1415: Henry V's Year of Glory

by Mortimer, Ian

The day had at last come. But before Henry went down to his flagship and embarked, there were some last minute necessities. One was a pardon for the earl of March ‘for all treasons, murders, rapes of women, rebellions, insurrections, felonies, conspiracies, trespasses, offences, negligences, extortions, misprisions, ignorances, concealments and deceptions committed by him’.30 No one can have had much doubt that ‘the hog’ (as Gray had called March) or the ‘daw or simpleton’ (as Sir John Mortimer later referred to him) was anything but complicit in the plot to make him king.31 But he had been the one who had informed Henry and that necessitated a reward of some kind. Not to lose his life and lands was an appropriate one.

  Another essential item of business was a royal order to all the sheriffs ‘on pain of grievous forfeiture, for particular causes moving the king and council’ to proclaim that men shall keep watch, night by night, until Allhallows (1 November) to protect the towns as well as the shores, and that ‘no man who holds a public inn shall receive or suffer a stranger to stay more than a night and a day without knowledge of the cause of his abode there’. This was in case of rebels as well as French and Scottish spies. Henry added that any man who did not confess his reason was to be arrested; clearly he had been shaken by the earl of Cambridge’s plot and knew that he was taking a huge risk by leaving the country at this juncture with two of his three brothers.32 The duke of Bedford was the sole potential Lancastrian heir left in England. Henry’s third and final precaution before leaving Portchester Castle was a repeat of his earlier order to array the clergy of the diocese of Lincoln against the Lollards during the king’s absence abroad.33

  Finally Henry went down to the barge that was to take him out to his flagship, the 540–tun capacity Trinity Royal, which was moored between Southampton and Portsmouth. With a crew of three hundred sailors, it was one of the two largest ships in his navy. It had a huge purple sail and the great banner of the Trinity on the main mast, together with streamers a dozen yards long and other smaller flags bearing the arms of St Edward and St George. The top-castle of the mast was decorated with a large gilt-copper crown, a golden leopard was on the prow and on the capstan was a sceptre with fleur-de-lys. As soon as he stepped on board Henry ordered the yard supporting the great sail to be half-raised to indicate his readiness to set out straightaway, and to signal to all the other ships scattered along the coast to start to make their way to the king.

  Henry did not set out immediately. He still had to wait for the ships to gather – and this would take some time. It was reported by eyewitnesses that he had 1,500 vessels in his fleet. In addition, more than 12,000 horses needed to be transported, and in each case the poor animal had to be put into a sling and hoisted on to deck with a crane: this was not a quick or easy task.34 For the next few days the Trinity Royal did not move. In that time she became known as the King’s Chamber. Another vessel – perhaps the Holy Ghost – was functionally named the King’s Hall.35 On these two ships the 101 men of the royal household attended on the king and the members of his council, coming and going from other smaller ships moored nearby – the King’s Larder, the King’s Kitchen and the King’s Wardrobe.

  Thursday 8th

  The first day waiting for the ships to assemble was spent seeing to some final pieces of administration. Diplomatic loose ends needed sorting out. An order was sent to Henry Kays, the keeper of the hanaper in chancery, to pay some money in advance to Dr John Hovingham and John Flete, the ambassadors to Brittany (who had been given their instructions on 28 July).36 A similar order was sent for Philip Morgan to be given 100 marks enabling him to return to the Burgundian court of John the Fearless to conduct ‘secret discussions’. Morgan had been part of the committee on 27 May to discuss this mission; his departure had been delayed by his journey to Calais to prorogue the truce. His instructions, which were formally drawn up by the chancellor two days later, empowered him to treat anew with John the Fearless, seeking to establish exactly what help the duke might offer Henry.37

  As the earl of Arundel, the treasurer of England, was about to sail with Henry, a new treasurer was needed. Henry appointed his friend Sir John Rothenhale, controller of the royal household, to the post.38 New orders were issued allowing the export of tin. And the paperwork allowing the heads of Lord Scrope and Sir Thomas Gray to be transported to their various places of exhibition needed to be drawn up. We might consider medieval society unsophisticated for beheading men and exposing their rotting heads in public but it was sufficiently sophisticated to require eight separate letters to be written to the sheriffs of eight counties ordering them to permit the passage of the said heads to York and Newcastle, where they were to be impaled on spears.39

  Before he set sail Henry made some final grants. To his friend Sir John Gray, younger brother of the executed Sir Thomas Gray of Heton, Henry granted custody of all the family lands during the youth of Sir Thomas’s heir.40 To William Porter, king’s esquire, Henry gave one of Scrope’s Leicestershire manors. To Lord Fitzhugh he gave Scrope’s inn at Paulswharf, London, in addition to his earlier grant of Scrope’s Richmond franchise. Scrope’s estate had by now become something like a displayed carcass, complete with pecking vultures. But it was a hasty and reckless dismembering of an estate – and another thing that Henry would later come to regret. It emerged in later years that Scrope’s family estates were all legally entailed on his father’s male heirs, so they could not be confiscated by the king at will. Henry had no right to re-distribute them among his friends.41

  Sunday 11th

  Nearly all the ships that Henry was expecting had assembled in a vast flotilla around him. He ordered the formal custody of England to be given to his brother John, duke of Bedford, the keeper of the realm. With this formal transfer went the right to summon parliaments and councils, to grant licences for the election of bishops and abbots, to restore and take temporalities and to accept fealty.42 John was instructed to summon a parliament immediately, to meet on 21 October to agree further financial support for the campaign. Then, about 3 p.m., with the handing over of the final documents, the last messengers left the Trinity Royal and the great purple sail was raised to its full height.

  Henry’s voyage was underway. As the ships started to move, a large number of swans settled in the sea and started swimming among the boats. This was seen as a good sign. Less propitious was the smoke that started rising in the sun. Three ships had caught fire. They burnt to the waterline before the fleet left English waters.43

  Monday 12th

  The figure of 1,500 ships has long been accepted by historians. It was estimated by an eyewitness, and it tallies – more or less – with the 1,600 ships mentioned in some French sources. In addition it is a reasonable figure if one considers how many men, horses and supplies were on these ships. Recent historical research in this area – particularly that undertaken by Anne Curry – is most significant. For example, the chronicler who stated that there were 1,500 ships also implied that there were more than 12,000 fighting men in the fleet. Professor Curry has demonstrated this was true by checking the financial records for the wages of the army and correlating these with the numbers of men required by indenture. Her findings are as follows:

  twenty-six peers undertook to provide a total of 5,222 men (including themselves);

  fifty-seven knights undertook to provide 2,573 men;

  lesser captains undertook to provide 1,306 men;

  a further thousand archers were drawn from Lancashire and South Wales;

  650 archers and 50 men-at-arms were summoned from Cheshire (but only 247 of them were paid, suggesting that only this smaller number turned up);

  the royal household provided in the region of 900 men.

  Taking the lower figure of 247 Cheshire archers (a safe minimum), this adds up to at least 11,248 men, of whom 2,266 were men-at-arms. In addition there was a number of other support staff, such as cooks, clerks, chaplains and servants for the lords and clerks for the men-at-arms. The account of the earl of Oxford suggests that it was
usual for the men-at-arms each to bring their own page with them at their own expense.44 So, although these pages do not figure in the royal accounts (being paid by the men-at-arms), it is safer to presume there were as many pages as men-at-arms – in excess of two thousand. Furthermore, there were all the miners, smiths and carpenters whom Henry had ordered to come on campaign: a total of 560 of them. If each lord and knight had a chaplain and two non-combative servants, we can be certain that the minimum number of men with Henry today as he crossed the Channel was more than 14,000 men, not including the mariners. Additional financial records detailing several hundred more fighting men are known to have existed once, being quoted in older historical works. If these are included, then the total number of non-mariners was in the region of 15,000. And, as Professor Curry points out, the travel allowances of horses were regularly taken up, with some lords taking several dozen beasts. There were more horses in the army than there were fighting men.45

  Those 1,500 ships must each have been carrying a minimum of ten men and ten horses, not including mariners. Given that the ships used to patrol the coasts carried between ten men-at-arms for a balinger and forty or fifty for a ship or barge, an army of this scale would have required 1,500 vessels, especially as each man was required to carry food sufficient for three months. Each ship also had to carry heavy artillery and weaponry – millions of arrows and thousands of bows, gunpowder and stone cannonballs – as well as more basic provisions for a siege: such as timber and animals for food in the first days. It was the largest army to leave England since the siege of Calais in 1347 (when Edward III had employed about 32,000 men over the course of a year).46 And at the time it was probably the largest fleet ever to have set out from England. In this context, one can understand Henry’s frustrations and occasional hastiness over the past months. He was taking a massive risk.

  Tuesday 13th

  It was the fishermen off the coast of Boulogne who first noticed the fleet approaching the French coast.47 The region around their town had been ransacked over recent days by the English of Calais, so they were alert to the danger. But one imagines that they looked at the huge fleet in the Channel with considerable alarm. Especially if they believed that it was heading to their own town.

  The men of Boulogne were lucky: Henry was heading elsewhere. At about five o’clock in the afternoon Trinity Royal sailed into the mouth of the Seine and dropped anchor near a small hamlet called Chef de Caux, about three miles from the walls of Harfleur on the north bank of the Seine estuary. The banner of the council was unfurled on the Trinity Royal, calling all the councillors to a meeting. It was decided that a royal proclamation would be issued to all the ships forbidding anyone, on pain of death, from landing on French soil before the king himself, unless they had the king’s express permission. Everyone was to prepare to land early on the following morning; if the men dispersed in search of plunder, or women, the captains of the army were liable to lose control. There was also the heavy risk of men in small groups being picked off by the French defenders. Henry had no need to take such risks at this stage of the campaign.

  A group of men was selected to go ashore that night and to reconnoitre the immediate vicinity. Henry chose the hugely experienced Sir John Cornwaille, and Cornwaille’s brother-in-arms, William Porter, king’s esquire; and Cornwaille’s stepson, the young and talented earl of Huntingdon. With them went Sir Gilbert Umphraville and John Steward, and a number of mounted men-at-arms.48 Prior information from the men who had travelled through Harfleur over the preceding year led Henry to believe there was a hill nearby, Mont Leconte, on which it would be suitable to make a first camp. The expedition was to explore the area and establish first whether there were Frenchmen guarding this hill. Second, they were to find a suitable place for quartering the royal household. They went ashore in the early hours.

  Wednesday 14th

  Henry’s attitude to the landing suggests a high state of anxiety. This is entirely understandable: he had 15,000 men and probably twice as many mariners in an extremely vulnerable position. Years of planning, preparation and reconnaissance were being put to the test. Cautious all the way through, he waited until Cornwaille, Porter and Huntingdon had returned before he began to plan his own landing.

  Those in the ships around him looked at the beach where they were expected to land. They felt uneasy. As the author of the Gesta Henrici Quinti noted,

  the shore was very stony, with large boulders against which the ships were liable to be dashed, and with other smaller stones, pebbles handy for throwing, with which the enemy (had they wished to oppose our landing) could have attacked us and defended themselves. And at the back of the shore, between us and the land, deep ditches had been dug that were full of water; and behind these … earth walls of great thickness, furnished with ramparts and angles in the manner of a tower or castle; and between every two ditches the ground was left intact for the breadth of a cubit, permitting only one man at a time to enter or leave.49

  The site had been chosen because it was thought to be left unguarded. But there was a good reason why: it was very difficult to land a large force here. A few ships could unload here quickly, maybe – but 1,500? The whole process would take such a long time. About a mile away, to the south of Harfleur, there were fewer stones – but that was no easier a landing place as there was a marsh there that led far inland, with ditches and gullies. The narrow tracks through that marsh would have allowed a few men to hold up several thousand.

  Henry and his men took to the barges ‘between the sixth and seventh hour’ – which in this case probably means 6–7 a.m. (reckoning from midnight).50 When Henry landed he fell to his knees and prayed that he might do justice on his enemies. This gesture may have been a spontaneous act – or it may have been a deliberate emulation of his predecessors. It is worth remembering that Edward III had fallen on landing in Normandy on the Crécy campaign, and declared it a welcome embrace from the kingdom of France. This in turn was probably a deliberate emulation of William the Conqueror, who had fallen on landing in England in 1066 and got up with his hands full of sand, declaring he held the kingdom of England in his hands. Also in emulation of past practice, Henry knighted a number of men there on the beach – among them William Porter, Thomas Geney, John Calthorp and John Radcliffe – just as Edward III had knighted his son and other men on landing in 1346.51 Following these ceremonies, he was quickly led to the Mont Leconte, where his priests were able to celebrate Mass, and where the army would camp.

  *

  For the French in the vicinity, there was no question of resisting such a large army. Although the English feared attack, and knew they were hugely vulnerable as they stepped ashore, to stop them would have required a large force of men to be ready to intercept them. The nearest such force (as the crow flies) was one of 1,500 men commanded by Charles d’Albret at Honfleur, on the south side of the Seine. Boucicaut was on the north side of the river – but at Caudebec, about 25 miles to the east.52 He also had about 1,500 men: too few to tackle the English after they had begun to come ashore in large numbers. As for Harfleur itself, there were at most only two small forces present: one hundred men-at-arms under Jean, seigneur d’Estouteville; and thirty-four men-at-arms in the town, under the command of Lyonnet de Braquemont, Olivier de Braquemont and Jean Bufreuil, together with a small number of crossbowmen under Roland de Gérault.53 These forces could hardly take on an army of more than 11,000 fighting men. Three hundred more men-at-arms were mustering on this very day, commanded by the redoubtable knight, Raoul de Gaucourt; but they were still more than three days’ march away from Harfleur. What defensive precautions had already been undertaken were due to the townsmen themselves. Apart from the possibility that de Gaucourt might yet reach the town before the blockade started, the people of Harfleur and the small garrison were on their own.

  Thursday 15th: the Feast of the Assumption

  The problems posed by the landing site meant that it would take several days for all the men, horses, equip
ment and provisions to be taken off the ships. As thousands of men moved in and around the beach, and up the hill to the tents, Henry probably relocated himself to the priory of Graville. Perhaps it was in the church here that he celebrated the feast of the Assumption.

  Outside the burning and looting had already started. Pigs, geese and hens were taken, granaries and houses robbed and burnt. The Englishmen – all with the red cross of St George painted on their surcoats – scattered quickly, searching for plunder.54 After a week of being restricted within small ships, they revelled in being on dry land and able to take what they wanted from the country that they had come to destroy.

  Friday 16th

  Henry had been gathering information on Harfleur for months. Members of his first embassy in 1414 had travelled to France via Harfleur, including Bishop Courtenay, the earl of Salisbury and Lord Grey.55 As we have seen, certain members of the recent embassy had also travelled that way, namely Sir William Bourchier, Sir John Phelip and William Porter. And these were just the ambassadors who had passed through Harfleur; there must have been many other men besides. So Henry knew more or less what to expect when he looked down over the town and port from the hill to the west.

  Harfleur was a medium-sized town, with a population of about five thousand people. A high 2½-mile stone wall, punctuated by two dozen watchtowers and surrounded by ditches, encircled the church of St Martin, the public buildings and houses of the citizens. The wall also enclosed le clos de galées: an inner fortified naval port whose walls were higher even than those of the town. The River Lézarde ran down from the north and divided into two: one part ran around the western wall of the town, like a deep moat; the other ran through sluices in the town walls, through the centre of the town itself and into le clos de galées. This guaranteed a water supply in a siege, and gave power to two mills just inside the walls. There were three gates: the Porte Leure on the west, the Porte Montivilliers on the north, and the Porte Rouen on the south east. Two large towers guarded the water gate leading to le clos de galées; these could raise a great chain between them, preventing the entry of any ships. To the south, on either side of the Lézarde, the town was protected by the marshes that ran down to the sea; these were the same marshes that the English attackers had noticed while waiting to disembark on the rocky shore further to the west.56