The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King

by Mortimer, Ian

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  If Henry could draw any hope from his situation, then it was through his father’s example of how to behave when out of favour with the king. On every occasion when Richard had either accused John of treason, or tried to murder him, John had resolutely and firmly responded with a declaration of his unfailing loyalty. Indeed, he was so adamant and consistent that we can hardly doubt that he was genuinely loyal, even if his motive was increasingly to secure the succession of his son. Henry now followed his father’s example. If he had objected to Richard’s treatment of him he would only have made matters worse.

  Parliament was summoned by the duke of York to meet at Westminster at the end of January 1395. With so many lords in Ireland with the king, or in Gascony with John, only thirty-seven peers were summoned, about two-thirds of the total.32 Henry was restored to his place among the lords appointed to receive petitions, but few were presented. Nor were any statutes enrolled. The only important business of the parliament was granting yet another subsidy to cover the king’s expenses in Ireland and discussing a curious document which appeared one day nailed to the door of Westminster Abbey. This was the famous Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards, the followers of the church reformer John Wycliffe. The document, written in English, put forward ten statements of faith. Among these were the idea that faith, hope and charity were driven out of the church through the possession of worldly wealth by the clergy; that priestly celibacy encouraged unnatural levels of lust, and should not be imposed; that nuns’ vows of celibacy led pregnant nuns to kill their children at birth; that modern priesthood bore little or no resemblance to that espoused by Christ; that confession led to arrogance among the clergy; that transubstantiation was a lie; and that all warfare was against the teaching of the New Testament. Although later generations of Englishmen shared several of these views, they were shocking in 1395, and to present them in this fashion was even more disturbing. The lords and prelates present at the parliament gathered together in two groups on 13 February and sealed two letters to the king asking him to return to England to attend to the threat to the church posed by these heresies. Henry was among those who set his seal to the letter from the lords, his first recorded action against heretics.33

  When parliament broke up two days later, Henry lingered in London. With his wife dead and his father in Gascony, there was little reason to return to Hertford, and probably a great deal of heartache in revisiting Peterborough, where he had spent so much time with his wife. Instead he spent his time at court with his uncle the duke of York and listening to music and poetry.34 Four of the six musicians who had accompanied him on his pilgrimage were still in his household, and three others had joined them, so that now his retained performers included four pipers, a trumpeter and two ‘minstrels’.35 As for poetry, Geoffrey Chaucer had joined Henry, temporarily at least. Like other members of Henry’s household, Chaucer received a furred robe for Christmas 1395, and a present of £10 from Henry’s own hands.36 It is not hard to picture the wizened poet, a sparkle in his eye, engaging the wistful Henry with his Canterbury Tales, alluding to the ‘parfit’ and ‘gentil’ soldier of Christ who had fought in Prussia, Lithuania, Russia, Granada, Algezir and other such places.

  Six weeks later, at the beginning of April, Henry left London. Tracing his movements is not easy; his accounts give very few direct references to his whereabouts. Instead we have to build up a picture of where he was by payments which correspond with his lifestyle. For example, as saddles were repaired for him at Leicester, we may presume that he had passed that way, if only briefly. Likewise, when he was paying the expenses of his London bargemen, it is likely that he was travelling up and down the Thames. However, even these payments do not give us sufficient information. In order to get a more complete picture, we need to consider payments such as those for his ‘cotton’. The section of his accounts entitled Necessaria includes many miscellaneous payments, including several for quantities of cotton together with disposable glass urinals. That Henry used cotton as toilet paper is suggested by the Boke of Nurture written by John Russell, servant to one of Henry’s sons, who states that the chamber attendant should make sure that ‘there be blanket [undyed woollen cloth], cotyn or lynyn to wipe the nethur ende’ for the lord in the privy.37 Cotton, however, was expensive – at 4½d or 5d per pound too expensive for common men to use for wiping the ‘nether end’ – so where we find payments for ‘cotton for the lords stool’, or ‘cotton and urinals’, it indicates that Henry was present (or expected soon to arrive) at the places where the cotton was bought. It means that we end up tracing the movements of the future king in the most undignified way – like an animal, by his droppings – but biographers must sometimes stoop to such levels.

  From London, Henry went to Gloucester, where he was in early April. He did not stay long, for he was at Tutbury (eight miles south-west of Derby), on Maundy Thursday, when he distributed alms and clothes to the poor, and washed their feet with his own hands, marking the religious feast which was also his birthday.38 He seems then to have gone north to Pontefract (where cotton was unavailable; he had to make do with wool) and returned south to Leicester, where his two older sons were staying. The eldest, Henry, had in fact been ill in March, and Henry had sent an express messenger from London to see him, probably carrying medicines.39 Taking leave of his sons, he returned to London via Higham Ferrers and St Albans, arriving at the end of May. On the anniversary of Queen Anne’s death, he gave a cloth of gold at Westminster, and on the anniversary of his own wife’s death he sent as many of her gowns as accorded with her age at death – twenty-four – to Leicester, where she was buried.40

  In London we have a few further insights into Henry’s surroundings. Black mourning curtains and two hundred curtain rings were purchased for his bed, which thus appears to have been a four-poster.41 Two books of his, which had been damaged, were rebound. He paid 33s 4d for ‘four tapetis, called carpets’. Rose water from Damascus – sometimes mixed with wine – was purchased for him, and a pewter bottle was bought specially to take the said rose water to Hertford Castle, to which he seems to have withdrawn for a few days. Interestingly, we read also of a ‘stool of iron in store for the lord’s chamber’ being mended and newly covered (probably in velvet) at a cost of 7s 6d. Its meaning and high value become clear when we read in the next entry of a payment for a new brass basin to put in it, and three pounds of cotton bought at the same time. This is the earliest known entry to a portable close-stool, of the type which became very popular among the upper classes a century later.42

  Richard returned from Ireland in May 1395 and went to Leeds Castle in Kent. He summoned Henry to a royal council at Eltham on 22 July. Henry accordingly took his barge from the city down the Thames.43 At Eltham he met the ageing chronicler Jean Froissart, who had returned to England to present a book of his poems to the king. The purpose of the council meeting, however, was serious. The lords of Gascony had objected to the king granting Gascony to John of Gaunt. It was an unalienable inheritance of the king of England, they claimed. Their view was supported by the legal opinions voiced at that time, that Edward III had guaranteed that Bordeaux would never be granted to any but the eldest son of the king of England. Thomas, duke of Gloucester, broke from this consensus and insisted that John’s two Gascon representatives should speak. They declined. Silence fell. The bishops present decided that the matter should be referred to the two royal dukes. Thomas declared that it would be a ‘strong measure’ for the king to revoke his grant, which had been made with the unanimous assent of the council. Henry dutifully supported his father’s interest, saying ‘good uncle, you have spoken well and justly explained the matter, and I support what you have said’. Froissart adds that three-quarters of the council there gathered was against them. So Thomas and Henry left the king’s chamber, went into the hall and demanded food, and sat down to eat by themselves.44

  Henry did not stay with the king much longer. Even before the council meeting he had once more been very obviously
ignored as a potential leader of the embassy to France. He was still at Eltham on 26 July but left shortly afterwards. He seems to have travelled to Hertford, Coventry and Nuneaton, and only in September appeared again at court, witnessing royal charters on the 11th, 22nd and 26th.45 His purpose in attending Richard at that time was at least in part his own business: to secure for his son part of his mother’s inheritance.46 Having done so, he wandered off again, the lack of coordination in his household being notable by a payment to a servant sent from London with two horses and new clothes to ‘look for Henry at Salisbury, then at Kingston [Lacy] in Dorset’ before finding him at Plympton in Devon.47 On 16 October he was at Plymouth.48 It seems Henry had travelled down to the West Country port through which he could expect his father to return. He remained there for some weeks. At the end of October he was still at Exeter. Not until the end of November did he return to London.49

  It is difficult to avoid connecting this wandering with a certain lack of direction in Henry’s personal life. It is of course entirely possible that he visited these places – as far north as Pontefract and as far west as Plympton – on official business. He was, after all, head of the family in his father’s absence. But it is equally possible that this travelling represents a wish to be away from court, and away from places reminiscent of his life with Mary. Although Henry attended the annual tournament at Hertford to celebrate Christmas, this period of uncertainty seems only to have come properly to an end when he heard that his father was returning by land, and hurried to the south-east to welcome him.50 On or just before 1 January 1396 father and son were reunited at Canterbury, and no doubt unburdened each other of their respective woes. For John there was the double disappointment of being both unsuccessful in Gascony and failing in health. For Henry there was the double disappointment of grief and being ignored by his cousin. Music, reading and jousting in themselves were not enough.

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  When John met the king in early 1396, he saw for himself why Henry had avoided court for much of the last year. Despite the fact that he (John) made a special visit to see Richard at King’s Langley, there was no great welcome. The king did not take the Lancastrian livery collar and put it around his own neck as he had done before. His reception was cold, and obviously so to all present. Walsingham noted that it was ‘without love’ that the king acknowledged his uncle’s return.51 John left court immediately, and went to Lincoln, where Katherine Swynford was staying. There he did the unthinkable. He proposed to her, his mistress, a commoner. In February they married.52

  The romantic shimmer which distorts our view of the age of chivalry has inclined many people to see this as the zenith of a great romance: that despite their social inequality, John threw everything aside to marry the love of his life. Although he certainly loved Katherine, this is a misrepresentation of the facts.53 Katherine was now approaching fifty – old for a woman in medieval England – and she was not even the ‘love of his life’; in his will he requested to be buried with his first wife, Henry’s mother. Nor can we say he married her so that she would be well treated after his death; she was never likely to end up destitute and cast aside – Henry would always take care of his mother’s maidservant and his own nanny. Rather we should bear in mind that a medieval marriage was above all else a political union, not a romantic one, and that it was impossible for John to marry Katherine without creating uproar, and making life exceedingly difficult for her. As a duke’s mistress, Katherine was acceptable in society. As a duchess, she was not. Two noblewomen who were particularly hostile to her after her marriage were Eleanor Bohun – Henry’s sister-in-law – and the countess of Arundel. They declared that their hearts would burst with grief if they had to acknowledge Katherine’s precedence.54 This was not just selfish pride; it was pride in their fathers’ and ancestors’ brave achievements. Their families had won their titles and lands through loyal service in battle, and these women perpetuated the memory of their families in their own high status. For them to see their ancestors’ honour relegated below that of a foreign-born commoner was contrary to their view of the whole of society.

  The real reason for the marriage – and the reason why it is important in a biography of Henry – is the effect it would have on the inheritance of the house of Lancaster. By marrying Katherine, John could make his sons by her legitimate. This not only enabled them to advance to higher status on their own account, it also put them in a position to inherit the Lancastrian estates if Henry died or was outlawed. Even more importantly, Edward III’s entail settled the throne on John’s legitimate sons. If Henry died or was killed – by a man like Thomas Talbot – John’s other children would have no claim. The Lancastrian claim to the throne would depend wholly on Henry’s young sons, the eldest of whom (Henry of Monmouth) was not yet eight. He would be no match for the duke of York, nor his heir, the earl of Rutland.

  In keeping with past policy, Richard ignored Henry when he appointed ambassadors to treat with France in early 1396. Again, it was the earl of Rutland who led that embassy, supported by Thomas Mowbray, earl of Nottingham. Rutland’s success in agreeing a twenty-eight-year truce and arranging a royal marriage between Richard (now twenty-nine years old) and the eight-year-old princess Isabella de Valois meant that the king increasingly regarded John of Gaunt as a great but ageing magnate, of little or no further political use to him. Rutland now lived permanently at court. Likewise Mowbray and Richard’s violent half-brother, John Holland, earl of Huntingdon, were in almost constant attendance on the king. Henry was entirely superfluous to Richard’s social and political requirements.

  It is not clear where Henry was for much of 1396. His father was with the king at Windsor on 1 May 1396, when the three royal uncles promised to return the French princess to her father in case of Richard’s death. The following month John secured a charter of liberties for his duchy.55 But Henry did not witness the royal charters granted on 8 July and 24 September, even though John was present on both occasions.56 It seems that Henry did not spend that summer living with his father.57 He seems to have attended court only once between September 1395 and November 1396 (on 25 July).58 Thus, it would appear that while his father followed Richard’s court, and laboured to win back the king’s approval in the summer of 1396, Henry kept himself out of sight.

  Wherever he was, Henry was preparing for war. Not a war in England but on the Continent. King Sigismund of Hungary had proclaimed a crusade against the Ottoman Empire, whose sultan, Bayezid, was threatening ‘to feed his horses on the altar of St Peter’s Basilica’ in Rome. This was an insult to all of Christendom. John of Burgundy was appointed to lead a French army to help the Hungarians. Among his companions were Boucicaut, Renaud de Roye and Jean de Saimpy: the three champions against whom Henry had jousted at St Inglevert in 1390. The temptation for Henry to join this expedition must have been great; he would probably have undertaken any challenge to get him out of England and back in arms, out on the open road, where people of consequence respected him. But his desire to go on the Nicopolis Crusade was stifled, which was lucky, for it ended in a catastrophic disaster.59

  With this ambition thwarted, Henry seems to have turned his thoughts instead to the count of Ostrevant’s campaign in Friesland. In June the count sent a squire, Fier-a-Bras de Vertain, to England to seek out Henry and ask him whether he would take part. Henry was both flattered and keen, and asked his father for permission to go. John was inclined to agree, but before he did so he asked the duke of Guelderland (who was then visiting the English court) for advice. The duke replied that the expedition would be highly dangerous, for the land was not easily conquered and the territory marshy and surrounded by the sea, and full of bogs and islands which only the Frieslanders knew well. Moreover, the natives were so lacking in honour that they paid no respect to any lord they captured in battle but executed them all. The duke told John that he himself had been asked to go on the campaign but would never set foot in that country. Now he strongly urged John to prevent Henry from doing so. Im
mediately John sent a messenger to Henry telling him to give up all thought of going to Friesland. Henry probably came to court to see his father to discuss this matter at the end of July.60 But John was adamant.

  Henry did not go to Friesland.

  SEVEN

  By Envy’s Hand and Murder’s Bloody Axe

  One vial full of Edward’s sacred blood,

  One flourishing branch of his most royal root,

  Is crack’d and all the precious liquor spilt,

  Is hack’d down and his summer-leaves all faded,

  by envy’s hand and murder’s bloody axe.

  Richard II, Act 1, Scene 2

  John’s policy of staying with Richard and talking up the usefulness of all his sons was moderately successful. The letter he sent to the pope asking for the Beaufort children to be legitimised met with Richard’s approval as well as the pope’s. Richard also agreed that Henry should accompany the royal family when they went to France to witness his wedding to the French princess. Thus it was that Henry found himself travelling south from Kenilworth to sail across to Calais in early October 1396. Although Froissart asserts that Henry was left behind with the duke of York ‘to guard England’, this is certainly wrong. Payments for Henry’s requisites and luxuries – including candle wax, beer, soap and a chicken for his favourite falcon – were made in Calais, Guines and Saint-Omer.1