1415: Henry V's Year of Glory

by Mortimer, Ian

  44. Wylie, Henry V, ii, p. 106; Barker, Agincourt, p. 238.

  45. Issues, p. 344.

  46. Issues, pp. 344–5

  47. Bellaguet (ed.), Chronique du Religieux, v, p. 589; de Baye, p. 233.

  48. For the feast being at Lambeth, see Chronica Maiora, p. 413. The date given is 1416 but Christmas 1415 is obviously intended, from the positioning of the reference. See also Gesta, pp. 113–14.

  49. Dockray, Warrior King, p. 222.

  Conclusion

  1. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, p. 133. The line was actually written in 1954 according to Curry, Agincourt … Erpingham, p. 9.

  2. Allmand, Henry V, p. 3.

  3. Allmand, Henry V, p. 443.

  4. Curry, Agincourt … Erpingham, p. 9.

  5. Pugh, Southampton Plot, p. 145.

  6. Hardy (ed.), Waurin, p. 391.

  7. Bradbury, Medieval Archer, p. 117.

  8. Issues, pp. 278 (joust), 280 (sparrowhawk), 284 (swordfight, and king’s fool), 285 (‘to a certain woman’).

  9. J. Simmons, ‘Mr Rowse’s Masterpiece’, National & English Review (January 1951), pp. 44–5.

  10. For chess, cards and tables, see Dockray, Warrior King, p. 214.

  11. Dockray, Warrior King, p. 222. He said this at Caen, in 1419, when asked how he justified killing so many innocent people.

  12. Allmand, Society and War, p. 42.

  13. Dockray, Warrior King, p. 214.

  14. Allmand, Henry V, p. 8. The ambiguity in Allmand’s text is clarified in Mortimer, ‘Henry IV’s date of birth and the royal Maundy’, pp. 568–9, n. 7.

  15. Otway-Ruthven, Medieval Ireland, pp. 165, 334, 348–50; ODNB, under John Talbot.

  16. Wylie, Henry V, i, p. 537; PROME, iv, p. 213 (1423); CPR, p. 361.

  17. HKW, ii, pp. 569–70.

  18. Nicolas, Agincourt, appendix, p. 15.

  19. Harriss, Shaping the Nation, p. 592.

  20. Pugh, Southampton Plot, p. 138.

  21. Vale, English Gascony, p. 76.

  Appendix 1

  1. Testamenta Vetusta, i, p. 189, quoting Hume, vol. iii, p. 64.

  2. Bennett, ‘Edward III’s Entail’, p. 608.

  3. For the declaration being in 1386 not 1385, see Mortimer, ‘Richard II and the Succession’, pp. 325–8.

  4. Mortimer, ‘Richard II and the Succession’, pp. 331–3.

  5. For the murder of the duke of Gloucester, see Fears, pp. 142–6; James Tait, ‘Did Richard II Murder the Duke of Gloucester?’, in T. F. Tout and James Tait (eds), Historical Essays by Members of the Owens College Manchester (1902); A. E. Stamp, ‘Richard II and the Death of the Duke of Gloucester’, EHR, 38 (1923), pp. 249–51; R. L. Atkinson, ‘Richard II and the Death of the Duke of Gloucester’, EHR, 38 (1923), pp. 563–4; A. E. Stamp, ‘Richard II and the Death of the Duke of Gloucester’, EHR, 47 (1932), p. 453.

  6. Fears, pp. 205–9.

  7. Riley (ed.), Annales, p. 399 refers to Thomas Mowbray, Earl Marshal, confessing that he was aware of the duke’s plot to rescue the boys. This has been seen as corroboration of Constance’s accusations. However, the chronicler may just have been describing the plot as ‘news of the duke’s intentions’ as a shorthand for the plan. The duke offered to defend himself in a duel to protest his innocence. The ODNB states that he confessed he knew of the plot after an initial denial; I do not know of the source for this, but, even if correct, it does not mean that he was complicit in his sister’s designs.

  Appendix 2

  1. Nicolas (ed.), Privy Council, ii, pp. 150–1.

  2. Nicolas (ed.), Privy Council, ii, pp. 154–5.

  3. See for example that of Lord Scrope of Masham, printed in Foedera, ix, pp. 230–2.

  4. Nicolas (ed.), Privy Council, ii, p. 154.

  Appendix 3

  1. Johnes (ed.), Monstrelet, i, p. 334.

  2. Gesta, pp. 58–9.

  3. Curry, Agincourt, pp. 122–3.

  4. S&I, p. 436.

  5. S&I, p. 434. Barker, Agincourt, p. 215 states that 47 archers were sent back to England.

  6. This is the method used in Barker, Agincourt, pp. 215–16.

  7. Curry, Agincourt, p. 123.

  8. Gesta, p. 59, n. 5; Wylie, Henry V, ii, p. 67.

  9. Wylie, Henry V, ii, p. 67. In addition, it is worth noting that some men seem to have returned with more men in their company than they had at the outset, presumably due to reorganisation of companies during the campaign. This would mean our understanding that these were all ‘reinforcements’ would be wrong.

  10. Curry, Agincourt, p. 123.

  11. The ratio of combatants to non-combatants in the lists of the sick sent home, 1,330 out of 1,693 (79%), compares closely with the ratio of combatants to non-combatants in the army as a whole (between 75% and 78%, depending on the number of Cheshire archers); so we can be confident that these lists describe men of all status groups, occupations and ranks, not just the combatants.

  12. The ‘we can prove …’ statement is to be found in Curry, Agincourt, p. 123.

  13. S&I, pp. 429–30, 433. For the number in his retinue, see Wylie, Henry V, ii, p. 63. He had contracted to provide 960, which is the figure Curry uses, but according to Wylie he actually mustered 798 archers and 246 men-at-arms. Of these a total of 742 men made it back to England; it is not clear how many were invalided home from Harfleur and how many died at the battle.

  Appendix 4

  1. The Gesta is normally regarded as a work of propaganda, written to bolster Henry’s reputation. Anne Curry writes that ‘the purpose of the Gesta was likely to extol to a European audience at the council of Constance the king’s virtues as a Christian prince’ (Agincourt, p. 260). Chris Given-Wilson questioned the assumption that it was a propaganda-related piece in a talk delivered at the University of Exeter in November 2007, pointing out that it was written in Latin, which relatively few contemporaries would have been able to understand. However, as Curry suggests, and as this book shows, Henry’s ambition in 1415 was coupled with his need for divine approbation. It was as clerically orientated propaganda that the Gesta was written, by a priest. One might say that propaganda concerning military miracles – divine intervention in military affairs – had to be written by a priest, in Latin. The language of this book does not invalidate its propaganda purposes.

  2. In Curry, Agincourt, p. 228, the ‘minimum figure’ for the English army is 8,732 fighting men: 1,593 men-at-arms and 7,139 archers. This incorporates her assumption that the lists of those sent back to England with dysentery are complete. It also seems not to account for the 160 Englishmen who had fallen into French hands since leaving Harfleur.

  3. Curry, Agincourt, pp. 326–7; S&I, p. 12.

  4. Nicolas, Agincourt, appendix, pp. 25–6.

  5. S&I, p. 156.

  6. S&I, p. 181.

  7. Curry, Agincourt, pp. 222–8, esp. 226.

  8. Curry, Agincourt, p. 228.

  9. S&I, p. 156. With regard to other retinues, the duke of Alençon seems to have no retinue in Curry’s reckoning, unlike all the other dukes. There may be other hidden retinues within the army. The men from the Marches of Boulogne are mentioned in the Burgundian chronicles (S&I, p. 157).

  Acknowledgements

  In the course of researching and writing this book I have been assisted by many people and several organisations. In particular I would like to thank my editors, Will Sulkin and Jörg Hensgen at Random House, and my agent, Jim Gill, at United Agents. The Royal Literary Fund was extremely generous in supporting me financially during a very difficult period. Grants from two funds managed by the Society of Authors – the Frances Head Bequest and the Author’s Foundation – were similarly crucial to my continuing to work on this book. I am very grateful to all those who showed such faith in this project that they kept me and the family from penury.

  I am very grateful to Stephen Read for his assistance in editing my multiple images of the battlefield at Agincourt in seamless files. Ric Horner kindly provided me with
the image of Archbishop Chichele’s tomb – thanks Ric. I also owe a big thank you to the novelist Hayden Gabriel for several meaningful discussions about the objective correlative as we trudged over Dartmoor. More thanks to Kay Peddle for assistance with picture research. And thanks to my brother David Mortimer for the advice about blacksmiths and smithying.

  More formally, I am grateful to the University of Exeter for continuing to have me as an Honorary Research Fellow and to grant access to a number of research resources and library facilities. I acknowledge the generosity of Professor Anne Curry and her publishers, Boydell and Brewer, in granting permission to quote from her translations in The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations (Woodbridge, 2000).

  With respect to accommodation on research trips, I would like to say a special thank you to both sides of the Gavrilenko family – both in Moretonhampstead (Liz and Laurent) and in Paris (Marie-Thérèse, François and Marie-Pierre). Thanks also to Jay Hammond, Zak Reddan and Mary Fawcett for accommodating me on visits to London.

  Last and most of all, I am very grateful to my wife Sophie for continuing to live with me while I have worked on this book. Living with a historian isn’t always easy. Constantly tumbling through a galaxy of facts, day and night, is extremely disorientating; and writing experimental history is never conducive to a relaxed way of life. But I’m very glad that she has put up with everything – from being burnt at the stake at the Council of Constance, murdered in Paris, beheaded at Southampton, besieged at Harfleur and shot to ribbons at Agincourt. Greater love hath no author’s wife than this.

  Appendix 1

  Edward, Duke of York

  This book portrays Edward, duke of York, as one of Henry’s four closest friends, and thus one of his closest companions, along with his younger brothers and uncles. The relationships between Henry and his three other closest friends – Richard Courtenay, Richard Beauchamp and Thomas Fitzalan – are relatively straightforward and unambiguous. This is not the case with Edward. His entire relationship with the house of Lancaster was complicated to begin with – and grew more so after Henry IV’s return to England in 1399. This, for example, is one eighteenth-century verdict on Edward’s historical reputation:

  This infamous man … had been instrumental in the murder of his uncle the duke of Gloucester, had then deserted [King] Richard by whom he was trusted; had conspired against the life of [King] Henry to whom he had sworn allegiance; had betrayed his associates, whom he had seduced into this enterprise; and now displayed in the face of the world these badges of his multiplied dishonour.1

  For this reason, he has normally been assigned a more distant position in the post-1399 royal circle. But Henry did not regard Edward with such diffidence. In fact, he almost always included him alongside his own brothers as one of the most trusted members of the royal family. Thus a note explaining his apparent shifts of loyalty prior to 1415, which have led some writers mistakenly to portray him as a disloyal or unreliable man, is necessary.

  Edward was born in about 1373. He was the eldest son of Edmund of Langley (d. 1402), duke of York, the fifth son of Edward III. His mother was Isabella of Castile (d. 1393), the daughter of Pedro the Cruel, the ousted king of Castile. Publicly, there were two other children of the union: Constance, who married Thomas Despenser (d. 1400), earl of Gloucester; and Richard of Conisborough (d. 1415), earl of Cambridge. However, as noted in the text, it is possible that Richard of Conisborough was the product of an adulterous liaison between John Holland and the duchess of York in the 1380s.

  Edward of York was not born high in the order of succession. According to Edward III’s entail of October 1376, ahead of him stood Richard II, John of Gaunt, and Henry of Bolingbroke, as well as his own father.2 His position was made potentially even lower in 1386 when Richard declared that the earl of March and his younger brother, Roger Mortimer, were next-inline to the throne (these boys being Edward III’s descendants through his second son’s only daughter, Philippa).3 However, by 1393 at the latest, Richard had changed his mind and set the earl of March back on the lowest rung of the royal family.4 In that year he began to see Edmund of Langley as his heir and, as Edmund was old, his son Edward was the man most likely to be the next king. That Richard was able to overlook John of Gaunt and Henry of Bolingbroke in this reckoning was due to John’s age and Richard’s personal antipathy to Henry which caused him to plot how to remove Henry from the succession.

  Richard II liked Edward. In 1390 he created him earl of Rutland. In 1395 he created him earl of Cork and in 1397 he raised him to a dukedom, creating him duke of Aumale. The following year he went so far as to adopt him as his brother, and suggested to William Bagot that he might resign the throne in Edward’s favour. (Richard seems to have imagined a future in which he was the Holy Roman Emperor and Edward of York king of England.) When John of Gaunt died in February 1399 and Henry of Bolingbroke was exiled for life two months later, it looked as if old Edmund of Langley was indeed next in line to the throne, and that Edward would follow him. That same month Richard II drew up a will in which he made it clear that this was the order of succession. It seems likely that he drew up an entailment at the same time settling the throne on Edmund and then his sons Edward and Richard of Conisborough. Edward went to Ireland with the king shortly afterwards, and his father was guardian of the realm when Henry of Bolingbroke landed at Ravenspur at the beginning of July 1399. Also in Ireland with him and the king was the young Henry of Monmouth – the future Henry V – of whom Richard II was fond.

  As is well known, Duke Edmund offered no opposition to the return of Henry IV. In so doing he abdicated any right to inherit the throne. In line with his father’s acquiescence, Edward also abandoned the king, despite being his adopted brother, and accepted the loss of his title of duke of Aumale in the subsequent parliament. Also in that parliament he defended himself against accusations of complicity in the murder of his uncle, Thomas, duke of Gloucester. As became clear from John Hall’s confession in that same parliament, two of Edward of York’s valets had been present and one named Francis had helped with the actual killing – but that did not equate to Edward’s guilt. The duke of Norfolk had also been present and yet he had clearly tried to stop the murder. It was Richard II’s own instructions which were to blame, not the valets who carried them out.5 Edward may not even have known of the king’s order in this regard. He certainly knew he could do nothing to stop him.

  It is at this point that traditional readings of Edward tend to go awry. The problem is a general failure to examine the man from a biographical point of view. Edward has always been seen in relation to Richard II or Henry IV – as if the kings’ points of view were the only ones which needed to be understood. But Edward’s key relationship after Richard II’s fall was not with the new king, Henry IV, but with his son, Henry V. The two men were friends. They were closely related and shared a passion for the English language and hunting: Edward wrote a version of Gaston Phoebus’s Book of the Chase in English and added various chapters of his own composition, and dedicated the whole finished work to Henry. They were also both deeply religious. So when the old duke of York allowed Henry of Bolingbroke to march against Richard II in 1399 on the grounds of justice, Edward was inclined to support this not only out of loyalty to his father, and probably a sense that he was right with regard to the question of justice, but also out of loyalty to his friend, Henry of Monmouth, the future Henry V.

  Edward’s shift of trust was only a betrayal with respect to Richard II. There were earlier personal ties with the Lancastrians. These he reinforced in January 1400. According to the Chronicque de la Traïson et Mort de Richart Deux Roy Dengleterre, Edward was at the meeting on 17 December 1399 in the abbot’s lodging at Westminster Abbey, on which occasion five lords, three churchmen, one knight, Richard II’s physician and an esquire planned to assassinate Henry IV and his sons in the plot which became known as the Epiphany Rising. However, Edward’s role at that meeting was almost certainly nothing more than gathering
information. This he divulged to Henry IV, allowing the king to save his own and his sons’ lives.6

  Edward inherited the dukedom of York on the death of his father in 1402. The following year he joined the prince in fighting in Wales against Glendower, racking up large sums in unpaid wages. He did not fight for the Percy family at Shrewsbury in 1403, even though they too were complaining bitterly about unpaid wages. But despite this loyalty, it is widely accepted that he betrayed the Lancastrians in 1405. In February of that year his sister Constance accused him of being the instigator of the plot to remove the Mortimer heirs from Windsor Castle. Immediately afterwards she declared that he had tried to murder the king at Eltham, either by scaling the walls or attacking him on the road. Far from acknowledging either of these accusations (as his entry in ODNB claims), the duke is said to have immediately thrown down his hood in acceptance of the challenge by his sister’s champion, to prove his innocence. However, he was arrested on the king’s order and locked up in Pevensey Castle while the king decided what to do with him. He petitioned for his release but was not set free until October 1405. After being freed, he remained unswervingly loyal, fighting in Wales again with Henry and doing so much to inspire the troops that Henry made a special mention in parliament of his great service.

  Was there any wavering of his loyalty to the Lancastrians in 1399–1400 or in 1405? As neither Henry IV nor Henry V ever held Edward guilty of complicity in the Epiphany Rising, it is likely that he was indeed their agent amidst the plotters, and far from wishing to punish him they owed him their lives. In 1405 his supposed wavering of loyalty was almost entirely the result of his sister’s accusations, and there is a high probability that these were groundless.7 The instigator seems to have been Constance all along. She was the widow of Thomas Despenser, who had been killed for his part in the Epiphany Rising; it would be understandable if she felt a grudge against her brother, especially if we are right in saying that Edward had betrayed that plot and indirectly caused her husband’s death.