth and fifteenth (normally about £18,500). Such a modest grant could not meet the costs of an expedition to France, which was looking increasingly likely. So the prince’s council decided to save money by suspending the payment of royal annuities.

  Henry had always been against letting down his supporters in this way. It is true that in 1404 he himself had suspended payments, under pressure from parliament, but Arundel’s skilful chancellorship had reversed this, so that annuitants in 1409 received arrears of the sums due to them.1 For the prince and his council now to fail to do something which Arundel had succeeded in doing was a grave mistake. The prince and his council might have claimed that they had insufficient funds but their excuse would have fallen on deaf ears. Never had Henry considered his resources adequate for government.

  In February 1411 he left Kenilworth Castle and proceeded slowly towards London. On Sunday 15 March he was with Archbishop Arundel at Lambeth, and there, four days later, a great council was held in his presence. The prince’s small council was outnumbered: both archbishops, ten bishops and two abbots were present, along with the duke of York, four earls and ten other lords.2 The business was almost entirely financial. The surviving set of accounts are incomplete but they indicate the council demonstrated how the wool subsidy of £30,000 and other income, including a tenth from the clergy, would be insufficient to meet the expenses of the royal household (£22,811) and the defence of the realm (£42,115).3 No mention was made of the direct taxation which should have been collected the previous November, with which it would have been possible to balance the books. A budget which takes into consideration the king’s expenditure survives from shortly after this, and it is noticeable that it allows £23,333 for the king’s household and chamber, far more than the £13,000 laid down by parliament. It would appear that Henry was beginning to reassert himself.

  Henry went to Windsor for April and was there for the Garter feast of 1411. For the rest of the spring he remained in the south-east, being rowed along the Thames between Windsor Castle, Lambeth Palace, Westminster and his house at Rotherhithe. In June and July he spent time at Stratford Abbey, and he was there when Archbishop Arundel’s attempts to eradicate heresy at Oxford ran into difficulties. This also forced him to involve himself in the business of government.

  Several years earlier Arundel had formulated a series of thirteen constitutions against Lollardy. Among other things, these laid down that disputes about the worship of the cross were forbidden, as were arguments about the nature of the Mass, marriage, confession and any other article of faith. No scriptures were to be translated into English except in an authorised version. And none of Wycliffe’s writings were to be circulated in schools, halls, hostels or anywhere else unless sanctioned by twelve theologians appointed by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Two years later these constitutions were promulgated in a convocation at St Paul’s. The twelve theologians subsequently read all of Wycliffe’s works and published a list of the parts which they found heretical; for example the references to the pope as ‘the Head Vicar of the Devil’ or ‘a sinful idiot’.4 One of these theologians was an Oxford master of arts called Richard Fleming. He poured scorn on the whole process and appealed to Congregation (the governing body of the university) against Arundel’s constitutions. He was supported by four other members of the university. Arundel railed furiously against them all, and decided to make a visitation of the institution, to root out the abuses. But when he arrived on 7 July 1411, he was refused admittance. He placed the university under an interdict, forbidding them from celebrating Mass. Two Oriel fellows broke open the church in the night and celebrated Mass anyway. Arundel spent two days at Oxford trying to bring the rebellious university to heel. But all the miscreants were protected by the chancellor of the university, Richard Courtenay, who maintained that the university was exempt from the archbishop’s jurisdiction.

  Henry had taken an interest in Richard Fleming ever since his objections had been made known to him in December 1409. Henry initially intervened on Fleming’s behalf, making sure that a committee was appointed to reconsider his doctrines, which had been declared erroneous.5 But by October 1410, the refusal of ‘certain members of the university’ to obey the archbishop’s constitutions had assumed a higher priority, and he ordered the arrest of all such persons. The university wrote to the king stating that, if their liberties were infringed, according to their oaths they would have to disband the university. Henry curtly told them that the exemption which the pope had granted them from ecclesiastical jurisdiction in England had never been ratified by Richard II or himself. On 9 September 1411, at Lambeth, Henry delivered judgement unequivocally in favour of Archbishop Arundel and his jurisdiction over the university.6

  By this time Henry was also heavily involved in discussions concerning an expedition to France. Negotiations at the end of 1410 had progressed, so that in 1411 the prince and his council expected an agreement with the duke of Burgundy. But there is evidence that this was never to Henry’s liking.7 A London chronicle sheds further light on this.8 It states that the duke of Burgundy approached the king of England with a view to obtaining English help in his fight against the dukes of Orléans and Berry and their supporters, collectively known as the Armagnacs.9 The duke offered to hand over four Flemish towns to the English, plus the hand of his daughter as a bride for the prince of Wales. Henry was cautious of the proposal, and remained so throughout the first half of 1411. On 14 August, he ordered the sheriffs of thirty-five counties to proclaim that he would shortly be sailing to Calais to defend the town, and summoned troops to be in London ready to sail on 23 September.10 On 28 August he assigned one thousand marks for the expenses of his journey, calling the council to meet him on 9 September to discuss the expedition. Pennons were painted for the voyage, standards embroidered and the king’s bed was made ready for transportation.

  Then something snapped. Suddenly Henry changed his mind, and instead of sailing to the defence of Calais, he started to make plans for another parliament, even though the existing grant of taxation had two years left to run. The reason is often said to have been his ill health, but for once this was not behind his change of plans.11 The real cause was his disapproval of the prince’s government, and his decision to bring his son to heel. Henry was still planning to sail on 3 September, when ships were ordered to be made ready for him, but he changed his mind sometime before 21 September, when the parliament was summoned.12 It is possible that it was the prince’s support of the chancellor of Oxford which was the catalyst.13 Alternatively, it could have been the bitter argument which broke out at this time between Henry Beaufort and Thomas of Lancaster. Thomas wanted to marry the widow of John Beaufort, his uncle, and the king supported him in this; but Henry Beaufort was bitterly opposed to the match.14 A third possibility is the growing disagreement between himself and the prince about which side to support in the French civil war. However, this too is unlikely to have been the key reason for such drastic action, for on 1 September the king licensed the prince to send ambassadors to the duke of Burgundy and empowered his own ambassadors to negotiate the marriage of the prince and the duke’s daughter if all went well. Clearly there was still room for negotiation and compromise in foreign relations. The most likely reason why Henry summoned parliament, and thus the most likely reason for calling off the French expedition, was an attempt by the council to depose him. There are two sources for this; one places the event in 1413 and explicitly states that the prince, Henry Beaufort and many other lords asked him to resign the throne and let the prince be crowned.15 The other places the event in the parliament of 1411, and states that the prince personally approached his father and told him he should abdicate ‘because he could no longer apply himself to the honour an
d profit of the realm’.16 It is possible that there was more than one attempt to get Henry to abdicate in the period after he made his will; indeed, it would have been strange if it had not been raised several times in council. Either way, the circumstances of the forthcoming parliament leave very little room for doubt that, by 21 September, either the prince or Henry Beaufort had made the suggestion to the king that he should abdicate. It was a bad move. As already mentioned, nothing was more important to Henry than his regal identity. After seeing off so many attempts to wrest the throne from him, he was not going to let anyone do so now, not even a member of his own family.

  *

  When parliament gathered at Westminster on the appointed day, 2 November, they were told by the chancellor that he had received a writ witnessed by the king himself putting off the parliament to the following day ‘for certain reasons’. The writ was dated at Westminster, so it was not distance which kept the king away. It may have been ill health or it may have been trouble with the prince. Ten days earlier the king had arrested six of the prince’s household knights and sent them to the Tower, including his steward, Sir Roger Leche. When the king and parliament did assemble on 3 November, the chancellor declared that the reasons for summoning the assembly were ‘the good governance of the realm, the due execution of the law, the defence of the kingdom and overseas territories, and the safeguard of the sea’. He elaborated on each of these, emphasising the need for ‘loyal counsel without wilful bias’ and for men to show ‘due obedience and honour to their liege lord’. Few present would have understood the full meaning of these objectives, but when the Speaker – Thomas Chaucer again – made his protest that nothing he said on behalf of the commons should be held against him, Henry made his position clear. As in the previous parliament the Speaker could speak only as far as his predecessors had done; Henry wanted ‘no novelties’. In other words, he wanted no talk of deposition.

  The early sessions were taken up with an abuse of the law – the wrongful doings of a royal justice, Sir Robert Tirwhit – and the official enrolment of the authority of the archbishop of Canterbury over the University of Oxford. The decisive political move did not come until 30 November. At the suggestion of the Speaker, Henry addressed the members of the council, who all came forward and knelt before the throne. He thanked them for performing their duties in a true and loyal fashion over the past eighteen months. The prince sourly responded that they could have done more if they had been given more money. Henry no doubt sympathised with such a view. But he said nothing about reappointing him or any other members of the council. Indeed, he did not name a council in this parliament at all. The whole council got up and returned to their allotted seats. With a growing awareness, they began to suspect the reality of what Henry had just done. He had sacked them all. With a polite word of thanks, he had resumed complete control of the government.

  On the last day of the parliament, 19 December, Henry reinforced his position. He directed the chancellor to remind parliament about the article limiting his power enacted in the previous parliament. Thomas Chaucer asked Henry to explain his intentions concerning this. ‘To which our lord the king replied by saying that he wished to have and preserve his liberties and prerogatives in all respects, as wholly as any of his noble progenitors had done.’17 Chaucer voiced the approbation of the commons, and Henry politely thanked them. The article limiting his power was annulled.

  Perhaps the most telling sign of Henry’s return to power was a petition submitted immediately afterwards. Addressed ‘to our most dread and most sovereign lord king’ it stated that ‘a great rumour has arisen among your people that you harbour in your heart ill-will towards various of your lieges who have come and are present by your summons at this your present parliament’. It begged him ‘to declare it as your noble intention in this present parliament that you think, maintain and consider all the estates … to be your faithful and loyal lieges and subjects, and regard them as people who have been, are, and will always be your faithful lieges and humble subjects’.18 Henry, of course, agreed, and ordered a general pardon to be granted as soon as parliament ended for all crimes, even treason, committed before that date.19 The commons assented to a modest land tax, a statute was agreed regarding the devaluation of the currency and parliament was dissolved. The following day Thomas Beaufort and Henry Scrope were sacked as chancellor and treasurer, and the king’s resumption of power was complete.

  Henry’s seizure of authority in 1411 was extraordinary by any reckoning. For a man who had been so regularly attacked in parliament, how on earth did he so easily resume power? Considering the popularity and success of the prince, how come he so easily gave it up? And as for the ambitious bishop, Henry Beaufort, why did he acquiesce so completely?

  The answer has to lie within a combination of the character and the condition of the king himself. It must have been apparent to all those concerned that Henry would never give up the throne. In the 1411 parliament, if not before, he made his determination to remain king absolutely clear. The parliament roll suggests no hard bargaining over this matter, and it is likely that in fact there were few objections; the magnates had already been silenced. What kept them quiet was the physical condition of the king. Henry may even have given the impression of having only a few more weeks to live. Also there remained the unassailable fact that Henry was an anointed king. That had not saved Richard but Henry was a different calibre of man. To depose him would be far harder than it had been to depose Richard. Henry was no longer seen as a failing king; the rebels were all defeated. Glendower was a vanquished fugitive, the Scottish king was an English prisoner, the French were fighting a civil war in the power vacuum created by their own king’s sickness, and England was more secure than it had been at any time since the reign of King Edward III. Besides, Henry still had his stable of strong Lancastrian supporters in the commons: men like the faithful Sir Robert Waterton, Thomas Erpingham and John Norbury. Thus, ironically, in Henry’s very physical weakness lay a new, indomitable strength. It was easier by far for the prince and the Beauforts to bide their time than challenge this man whose determination to remain king proceeded not just from his mind but his heart and soul.

  *

  On 23 December 1411, Henry handed over the seal of the exchequer to his new treasurer, Sir John Pelham. After Christmas at Eltham, he persuaded Archbishop Arundel to accept the great seal of the realm as chancellor for a fifth and final time. His new council – appointed that same month – consisted of these two officers and his faithful keeper of the privy seal, John Prophet, and four others. Apart from two bishops who had served the prince, Thomas Langley of Durham and Nicholas Bubwith of Bath and Wells, all the old councillors were passed over. Instead he appointed Archbishop Bowet of York, who had proved unswervingly loyal, along with Lord Roos.20 It was an even smaller council than that with which the prince had governed. Henry had learned something from his son’s short administration.

  Henry’s resumption of power, of course, implied taking responsibility for war policy, and that was by no means an easy matter. His inclination to support the Armagnacs in the French civil war, though described by one modern historian as ‘backing the wrong horse’, was entirely understandable at the time.21 His Gascon subjects were in alliance with the Armagnacs, and so to support Burgundy against them would have been to risk war between his English and his Gascon subjects. Similarly his relations with Aragon, Navarre and Brittany would have been strained by English intervention on the Burgundian side in the war.22 His choice may also have been governed by the way the Burgundians had treated him, for they still refused to acknowledge him as king of England. Their pride may have been no worse than his own but, in this instance, they were the ones who needed help.

  Matters were complicated, however, as a consequence of the prince’s eagerness to entertain Burgundian ambassadors in 1411. Henry had been equally eager to make sure that it was the prince, and not he himself, who was associated with such approaches, but that had not prevented an
Anglo-Burgundian alliance. An English expedition had set out in September 1411, commanded by the earl of Arundel, to supply the duke of Burgundy with an English military force of eight hundred men-at-arms and two thousand archers. In November, at St-Cloud, near Paris, the Anglo-Burgundian army won a significant victory over the Armagnacs. It was clear to all parties that the English archers were a major asset. In February 1412 both sides sent representatives to try and forge closer links with England.

  For Henry, the maximum political gain lay in exploiting these divisions in France. The best way to achieve this was through supporting those who opposed the French king and the duke of Burgundy. Henry remained convinced therefore that he should be supporting the Armagnacs. However, the prince’s negotiations for the hand in marriage of Anne of Burgundy had progressed too far to be ignored.23 The Armagnacs knew this, and started a bidding war for English help. As rebels to their king, their cause was the more desperate, and so they offered more. They acknowledged Henry as king of England and promised him eventual sovereignty of all of Aquitaine, as well as suitable marriages with girls of the royal blood. Although the Burgundian negotiators had arrived first, in Henry’s eyes there was simply no contest.

  Henry went down to Canterbury soon after the Armagnac envoys arrived. He heard how they had been intercepted on leaving France by agents of the duke of Burgundy, and had had their bags searched. Letters from the Armagnac lords recognising Henry as king of England had been confiscated. The duke of Burgundy himself hypocritically accused the Armagnac lords of treason for consorting with the king of England, and quietly recalled his own unsuccessful ambassadors from Westminster. The Armagnac negotiators were aware that their lords wanted an English alliance quickly, and on 6 April they concluded one. Fired up, Henry once again declared his intention of leading a force to Gascony in person, but the sad reality was that, just at this point, when it would have been politically feasible for him to lead an overseas expedition, his body was incapable of the task. According to Walsingham, he could not even walk without pain, let alone ride a horse.24 Henry maintained his resolve for a few days – on 18 April he gave orders to enlist mariners for his forthcoming expedition – but soon afterwards he came to accept that he would never lead an army again.