Henry V

by Teresa Cole

  It was undoubtedly the French expedition that brought matters to a head, and the question of who, ultimately, was in charge of royal policy. The fact that the prince felt able to go ahead with this without specific authority from his father would no doubt have piqued his pride. Similarly the fact that ambassadors sent to negotiate with the English were instructed to deal with both king and prince would have shown Henry how far his own position had been called into question by giving the prince and council such a free hand.

  For whatever reason, the change was made. Smoothly but suddenly there was a new Chancellor, Archbishop Arundel, and a new head of the council, Prince Henry’s younger brother, Thomas, who had never been part of the prince’s party, and may perhaps have been his father’s favourite.

  And with these changes there came an equally sudden change of policy towards France. Although in January 1412 the Duke of Burgundy requested continued support, instead the king transferred his backing to the Armagnac faction. This might have been purely to assert his right to choose his own policy and go contrary to that of his son, or it might be that the Armagnacs simply put in a higher bid. Certainly the treaty that was signed in 1412 offered a good deal to the English king – recognition of his right to the Duchy of Aquitaine and a promise to assist in its recovery, a further promise of full support for any military expedition Henry might make to assist the Armagnac cause, three months’ wages at an agreed level for the men of such an expedition, and royal alliances by way of marriage with their ‘sons and daughters, their nephews and nieces, their relatives and kindred’. In exchange the king promised three thousand archers and a thousand men at arms to be fitted out and sent with all speed to the aid of the Armagnacs. We are told that King Henry required each of his sons to sign this treaty, which must have been a bitter pill for the prince to swallow, more especially since the head of this expedition was to be his brother Thomas.

  His protests, however, were ignored and he seems to have taken himself away from court altogether at this time, while the expedition was being assembled. In June 1412 he sent a letter from Coventry to friends and supporters around the country, claiming that certain persons, ‘sons of iniquity’, were spreading false stories about him, and trying to make a split between himself and his father by claiming he wanted to usurp the throne. Instead he protested his complete loyalty and his love and respect for the king.

  Two weeks later he followed this up by a visit to London with such a crowd of retainers at his back as to cause comment in several of the chronicles of the time. In some accounts he was trying to threaten and overawe his father, in others simply to try one last time to dissuade him from the French expedition. In that he failed. Despite being granted an interview with the king – to which Henry was carried in a chair, being too ill to walk – and being assured there was no doubt about his loyalty, a few days later Thomas was dubbed Duke of Clarence and royal lieutenant in Aquitaine, and sent on his way with the king’s blessing.

  Unfortunately for Henry and for Thomas, even before the expedition had landed in France the warring factions had come to a temporary truce. Now the presence of English soldiers was an embarrassment to all, and, after firing off some furious letters about the breaking of treaties, Thomas was paid to take his men home.

  In the meantime stories continued to circulate about the prince. He was accused of misappropriating the wages of the garrison at Calais while holding the office of Captain of Calais, and apparently came to London again in September, armed with rolls of accounts, to clear himself. Some writers merge this with his earlier visit and again the details vary. According to an often repeated, if over-dramatic story, at one of these meetings the prince, having taken Holy Communion and confessed his sins beforehand, fell on his knees before his father, handed him a dagger and told him to take his life rather than that he, the prince, should cause him any worry or suspicion. Needless to say, in the story, the dagger is thrown away and the king and his son end in tearful reconciliation.

  It is to other stories no doubt circulating at this time that we must attribute Shakespeare’s ‘madcap prince’. They are so many and so varied that no doubt some of them are true, but hard evidence, as opposed to hearsay, is almost impossible to find. Drunkenness, frequenting taverns in Eastcheap with men of low birth, brawling and robbery, serving ‘Venus as well as Mars’; all these accusations are thrown at the young prince, and, given his age, would be very easily believable if they did not sit so strangely with his character before and after this period. Perhaps reaction to his father’s apparent ingratitude for long and faithful service might be an explanation if the stories proved to be true.

  There are some fragments of fact available. The prince’s presence in Eastcheap is easily explained since he lived there, when in London, in a property called Coldharbour, given to ‘my dearest son’ by King Henry in 1410. The place was previously known as Poulteney Inn. There are some records of brawls in the area that were broken up by the authorities, but the names attached are those of the prince’s brothers Thomas and John. Similarly there are no records of any royal bastards attributed to the prince, which is probably unusual for the time he lived in, when even Bishop Henry Beaufort was acknowledged as a father.

  Perhaps the strongest evidence in favour of such stories comes from the comments in several chronicles about the change in the prince’s behaviour when he became king, how he suddenly changed into ‘another man, zealous for honesty, modesty and gravity’. How much of this change they witnessed for themselves and how much they were relying on earlier tales of wildness we do not know, and we also have the prince’s claim that his name was being deliberately blackened at the time to balance against this.

  If such a claim is true, it is hard to see who would be behind these stories. Cui bono? is a valid question. Who would benefit by opening a rift between the prince and his father? The obvious candidate would be Thomas, who stepped into his shoes in the council and at the head of the French expedition. Though that brought him little kudos, it made him considerably richer. He had also been named the king’s lieutenant in Aquitaine, another stab at his brother, who had been Duke of Aquitaine since 1399. There is never the slightest suggestion, though, that he expected or intended to replace the prince as heir to the throne, and when Henry became king he served him loyally for the rest of his life. At the most it might have been a brief brotherly spat, aimed at getting his own back on a brother constantly praised while he was criticised.

  Another target might have been the Beauforts, who had enemies enough of their own, for they too fell from grace along with the prince. One very strange story tells of a man discovered hiding in the prince’s room at night, a supposed assassin. On being questioned, he claimed to have been sent by Bishop Henry, which seems patently absurd. By some convoluted thinking it has been suggested the bishop sent him in order to implicate someone else in a plot on the prince’s life, the unfortunate man being drowned by the Earl of Arundel soon after. It does seem more likely, however that it was Bishop Henry who was being framed.

  Whatever rift there was between the king and his heir seems to have healed during the autumn of 1412, whether because of the prince’s visits or because the division over French policy had now been resolved. The health of the king, however, was steadily declining. We are told he suffered greatly in body and in mind, the latter being attributed to a guilty conscience.

  In December he had another severe attack of illness, but despite this began to plan a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It had apparently been foretold to the king that he would die in Jerusalem. The prophecy, if there was one, worked out a little differently than he might have expected, however.

  In March 1413 he collapsed while praying before the tomb of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. He was carried to the abbot’s lodging, to a room known as the Jerusalem chamber, and there he died. Once again all manner of stories and legends have grown up about his death, some accounts dragging it out over several days. In one he confesses to the murder of Richard
. In another, repeated by Shakespeare, the impatient prince tries on the crown while his father still lives. In yet another he asks his son how he intends to hold on to the crown, having no right to it, the answer being, ‘I will guard it, as you did, with my sword, all my life.’

  What seems to be clearly established, however, is that at the time of his death the king was at peace with all his sons, and bequeathed to his eldest not only his crown, but also his blessing.

  4

  SETTLEMENTS AT HOME

  1413–1415

  On 9 April 1413, Passion Sunday, Henry V was crowned at Westminster Abbey in the midst of a snowstorm – an ‘unprecedented storm with driving snow, which covered the country’s mountains, burying men and animals and houses … creating great danger and much loss of life’. Well, England can do that in April, but it set a challenge to those looking for omens for the coming reign. Did it show the icy temperament of the new king? Was England in for a bitter winter of unprecedented severity? Or, as one suggested, did the passing of the coronation snowstorm indicate that spring had come and good times were ahead? With hindsight we could add a few more suggestions. The reign would certainly bring an exciting challenge for many, and future generations would come to see Henry himself as a whiter-than-white example of kingship.

  For, however exaggerated the earlier stories of his wild youth, it was immediately clear to all that, from the day of his accession, the king was a new man. Some even likened it to the transformation of Thomas Becket centuries earlier, when he became Archbishop of Canterbury. The story is told that on the very night of his father’s death Henry sought out a monk, or some say a holy recluse, at Westminster Abbey and spent the entire night in prayer – rather like the vigil kept by a man before receiving his knighthood.

  What is certain is that he emerged the next morning decisively in control of himself and his kingdom. His hand was set firmly on the tiller and never for a moment thereafter was his grip at all slackened. After something like fifty years of loose and variable government, the collective sigh of relief from the nation might have been the breeze to melt all that snowfall.

  He was a young man, twenty-six years old, but already rich in experience of military matters and government. There is a general agreement that he was taller than average, graceful and slender but strong. The best known portrait that we have of him was painted many years after his death but is claimed to be a copy of a contemporary likeness. It shows a rather severe face with long nose, square jaw, full lips, hair cropped short above the ears and a piercing gaze. He must have been marked by the wound received at Shrewsbury but that side of the face is not shown, perhaps deliberately. Some have described it as a soldier’s face, a cold face, and suggested that the king was unlovable, but surely that can’t be true. It is difficult to paint charisma, even harder to describe what makes a man a natural leader, but whatever it was the new king had it in abundance. Those who served him, with very few exceptions, served him for life, and with an intense and personal loyalty that is probably key to the admiration felt by succeeding generations. Even at the time of his coronation he had already achieved something his father had never had – popularity.

  The story of his trying on his father’s crown while the king lay dying has been interpreted by some as a hint that, if he did not take it at once, it might be snatched away by another claimant. There is, however, not the slightest suggestion of such a threat at the time. Indeed, Henry seems to have had enough confidence in his own right to reign that one of his first acts was to free young Edmund Mortimer, the last heir apparent of Richard II, who had been held captive by Henry IV for most of his life. Not only was he freed but, on the day prior to the coronation, he and his younger brother Roger were made Knights of the Bath, and soon afterwards all his family estates were returned to him.

  Such mercy, a sign of the strength of the king’s position, was to be extended to others as well. A large group of Scottish prisoners (though not the youthful King James) were sent home. Edward, son of the old Duke of York and a serial plotter and betrayer of plots, was restored to his dukedom, and his brother created Earl of Cambridge. Hotspur’s son, another Henry Percy, would eventually be restored to the northern estates of his grandfather, and even Owen Glendower was offered a pardon, though he did not come forward to accept it.

  In a similarly decisive way the new king rearranged his government. On the first morning of his reign Archbishop Arundel was thanked for his work and dismissed, the chancellorship going instead to Bishop Henry Beaufort. Others, too, lost their places on the council and the earls of Arundel and Warwick and Lord Henry Scrope were restored to power. The next day a parliament was summoned to meet on 15 May. The king was starting as he meant to go on.

  Not everyone was happy with this smooth transition, of course. In July one John Whitelock was tried before the King’s Bench accused of plotting against the king. He had been caught posting bills inciting rebellion in the name of Richard II, allegedly still alive in Scotland. Little had been heard of this line of challenge for some time, but a band of supporters of the former king were known to be in hiding in Westminster, and Whitelock was one of them. Found guilty and condemned, he subsequently escaped, only to appear again on the same errand three years later. There was never any real likelihood of danger to the king, but it may be that his ceremonial reburial of Richard’s body at Westminster Abbey at the end of the year was more than just a reverent gesture to a well-loved man. In spite of this the name was still invoked as a figurehead for unrest for a number of years, until the pseudo-Richard being supported in Scotland himself died in 1419.

  While this first challenge could be easily brushed aside, the second had to be treated more seriously. It came from the Lollards, a religious sect who traced their roots back into the previous century. Most agree that the name Lollard is derived from a Dutch word meaning to mutter or mumble and referred to their method of praying, but one ingenious writer has traced an equally possible derivation from a Latin name for a weed. It is certain that, at the time, the Lollards were regarded as weeds, infesting the good crop of Christian belief and threatening to overwhelm it, and, as such, they had to be plucked out and destroyed.

  For western Europe at the time Christianity was the bedrock on which society was built, and not just Christianity but one particular branch of Christianity, the Catholic Church, headed by the Pope, the successor of St Peter. By the late fourteenth century, however, there were some serious flaws in this system, obvious to anyone who was prepared to look for them. One who looked long and hard, first from an academic and then a practical viewpoint, was John Wycliffe, and it is to him that the Lollards traced their origin.

  John Wycliffe was an Oxford scholar of some note, who had spent his academic life studying orthodox theology and the Bible. He became briefly drawn into the political world, representing the Crown on a foreign mission and in a legal dispute, and it was this as well as his studies that led him into his first area of controversy. Not only was the Church immensely wealthy at this time but it was powerful too, and in ways that went well beyond religion. As we have seen, bishops and archbishops were routinely appointed to the highest posts in the land, and, with the Pope as head of the Church and the king as head of the State, conflict of interests was almost inevitable.

  Now, in the 1370s, Wycliffe declared that the Pope, and indeed the Church in general, had no business meddling in secular matters. Nor was its wealth at all in keeping with the design laid out in the Bible. Pope and Church should be poor, as Christ was poor. In fact he went further and pointed out that there was no pope mentioned in the Bible at all.

  Many agreed with him, not only among the poor but among the landed magnates too, who resented the power and wealth of the clergy. John of Gaunt became his protector, and when in 1377 he was summoned before the Bishop of London to explain himself, both Gaunt and the Earl of Northumberland accompanied him.

  No one could deny that some Church reform was needed. For the whole of Wycliffe’s life the Pope
had resided not in Rome but in Avignon under the influence – some would say control – of the French king, and during this time of exile had behaved more like a king himself than a religious leader. An immense palace had been built, a household of hundreds established, the best food and richest clothing purchased, and art commissioned on a lavish scale. All this was paid for by widespread corruption and by a variety of money-raising schemes, in particular the sale of ‘indulgences’, regarded as a shortcut to heaven for those sinners who found repentance too burdensome.

  Having come into conflict with the Church, however, Wycliffe went further. The Bible, he declared, was the source of all grace, and only those in a state of grace could properly instruct others. If the Church could not deal with its own corruption the State should do so. The sacraments were not essential and nor were priests; pilgrimages and ‘saint-worship’ were useless; and finally, the worst heresy of all in the eyes of the Church, contrary to doctrine, the bread and wine used at communion were still bread and wine after consecration and only symbols of the body and blood of Christ.

  By 1378 he had been condemned by the Pope, though still protected by John of Gaunt and Oxford University. Indeed his many followers at the university had begun to spread his word far and wide. The first sign that this might involve conflict with the State as well as the Church came in 1381, when some of his ideas were taken and adapted to suit the purposes of the Peasants’ Revolt.

  One John Ball, a former Catholic priest who had adopted Wycliffe’s ideas and begun preaching around the countryside, was at the time imprisoned in Kent for heresy. The mob freed him and found his anti-clerical ideas much to their liking. Accompanying them to London, he preached a sermon on Blackheath, including the now famous declaration, ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’ Clearly, if the Church would not voluntarily give up its wealth there were many who would be happy to relieve them of it.