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

by Mortimer, Ian

  Henry suspected that Mowbray had already killed his uncle ‘without a just and reasonable cause’, but for the moment he let that matter lie as he listened to this stunning revelation. Who were those behind this plot?

  ‘The duke of Surrey, the earl of Wiltshire and the earl of Salisbury were against us. They persuaded the earl of Gloucester to join them. They mean to destroy all of us, including you and me, your father, John Holland, John Beaufort and the duke of Aumale. They mean to reverse the pardon of Earl Thomas of Lancaster, for this would be to the disinheritance of us all.’4

  ‘God forbid!’ Henry exclaimed, ‘it would be a great wonder if the king agreed to that, after promising to be a good lord to us, and even swearing so by St Edward the Confessor.’

  ‘He has often sworn – even on the Holy Sacrament – to be a good king to me, but I no longer trust him’, said Mowbray, adding that the king had decided to lure the earl of March back from Ireland to join the others in their plot.

  ‘We will never be able to trust them again’, Henry said.

  ‘Certainly not’, agreed Mowbray. ‘Even if we succeed in thwarting them now, they will still be intent on destroying us in ten years’ time.’

  *

  Stunned by Mowbray’s revelations, Henry went to see his father.5 Under such pressure, he could hardly not tell him that there was a plot against them. It was not just the threat to their lives either; the dignity of Henry’s ancestors on his mother’s side was under attack, and that meant the dignity of his grandfather, the great duke of Lancaster. If Thomas, earl of Lancaster, had been a traitor, then it followed that the Lancastrian titles and estates should not have passed to his brother Henry, the father of Duke Henry. That meant that no one but the king should have enjoyed the benefit of the Lancastrian titles and estates since 1322. If the Lancastrians still carried any hope that Edward III’s entail would place Henry or his eldest son on the throne after Richard’s death, then that hope was about to be extinguished.

  John must have been furious when heard the news. He was angry with Mowbray for killing his brother. Now to hear from Henry that Mowbray believed ‘they were about to be undone’ made him reflect not only on Mowbray’s responsibility for Gloucester’s murder but also Mowbray’s own actions in February 1385, when he and de Vere had sought to murder him (John). With this new information, it was obvious to John what he needed to do. Rather than allow both his son and Mowbray to be ‘undone’, he would make sure it was just Mowbray. He went to see the king.6

  Richard’s state of mind in the days after the parliament was not steady. He was feeling more vulnerable than ever. It was said that the earl of Arundel’s head had miraculously reattached itself to his body. Hundreds were congregating around the tomb, to demonstrate their opposition to the king through fidelity to a man who was deemed to have given his life resisting Richard’s tyranny. Most kings would have tried to weather such demonstrations, but not the insecure Richard. He demanded John come with him to the church where the earl was buried. Under the cover of night, they watched as workmen dug up the earl’s decomposing body and carted it away.7

  When Mowbray discovered that John had reported his words to the increasingly paranoid king, he was terrified. He probably went to the king and threw himself on his mercy. According to the later testimony of the duke of Exeter (Richard’s half-brother), a plot was now made between Richard, Mowbray and William Bagot to kill John before he reached Shrewsbury.8 With John out of the way, Richard would be free to act against Henry and the Lancastrians (by reversing the pardon on Thomas of Lancaster), and Mowbray could hope to be forgiven for his indiscretion.

  Mowbray’s plot to kill John failed. Although the details are not clear, it seems likely that Bagot betrayed him. Although Bagot served Mowbray, his loyalties were changeable: he had once been a Lancastrian retainer. He had served Henry at the time of Radcot Bridge.9 He must have been worried that Richard was looking not only for Henry’s and Mowbray’s destruction in revenge for 1387 but his too. Later, Henry went to some lengths to save Bagot’s life after he was accused of treason, and he may have done so in return for Bagot betraying Mowbray in January 1398. Either way, Bagot was discovered, forced to confess his crimes and to swear that he would never again try to murder John or any of his family, nor to try and disinherit him or them. So routine had murder plots become at the court of Richard II that Bagot sealed two official documents promising not to murder or disinherit the duke of Lancaster and had them enrolled in chancery as if they were the usual business of the day.10

  It was in this atmosphere that Henry proceeded with his father to Shrewsbury. Between 18 and 23 January 1398, at Great Haywood in Staffordshire, Henry entered Richard’s presence. Richard announced that he had heard that Henry had accused Mowbray of slandering the king. Henry boldly repeated what Mowbray had said to him, and was told to draw up his accusations in writing. Henry probably delivered his testimony to Richard at Lilleshall Abbey on 25 January, when he received a renewed pardon for anything that he had done against the king in the past.11

  On Monday 28 January, Henry and his father entered the thronged hall at Shrewsbury and listened to the chancellor remind them of the proceedings of the previous sitting of parliament, including a strict exhortation that there should be no more than one ruler in the realm.12 The chancellor announced that further taxation for the defence of the realm would be required. After a few further preliminaries, all the proceedings of the Merciless Parliament were revoked, and the questions to the judges of the preceding year were reinstated. The crushing wheel of Richard’s will had begun to turn once more.

  On Tuesday 29 January, the newly created earl of Wiltshire, William Scrope, was appointed proctor for the clergy, so that parliament could proceed to try Lord Cobham for treason, or, more particularly, to sentence him to death for participating in the commission of 1386. Richard played the part of a merciful monarch and granted him his life. As in the previous session of parliament, the trial was a show trial, and the death sentence and its revocation a publicity stunt. No one was left in any doubt about Richard’s deadly form of justice.

  On Wednesday 30 January, the Speaker Sir John Bussy announced that, although in the past many parliamentary decisions had been reversed and revoked, this should not happen to any Act of this present parliament, and if anyone in any way sought to reverse, repeal, invalidate or annul any of the judgements, he would be guilty of treason and punished as a traitor. Parliament was sober and wary. Certain prelates explained to the king that he could not oblige his successors as kings of England to abide by his will. To this Richard replied coldly that he would write to the pope and ask him to excommunicate those who sought to repeal any Act of this parliament. In this chill atmosphere, Henry was called to present his bill against Mowbray. Standing before the throne, he resolutely repeated the words which had passed between them on the road between Brentford and London.

  Everyone was aware of the seriousness of the libel. Henry was accusing Mowbray of saying that the king himself was involved in a plot to destroy the Lancastrians. Even if this were absolutely true, Richard could not acknowledge it had anything to do with him, and so he had no option but to present it as a slander against him by Mowbray. Mowbray was so terrified of being impeached in parliament and summarily executed that he did not even turn up to defend himself. The best Richard could do to protect the instrument of his scheming was to delay matters. The following day, with the assent of parliament, Richard declared

  that the matters contained in the said writing should be determined and finally considered by the good advice and discretion of our lord the king and the advice and discretion of certain commissioners appointed in the matter by authority of parliament; namely, the duke of Lancaster, the duke of York, the duke of Aumale, the duke of Surrey, the duke of Exeter, the marquis of Dorset, the earl of March, the earl of Salisbury, the earl of Northumberland, the earl of Gloucester, or six of them, the earl of Worcester and the earl of Wiltshire, the proctors of the clergy, or one of t
hem, and John Bussy, Henry Green, John Russell, Richard Chelmeswyk, Robert Teye, John Golafre, knights, coming for the parliament, or three or four of them.13

  Extraordinarily, as soon as he had referred this ‘slander’ to himself and the commissioners, Richard did something to support the truth of Mowbray’s statements. He reversed all the judgements passed against Hugh Despenser and his father in 1326. At a stroke, the enemies of Thomas of Lancaster were vindicated. It follows that Richard believed they had been correct to advise Edward II to march against the Lancastrians, and that the 1320s condemnations of Thomas and Henry of Lancaster as traitors should be upheld. There can be little doubt that, had Henry not produced his bill and upset proceedings, the Lancastrian pardons of 1327 would have been repealed, if not at this parliament, then soon afterwards.

  With such accusations looming, and deep discontent in the air, Richard brought the parliament to a sudden end. Henry went down on his knees and confessed that he had taken part in the ‘uprisings and troubles’ of 1387, and pleaded that he had done so with no intent of harming the king. Richard pardoned him again, and added that he would offer a general pardon to everyone throughout the realm who had taken part in the troubles. In return he demanded that he should be able to levy the wool subsidy for life, plus one and a half subsidies of ‘a tenth and a fifteenth’ of people’s goods. (This was the usual means of levying extraordinary taxation: a tenth of the value of the moveable goods of townsmen and a fifteenth of the value of country dwellers’ goods.) Such requests were shocking in themselves; a life grant of the wool subsidy – about £30,000 per annum – effectively meant that, as long as he did not go to war, he could rule without having to summon parliament. In reality, he was not so foolish as to announce his intention of ruling alone, but the political bond between king and people – forged over the last century in the furnace of parliament – had been weakened. In future, petitions could be presented to the commissioners. No more would the king need to consent to the wishes of his people. No more would they be able to hold his ministers and favourites to account. The king’s rule was now, in theory, absolute.

  *

  Although Henry was pardoned for his acts in 1387–8, Richard nonetheless had him arrested. The reason was that the matter of the ‘slander’ had yet to be resolved. As far as Richard was concerned, the question was this: had Mowbray slandered the king? Or was Henry slandering Mowbray? On 4 February, Richard demanded that Mowbray appear before him within two weeks. Mowbray did so, and was stripped of his office of Earl Marshal and lost his lands. On 23 February, at Oswestry, Richard made an attempt to reconcile the two dukes. He asked Henry if he stood by his accusations. Henry removed his black hood. ‘My lord’, he said, ‘as the petition I have given you makes clear, I declare that Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, such as he is, is a traitor, false and recreant towards you and your royal majesty, to your crown, to the nobles and to all the people of your realm.’ When asked to reply, Mowbray declared that ‘Henry of Lancaster, duke of Hereford, has lied in what he has said and wishes to insinuate against me, like a false traitor and disloyal subject that he is’. ‘Ho!’ said the king, ‘we’ve heard enough of that’, and he promptly gave orders for both of them to be arrested.14 Three days later the constable of Windsor Castle was ordered to take both men into custody.15 In Henry’s case, four dukes – his father and uncle, his cousin Edward and Thomas Holland – stood bail for him. He remained free, for the moment at least.16

  The level of dissembling around the court now reached its most extreme. Here was Henry, in fear of his life, pretending loyalty to the king. Here was Mowbray, murderer of one of the king’s uncles, who had twice now attempted to kill another (John), protesting that he was not a traitor. And here was John of Gaunt pretending that nothing was wrong, despite two attempts to murder him in the last six months. When Roger Mortimer, the earl of March, had arrived at parliament in January, he had apprehended that he too was vulnerable, and had professed his loyalty even though he detested the form of rule which Richard had assumed. He swiftly realised that Richard was plotting against him, and, far from drawing him over to support the anti-Lancastrian cause, was planning to arrest him.17 Although March’s only crime was to protect his ageing uncle, Thomas Mortimer, whom the Counter-Appellants had accused in 1397, Richard deprived him of office and sent the duke of Surrey to Ireland to arrest him. March never knew that his suspicions of Richard were well founded, for by the time his arrest was ordered he was dead. At Kells, on 20 July 1398, he fell fighting bravely in the vanguard of his army against the Irish. Any claim to the throne through him – denied by Richard – now passed to his sons, Edmund and Roger, aged seven and five. Their claim was practically unenforceable, throwing Henry even more clearly into the position of heir apparent.

  For Henry, however, inheritance required staying alive, and that was looking a less likely prospect by the day. His argument with Mowbray was considered by the parliamentary commission at Bristol on 19 March 1398. It was decided then that the matter would be put to the Court of Chivalry, unless Henry could prove the slander or Mowbray could prove his innocence. That meant a duel. Henry returned with his father and the king to London at the beginning of April, and remained in the city until setting out for the Order of the Garter feast at Windsor.18 Shortly afterwards, on 28 April, he faced the parliamentary commissioners once again. This time he openly accused Mowbray of embezzling funds for the protection of Calais and, astoundingly, of murdering the duke of Gloucester.19

  This new accusation was extremely dangerous. Froissart records that Richard had announced that anyone even mentioning the deaths of the duke of Gloucester and the earl of Arundel would be deemed a traitor.20 Mowbray had been acting on Richard’s orders. Would he now betray the king? Henry hoped perhaps to present Mowbray with such a difficult situation that he confessed to some lesser element of his crime and was judged the culprit. But Henry had struck a raw nerve: the king was incandescent with rage. Richard demanded an explanation from Mowbray. One of Mowbray’s knights answered for him, and accused Henry of lying. Richard directly asked Mowbray himself if these were his own words, and Mowbray answered that he had accepted money for the defence of Calais, but had never misappropriated any. He also admitted trying to kill John of Gaunt, and claimed he had been forgiven. That was all he wished to say. Richard did not press him on the matter of the murder. Instead he asked whether either of them would withdraw their accusations. They could not; as Mowbray said, honour was too deeply involved. Richard dismissed them. The following day they were told that their dispute would be settled by a duel to be fought at Coventry in the autumn.21

  Each man must have felt betrayed. In return for warning Henry of a murder plot against him and the disinheritance of his entire family, Mowbray was now in prison, in disgrace, had lost his position as Earl Marshal, and would have to fight for his life. He had been openly accused of murder, which he had committed out of loyalty to the king. Henry, having reported to his father what had been said about a plot to kill them both, was now being treated as if he was the traitor. These two men were now to fight a duel, a joust of war. The lances would not be capped.

  Henry’s physical state seems now to have taken a turn for the worse. Payments appear in his accounts for mending his brass astrolabe on 17 May and again on 8 July.22 They do not necessarily indicate that Henry was intent on having his future told, for the position of the stars was a factor taken into consideration by physicians when deciding the most propitious time to use medicine, or to let blood; but it is good evidence that he was either ill or consulting the stars for some other purpose. In support of the illness interpretation, medicines were bought for him in London on the last day of May.23 Other medicines were transported to him at Hertford in the summer.24 It is likely that the stress of the situation was making him ill. Another example of his concern might be a payment for a figure of St Christopher – the protector of travellers – which he bought for one of his messengers, John Elys, when he sent him to the king.25 On Maundy
Thursday in this year (4 April) he gave alms to as many paupers as were in his age not next birthday but the year after that: thirty-three paupers, although he was only thirty-one.26 In later years, the payment by the king of an extra year’s alms was described as ‘the Year of Grace’, that is, the next year which the king hoped that by God’s grace he would live to see.27 Henry’s example in 1398 might be the first instance of such a hopeful donation.

  We may ask why Henry was so worried, given that he was one of the most proficient jousters in the realm, and had done nothing wrong. Mowbray was hardly any less a jousting champion than Henry.28 At St Inglevert, eight years earlier, Mowbray had dared to ride one of the first jousts of war against Renaud de Roye, and had broken one of the Frenchman’s lances. Thus the forthcoming duel was not only the first in England between two dukes, it was between two of the best jousting champions in the kingdom. Another reason for Henry to be worried was Richard’s reaction. If he survived, he would be the last of the Appellants whom Richard had sworn to destroy, and more vulnerable than ever. If he lost this joust, he would be either dead or guilty of slander, and thus ruined.

  For the forthcoming duel, Henry understandably wanted nothing but the very best military hardware. Thus he sent to his old friend Gian Galeazzo Visconti, duke of Milan. The Italian esquire Francis Court, who had devoted himself to Henry’s service since 1393, was now sent back to his old master to request the finest Italian armour available.29 Later that summer a group of Italians from Duke Gian Galeazzo arrived, and were entertained at Henry’s expense, probably bearing the equipment.30 At the same time, Mowbray was soliciting the help of the best German armourers. The forthcoming duel was set to be the greatest chivalric event of the age: two dukes, two jousting champions, the two leading manufacturers of armour, and a fight to the death over a matter of honour.