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

by Mortimer, Ian

  Almost, but not quite. For in the foregoing list of Henry’s qualities and characteristics we have not mentioned the most important two. First of these is his tenacity. With the exception of his expedition to Scotland, it is difficult to think of anything on which Henry gave up. Surely Glendower cannot have expected in 1400 that the king of England would personally lead expeditions against him every year for the next five years? And that he would delegate to his son the responsibility to continue the fight for another four years? As reflected in his propensity to argue points of honour, he was determined to have the final word in everything. On matters of loyalty, duty and almost every aspect of his royal prerogative, he did have the last word, dying peacefully with his royal power intact and the word ‘Jerusalem’ on his lips. Even his illness did not overwhelm this tenacity; it is wholly remarkable that a man whose flesh was rotting, who could not walk and who had twice been in a coma should stage a comeback and resume power as he did in the parliament of 1411. If he did indeed suffer from the same disease as the Black Prince in the last eight years of his life, then his achievements in his time of illness outstrip the prince’s by a very great margin, and that is due wholly to his determination to see things to an end.

  This brings us to the last and by far the most important characteristic of Henry IV. Without it, none of the above would have happened, and this book would not have been written, for Henry himself would not have survived. It is, of course, his pragmatism. It runs like a golden thread of self-preservation throughout his life. Without it, he would have seen his uncle Thomas seize the throne from Richard in the last days of 1387. He would have buckled under the weight of Richard’s antipathy, forced into an open and treasonable revolt in 1385, when Richard tried to murder his father, or in 1394, when Richard appointed his uncle to be keeper of the realm, ignoring Henry’s claim to the throne. Or in 1397 when Richard murdered his uncle. As for how he managed to contain himself in 1398, after learning that Richard had planned to murder his father and was yet planning to destroy the Lancastrians, we can only guess. By the time of the duel with Mowbray, Henry must have been on the point of lynching Richard. But he did not. His pragmatism during his revolution was a clear factor in his success, and it is repeatedly in evidence, from his oath-swearing to his claiming the throne by inheritance from Henry III, and his precaution of being confirmed as king in parliament. Afterwards, his pragmatism proved his saving grace. His order to have Richard killed – a reversal of his earlier decision – is perhaps the best example. All those thousands who rallied to the cry ‘King Richard is alive’ would have been able to cause a great deal more trouble if Richard had been languishing in some dungeon, or able to return from Scotland and lead an army in person. And most of all, Henry’s pragmatism in standing back from the most intense criticisms and demands of his kingship allowed him to weather the worst political storms. Whereas Richard’s attitude towards political opponents was summed up in his phrase that ‘he is a child of death who offends the king’, Henry accommodated his opponents’ skills within his government. It has been said once already but it is worth saying again that that quality – the ability of the tree to bend and sway in the storm and not to snap – was the key reason why Henry survived and Richard did not.

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  If you go looking for the visual reminders of Henry IV today, you will find very few. Nothing at all remains of his palace at Eltham: the surviving hall was built for Edward IV. The gatehouse at Lancaster Castle is Henry’s only significant secular structure, and the church at Battlefield, near Shrewsbury, and the chapel of St Edward the Confessor at Canterbury are his only religious foundations visible today. Given his shortage of money and the need to prioritise what gold there was for the defence of the realm, it is not surprising that Henry did not build on a large scale. It is also important to remember that in his reign, most of Edward III’s great buildings were still standing, and thus he did not need to build huge palaces to celebrate his kingship. Thus the physical impact of Henry’s reign on the landscape was, and is, minimal.

  Much the same can be said about other artworks and items of patronage. You will find little to do with Henry IV in any museum. Coins from the reign are relatively rare, because Henry was able to depend on the specie in circulation from the long reign of his grandfather. No textiles have survived. The Dunstable swan jewel may or may not have passed through his hands. The crown of his daughter, Blanche, survives in Munich, but it was inherited with the treasure of Richard II, and was probably made for Queen Anne in Paris in about 1380. A few livery collars survive; none, however, can be associated with Henry himself. Some early fifteenth-century cannon survive but there is no evidence that they were based on Henry’s designs. Even the two extant pieces of music probably by him are often attributed to his eldest son, and are very rarely sung. To see physical evidence of Henry’s existence we must either go to Canterbury Cathedral to see his tomb, with the effigy of him placed there after his death by his widow, or we must go to The National Archives to see his accounts, a few letters bearing his handwriting, and images of him in manuscript.

  For these reasons, it could be said that Henry hardly made a mark on England. With few visual reminders, he just does not crop up in conversation or feature on the tourist trail. Even the custom of the sovereign giving an age-related amount of money to an age-related number of recipients has lost its connection with Henry. Ask the man in the street which English crusader king entered Jerusalem, and the chances are that he will answer Richard I (who never set foot in the holy city), not Henry IV. Henry’s life, of course, saw a golden age of literature, and he had an indirect legacy in the work of the poets Chaucer, Hoccleve and Gower, all of whom he patronised or employed. But if our purpose in searching for antiquities and literary remains is to establish what difference Henry made to England, we are setting about answering it in wholly the wrong way. The Roman Emperor Claudius never came to England but he has a good claim to be named one of the most important men in the history of the country, for it was his invasion which brought the country within the Roman Empire. Likewise Henry’s importance is not to be found in any physical manifestation of royal power, such as a great palace or a widely read book. It lies in the fact that Henry forced all of England and much of the rest of Christendom to consider the nature of the accepted social order in relation to God. If the king ruled badly, broke his promises and murdered his subjects, could it be lawful for a man to depose him and take the throne in his place? Could it be justified in the eyes of God? These questions would continue to tear society apart for the next two hundred and fifty years, and would only be finally answered when England deposed its king in 1649 and killed him, not secretly by starvation but with an axe, in public.

  This challenge to the social order is undoubtedly Henry’s lasting legacy. It is ironic that it was accidental; he himself was very conservative in his determination to preserve the royal prerogative. But there is no avoiding the fact that he dealt a colossal blow to the prerogatives of the English throne. Not only did he force the king to abdicate, he used parliament to introduce and confirm a new royal legitimacy, scrubbing the lawbooks clean in order to facilitate his ‘inheritance’. Thus the precedent was created that parliament had the de facto authority to choose a new king as well as to depose one. If we take the view that Henry was not Richard II’s legal heir (and the claim from Henry III seems to indicate that he was not), then it follows that he was the first elected ruler of England since William the Conqueror, who was ‘chosen’ to be king by the Saxon Witan following the battle of Hastings.

  That empowerment of parliament was, of course, where many of his problems started. A parliament which had ratified a king’s claim to the throne was always going to have a high opinion of its own importance and authority. From 1401 we get the impression that, in parliament, Henry was like a wounded mammoth, surrounded by scavengers scenting that the great animal was weak, although it was still strong enough to lash out with its great tusks and defend itself. In that he was u
nfortunate. Indeed, luck was rarely on his side. He was fortunate to have the king of Scotland fall into his hands but unlucky that the Scottish and French kings chose not to recognise him in the first place. He was financially unlucky too. He could hardly help the terrible harvests and high food prices early in the reign, or the simultaneous collapse of the revenue from the wool trade, but they both caused enormous hardship, fuelling discontent against him and his government. Similarly he was unlucky to have prophecies stacked against him, foretelling his doom and encouraging opposition. People did not have to believe in prophecy to see that such calamities might well come true.

  Considering these misfortunes, it was no small achievement for Henry to retain the throne. But the reign was not without its political achievements. First and foremost there is the stabilising effect of his ability to see off all attempts to dethrone him. Then there was the stability of his form of kingship. In the 1407 parliament Thomas Arundel listed the reasons why he thought the people should ‘honour the king’: because Henry had preserved the liberties of towns and religious institutions; because he had showed himself unstinting in his efforts to defend the realm; and because he had showed mercy to his adversaries. All of these were matters of maintaining the status quo; nothing here was a new development. This points to the very success of his conservative policy. If a revolution is to be wholly successful, all the counter-revolutions must be defeated. That Henry did so while showing mercy and preserving existing liberties is to his credit.

  Historians of parliament of course can (and do) list many other developments in this reign. To what extent they were due to Henry himself, and to what extent they can be classed his achievements, are quite different questions. Perhaps Henry deserves some credit for his flexibility and initiative in proposing new forms of taxation, such as the land tax. The promise of low taxation was very clearly unsustainable but it did result in the acceptance of the principle that extraordinary taxation could be used to repay the government’s debts. On the other hand, the confirmation of the right to discuss matters of state without the king being present was a step forward for the commons. Both sides of the parliamentary lobby thus gained from the reign. That is hardly surprising, but if Henry can be credited with these developments it is only on account of his successful management of change. As stated at the outset, most of the developments in parliament were in spite of his involvement, not because of it.

  On this basis, we have to conclude that Henry has been unfortunate in the way he has been treated historically, and to have had his reputation stamped with the superficial judgement of ‘usurper’. At the time, men called him a saviour, not a usurper, and it was largely the ambitions of subsequent aspiring usurpers and the vulnerability of subsequent rulers which has maintained the ‘usurper’ tag. Another blow to Henry’s reputation came with the success of his son. Given that Henry IV’s reign was a struggle to stabilise the realm, the subsequent one seemed glorious by comparison. The contrast was exaggerated by polemicists wishing to create a warrior-hero out of Henry V. To make the younger Henry’s achievements seem even greater, they compared his victories to his father’s frustrations. And Henry IV’s successes, such as the victory of Shrewsbury and the defeat of Glendower, were associated with the hero-son, not the usurper-father, as if it was only due to Prince Henry’s presence that Henry IV survived at all. There is a clear mismatch of condemnation and praise.

  How then should we see Henry today? In chapter fifteen it was observed that he and Glendower had a number of points in common; for example, their high level of education, justification for revolution, aspirations for international recognition, military skill and political resilience. In terms of reputation, they cannot be compared. Not only was their struggle an unequal one; there is still today a cultural need in Wales to celebrate Glendower as a national hero, whereas in England there is no equivalent need to view Henry in a positive light. Historical judgement is cruel; most historical reputations develop in an arbitrary way. In fact, to see just how unfair historical judgement can be, consider Henry’s life in relation to that of a later ruler of England, Oliver Cromwell. Neither Henry nor Cromwell was born to be head of state. Both men deposed and (reluctantly) killed their lawful king. Both were soldiers, both achieved power through a military campaign and parliamentary acclamation. Both were serious, spiritually motivated, private men, and both attempted to rule through God’s direction. Neither man was educated in governance but did so in good faith, and both had to face a series of economic disasters. Both died of natural causes, still in power but exhausted and gravely sick, after little more than a decade of rule. Of course there are significant differences – Henry was a nobleman, Cromwell was a commoner, and the country deserted Richard II whereas many stood by Charles I – but the point is clear. Cromwell is judged a great man and a great leader; today there are statues to him, and he is a household name. There is only one commemorative statue to Henry IV, on the east end of Battlefield Church, near Shrewsbury. He is still labelled a usurper because that is the way subsequent monarchs wanted people to think of him, and the way their subjects (including Shakespeare) agreed to present him.

  Thus we come to the end of this study of the life of Henry IV. And what more appropriate image is there with which to end but that final moment of his life. Picture him lying on that low bed in the Jerusalem Chamber of the abbot’s house at Westminster. He is lying by the fire, covered in blankets, dying. He is in great pain. But as he lies there, who can doubt that his career has been the most phenomenal success. What has he not achieved? The king of Scotland is his prisoner. The Welsh revolt is crushed. The French are in disarray as Clarence rides at the head of an army all the way to Gascony. Henry’s throne now will pass unopposed to his eldest son, Henry of Monmouth, who is at his bedside, reconciled to him. Despite all Henry’s fears, despite Richard’s bitter hatred, despite all those rebellions, plots, and arguments in parliament and in the council chamber, he will die in peace, a respected man and an unvanquished king.

  Few men confront the basic tenets of the society in which they live and try to change them. Very few of those are successful. And even fewer survive to reflect on their success. Henry IV was one of these very few.

  Henry’s maternal grandfather and namesake, Henry of Lancaster. He was the epitome of the aristocratic warrior: brave, talented, rich, literate, pious and dutiful. This image, drawn about 1440, shows him in the robes of the Order of the Garter.

  Henry’s paternal grandfather, Edward III, the hero-king of England. He knighted Henry at Windsor on St George’s Day, 1377. Here he is shown with his eldest son, the Black Prince.

  Henry’s father, John of Gaunt, was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral alongside his beloved first wife, Blanche of Lancaster. The tomb, with John’s lance and shield, stood to the north of the high altar until it was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666.

  Only the foundations now survive of Henry’s birthplace, Bolingbroke Castle, in Lincolnshire. The King’s Tower, shown here, was remodelled about 1450 as a stately polygonal structure. It is possible that the remodelling was a public commemoration of Henry’s birthplace.

  Edward, the Black Prince, was Henry’s uncle. His chivalrous deeds of arms and devotion to the Trinity were followed by Henry, who chose to be buried in the same chapel, in Canterbury Cathedral.

  Mary Bohun was ten or eleven when she was depicted with a crowned woman, probably Mary Magdalene, in this psalter. It was probably commissioned to mark her wedding to Henry in early 1381.

  This is by far the most famous image of Henry IV. Unfortunately it is not actually him. In the late sixteenth century, when series of English royal portraits were in demand, no portrait of Henry was known, and so this was concocted from a suitable French original and widely copied.

  Henry’s actual appearance is best revealed by several miniatures and his funeral effigy. This fine example appears in the Great Cowcher, a cartulary of the dukes of Lancaster, made in about 1402.

  Richard II. Deeply insecure, h
is struggle to reign with a strong hand was a tragedy both for himself and his subjects. His bitter hatred of Henry directly led to his own downfall and ultimately his death.