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

by Mortimer, Ian

  Many antiquaries have speculated on the meaning of the esses. The author of the brief description of an example included in the catalogue of the Gothic exhibition at the V&A Museum quotes the work of R. W. Lightbown, who suggests soverayne (sovereign), souveignez (remember) or a combination of sainteté, sagesse, sapiencé and seigneurie (sanctity, wisdom, learning and lordship).4 Other suggestions have included St Simplicius.5 Only two of these are supported by the extant evidence: sovereign and souveignez. Of these two, it is ‘sovereign’ which has received the most support. The key evidence amounts to the following three facts: that Henry’s tomb at Canterbury has a carving of an ‘esses’ collar around the royal arms which bears the motto Soverayne; that the motto Soverayne appears on the scabbard of the ceremonial sword he presented to the mayor of Dublin in 1403; and that the motto Sovereigne was used by Henry’s son, John.6 However, all these references date from after he became king, when he was indeed the ‘sovereign’ lord of England. It would have been treasonable for Henry and his father to use such a motto during Richard’s lifetime. Every secular appearance of the word ‘sovereign’ relating to an individual on the parliament rolls relates to the sovereign power of the king, or the king himself, and no other member of the royal family.7 When Henry used a motto incorporating the word ‘sovereign’ before 1399 (as on his seal as earl of Derby), it was in the qualified form ma souveroine (‘my sovereign’), in the feminine, a motto alluding to the ‘sovereign’ power of a lady.8 It has been suggested that ‘sovereign’ was adopted as a motto by John of Gaunt because of his claim to be king of Castile. This is demonstrably incorrect. John sold his claim on Castile in 1389. Even more significantly, Henry’s accounts mention many esses collars in the 1390s although he himself had no claim on Castile at all.9 Consequently, we may be confident that the esses cannot stand for ‘sovereign’ as this would imply John and Henry were claiming a share in the sovereignty of the realm from at least 1391 and probably before 1386, which would have been tantamount to treason.

  As anyone who has looked at Henry’s accounts will be aware, the vernacular phrase most frequently found among the Latin entries is ‘souveyne vous de moi’. This can be translated as ‘remember me’ but it also can be read as the name of the forget-me-not flower. It appears in at least a dozen entries in Henry’s accounts between 1391 and 1398.10 For instance, his goldsmith’s account for 1391–2 records a payment for a wide belt for Henry ‘made in the form of a trail of soveigne vous de moy hanging copiously with gilded silver leaves and fronds’.11 In the embroidery section of the same account we may read of ‘a mantle and short loose gown for the lord of velvet motlee with St John’s Wort and soveyne vous de moy’.12 There are later references on this same folio to hundreds of gilded silver ‘leaves of soveigne vous de moy’. These relate to pictorial representations of flowers. Several entries in later accounts make this explicit; for example, ‘for mending a collar of the lord in the form of flowers of souveyne vous de moi … with a swan newly enamelled’, and ‘for a collar of esses and flowers of souveyne vous de moys’.13 These flowers obviously trailed all over Henry’s clothes and livery chains, and his swan badges hung from chains of golden forget-me-nots.

  The ubiquity and exclusive use of these flowers of souveyne vous de moi suggest that they are a rebus (a picture representing a word or phrase), standing for the motto ‘remember me’. A rebus is a common feature of heraldic emblazons, livery collars and banners at this time. Thomas Mowbray’s livery collars incorporated mulberry leaves; Thomas of Woodstock’s banner included a woodstock. Evidence that the flowers indeed stood for a motto and were not purely a design feature is to be found in Henry’s separate use of souveignez (without any reference to flowers) in at least two instances. Descriptions of the windows in his new buildings at Eltham Palace state that they incorporated the motto ‘soueignex vous de moy’.14 And his wedding present to his second wife was a jewelled collar ‘engraved with the motto soviegnez [sic] and the letter S’.15 This last example is a particularly striking juxtaposition of the soveignez motto and the esses. Similar juxtapositions may be found among references to Henry’s own collars, such as ‘for a collar of esses and flowers of souveyne vous de moys’.16 Thus there can be little doubt that the esses in the Lancastrian livery collar relate to the motto souveignez vous de moi. The Lancastrian collar should be understood as an exhortation for the family to remember someone.

  Without further evidence we can only speculate as to who should be remembered. An intimate source is not ruled out by the use of ‘vous’ (not ‘tu’), as it could be an exhortation to several people to ‘remember me’. It is possible that the phrase (as a Lancastrian motto) dates from 1368, long before the invention of the livery collar, and is connected with an exhortation by Blanche (Henry’s mother) to her children and husband to remember her. Such an explanation would explain why Henry particularly was described as ‘the one who wears the S’, and it fits with the fact that John chose to be buried by her side, not beside his other wives. Alternatively we might suggest these were final words spoken to John of Gaunt by Edward III or the Black Prince. Further research might clarify the date at which the motto ‘Remember me’ was adopted by the Lancastrians, and this might strengthen or weaken the above suggestions. However, we are unlikely ever to know its exact source and relevance.

  A far more important question arises from an implication of the above analysis. What is the origin and relevance of the motto which does not relate to the esses, ‘sovereign’? The document on which the seal with this motto (in the form ‘so / ve / rey / ne’) is first found is dated Leominster 31 July 1399.17 That document describes Henry as duke of Lancaster, naturally. But the seal itself describes him as ‘Sir Henry of Lancaster, duke of Hereford, earl of Derby and Northampton, lord of Brecon’ (see here). The seal was thus made sometime between his creation as duke of Hereford (29 September 1397) and the death of his father (3 February 1399). There is no record of Richard granting the use of this motto to Henry so it would appear that Henry assumed it for himself. As noted above, it is unlikely that he did so at the time the seal was created, during Richard’s reign. But it is quite possible that it was engraved as an addition on his return to England, probably after his oath-swearing at Doncaster.18 This would explain the basis on which Henry appointed the earl of Northumberland as warden of the Marches of Scotland on 2 August 1399, while Richard was still king, for the grant was authenticated with this seal.19 The implication would be that, at Doncaster, Henry agreed to become regent: to allow Richard to remain king in name and lineal right while he (Henry) henceforth exercised sovereign power (as the regent and Richard’s heir apparent). Whether Henry formally did divide these two aspects of kingship – the title of king and royal sovereignty – prior to his accession is not proven (and might not be provable) but it would explain many things and must be considered one of the most important historical questions from the summer of 1399 yet to be answered.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am very grateful, as ever, to my agent, Jim Gill, and my editors at Jonathan Cape, namely Will Sulkin and Jörg Hensgen. I am also very grateful to the organisers of the 2006 symposium on Henry IV’s reign at the University of Nottingham, particularly Dr Gwilym Dodd, for inviting me to participate. I would like to thank all the scholars who took part; their advice and suggestions have proved exceedingly valuable. In addition, I would like to thank Dr Dodd himself for reading through the typescript and making several valuable observations and suggestions. I would like also to thank Susannah Davis, Zak Reddan and Mary Fawcett for accommodating me on research trips to London. Thank you also to Zak for his National Portrait Gallery research. Staff at the library of the University of Exeter proved very helpful, as did staff at the British Library and the National Archives. I am very grateful in particular to Dr Adrian Ailes for his comments on Henry’s seals. Also to Dr John Banham, who, when told I was unable to obtain a colour image of Ralph Neville and Joan Beaufort, drove to Staindrop Church and took the photograph included here.
I gratefully acknowledge a grant from the K Blundell Trust, administered by the Society of Authors, towards writing this book. Last but most of all, I am profoundly indebted to my wife, Sophie, who put up with me working all hours of the day (and many of the night) on this book, and then had to listen to me complaining about the fact. She also took the lioness’s share of looking after our three young research ‘assistants’, Alexander, Elizabeth and Oliver. This is a book in which she too can take pride.

  Necessitas non habet legem

  (‘Necessity has no law’ or ‘Necessity is above the law’: a maxim quoted in French by the chronicler Jean Creton on the arrest of Richard II, and which Henry himself wrote in Latin on a letter in 1403)

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