‘Time honoured Gaunt’ (not yet sixty) died in February 1399. The king turned his death into a disaster by refusing to let Bolingbroke inherit his father’s duchy of Lancaster, which was confiscated, altering his term of banishment to one for life – without an allowance.
Think what you will, we seize into our hands.
His plate, his goods, his money and his lands.
(King Richard II, Act II, scene i)
Richard made a mortal enemy, who had to regain his inheritance or die a beggar. Such flagrant injustice caused every magnate in England to fear his own estates might be confiscated in the event of royal displeasure – not even King John had dared to flout the common law like this. Ignoring the general outrage, Richard granted former Lancastrian estates to his favourites, but kept a substantial portion for himself.
Downfall
By now he had acquired very large sums of money, not only Lancastrian and Appellant revenues, but over £130,000 from his wife’s dowry.26 It made him over-confident, and in May 1399 he took another expedition to Ireland, leaving his ineffectual uncle York as regent. Writing only five years later, Froissart claims that law and order broke down while he was away. Courts were suspended, while gangs of brigands roamed the roads and plundered farms. Rich men took refuge in London. Everyone grumbled that if things went on like this they would starve, and blamed the king for letting it happen. ‘All he worries about is enjoying himself – he doesn’t care what happens to anybody else so long as he gets his own way.’27
Disguised as a pilgrim monk, the ex-Archbishop Arundel went to Henry of Bolingbroke at Paris, urging him to go home and recover his inheritance. Supporters sent ships. Landing in Yorkshire at the end of June with Arundel and 300 men, Bolingbroke rode south. After taking an oath on the Host at Doncaster that he sought only to recover his inheritance, he was joined by the northern lords and Archbishop Scrope of York, and then by the Duke of York. Retainers from the Lancastrian estates rallied to him, making a formidable army. Instead of going to London, the rebels first captured Bristol, where they expected Richard would land on his way home from Ireland, then marched to Chester.
After the Duke of York came over to his side, Henry behaved as though he had replaced the duke as ‘Keeper of the Realm’, executing the regime’s key henchmen. These were the Earl of Wiltshire, who was Richard’s treasurer, with two members of the royal council, Sir John Bussy and Sir Henry Green, popularly considered to be the ‘chief aiders and abettors of his malevolence’.28
Froissart thought that Londoners played a key role. Henry had become their hero, a royal prince who was untarnished by pro-French policies. Since the king’s heir presumptive, the Earl of March, was only eight and not a male Plantagenet, it was easy to see Bolingbroke as a likely alternative – they knew that Edward III had wanted Lancaster or his sons to inherit the throne if Richard died without issue. The mayor was overjoyed when he received news of Henry’s landing, telling the City’s notables they must help him. According to Froissart, more than 500 Londoners, who by now referred to their sovereign as ‘Richard of Bordeaux’ instead of ‘King Richard’ and drank to his damnation, rode off to enrol in Bolingbroke’s army.29
Many other Englishmen thought like the Londoners, but Henry, a subtle politician who kept even his friend Archbishop Arundel in the dark, concealed his plans until he had Richard safely in his hands. Shrewd folk guessed what he had in mind, however. Among them was a Welsh protégé of Arundel called Adam of Usk, a lawyer at the Court of Arches, who left London to join Bolingbroke despite his sympathy with March’s claim.
Delayed by lack of a fleet, Richard landed in Wales on 24 July, to find England had gone over to Henry. His troops deserted him, even his Cheshire archers, while his enemies had occupied Chester, the one city that might have supported him. He took refuge at Conwy Castle in north Wales, hoping the Earl of Salisbury, whom he sent ahead, could raise a Welsh army. When he reached Conwy, however, he found that Salisbury had rallied fewer than a hundred Welshmen.
The king might have found refuge at Dublin or Bordeaux, but was sure he could outwit his enemies, confiding to a French visitor that one day he would skin them alive. Under this delusion he let himself be lured out of Conwy by Archbishop Arundel and the Earl of Northumberland, who swore on the Host he should keep the throne if he restored the duchy of Lancaster to Henry. But as soon as he emerged Richard was seized and brought to Henry at Chester. His household abandoned him. When his favourite greyhound licked his rival’s face, he muttered it was a bad omen.
The king was taken to London, trying unsuccessfully to escape en route – being caught climbing out of a window. When he arrived in the City (at night, by his own request, to avoid being jeered at by the Londoners) he was put in the Tower under guard. In contrast Henry received an ecstatic welcome, partly because he announced he would abolish taxes and ‘live of his own’ on Crown revenues. A delegation led by Henry came to the Tower where they read out a list of charges. Panic-stricken, the king blamed four household knights for the deaths of Gloucester and Arundel and for suggesting Calais should be surrendered to the French. The four were arrested, tried in an adjoining room by the mayor and then, each tied to a horse’s tail, dragged to Cheapside where their heads were hacked off on a fishmonger’s slab.
‘King Richard was in terrible anguish, knowing he was trapped and in danger from the Londoners’, Froissart tells us. ‘He thought every man in England was against him . . . he began to cry.’30 His frightened followers told him to give the Crown to Henry. Adam of Usk, who served on the committee for deposing the king, went to see him dine at the Tower. Here he heard Richard, possibly the worse for drink, lamenting, ‘My God, this is a false, treacherous country, toppling, destroying and killing so many kings, rulers, great men. It never stops being torn apart by quarrels, strife and hatred.’ Then he named the men he had in mind, describing what happened to them. ‘I took my leave deeply moved’, says Adam, ‘recalling his former splendour’.31
Deposition
After arguing that kingship was inalienable, Richard yielded on 29 September – his opponents having made clear that otherwise he would be killed. Entering the hall at the Tower in royal regalia, he took off his crown. ‘Henry, good cousin and duke of Lancaster’, he said in a loud voice. ‘I give and deliver to you the crown with which I was crowned king of England and all rights belonging to it.’32
Next day, the king’s resignation was read out before parliament, in Westminster Hall. Thirty-three articles of deposition were then recited, the first indicting him for his evil rule, after which Henry made the sign of the cross and, in English, claimed the throne. ‘In the name of God, I, Henry of Lancaster, challenge this realm and the crown with all its dependencies and possessions, by right line of blood from King Henry III.’33 He produced the ex-monarch’s ring as proof of his approval. One after another, the peers gave assent. Finally, Arundel took Henry by the hand and led him to the throne, whereupon the assembly acclaimed Henry IV.
On 21 October a committee of fifty lords spiritual and temporal condemned their former sovereign to perpetual imprisonment, in ‘safe and secret ward’. Eight days later, records Adam of Usk, ‘The lord Richard, late king, after his deposition was carried away on the Thames in the silence of dark midnight, weeping and loudly bewailing he had ever been born. At which a certain knight who was there told him, “You may remember how you treated the earl of Arundel in just the same way, always with the utmost cruelty.”’34
Retrospect
Henry ‘had never dreamed of taking the crown and would not have done so if Richard of Bordeaux had behaved in a proper and friendly way towards him’, comments Froissart. ‘Even then, it was the Londoners who made him king, to put right the cruel injustice done to him and his children.’35 But it is also true that many other Englishmen besides Londoners wanted Henry of Bolingbroke to become their king.
Richard II’s inability to rule according to the laws and customs he had sworn to defend meant that even without Boli
ngbroke his regime would have imploded. The man who claimed to represent Edward the Confessor, quartering what was thought to be his coat of arms, destroyed himself by ignoring the ‘laws of King Edward’ – governing without consent. The demon was in Richard, and it destroyed him.
10
The Usurper – Henry IV
a more complex Macbeth
Bruce McFarlane1
The usurper
When Henry IV lay on his deathbed, his son picked up the crown from a nearby table. The dying man opened his eyes and asked, ‘Why do you think you have any right to it? I had none myself, as you know very well.’ Enguerrand de Monstrelet, the chronicler who told the story fifty years later, accused Henry of coming to the throne by ‘strange, dishonourable means’.2 Many contemporaries shared Monstrelet’s opinion.
When Henry told parliament in 1399 that he ‘challenged’ the realm of England, he implied he was taking the crown by right of conquest as well as descent, which meant he was ready to fight off rival challenges.3 These duly came, in a series of risings driven by a wish to revenge his predecessor or inability to accept him as king. ‘Not since I was a youth can I recall such deep forebodings by well-balanced men about the grave disorders and troubles they fear will soon afflict this kingdom’, his own confessor wrote to him in 1401, an ex-Lollard who remembered the Peasants’ Revolt.4
‘Always in deep debt, always kept on the alert by the Scots and Welsh; wavering between two opposite lines of policy with regard to France; teased by the parliament, which interfered with his household and grudged him supplies; worried by the clergy and others to whom he had promised more than he could fulfil; continually alarmed by attempts on his life, disappointed in his second marriage, bereft by treason of the aid of those whom he had trusted in his youth, and dreading to be supplanted by his own son; ever in danger of becoming the sport of the court factions which he had failed to extinguish, he seems to us a man whose life was embittered by the knowledge that he had taken on himself a task for which he was unequal.’ Stubbs’s epitome will never be bettered.5
John of Gaunt’s heir
Born at Bolingbroke Castle in the Lincolnshire Wolds in 1366, it seemed Henry would one day succeed his father Gaunt as England’s richest magnate. In any case, he was enormously wealthy from his marriage in 1380 to the twelve-year-old Mary de Bohun, the younger of the Earl of Hereford’s two heiresses. His uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, had married her elder sister, forcing Mary into a nunnery in an attempt to secure the entire Bohun inheritance, but Gaunt abducted her, the marriage being consummated when she was fourteen.
The other drama of his early years took place during the Peasants’ Revolt, when he was caught in the Tower of London by a mob who wanted to lynch John of Gaunt’s son – only a kind-hearted soldier’s intervention saved the boy. Some suspected he had been deliberately left in the Tower by ruthless courtiers, to eliminate a potential rival of the young king.
Aged twenty-one, Henry led the Appellants to victory, routing de Vere’s army at Radcot Bridge, but hedged his bets by trying to save the life of Richard’s old tutor, Sir Simon Burley. He also blocked Gloucester’s attempt to seize the throne. His father Lancaster possessed a better claim than Gloucester while, despite a mutual detestation of de Vere, their dispute over the Bohun inheritance gave him reason not to trust his uncle.
The Crusader
In autumn 1390, after sailing through the Baltic and landing near Gdansk, the Earl of Derby (as Henry was then styled) joined the Teutonic Knights on the Northern Crusade in Lithuania. Travelling down the River Memel, he helped to besiege Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. The Lithuanians’ Grand Prince had converted to Christianity, but the Crusade continued, since many of his folk were still pagans who worshipped hares and snakes. Having wintered at Königsberg in East Prussia where he was entertained by the Knights’ marshal, Henry went home, en route visiting the Grand Master’s court at Marienburg.
In 1392 he returned to the Baltic. Finding there was peace between the Teutonic Knights and the Lithuanians, he went with a household fifty strong on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, 2,000 miles away. After visiting Prague and Vienna Henry sailed from Venice to the Knights of St John at Rhodes, from where he took ship to Palestine. At the Holy Sepulchre he swore an oath that one day he would go on Crusade, recover the Holy Land for Christendom and then die in the Holy City. On the way home, he visited Cyprus whose ruler, James I – titular King of Jerusalem – gave him a leopard that he took back to England.
Here, Henry kept on outwardly good terms with King Richard until the final upheaval, being made Duke of Hereford for deserting the Appellants and his part in the Earl of Arundel’s destruction. Had he been allowed to inherit his father’s patrimony, it is unlikely he would have rebelled.
First years
The new king was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 13 October by Archbishop Arundel. It was St Edward’s Day, to stress his sincerity in swearing the coronation oath to defend the Confessor’s laws. When Arundel anointed his head, it was swarming with lice, which some saw as an evil omen. Parliament met the next day and some of the dukes Richard had created were reduced to their old rank of earl, but did not suffer financially. However, the estates of Scrope, Bussy and Green were confiscated as most people regarded them as criminals.
At the end of 1399 a band of plotters met at Westminster Abbey, whose abbot William de Colchester remained loyal to the ex-king. They planned to kill Henry with his sons during an Epiphany tournament at Windsor and restore Richard. Not knowing where he was, they found a clerk of the chapel royal called Maudelyn, who bore a resemblance, to impersonate him. On Twelfth Night (6 January), the Earls of Huntingdon, Kent and Salisbury with 500 men-at-arms rode through the night from Kingston-upon-Thames, storming the castle at dawn. Proclaiming Richard II king again, they rushed from room to room, but failed to find their enemy – Rutland had betrayed the plot to his father, the Duke of York, and Henry had escaped with his sons a few hours before. Fleeing to the West Country, the coup’s leaders were lynched, their heads sent to London in fish-baskets ‘to gladden the king and the Londoners’.6 A Te Deum was sung at St Paul’s by Arundel, who led a procession through the City in thanksgiving.
After the ‘Epiphany Plot’ Henry’s advisers told him, ‘As long as Richard of Bordeaux stays alive, neither you nor your kingdom will be safe.’ The king said nothing, but left the room. ‘Then he visited his falconers and, taking a falcon on his glove, seemed interested only in feeding it.’7 His predecessor was dead by 17 February, starved to death at Pontefract Castle. The body was exhibited to the public at St Paul’s Cathedral, on a black cushion with all but its face wrapped in lead, before burial at King’s Langley Priory – not in the tomb Richard had prepared at Westminster. Even so, rumours persisted that the ex-king was alive in Wales or in Scotland, where until 1419 a madman with a likeness to him claimed to be Richard.
In September 1400 Henry led an expedition to cow the Scots,8 provoked by an offensive letter from Robert III addressing him as Duke of Lancaster instead of king. Its aim was to forestall a Franco-Scottish invasion, but it failed when the Scots used scorched earth tactics. Just after the king returned, Owain Glyndwr of Glyndyfrdwy in Denbighshire, a descendant of the ancient princes, quarrelled with Lord Grey of Ruthin, who was a friend of the king, sacking Ruthin before being driven off into the hills. The English dismissed the incident as a local feud, although Henry took a small force into Wales in a display of English authority.
At Christmas, the king was visited by the Emperor of the East, Manuel II Paleologus, whose empire by now consisted of little more than Constantinople. Even that was threatened by the Turks, so Manuel had embarked on a tour of western courts to beg for aid. After entertaining the emperor at Eltham (which had become the king’s favourite palace), Henry gave him £2,000 he could ill afford.
In 1401 the king took action against what Walsingham calls the ‘detestable ravings of the Lollards’9. Henceforward, by the statute de heretico comburendo, here
sy became punishable with burning at the stake, while it was illegal to read the Bible in English. But only in the next reign would persecution drive the Lollards underground.
One night in 1401 a calthrop with three razor-sharp prongs (for maiming war horses) was discovered under the royal mattress, where it had been hidden in the hope Henry would impale himself through the straw. Early the next year an Augustinian prior was executed for failing to reveal a plot to kill him. In May eight Franciscan friars were hanged for conspiring to murder the king and raise men under the pretext that Richard II was still alive. Among their allies was a bastard of the Black Prince, Sir Roger Clarendon, who went to the gallows with them. During the friars’ trial, when Henry insisted, ‘I did not usurp the crown, I was elected’, one of them, Dr William Frisby, told him no election could be valid while the legitimate possessor was still alive and that if he had killed Richard, then he had forfeited any right to the kingdom.
Henry’s title was questioned all over Europe. In 1402–3 he received letters from the Duke of Orléans, who accused him of being a usurper and no true king.10 He looked far from secure. Quite apart from plots by friars and abuse by Frenchmen, he was desperately short of money. In 1401, when he asked the Commons for subsidies, they impertinently asked what had happened to Richard’s jewels.
The man
In Stubbs’s view, ‘There is scarcely one in the whole line of our kings of whose personality it is so difficult to get a definite idea.’11 This remains true today because of inadequate sources. But some of Stubbs’s insights are convincing – ‘suspicious, coldblooded and politic, undecided in action, cautious and jealous in private and public relations and, if not personally cruel, willing to sanction and profit by the cruelty of others’.12 McFarlane adds, ‘Henry, in fact, was that comparatively rare combination, the man of action who was also an intellectual.’13
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