by Teresa Cole
Also in the king’s train in Ireland was Henry of Monmouth. Although still, probably, a surety for his father’s behaviour, he seems to have enjoyed himself on campaign, and was in fact knighted by the king. But while Richard vainly sought a decisive meeting with the rebels, things were moving at home.
Scarcely had the king arrived in Ireland than Henry Bolingbroke set out from Paris, accompanied by Thomas Arundel, former Archbishop of Canterbury, and his nephew the son of the late Earl of Arundel. Together with a small company they landed at Ravenspur on the Humber and made their way to Pontefract Castle, a stronghold of the House of Lancaster. Within a matter of days Northumberland and his son, along with the Earl of Westmoreland and most of the north of England, had rallied to him. He swore he had come only to claim his inheritance, but as they set out southwards, urgent messages were sent from London to Ireland, and the Duke of York, who had been left in charge in England, together with most of the king’s council, fled westward.
By the time the messages reached the king in Ireland Henry was well set. Then it seemed there were not enough boats to transport Richard’s army, and he was advised, foolishly or possibly treacherously, to split his force, sending half to north Wales while he accompanied the other half to the south.
When he landed at Milford Haven towards the end of July it was probably too late even then to turn back the Lancastrian tide. News that the Duke of York had submitted affected the king badly. No longer knowing who he could trust, he abandoned his force in the south, though some accounts say these had already started to disperse following treachery on the part of their leaders. Instead he struck out for his most loyal county of Cheshire in the north. That he chose the coastal route may suggest he already realised he might have to flee for his life, but in any case Henry was there ahead of him.
The Earl of Salisbury had raised a force for the king in Cheshire, but hearing rumours that Richard was already dead, he allowed these to disband and withdrew to Conway Castle, leaving Chester and all the surrounding area to be occupied by Henry’s forces without even a fight. On 11 August Richard joined him at Conway.
From here we have two different accounts of what followed. According to the official Lancastrian version, Richard was visited at Conway by the Earl of Northumberland and Archbishop Arundel. After hearing what they had to say he agreed to abdicate, asking only that his life should be spared and that he should be given an honourable livelihood. He then accompanied them to Chester to meet Henry, and thence to London where he was lodged in the Tower.
The other version, from those more sympathetic to Richard, is rather different. Visited by Northumberland and the Archbishop, he was told that Henry wanted only his inheritance and that his claim should be submitted to a full Parliament. Northumberland then swore on the Holy Sacrament – the most sacred of all oaths – that no harm should come to the king and that he would retain his full title and power. No doubt with a strong sense of déjà vu, Richard accepted, set out with them towards Chester and was immediately ambushed by Northumberland’s men and taken prisoner.
Whichever version is correct, the outcome was the same. When the cousins arrived in London, Richard was escorted to the Tower, while Henry Bolingbroke took up residence in the Palace of Westminster.
2
AN EDUCATION IN WARFARE
1399–1408
It would be interesting to know exactly when on his journey Henry Bolingbroke decided to try for the crown. Some accounts suggest that it was Archbishop Arundel and his nephew, determined to avenge brother and father, who pushed him towards the throne. Certainly at his meeting with the northern lords in Doncaster he was still denying any such ambition, but by the time he came face to face with Richard at Chester he must have known there was no going back. They had danced this dance before, little more than a decade ago, and Henry could be sure that, whatever his position then, he had no hope of escaping this time with his head still on his shoulders as long as Richard was king.
A parliament had been summoned in Richard’s name for 30 September. Again the official account says that Richard’s abdication was read to them and accepted and the throne declared vacant. It also says he had been visited by Northumberland, Arundel and Bolingbroke in the Tower and signed this document cheerfully, handing his signet ring to Henry as a nomination that he should replace him as king. Other accounts, some by eyewitnesses, tell a different story – of Richard raging against his captivity, of his being promised a chance to put his case before a full parliament, and later of his gloomy recitation of the many earlier kings who had been ‘exiled, slain, destroyed or ruined’ by their countrymen. It is, no doubt, this account which provided Shakespeare with the inspiration for his famous ‘deaths of kings’ speech in the play Richard II.
And what of Henry of Monmouth while all this was happening? He had been left behind in Ireland at Trim Castle. It is significant that, if he was supposed to be a hostage for his father, there was never any attempt to use him as such. No threats were made, no harm ever came to him. We have, indeed, one rather fanciful record of a conversation when Richard informed the boy of his father’s actions. On Henry’s protesting his innocence of any involvement, Richard is supposed to have replied, ‘There is one Henry that will do me much harm, but I know that you are not he.’
In early September Bolingbroke sent for his son. Instead of returning to his father, however, Henry is reported to have gone to Richard instead, and only at his insistence to have obeyed his father’s command and joined him. It was, no doubt, a confusing time of divided loyalties for a thirteen-year-old.
It was by now clear to all that Bolingbroke was going to be king. The difficulty was in how to frame his claim to such an elevation. That Parliament was not entirely happy with the story of Richard’s abdication may be seen in the fact that, even after that had been accepted, they then proceeded to discuss a long list of thirty-three articles detailing Richard’s crimes and defects before agreeing that he be deprived of the throne. Bolingbroke would need more than a signet ring to put him in his place.
The precedent most closely followed by all concerned was that of the deposition of Richard’s great-grandfather, Edward II, some seventy years before. Then, though, there was an obvious choice of an heir, his son Edward III. Now Bolingbroke was no such automatic choice. By strict hereditary principles Richard’s heir should have been the seven-year-old Earl of March, but his name is barely mentioned. There was some attempt to create or resurrect a strange theory that Edward I was not the eldest son of his father, Henry III. Then, by disinheriting the previous four kings, Bolingbroke could claim descent through his mother from another son, Edmund of Lancaster. This tale was apparently examined and discounted in the weeks before Parliament sat.
There was a strong reluctance to claim the throne by election through Parliament, since what Parliament made it could later unmake. Similarly, right of conquest might give ideas to other mighty magnates that they could do the same. In the end the claim of Bolingbroke to become Henry IV was a cobbled-together version of all three possibilities, which has been argued over by lawyers and parliamentarians ever since.
On 30 September 1399, when the throne was declared vacant, he stepped forward to claim it, ‘by the right blood coming from King Henry III, and through that right that God of his grace hath sent me, with the help of my kin and my friends’. Despite the peculiarity of this claim it was immediately accepted by Parliament and the populace, the assembly was dissolved and a new parliament announced for 6 October in the name of King Henry IV.
Exactly one year from the day he departed into exile, on 13 October, the feast day of St Edward the Confessor, Henry was crowned with full ceremonial in Westminster Abbey. Throughout the long ceremony the Sword of Justice was carried by his eldest son, Henry of Monmouth. As one writer has commented, this must have taught the boy the useful early lesson that justice can be a very heavy burden.
Now, however, young Henry was to discover the benefits involved in being a king’s son. In shor
t time he became Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Earl of Chester, Duke of Aquitaine and Duke of Lancaster. It was proposed, and accepted by Parliament, that he be acknowledged as lawful heir of his father, and he knelt to receive a coronet, ring and rod as signs of his authority. Nor were these empty titles. Despite his tender years, it was made immediately apparent that he would be expected to live off the estates transferred to him, to maintain his own household and to take a full part in the administration of both household and estates.
Of the various territories now coming under his sway, Lancaster and Cornwall would be the most productive, Wales and Chester the most challenging. Cheshire had been a centre of support for Richard and there was little sign as yet that the people of that county had transferred their loyalties to a new regime, while in Wales he would have to balance the sensitivities of the Welsh against the egos of powerful English lords holding lands along the border.
Even before he took up his duties, however, one decision had to be made. In late October the commons proposed that Richard be put on trial for his alleged misdeeds. Instead, a special meeting of the lords was held at which each in turn was asked what should be done with the former king. Fifty-eight individual names are recorded as agreeing to the proposal that he should be imprisoned in some secret place where no rescue could be attempted, and that none who had previously served him should have access to him. Although some accounts declare he was not there, it appears the prince’s name is enrolled with the rest.
On 27 October this decision was announced to the commons and approved. Two days later Richard was taken from the Tower and, by various stages, to imprisonment in Pontefract Castle in the heart of Lancastrian territory.
If Henry IV thought he could now rest easy with the crown on his head, he was soon to be disillusioned. His overwhelming acclamation by Parliament and people may have misled him into leniency to those formerly close to his predecessor. As one writer has noted, a more ruthless operator would have had their heads off at once, along with that of the young Earl of March. Instead they were merely demoted, losing the titles Richard had heaped on them in 1397. In return, four of them, including Richard’s half-brother the Earl of Huntingdon and his nephew the Earl of Kent, hatched a plot to seize the king and his heir at the Epiphany feast at Windsor in January 1400.
No doubt they thought an early strike would have the best chance of unseating a new king and returning Richard to the throne, but they had sadly misjudged the mood of the country. The plot was betrayed, probably by one of the conspirators, Edward, Earl of Rutland, eldest son of the Duke of York. The king, warned with hours to spare, escaped with his family to the safety of London, raised an army and set out after the plotters. It seems he need hardly have bothered. One group containing the earls of Kent and Salisbury fled westward as far as Cirencester and, failing to raise any support, were dragged from the sanctity of the abbey and beheaded by an angry mob. The Lord Despenser, brother-in-law of Rutland, managed to reach Cardiff, took ship for the Continent but was instead landed at Bristol, and there suffered the same fate. The other chief conspirator, the Earl of Huntingdon, uncle of Kent, who had remained in London, tried to escape eastwards, only to be put to death in the same way at Pleshey Castle in Essex.
Within a month Richard himself was dead, officially having ‘pined to death’ and refused food. Unofficially it seems that Henry had learned a hard lesson and taken steps accordingly. The body was brought to London and exposed to public view, though only part of the face was visible, the rest of coffin being sealed in lead. After lying in state in St Paul’s, it was handed over to be buried obscurely at the Dominican priory of King’s Langley in Hertfordshire.
We have no way of knowing if the young Prince of Wales truly believed the official story. What we do know is that one of his first acts when he became king was to have the body of Richard exhumed and reburied with all due state in Westminster Abbey in the tomb designed for him and where his wife already lay.
It was to be in Scotland rather than Wales that Prince Henry would get his first military experience. At the time of the accession of Henry IV, the Scots had such problems at home that very little was expressed in the way of approval or disapproval. With a weak and incompetent king, and a power struggle between his son the Duke of Rothesay and his brother the Duke of Albany, there was little mind to renew ancient hostilities with England. By the summer of 1400, however, Henry had determined on a strong raid into Scotland to try and force the Scottish king to do him homage. A renewed threat from France and the history of alliances between those two countries was one reason for this. Another was the urging of a disaffected Scottish lord, George Dunbar, whose bid to have his daughter married to Rothesay had been trumped by the Earl of Douglas, leading him to transfer allegiance to Henry. A successful campaign would also enhance the new king’s prestige at home, and maybe unite the country behind him.
It was not a successful campaign. Money was short and the Scots refused to fight, shutting themselves up in impregnable strongholds. Henry crossed the border in mid-August, and after two weeks of fruitless sabre rattling the English army was in Newcastle again on the 29th of that month, with only a vague promise of future negotiations to show for their efforts, and having stirred up troubles on the border that would be a drain on men and resources for years to come.
Prince Henry had accompanied his father to Scotland, but it was on their way back to London that they received news which was to concern him and his new responsibilities much more closely. On 16 September Owen Glendower, a little-known Welshman, had proclaimed himself Prince of Wales, and set off a violent revolt against the English that was to spread throughout the whole of that country.
This Glendower was not some wild Welsh chieftain but a comfortably middle-aged landed gentleman with extensive estates and manor houses near Oswestry. What stirred him now to take up arms against England has never been fully explained, but its origins seem to lie in the landholding arrangements along the border between Wales and England.
For centuries the border counties, from Flint in the north to Monmouthshire in the south, had been held by powerful English lords, the so-called Marcher lords. The Mortimers, Fitzalans and Talbots were prominent among them, and, in general, as long as they kept the border quiet, they had remarkable freedom to do as they wished with the lands under their sway. Opportunities for misunderstanding, insult and oppression were legion, and raids back and forth across the borders were frequent occurrences.
One of these lords, Lord Grey of Ruthin, had a land dispute with Glendower. This had been submitted to the new king for settlement, and with Grey being a member of Henry’s council, the decision had gone his way. Glendower, feeling ‘his pleas slighted and his oaths scorned’, had taken some revenge on the cattle and crops of his opponent. Then it appeared that Grey had delayed a summons for Glendower to supply men for the Scottish campaign, and when they had not appeared on time had denounced him as a traitor.
These and similar slights seem to have produced the spark to set alight a rebellion that was to fill the next ten years of Prince Henry’s life, and which would give him the soundest of educations in all the arts of war.
Initially at least it seemed a very minor problem. Henry IV diverted his army from Northampton to north Wales, but the immediate crisis was over before he even got there, stamped out by local forces from Shropshire and Herefordshire. Nevertheless he carried out a swift punitive raid through all the northern counties of Wales, while Glendower and his supporters retreated to the mountains. This was followed by confiscation of all the estates of the rebels which were then given to Henry’s half-brother, John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset.
This was the situation inherited by the young Prince of Wales when he took up his duties towards the end of 1400. In theory he was overlord of all the Welsh and in supreme command of all actions against the rebels. In practice, the fourteen-year-old had a governor, Hugh le Despenser, appointed by his father to guide him, and Henry Percy, Hotspur, son of the Earl of N
orthumberland, as justiciar to enforce the royal will. His council was also appointed by the king, and it seems likely that, at least at first, overall policy would have been dictated from Westminster, but it is clear from letters between the two that Prince Henry took a full part in council meetings and decisions. With Hotspur some twenty years his senior and one of the most famous soldiers in England, it also seems likely that the justiciar became something of a mentor to the boy. No doubt he could have done a lot worse than model himself on a man whose reputation for valour and uprightness was jealously guarded, even after his death.
The prince’s headquarters were established at Chester, which should have been the heart of his own territory and a source of support and finance for him. Cheshire had been Richard’s own county, however, and Wales, too, had strongly favoured him, and this planting of the royal household here may have been intended to discourage the men of Cheshire from joining those in Wales in open revolt against the English king. Glendower was quiet for now, apart from the usual ongoing border-raiding activities, but it was reported that the Welsh in England, even students at Oxford and Cambridge, were all being drawn homeward in his support.
On 1 April 1401 hostilities were resumed. It was Good Friday, and while all the garrison of Conway Castle were at prayers, the castle was taken over by the rebels, led by the Tudor brothers, Rhys and William. This was not only a strategic loss but a psychological blow to the English and immediate steps were taken to recover the castle. Prince Henry himself, along with Hotspur, took part in the four-week siege that led to its surrender on 28 May, but as a sign of the king’s displeasure Hotspur was stripped of his lordship of Conway and of nearby Anglesey.
