1415: Henry V's Year of Glory

by Mortimer, Ian

  Was there any justification for their seizure and arrest? Taking a view sympathetic to Henry, we may speculate that his thinking was as follows. Since the leading English merchants in London were being leaned on very heavily to loan money for the expedition, for the safeguarding of England’s trading links among other things, there was no reason why other merchants profiting from trade in England should not equally be required to do so. Indeed, the Italians may have been considered to have had an unfair competitive advantage in retaining their capital while the English merchants had to pledge theirs. In addition, we may remark that there was a precedent: Edward III had given orders for all the Italian merchants in England to be arrested in 1337, saving only those of the Bardi and Peruzzi companies, on whom the king was reliant for future borrowing. As Henry V regarded so many aspects of his great-grandfather’s reign as instructive for his own expedition, he may have known about this from the same chronicles that he was using for his military preparations. Although in 1337 the Genoese had been supporting the French in their antagonism of England – providing them with ships and mercenaries – Henry seems not to have been bothered by such details. Thus the king may have wholly believed that what his council was doing in his name was justifiable. But from a more objective standpoint it smacks of the sort of tyranny that Richard II perpetrated in the late 1390s, which Henry’s father had returned to England to stamp out in 1399.

  The above business concerning the merchants – like all direct requests for money – was not conducted by the king in person but on his behalf by powerful men. Henry himself was concerned with the building of a bridge. He appointed Robert Welton, one of the clerks of the exchequer, to be the surveyor for ‘the construction of a bridge to be made by the king’s advice, to take carpenters, smiths and other workmen, artificers and labourers, and timber, iron, hides and other necessaries’.55 Where his new bridge was to be is not clear, but presumably it was a replacement of a dilapidated structure on the king’s highway.

  The formal order for the delivery of Mordach, earl of Fife, to John Hull and William Chancellor was drawn up today at the king’s personal command.56

  Saturday 25th

  Robert Thresk – one of the clerks of the exchequer whom Henry had rewarded in February – had recently submitted a petition to the chamberlain. He wished to have permission to found a chantry of three chaplains to celebrate divine service daily at the altar of St Anne in his church at Thresk in Yorkshire (Thirsk, as it is called now).57 The beneficiaries of these prayers would be Robert Thresk himself and the king – for their good estate in their lifetimes and for their souls and the souls of Robert’s friends and relatives after death. Henry granted the petition.

  One other order is extant for today. Stephen Ferrour, the royal farrier, was ordered to take iron and ‘horsenails’, and to enlist blacksmiths for shoeing the king’s horses on his expedition to France.58

  Sunday 26th: Trinity Sunday59

  Trinity Sunday was, for Henry, one of the most important religious feasts of the year. His devotion to the cult of the Holy Trinity featured in almost every aspect of his life, and the lives of those around him. From the character of his prayers to the decoration in the stained glass windows of royal palaces and chapels, and the salutations in his letters, he was a sincere follower of the three-in-one: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Of the twenty or so ships in the royal fleet, three were called Trinity and one was the Holy Ghost. In 1413, he had travelled to Canterbury Cathedral to see his father entombed in the Trinity Chapel on Trinity Sunday. He may have had a difficult relationship with his father but, in their complete devotion to the Trinity, they were as close as father and son could be.60

  For this reason it is all the more surprising to find Henry conducting business as normal on this day. Other important religious feasts noted above saw little or no recorded royal business. In contrast, several matters were attended to today. Only one of them was of a religious character. Henry ordered a charter to be sent to the House of Jesus of Bethlehem at Sheen showing that the priory had been granted the possessions of Ware and other alien priories.61

  A letter was sent to the sheriff of Chester on the king’s command, stating that, on the advice of the chancellor, Henry had decided that no general or special assizes were to be held during his absence abroad.62 This was not out of any clemency for those accused of heinous crimes; they were left to languish in their gaols until their moment of justice should come after the campaign was over. Henry’s motive was to free up his men preparing to travel with him by releasing them from any obligation to serve on juries or to have to worry about turning up in court to give evidence.

  Henry made preparations for feeding his army. The sheriffs of Kent, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Hampshire were ordered each to send two hundred oxen to Southwick, Tichfield, Beaulieu and Southampton respectively by 25 June.63 All four of these writs were authorised by Henry in person – as indeed were the great majority of preparatory writs. Also he heard his chamberlain recite a petition from the royal surgeon, Thomas Morstede, asking for a sum of money sufficient to obtain all the surgical consumables he had been ordered to provide for the duration of the voyage, and for the king to arrange carriage for everything to France. In addition, Morstede asked the king to appoint men to serve at the given wages: one suspects that he anticipated some difficulty persuading surgeons to give up their lucrative, safe London practices in return for 6d per day in a war zone. As one would expect, Henry granted Morstede’s petition in all respects.64

  It is worth pausing at this point, on Trinity Sunday, to reflect on how much business was falling personally to the king. When books about Henry’s reign state that Henry spent most of the first half of 1415 preparing for the forthcoming campaign, they fail to draw attention to the extraordinary level of work that this entailed, and how much of it was dealt with by the king. As we have seen, Henry even involved himself in such matters as the provision of meat for the army when it assembled – even though this was a religious feast day when he might have chosen not to work. We have seen him over and over again personally attending to such matters as the provision of horseshoes and horsenails, or the manufacture of bowstaves. One would have thought that much of this would be delegated. But in 1415 there was no War Office. Matters such as carriage could be delegated, but otherwise each individual aspect of the forthcoming campaign had to be attended to by the king and council. And, with the council largely composed of clergymen or earls absent on royal business, for the most part that meant by Henry himself.

  Monday 27th

  This morning at the Tower the earl of Fife was released into the custody of John Hull and William Chancellor, in accordance with Henry’s directions of the 21st.65 His long journey back to Scotland had begun.

  Elsewhere in the Tower, Henry was presiding over the council meeting held today to delegate various duties. First on the agenda was the duke of Burgundy. Instructions needed to be drawn up for men going to see John the Fearless. What the exact nature of their business was we cannot tell; the instructions themselves are no longer extant. But we know that Henry himself chose the archbishop of Canterbury, Hugh Mortimer, Master Philip Morgan and Master John Hovingham to deal with the matter, adding Lord Scrope ‘when he will arrive’.66 Apart from the archbishop, all of these men had been on the embassy to John the Fearless in June 1414, and Lord Scrope had secretly been back since. The wording of the note referring to Scrope suggests that the men were to sit down to draw up the instructions straightaway. Clearly the secret negotiations with John the Fearless were ongoing.

  The next items on the agenda were the crown jewels and the treaty that Sir John Tiptoft was required to negotiate in Gascony. With regard to the crown jewels, the lords had decided at the April great council that, in return for accepting late payment of wages, they would take jewels as security. Some had already been dispersed, such as the ‘large tabernacle of gilt silver’ recently sent back to Henry’s creditors in Devon. To control the dispersal of such
treasures, Henry appointed a committee consisting of his brother John, Henry Beaufort and Richard Courtenay, bishop of Norwich. Another committee – namely his brother Humphrey, Thomas Beaufort, and the keeper of the privy seal – was appointed to draw up precise instructions for Sir John Tiptoft with regard to Gascony.

  The various committees indicate that Henry was beginning to delegate more tasks. The chancellor, Henry Beaufort, was given the duty of arraying men for the defence of the realm in each county. Beaufort was also instructed to inform all the archbishops and bishops to enter into their registers ‘the malice of the Lollards’. He was to organise the building of beacons – warning fires, in case of invasion – in each part of the country. To the treasurer of England (Thomas, earl of Arundel) and the controller of the royal household (John Rothenhale) fell the responsibility for obtaining and transporting victuals to Southampton. The treasurer (Arundel) and the admiral of England (Thomas Beaufort) were given the task of paying all the mariners. And these two men were also entrusted with sorting out the terms of an agreement for provisioning Calais and its English-held hinterland.67

  Despite this increased level of delegation, Henry did not lessen the burden on himself. He commissioned several men to enquire into those rights in his manor of Sheen formerly enjoyed by his tenants there, which they had lost as a result of his new initiatives.68 And he personally dictated a letter to the sheriff of Hampshire firmly ordering him to proclaim throughout the county that people should bake bread and brew ale to provide for the king’s army due to assemble at Southampton.69 Although this was the same day as he appointed a committee to oversee provisions for the army, it still fell to the king to issue this letter. And one small detail it contains explains just why it had become so important for the king to start delegating to the newly constituted committees. The people of Hampshire were ordered to bake and brew until the feast of St Peter ad Vincula (1 August). That was a full month after Henry hoped to sail. Clearly he anticipated yet further delays.

  Tuesday 28th

  Chancellor Beaufort was quick to act on his commission to array the clergy. The king dictated – or Beaufort drafted in the king’s name – a letter to be sent to all the archbishops and bishops. By the end of the day, the chancery clerks had written out the necessary copies to be sent to the twenty-one prelates of England and Wales, requiring them

  to assemble with all speed the able and fencible clergy of the diocese … compelling them to be arrayed and equipped according to their estate and means, sparing none, and keeping them in array so as to be ready to resist the malice of the enemies of the realm and Church of England and of the Catholic faith when need be … and to certify in chancery under his seal by 16 July their array and equipment and the number arrayed.70

  Nor were they to restrict their array to the parish clergy. The order expressly stated that the regular clergy were to be included, thereby requiring even those canons and friars who lived in near-monastic institutions to be arrayed. Even those who had exemptions from serving were required to be arrayed. During the king’s forthcoming expedition the clergy were to assist in ‘the defence of the realm and the church and of the faith, for which all Christians are bound to fight if need be to the death’. Quite what the motley crew of canons, precentors, rectors, vicars, priests, friars and hermits looked like when they were arrayed, together with their households, is anybody’s guess, but they assembled in large numbers. And between them they provided a large number of archers. A total of 6,759 eventually gathered in just six dioceses, so probably twice as many archers were arrayed by the clergy as sailed to France with Henry. Those Sunday archery training sessions, compulsory since the reign of Edward III, were now paying off.

  The stream of orders preparing for the campaign continued. John Rothenhale, controller of the household, who had been delegated to find provisions for the expedition, issued a bill straightaway for Sir John Phelip and six other men ‘to take coals, wood, bowls, pots, vessels, and all other things necessary for the scullery of the royal household, as well as carpenters, labourers, carts and horses as needed’.71 He issued a similar order to Alexander Smetheley, yeoman usher of the king’s hall, to procure sufficient ‘timber, carts, horses, litters, saddles, carpenters and labourers’ for his office on the expedition.72 Other orders of Rothenhale included a commission to David Andever to take sea fish in the south and west of England for the royal household, and a commission to Richard Scalle to gather enough bacon for the king’s voyage.73

  Amidst all this organisation and determination, one small, rare chink of personal affection is visible. Today Henry gave an order for Blanche Chalons to receive £20 yearly from the duties levelled on cloth in East Anglia.74 Blanche was the daughter of Hugh Waterton, one of the most trusted of all Lancastrian retainers. Hugh had first served John of Gaunt and then had become treasurer to Henry’s father in 1377. He had remained in the future king’s service for the rest of his life, becoming his chamberlain in 1396 and travelling with him on his crusade to Prussia and his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In 1393 his daughter Blanche had married Robert Chalons esquire, who had also travelled on the crusade to Prussia. Thus she was by inheritance and by marriage intimately connected with Henry’s family. But most of all, she had looked after Henry and his brothers and sisters in the 1390s, when they had been in Hugh Waterton’s guardianship.75

  As Henry is increasingly revealed as a man who desired spiritual blessings and military victory above all else – to reassure him of the justice of his kingship – it is something of a reassurance to find that he had not forgotten those who had looked after him in his youth.

  Wednesday 29th

  Many of those observing the proceedings of the council of Constance must have wavered in their confidence that the prelates would be able to depose the three popes. Things had changed a lot since the last time three popes had been removed (at the council of Sutri, in 1046). There was a more formal election process, so to set aside the pope necessitated the setting aside of the opinions of a majority of the cardinals. Whole kingdoms and ‘national’ interests were now represented by each pope, and so each man had his secular following as well as his cardinals and prelates. And yet the council had done enough to continue to inspire confidence. It had shown enough conviction in its dealings with John XXIII; and Gregory XII had maintained his willingness to resign his title, despite John XXIII’s machinations and subversions. So the council had managed to weather its difficulties – largely due to the leadership of the emperor, the courage of the radical intellectuals who were prepared to elevate the council above the power of any pope, and the compliance of Gregory XII.

  Today was the day that all those who had kept their faith in the council were rewarded. Today was set for the deposition of Pope John XXIII. The sentence had been written, the agreement had been achieved. Now all it required was the performance of the act.

  The man selected to read the sentence was the deep-voiced Martin Porée, bishop of Arras, the chief spokesman of John the Fearless. The pope himself was not present, being in custody at Radolfzell.76 When the emperor was seated, following Mass, the bishop of Ostia signalled for Porée to begin. First he declared that, in the case of a vacancy, the council prohibited anyone taking any steps to fill that vacancy without the assent of the council – a wise precaution. The second decree stipulated that none of the three current popes should ever be re-elected to the papacy. And then came the words of the deposition itself:

  In the name of the Holy and Indivisible Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen. The sacrosanct general synod of Constance, lawfully assembled in the Holy Spirit, invoking the name of Christ and keeping God only before its eyes, has noted the articles formulated and presented in the case against the lord pope, John XXIII … The clandestine departure of the said pope from this city of Constance and the sacred general council at a suspicious hour of the night, in an unsuitable disguise, was and is unwarrantable – a notorious scandal to the church of God and the council, a disturbing obstacle to the peac
e and union of the Church, an act to prolong the schism and a violation of the vow sworn by the same pope John to God and the Church and this sacred council. Pope John was and is a notorious simoniac, a notorious waster of the property and rights of the Roman and other churches, and of other pious institutions, and an evil administrator … By his detestable and dishonourable life and character he has notoriously scandalised the church of God and Christian people … Therefore, for these and other crimes … he deserves to be unseated, removed and deposed from the papacy and all administration, spiritual and temporal, as unworthy, unprofitable and dangerous. And the said holy synod hereby unseats, removes and deposes him, declaring all and every Christian of whatever rank, dignity or condition released from obedience, fealty and obligation to him …77

  That was emphatic. It could have been more so – earlier drafts of the sentence had included charges of adultery, incest, and murdering his predecessor.78 But in the formulation of the final decree it had been decided that the more scandalous charges would bring shame upon the whole Church, and so only those above were read out. They were enough. John XXIII was no longer pope, and no one would ever again address him as one.

  About the time of the pope’s deposition, John Catterick packed his bags and began the journey back to England. Ostensibly he carried a commission from the council to collect papal revenues, but in reality his main purpose was to relay all that had happened back to the king. He may have carried a copy of the deposition with him; the chronicler Thomas Walsingham included an amended version of it in his Chronica Maiora. Walsingham also mentioned that when the news was proclaimed in London, the chest containing the papal revenues in St Paul’s Cathedral was unlocked and emptied.79 The English were only too keen to be rid of John XXIII. Another chronicler, Adam Usk, found out that the pope had originally been charged with crimes far worse than simony and wasting church property. ‘Extraordinary to relate,’ he began, ‘because he [Pope John] was recalcitrant, and because of his former perjuries, homicides, adultery, simony, heresy and other crimes, and because he had twice ignominiously fled in secret in disguise, he was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment’.80