by Ed West
But just as the Starks have their rivals in the Boltons, so the Percys were threatened by the Nevilles. They also had a number of smaller but no less proud houses whose dignity had to be appeasaed; in Westeros there were the Karstarks, Flints, Tallharts, Glovers, and Hornwords, while in real life there were the Cliffords, Dacres, de Ros, and the Scropes of Bolton.8
The North has warring hillside tribes often beyond the reach of any law, groups such as the Clans of the Mountains of the Moon who are descendants of First Men who did not submit; they are almost like wildlings, with practices of bride-stealing in common. Again, this has a real life parallel, for the border regions of England and Scotland were long populated by clannish “reiver” families who often lived outside of the law.
Among these notorious border clans were the Scotts, Burns, and Irvines north of the Tweed and the Fenwicks, Millburns, Charltons, and Musgraves on the English side. Some clans were found on both, such as the Halls, Grahams, and Nixons, although in reality the border meant little to border people. Among the most notorious were the Armstrongs who, when the law caught up with them, “melted away on their hardy ponies into the hospitable boggy scrubland.”9*
These families lived beyond the control of either London or Edinburgh, the pacifying effect of the rule of law being non-existent, and so border folk still relied on the protection of their clans; this honor culture perpetuated cycles of violence that spanned and stained generations.
The border people had a culture unique in England that was clannish, stubborn, and exceptionally violent. There were northern ballads a plenty, such as “The Battle of Otterburn” and “Chevy chase” which portrayed a society of personal vendettas and close family networks. The former recalled that:
The Percy and Montgomery met,
That either of other were fain;
They swapped swords, and they twa swat,
And aye the blood ran down between.10
The reivers maintained cousin marriage and blood feuds long after a strong centralized state had stamped these practices out elsewhere. Many of these clans were outlaws and some were lawmen; others were both or either depending on circumstances.
But even noble families would still thieve or murder when it suited them. The Dacres of Cumberland, who had been sheriffs since at least the thirteenth century and Wardens of the Middle March later, were widely suspected of engaging in lawbreaking, but they weren’t the only ones. Raiding and violence was so common on the border that there sprung a tradition whereby truces were arranged in return for “blackmail,” a tribute to border chiefs. The word, which may come either from the Scottish Gaelic blathaich, rent, or more likely from the Middle English male, tribute, in the nineteenth century came to mean any sort of extortion.
The thinly-populated area of the western march from Carlisle to Langholm was known as the Debatable Land, so unsure were people what country they were in, who owned the land, and whose law held sway. This region, with its majestic lakes, is among the most poetic and beautiful on the island, but it has also historically been a place of grinding poverty. (Likewise, the North of Westeros has its “Disputed lands.”)
The border family vendettas were notorious, among them those involving the Johnson clan and their habit of “adorning their houses with the flayed skins of their enemies the Maxwells in a blood feud that continued for many generations.”11 The border folk also long maintained their unique beliefs and superstitions, often to do with witches, who could be detected by the howling of dogs or a warm current of air.
Large numbers of reiver families later migrated to Ulster and then onto the American colonies, playing a leading role in the founding of the United States, Scots-Irish settlers being the most ardently pro-independence group during the American Revolution. They also shaped, in particular, the mountain culture of the Appalachians, “hillbilly” just being border slang for “hill folk.” Many historians and sociologists view the persisitently higher rates of violence among southern whites compared to northerners as being related to the honor culture of the borders, which encouraged a readiness to commit violence, and to become engaged in blood feuds rather than resort to law.12 The clannishness of families such as the Hatfields and McCoys, who conducted a famous feud on the West Virginia-Kentucky border over three decades in the late nineteenth century, is cited as an example. Even today this region has clear cultural differences to the rest of the United States, with surveys of cultural attitudes showing far higher support for using violence in situations other Americans think inappropriate, and strong support for the military.
THE BLOOD OF THE KING
The joust between Henry of Derby and Thomas de Mowbray, arranged for September 1398, attracted people from across western Europe, and for the event Derby commissioned armor from Milan and Mowbray all the way from Bohemia. It was to be the greatest event of the age, and yet at the last minute the king stopped proceedings and ordered both men banished from the kingdom, Mowbray for five years and Derby for ten—or whenever his father died. Mowbray left for Venice and Derby for Paris, where the regent Louis, Duke of Orléans, allowed him to settle under heavy guard. Orléans had his own plans to establish a kingdom in northern Italy and thought Henry would be useful as a destabilizing influence on the English crown in the meantime. The following February, Gaunt passed away, and Richard told the king of France in a letter that he felt “a sense of joy” about his uncle’s death. And now the king had all of his cousin’s lands confiscated, before embarking for Ireland to bring retribution for the killing of Mortimer.
Orléans was supposed to keep a close guard on Derby but he now purposefully let him escape and the new Duke of Lancaster landed in Yorkshire, on a spot called Ravenspur, to reclaim his land—or so he claimed. This was Percy country.
Henry Percy had in 1377 become the first Earl of Northumberland and three years later was put in charge of raising troops in the North; he was also briefly, in 1383, Marshal of England, a role that originally entailed being in charge of the king’s horses but evolved to have a wider scope over royal ceremonies. Percy was also Admiral of the Northern Seas, in charge of the realm’s eastern coastal defenses until it was merged with the position of Admiral of the West in 1412 to become Lord Admiral of England. But the House of Percy felt increasingly threatened by the House of Neville, who had grown in power under the new king.
The Percy and Neville clans had once been friendly, at least until the mid fourteenth century, when both northern magnates engaged in protecting the frontier. And yet the edge to their rivalry was to turn bitter as the Nevilles expanded at the expense of their rivals. In 1382, Percy was commissioned as joint guardian of both marches alongside Ralph Neville, but soon afterwards the two northerners fell out, most likely because Neville was too close to Gaunt, whom Percy disliked. Despite this Percy had married Neville’s sister. Then in 1382, Gaunt humiliated Percy, putting his rival in charge of the east and west marches, so that Neville territory now surrounded them. However, it was Ralph Neville’s elevation to Earl of Westmorland in 1397, putting him on par with the far older, more established family, that lit up the enmity between Percy and King Richard.
And so when Henry of Derby arrived in Percy country the Earl of Northumberland should—and could—have stopped him. He let him pass.
As he headed south, Henry amassed followers and soon realized he could take the crown. Indeed, he had to take the crown or die. Richard was isolated, and when he landed in Wales on July 24, he found that the realm had turned to his rival. Even the Cheshire archers had deserted him. Richard fled to Conwy Castle, sending John Montacute, the Earl of Salisbury and one of the last men loyal to him, to raise a Welsh army.
Montacute’s grandfather William had been Edward III’s closest compainion and had captured Mortimer with him. As a young man the grandson had fought against the pagan Slavs in Prussia alongside Derby, and the latter’s eldest son Henry of Monmouth was entrusted to him after the boy’s mother had died; but despite this he now stood by the king even as his support f
aded. And yet Montacute could raise only one hundred men, and now even the king’s uncle Edmund, Duke of York, who had been placed in charge of the capital, came over to Derby.
It was Percy who lured Richard out of the castle, telling him that his cousin had sworn on the sacraments that he would remain king if only he restored the duchy of Lancaster to his cousin; instead Richard was seized and taken to Chester, and soon the last of his followers abandoned him. On the way down to London, King Richard had tried to escape out a window of the carriage, but to no avail; his fate was sealed. Richard swore revenge against the Percy house and that its head would suffer “bitter death.”
Political instability and violence was a feature of late medieval England and now Richard was on his way back to the city he once ruled as a prisoner of Henry of Lancaster, his fate all too clear—for a king who lost his crown soon enough lost his head. It was a huge and dangerous step to usurp a man chosen by God to be king, but Henry now called on parliament to proclaim him ruler “with their hearts as well as their mouths”; adding, with false modesty, and that if they didn’t “it would not be any great surprise to me.”
Warwick was allowed back from the Isle of Man. The king had wished to be reconciled with Mowbray, but it was too late—he had died of plague in September. Having been captured, Richard refused to give up his crown to his cousin, and so placed it on the ground, symbolically abdicating to God. After a plot to free Richard led by Montacute, numerous supporters were beheaded, Montacute included, and the former king died a few months later. His cause of death was officially declared to be hunger strike, but few believed it.
In the words of historian Nigel Saul: “A dangerous new element of instability had been introduced into politics,”13 and many more men would die before the fighting for the throne was done.
At the coronation, Percy bore King Henry’s sword, the weapon he’d worn on arriving in England, while Sir Thomas Dymoke, the son of Richard II’s champion Sir John, continued the family tradition. The king had commissioned a new royal crown and had himself anointed with special oil but, it was noticed, lice emerged from his hair. When the archbishop gave Henry a ceremonial coin representing his kingship the king-killer dropped it, and it rolled away never to be seen again. It was a sign from God.
King Henry, by overthrowing and most likely murdering the anointed king, had committed something monstrous in many people’s eyes. As in Westeros, where Jaime Lannister is tarnished with the name Kingslayer, the killing of a monarch was a crime of supreme depravity in medieval Europe. His reign was cursed with ill-health and with rebellions in the north and west, numerous assassination plots and increasingly bizarre attempts to put ever-less-convincing Richard impersonators on the crown. Henry’s life would fall apart, and his line would come to a tragic and bloody end.
Percy had been rewarded for his part in the overthrow, made Constable of England and Lord of Man, while the earl’s eldest son Harry “Hotspur” became justiciar of north Wales, responsible for enforcing English law in that region. Northumberland’s brother Thomas, Earl of Worcester, was made steward of the royal household, while the Percy family were also well paid for their part in the coup, a total of £4,900, while his rival Westmoreland received just £146.
But they were discontent, nonetheless. Percy’s heir, known as Hotspur for the speed in which he once launched into the Scottish lines, was widely feted for his great fighting abilities, but he was also impetuous and proud. It was not unusual at the time for people to witness extreme violence even at an early age, and Hotspur had first been on a battlefield at the age of nine, where he would have seen men slashed to death. Knighted at twelve alongside the future Richard II and Henry IV, he was in Ireland on campaign at sixteen and two years later on crusade in Prussia before becoming Warden of the East March at twenty. The following year he went with King Richard on campaign in Scotland.
The border remained volalite, and liable to explode. From 1377 there had been ongoing war between the Percy and Douglas clans. At Otterburn in 1388, Hotspur had attacked the Scots at night under a full moon, having chased James Douglas around the north, partly in order to get back Hotspur’s standard which the Earl of Douglas had taken in a previous skirmish. Although the Scots won, and captured Hotspur, Douglas was mortally wounded.
In 1402. the Percys fought the Douglas clan again, at Homildon Hill, this time facing Archibald Douglas, a grandson of Black Douglas who had inherited the title despite his father being a bastard. Only five Englishmen died in the battle—while five hundred Scots perished just from drowning while trying to ford the Tweed. Douglas lost an eye and was captured, but this began a disastrous series of events for England’s leading houses.
King Henry insulted both Percy and Douglas by insisting that the prisoner be transferred to London. According to border law, unwritten but no less real for that, prisoners should have dignified treatment and were allowed cross-border visits on the honor system, in which they had to give their word to return, the custom called parole (“word” in French). Prison in the south would have been a much more traumatic prospect, a land alien to people from both sides of the border.
And King Henry faced an even bigger problem in the west. A Welsh gentleman by the name of Owain Glyndŵr had begun a rebellion largely motivated against local magnate Lord Grey of Rythin; the two had an old grudge, and Grey had previously got Glyndŵr listed as a traitor after purposely losing his military summons. Glyndŵr was descended from the ancient Princes of Powys, the hilly, landlocked region of Wales facing Mercia (it literally means countryside, related to the words “pagan” or French pays), and now he raised enough support in the hills to have himself proclaimed Prince of Wales. In 1402, Glyndŵr won a great victory at Bryn Glas against a larger English army led by Edmund Mortimer, a great-grandson of Edward III and one of the leading border lords. Mortimer was also the brother of the late Roger, and although Roger had left a son (also confusingly called Edmund), certainly Edmund Mortimer’s claim to the throne was better than that of Henry, Earl of Derby.
Mortimer’s own Welsh troops had now changed sides and the captured English baron was led away into captivity. Yet there he fell in love with and married the Welsh leader’s daughter Catrin and joined Glyndŵr in rebellion, upset that the king had refused to pay the ransom, another miscalculation by Henry. The web of aristocratic family ties dictated the allegiances people followed in conflicts, and as Mortimer’s sister was married to Hotspur, so Percy edged closer to the western rebels.
Finally, in July 1403, Hotspur marched south, recruiting Cheshire archers to his side. The plan was to capture the king’s heir Prince Henry in Shrewsbury, but the monarch reacted quickly and reached the border town with fourteen thousand troops. At the ensuing slaughter young Henry was hit in the face with an arrow but survived after undergoing agonizing treatment. Hotspur was not so lucky; he lifted his visor and then a steel-tipped arrow went through his eye-socket, killing him instantly. Douglas survived but lost a testicle. Eventually the Scotsman was released, in 1407, signing a statement proclaiming his loyalty to Henry, and then went back to raiding immediately.
It was the first time two large armies had fought in England since 1066, and up to five thousand lives were lost—but it would not be the last. After the battle Percy’s brother Thomas, Earl of Worcester, was captured, hanged, and quartered. Hotspur’s corpse was dug up, salted, and put on show in the Shrewsbury pillory, after which his head and intestines were displayed in the north as a warning.
And yet the northerners remained loyal to the Percys, always. Sir William Clifford, Hotspur’s captain, held Berwick castle in his name and was put in charge of his ten-year-old son, another Henry. He refused to hand over Berwick to the king unless the dead lord’s lands were returned to his boy.
Earl Percy himself went into alliance with Glyndŵr and Mortimer in 1405, an agreement in which they would split the country three ways, with Percy king of the North. Another of Edward III’s descendents, Edmund of York’s son Edward of Norwich, w
as also implicated in the plot against the king, denounced by his own sister, and sent to the Tower where he took to translating a treatise on hunting, The Master of Game.
Then in May 1405 Archbishop Scrope of York gathered eight thousand armed men in York to protest about tax and the treatment of clergy, and to support his cousin Northumberland. Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, faced down the rebels and when Henry reached the city he had Scrope executed, being made to ride a mule backwards on his way to his death.
Over 1407-8, Europe was hit by the “Great Frost and Ice,” the coldest winter in a century, and clerks and monks could not write records because the ink froze in their jars “every second word.” Under these harsh conditions of snow and ice, early in the new year Percy raised an army in the north under the banner of Richard II; in doing so he followed his son to the grave.
King Henry had been chasing Percy north when he found that he could not stop without screaming in pain. He then woke up after a nightmare crying “Traitors! ye have thrown fire over me”; he was burning up, a mysterious illness that no physician could understand, and which today remains a mystery, perhaps gangrenous ergotism, a sort of fungal infection, or leprosy.
Percy was now dead and soon Edmund Mortimer was, too, after a siege. The Welsh rebels submitted, their support from France drying up in 1411 when feuding between two factions at the French court exploded into full-on civil war. Although the English had ground out victory in Wales by drowning prisoners and starving the small folk, Glyndŵr disappeared into the mist.
And yet although his enemies were now dust, the king-killer could find no joy. Three years to the day after Scrope was killed he suffered a stroke and could not speak without much difficulty; he spent his last years in agony, his body covered with red pustules and crying out as if on fire. All sorts of stories abounded around the kingdom and beyond about his mysterious illness, which left him screaming in pain, and sometimes, he wondered, if he was dead already, and in hell. He died in 1413, now aged beyond his years, convinced he was suffering divine punishment for the killing of his cousin the king.