Henry, left in the control of Warwick and Suffolk, his new steward of the household,51 spent the late summer of 1434 at Kenilworth.52 Approaching the age of thirteen he was already eager to participate in affairs of state. Childish meddling this may have been, but it now caused its own crisis of confidence for the council in England. Throughout the minority the main instrument of conciliar government, the privy seal, had been static at Westminster, like the government to whose acts it gave expression. From 10–14 November 1434 writs under the privy seal were suddenly changed to dating at Cirencester53 and the explanation is found in a council minute of 12 November.54 ‘Motions and stirrings’ had been made to Henry which had caused him ‘to depart and choose, namely in matters of great weight and difficulty’, suggesting to his alarmed council that he was intending to ‘change the rule and governance that afore this in his tender age hath by his great council in parliament and else been advised and appointed for the good and surety of his noble person and of this land’. Consequently the whole council arrived post-haste to confront him at Cirencester, armed with a lengthy protestation which the chancellor read out to the boy word for word. The tone was remarkably deferential and the fundamental implication obvious: if he wished to end the conciliar rule of his minority there was nothing they could do to stop it. Nevertheless, while stressing his ‘great understanding and feeling as ever they saw or knew in any prince or other person of his age’ and their belief that he was likely to reach a stage of maturity adequate to assume the responsibilities of kingship ‘as soon as any is possible by nature’, they made it crystal clear that, in their collective wisdom, anyone who put him in conceit or opinion that such a stage had yet been reached was guilty of action prejudicial and perilous to him and to his people. Twenty-one other councillors, headed by the cardinal, heard the chancellor, the bishop of Bath and Wells, read out this protestation, which Henry, according to the record, willingly accepted. He gladly undertook for the future not to agree or assent to any such ‘motion or stirring’ again, until he had consulted the great or continual council. The specific nature of the offending initiative is shrouded in mystery, but Gloucester’s name alone is conspicuous in its absence from the protesting council thus assembled in Henry’s presence. Had he been responsible for Henry’s throwing off conciliar restraint? In spite of Warwick’s increased powers over the previous three years, Henry had clearly outwitted his immediate official entourage, because both Warwick and Suffolk, the two chief councillors about the king’s person, were present and subscribed to the protestation.
Henry’s inevitable involvement in affairs of state, other than in a ‘dignified’ capacity, was in fact not far distant. He appears to have been kept in the West until Easter 1435 and then to have spent that whole summer hunting in Rockingham forest, staying at Higham Ferrers castle until Michaelmas 1435.55 It was Bedford’s death in September which began his participation in affairs of state. A council warrant of 1 October 1435 recorded his presence, his first, at a meeting of the continuous council, held at Kennington, which included Gloucester, the cardinal, Warwick and Huntingdon. It met urgently to appoint a new Captain of Calais, Richard Wydeville, in place of the deceased Bedford.56 This exactly accords with views of the council expressed to the Norman estates round about his fourteenth birthday, two months later, that they had decided he should henceforth be party to and constantly attend to affairs of state.57 As further evidence of his participation there is a privy seal writ, dated for the first time in the reign at a royal palace other than Westminster, on 10 April 1436, which may have been his very first official act of state: the presentation of his ‘beloved chaplain’, Doctor William Aiscough, to the parish church of Ditton in the diocese of Ely during the vacancy of the bishopric.58 From 21 July 1436 the privy seal once more became mobile, with writs sealed at Canterbury, where Henry is known to have been, attending the departure of his uncle Gloucester on an expedition to Calais to make war on his defaulting ally the duke of Burgundy.59 While still at Canterbury on 28 July he personally granted an important part of Bedford’s lands in England, the manor of Canford and town of Poole in Dorset to Cardinal Beaufort, ‘our great-uncle for his great services’ for life, rendering nothing for them, and he simply signed the warrant ‘Henry’ at the bottom.60 On 5 August, at Merton priory, he granted prebends to his clerk and chaplain Thomas Lisieux and to Duke Humphrey’s dean of the chapel Richard Wyot, again signing the instrument with his own hand, ‘Henry’, at the top left of the document, the normal position for the royal sign manual.61 From early October 1436 his itinerary can henceforth be followed from the dating clauses of instruments of government. His signet seal, released from the custody of his uncle Gloucester, reappeared in use at Eltham palace on 8 January 1437.62 Also from August 1436 members of the council ceased to sign measures passed in the council, which had been the normal method of authentication of acts of state during the minority. That minority was now coming to an end.
Henry’s initiation into affairs of state thus came just too late for him to exercise any influence over the crucial course of events in France which began in the spring of 1434, leading to the tripartite Congress of Arras, formally opened early in August 1435, and to a separate peace, concluded in September 1435, between Charles VII and the principal English ally, Philip of Burgundy. French-Burgundian negotiations began at Chambéry in February 1434, as a continuation of interminable family efforts to heal the Armagnac-Burgundian rift of 1419 in which the French king’s mother-in-law, Queen Yolande of Aragon,63 had laboured ever since Charles’s succession. This specific occasion was Burgundy’s presence in Chambéry for the marriage of his cousin Louis count of Geneva.64 It was at a further family gathering at Nevers in January 1435 that what turned out to be the final terms of the Congress of Arras were agreed between Burgundy on the one hand and Charles VII’s ambassadors on the other. Offers made on behalf of Charles VII for public atonement and reparation for his share in the death of Burgundy’s father, Duke John the Fearless, in 1419, were accepted, and it was decided that if the English could not be brought to terms, Burgundy was to get all the lands pertaining to the French crown on both banks of the Somme, the county of Ponthieu, the towns of Montreuil, Doullens, Saint-Riquier and all other places on the side of Artois and Flanders. This was to be subject to homage, but performance of homage was to be delayed for face-saving during Philip’s life-time. The sovereignty would pass to Burgundy in perpetuity unless Charles VII redeemed these lands for the sum of 400,000 ecus d’or. Various possible Valois-Burgundian marriages were also discussed. A journée was fixed for Arras on 1 July 1435 and if Henry VI’s government of the minority refused to entertain plans for peace and rejected reasonable offers, then Burgundy, saving his honour, would sign a separate agreement with Charles VII. This was asking the impossible from the English negotiators so the subsequent peace negotiations at Arras were doomed to failure. The English council could have no authority to agree to any settlement. They had to maintain the king’s ‘right’, including the claim to the French throne, to the full. All they could hope for from the negotiations were temporary expedients to postpone a final settlement until Henry came of age and could decide for himself.
Burgundy’s defection aroused the bitter anger of public opinion in England and greatly moved the young Henry. When the duke’s emissaries were sent to London in late September 1435, to attempt to explain and justify their master’s treachery, they went in fear of their lives. Their letters, when opened before the king, were found to be addressed to Henry, for the first time, as mere king of England and not as Philip’s sovereign lord. The significance of this was not lost on the boy and caused his eyes to fill with tears which ran down his cheeks. He said he feared for the whole future of his dominions in France because of this Burgundian reconciliation with his adversary.65 Even twenty years later the thought of his ‘good uncle’ of Burgundy’s treachery still rankled.66 The duke of Alençon’s emissary, who had two conversations with him in London early in 1456, reported that he then
declared that Burgundy was the one man in the world on whom he would most wish to make war and that he would indeed yet do it if only he lived long enough, ‘because he abandoned me in my boyhood, despite all his oaths to me, when I had never done him any wrong’.67 This incident provides some insight into the character of Henry. For once his feelings were revealed. It is natural to assume that his coronation and anointing as King of France would have made a lasting impression on the nine-year-old boy, and now the emotional reaction of the adolescent shows how deep was his conviction of his own right to France. The fact that twenty years later he had still not forgotten Burgundy’s betrayal confirms his sense of injury and also reveals a perhaps unexpected, unchristian and unforgiving nature. On the more practical level he showed that he was well enough informed to understand the significance and danger of Burgundy’s volte face. His presence at Canterbury the following year, to speed his uncle Gloucester at the outset of his campaign against Burgundy, shows his support for that warlike policy and his wish twenty years later to make war on Burgundy shows him as no pacifist, even though he had by then proved to be no practical soldier.
1 R.P., IV, 337 (15 November 1429).
2 P.P.C., IV, 12.
3 Ibid., IV, 89, 99, 107, and chronicle references in Stubbs, III, 115, and Ramsay, I, 437.
4 P.P.C., IV, 91.
5 Ibid., 104, 105–6 (18 November 1431).
6 First admitted and sworn to the council on 30 November 1430 with the approval of all existing members except the chancellor and treasurer, then absent. The treasurer subsequently agreed (ibid., 108).
7 A. J. Otway-Ruthven, The King’s Secretary and the Signet Office in the XV Century (Cambridge 1939), 13–14, 33–4.
8 P.P.C., IV, 38.
9 The petition printed in P.P.C., IV, 67, minuted ‘R.H. we have granted this bille’ and dated there 13 September 1430 (9 Henry VI) is in fact 9 Henry V, 1421. The original is in B.L. Cotton Vespasian F. iii fol. 5, ‘Royal and Noble Autographs’, No. 6.
10 P.R.O., C.81/1367/1.
11 P.P.C., IV,110.
12 Ibid., 102 (26 February 1432). C.P.R., 1429–1436, 187.
13 Ill on 30 November 1430 (P.P.C., IV, 108); unable to open parliament on 12 January 1431 (R.P., IV, 367).
14 Ibid., IV, 392.
15 P.P.C., IV, 100–1.
16 Ibid.., 104–5.
17 R.P., IV, 389.
18 Ibid., 390–2, P.P.C., IV, 162–3.
19 Stevenson, Wars, II, 442.
20 P.P.C., IV, 132–7 (council minutes, 29 November 1432).
21 R.P., IV, 371, wrongly printed in P.P.C., IV, 279–80 under the date 8 July 1434.
22 £20 to be paid to Gilles being about the person of the king 28 August 1432. P.P.C., IV, 128. Agreement on his return to Brittany in spite of the very great and singular pleasure the king had in his company P.P.C., IV, 278 (Gravesend 6 July 1434).
23 Stevenson, Wars, II, part I, 218–62.
24 P.P.C., IV, 257; R.P., IV, 420.
25 P.P.C., IV, 218.
26 Ibid., 175 (11 August), although Scrope was ill and confined to his chamber on 15 December (R.P., IV, 422).
27 This could have been as early as 20 April, but Suffolk was first referred to as steward on 14 August 1433 (R. L. Storey, ‘English officers of State’, B.I.H.R., XXXI [1958], 89).
28 R.P., IV, ‘Domum ipsirum Communium’.
29 Ibid., 423 (24 November).
30 Ibid., 424–5.
31 Ibid., 423–4.
32 P.P.C., IV, 185–6.
33 R.P., IV, 446, the other members being the bishops of Rochester and Bath (the chancellor), the earls of Huntingdon, Warwick, Stafford, Suffolk and Northumberland, Ralph Lord Cromwell (the treasurer) and John Lord Tiptoft.
34 Ibid., 425–6.
35 Ibid., 420–1, 432–9.
36 B.L. MS Harley 2278, the original book presented to the king: dedication on fol. 119V.
37 First printed in Archaeolgia, XV, 65–71 and in Dugdale’s Monasticon (ed. Caley and Ellis, 1821), III, 99.
38 P.P.C., IV, 210–13.
39 Ibid., 213–16.
40 Ibid., 226–7.
41 Ibid., 228–9.
42 Ibid, 229–32.
43 Figures in R. Somerville, History of the Duchy of Lancaster, I (London 1953), 206, 208, with details of lands 339–40.
44 P.P.C., IV, 227.
45 Ibid., 243–4, referring to R.P., IV, 423–4 (see above p. 72).
46 P.P.C., IV, 232–9, 244–5, 247–54.
47 He was still at Gravesend on 6 July (ibid., 278).
48 Delivered into Suffolk’s custody on 21 July 1432 (ibid., 124).
49 Agreement of 15 August 1433 (Foedera, X, 566–63).
50 At Gravesend on 1 July (P.P.C., IV, 259–61).
51 Powers granted to these two and the officers about the king ‘for evident causes and necessity’ to move him as the case may require, Gravesend 1 July (ibid., 261).
52 John Benet’s Chronicle, ed. G. L. & M. A. Harriss in Camden Miscellany, XXIV, 184.
53 P.R.O., C.81/699/2977–2983; C.P.R., 1429–1436, 450.
54 P.P.C., IV, 287–9.
55 Benet’s Chronicle, 184.
56 P.R.O., C.81/1545/55 at Eltham.
57 See below p. 88.
58 P.R.O., C.81/702/3262.
59 P.R.O., C.81/703/3365–3377; E.404/52/385; London Calendar of Letter Books Letter Book, K, 206.
60 P.R.O., E.28/57, dated 28 July, 14 Henry VI.
61 P.P.C., IV, 345 from B.L. Cotton Vespasian F. iii fol. 7b; P.R.O., C.81/703/3378, 3379 (the privy seal writs).
62 P.R.O., P.S.O. 1/5/230.
63 Daughter of John I of Aragon, m. 1400 Louis II of Anjou, king of Sicily, who died 1417. Their daughter, Marie of Anjou, betrothed from 1413 to Charles of Ponthieu who became King Charles VII.
64 Eldest son of Amadeus VIII duke of Savoy, who had married Philip’s aunt, Mary of Burgundy.
65 Monstrelet, chap, cxci, col. V, 192, and Marie-Rose Thielemans, Bourgogne et L’Angleterre: relations politiques et économiques entre les Pays-Bas bourguignons et L’Angleterre, 1435–67 (Brussels 1966), 65–7.
66 Philip the Good’s first wife (died 8 July 1422) was Michelle of France, daughter of Charles VI and sister of Henry VI’s mother. ‘Bel oncle’ was the mode of address he used for Burgundy as for Beaufort and Gloucester and for Charles VII after he ceased to be ‘our adversary of France’ from 1444 (Stevenson, Wars, II, part i, 250, 262).
67 ‘Parce qu’il m’a abandonné dans ma jeunesse, combien qu’il m’ait fait le serment, et sans que oncques lui eusse meffait’: quoted by Beaucourt, vi, 137, from the deposition of Edmond Gallet, MS fr. 18441, f. 112v.
Part III
MAJORITY RULE
Chapter 5
THE ATTAINMENT OF POWER
From 13 November 1437 the full powers of personal kingship in England were formally and fully restored and vested in Henry of Windsor, albeit he was still scarcely sixteen years old. This has been disputed by some historians, who believe that the council of the minority were determined to cling to power as long as they possibly could. The official records of the event and subsequent detailed workings of government show that this was not so. By November 1437 Henry had already undergone a two-year period of initiation into the conduct of affairs of state, begun soon after the death of his uncle Bedford in the autumn of 1435. Traditionally a major part of the duties of personal kingship consisted in granting or refusing requests submitted in the form of petitions: for grants of land, money, offices, benefices, annuities, pensions or pardons of crime. But a surprising further variety of state matters could be couched in the form of a petition, all things which in a period of active, adult kingship only the king’s personal grant could make effective. Petitions, equally from the highest in the land or the humblest, could only reach the king via those who had access to his person, the normal channels being either through his council or through his household chamberlain.1 He could signify his will by writing his sign man
ual on the document, or by the mere act of handing it to the head of one of his writing departments, his chancellor, the keeper of his privy seal, or his secretary who kept his signet seal. Alternatively he could hand it to the household chamberlain. In the case of the latter, who was most constantly with the king, but did not control his own writing office, this officer would himself sign the document for authentication before it was passed on to the appropriate writing department. Such was the traditional machinery, but the unique situation of supreme power being gradually transferred from a council to a king from 1435 led to the development of a further method for Henry. A privy seal clerk, who was already serving as clerk to the council, was now employed additionally to maintain contact between council and king, and he began to endorse or subscribe the petitions with a note of the date, place and people present at the time when Henry signified his will in the matter.
Henry VI Page 14