2. Wylie, i, p. 144.
3. ODNB, under ‘Glyn Dŵr, Owain’.
4. CPR 1399–1401, p. 555. He was at Shrewsbury on the 15th and 16th, Shifnal on the 18th.
5. Boardman suggests that Henry might have averted further rebellion if he had ‘made any effort’ to enquire into the grievances of Glendower and the Welsh people (Boardman, Hotspur, p. 119).
6. Revolution, p. 203.
7. Wylie, iv, pp. 141, n. 8, 263.
8. Wylie, iv, p. 263.
9. Wylie, i, p. 158.
10. Adam Usk, p. 119.
11. Details of the tournament have been drawn from an article by John Priestley, ‘Christmas day and knights’, in the November 2006 issue of Heritage Today, the English Heritage magazine, pp. 28–31. See also Nicol, ‘Byzantine Emperor’.
12. Wylie, iv, pp. 129–30.
13. Issues, p. 282.
14. This figure is drawn from Rogers, ‘Political crisis’, p. 89. Rogers’ claim that this amounted to more than Richard II’s household had spent in its last three years does not seem to be borne out by Given-Wilson’s more recent study. See Royal Household, pp. 76–92, 94 (in particular), 107–8, 271.
15. Wylie, iv, pp. 315–18. According to Given-Wilson in PROME, 1401 January, introduction, Pope Boniface VIII had recommended in 1298 that burning should be adopted throughout Christendom. Given-Wilson adds that the Lollard William Swinderby ‘fully expected to be burned’ at his trial in 1382.
16. Usually depictions of burnings are without the barrel. John Badby, who suffered the same fate as Sawtre nine years later, was described as being burned in a barrel by the contemporary Thomas Walsingham. See CM, p. 376.
17. Rogers, ‘Political Crisis’, pp. 87–8; Castor, King, Crown and Duchy, pp. 30–31.
18. Brown, ‘Commons and the council’, p. 3.
19. PROME, 1401 January, introduction; Kirby, pp. 112–13; Rogers, ‘Political Crisis’.
20. His attempts to limit the anti-Welsh legislation were restricted to granting a pardon to all those who had taken part in Glendower’s rising – except William and Rees ap Tudor, and Glendower himself – and a three-year limit on the period during which Welshmen could not sue Englishmen in Wales.
21. PROME, 1401 January, item 48.
22. Adam Usk, p. 131.
23. Harriss, Shaping the Nation, p. 496, describes this as an ‘open letter’. However, it was written at Henry’s own request: in Repingdon’s words, ‘when, with a heavy heart, I last departed from your presence, your excellent majesty requested me, your humble servant, to inform you without delay of anything I might hear … ’ (Adam Usk, p. 137) … ‘I am saying no more than I have already said to you by word of mouth, when I was in your presence’ (ibid., p. 143). It seems to have been a private letter, written for Henry’s information and with his approval, which later came to Usk’s attention, perhaps through the offices of the archbishop of Canterbury.
24. It appears in Adam Usk, pp. 137–43.
25. Wylie iv, pp. 198–9.
26. Gwilym Dodd, ‘Henry IV’s Council’, p. 100.
27. Issues, p. 284.
28. Wylie, ‘Dispensation’, pp. 96–7. Edmund was in his eleventh year on 15 January 1412.
29. Otway-Ruthven, Medieval Ireland, p. 341. Thomas was officially appointed on 27 June and arrived on 13 November.
30. Adam Usk, p. 135; Wylie, i, pp. 228–9.
31. RHL, pp. 73–6.
32. To add to the six chapters of the 1401 statute concerning the Welsh, on 18 March a further ordinance for Wales was issued. This added a number of precautionary measures but these arose from petitions presented in the parliament to prevent a reoccurrence of Glendower’s rising. It cannot therefore be said to have greatly extended what was agreed in parliament.
33. Wylie, i, pp. 212–18; Adam Usk, p. 129.
34. ODNB, under ‘Glyn Dŵr, Owain’. The reference to PC, ii, p. 55, quoted indicates that Glendower was in the Carmarthenshire/Cardiganshire area in May, not June.
35. Signet Letters, p. 28.
36. RHL, i, p. 71.
37. PC, i, pp. 156–64; Kirby, pp. 127–8.
38. Adam Usk, p. 135.
39. PC, i, p. 154; Kirby, p. 128. This was made up of £13,000 for Calais, £5,000 for Ireland, £10,000 for Aquitaine, £8,000 for returning Isabella, £24,000 in annuities granted by the king, £16,000 to repay loans, £16,000 for the wardrobe, and £38,000 for the war in Scotland, the campaigns in Wales and the defence of the sea. See also Royal Household, p. 129.
40. Rutland was created lieutenant of Aquitaine on 28 August. CP, xii, 2, p. 903.
41. Wylie confused Henry’s itinerary in Wales in 1401 with that of 1400. Henry was at Hereford on 10–11 October 1401, and then at Llandovery on the 14th (see Wylie, i, p. 243; Signet Letters, p. 31; Kirby, p. 130). He returned to England via Worcester (where he was on the 27th), not Shrewsbury and Shifnal as Wylie states, mistakenly placing the undated rotulus viagii of 2 Henry IV at the start of 3 Henry IV.
42. Adam Usk, p. 145.
43. Adam Usk, pp. 149–53.
13: Uneasy Lies the Head
1. Annales, p. 337; EC, p. 23; Eulogium, iii, p. 389.
2. HA, ii, p. 248. Vitae, p. 171, adds the details that the attempted assassination took place in early September 1401 at Westminster and that the murderous contraption was placed in the king’s bed by a member of Queen Isabella’s household, who confessed to the crime and was later pardoned.
3. It may be noted that (1) high-status beds did not normally have straw mattresses at this time, (2) Henry was at Windsor, not Westminster, in early September 1401, and (3) Isabella and her household had left Westminster several months earlier. Nevertheless, the story is unlikely to have been a complete fiction, and certainly not one started by the king himself (despite Paul Strohm’s assertion in Strohm, Empty Throne, p. 64), for no element of this story can have rebounded to the benefit of the king’s public image.
4. Vitae, p. 171; Dyer, Standards of Living, p. 263.
5. Kirby, p. 127.
6. Adam Usk, p. 147.
7. PC, p. 178.
8. PC, p. 178.
9. ODNB, under ‘Joan of Navarre’.
10. Froissart states that he went to Brittany and met her at Nantes on his way to Spain. See Froissart, ii, p. 687; Strickland, Lives, ii, pp. 60–61.
11. RHL, i, pp. 19–20.
12. For example, see Kirby, p. 136. ‘Whether or not its terms are more effusive than common courtesy required is not easy to determine’, Kirby says, even though he must have realised that no other extant letter addressed to Henry is exclusively devoted to expressions of goodwill towards him. ‘At least Henry might assume on the receipt of this that the duchess was not ill-disposed towards him,’ he adds, with cautiousness so extreme it is comical.
13. PC, i, p. 188.
14. ODNB, under ‘Joan of Navarre’.
15. In addition to Henry’s two love matches we might add his father’s first and third marriages (to Blanche and Katherine), his uncle’s (the Black Prince and Joan of Kent), his aunt’s (Isabella and Enguerrand de Coucy) and his sister’s (Elizabeth and John Holland). The last three especially were choices made out of affection, not political gain.
16. Morgan, ‘Shadow of Richard II’, p. 17.
17. EC, p. 26; Annales, p. 339.
18. The prior of Launde’s arrest is placed just before Trinity (21 May) by Walsingham. See Annales, p. 339.
19. Wylie, i, p. 277.
20. The dialogue here has been modernised from EC, pp. 24–5. The execution is also mentioned by Walsingham (Annales, p. 340).
21. Strohm, Empty Throne, pp. 107–8.
22. EC, p. 24.
23. Issues, p. 286.
24. Morgan, ‘Shadow of Richard II’, p. 13.
25. Syllabus, ii, p. 545.
26. Given-Wilson & Curteis, Royal Bastards, p. 145.
27. Annales, p. 340.
28. The dialogue has been modernised from EC, pp. 24–5. The date is from Wy
lie, i, p. 278. Walsingham says ‘a few days after 25 May’ in Annales, p. 341.
29. First a London jury failed to condemn them, then so did a Holborn jury. Eventually they were found guilty by the men of Islington. They were drawn to Tyburn and there hanged, the master giving a devout sermon before he died, exclaiming his innocence and forgiving his killers. Another friar made a scaffold speech in which he declared that he never intended ‘to slay the king and sons but to make them dukes of Lancaster, as they should be’. EC, pp. 25–6.
30. Various writers give various dates for this battle, and differ as to whether it was led by Glendower in person. This date and Glendower’s presence in person are from Glyn Dŵr, p. 107.
31. Annales, p. 341.
32. Boardman, Hotspur, p. 145.
33. See Wylie, iv, p. 289, for his itinerary at this time. Between 25 June and 15 August 1402 he stayed at Berkhamsted (Hertfordshire), Market Harborough (Leicestershire), Lilleshall (Shropshire), Ravendale (Lincolnshire), Lichfield and Burton-on-Trent (Staffs), Tideswell and Darley (Derbyshire) and Nottingham, as well as many places in between.
34. Adam Usk, p. 161.
35. Wylie, i, p. 293 (for the prisoners); PROME, 1402 September, item 16.
36. Rogers, ‘Royal Household’ (Ph.D. thesis), p. 90.
37. Signed and sealed at Goucy 7 August 1402. Monstrelet, i, p. 16; Waurin, pp. 64–6.
38. Henry’s reply was dated London 5 December 1402. See Monstrelet, i, pp. 16–18; Waurin, pp. 67–70.
39. Orléans’ second letter was dated 22 March 1403. See Monstrelet, i, pp. 19–20 (has incorrect date of 26 March 1402); Waurin, pp. 73–7. Henry received it on the last day of April.
40. Henry’s reply to Orléans’ second letter was undated. See Monstrelet, i, pp. 21–3; Waurin, pp. 77–85.
41. Wylie, i, p. 309.
42. Signet Letters, p. 41.
43. Radford, ‘An unrecorded royal visit’, p. 259.
44. Wylie, i, p. 310 (where it is given as five hundred marks) and ii, p. 288.
45. Radford, ‘An unrecorded royal visit’, p. 262; Issues, p. 305.
46. For his fool see Issues, p. 284.
47. For this aspect of her character, see her refusal to allow her husband to send their little son as a hostage to the lord de Clisson, in Strickland, Lives, ii, p. 57.
48. Strohm, Empty Throne, p. 157.
49. Issues, p. 286.
14: A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury
1. See the speech attributed to the Percys in Eulogium, iii, pp. 396–7.
2. Particularly Adam Orleton, bishop of Hereford in the reign of Edward II, William Melton, archbishop of York during the time of Mortimer’s rule, John Stratford, archbishop of Canterbury during the Crisis of 1341, William Wykeham in relation to John of Gaunt in the 1370s, and Thomas Arundel himself in 1386. I am indebted to W. M. Ormrod, ‘Rebellion of Archbishop Scrope and the Tradition of Opposition to Royal Taxation’, for further ideas about this.
3. Boardman, Hotspur, p. 149.
4. Brut, ii, p. 548.
5. EC, p. 27.
6. EHD, p. 192. Adam Usk, p. 161. He fathered four children by her in the seven years after being taken captive, so the marriage must have taken place reasonably soon afterwards. The failure of parliament to appeal on his behalf suggests his loyalty was in doubt in October 1402. Edmund declared his allegiance to Glendower in a letter to Sir John Greyndour dated 13 December 1402.
7. CPR 1401–5, p. 213.
8. PC, pp. 203–4.
9. PC, Privy Council, pp. 204–5.
10. See 1 Maccabees, chapter 2; see also 1 Maccabees, chapter 14, verses 29–32, regarding Mathathias’s son, Simon, who had resisted invasions and spent much money in defending the country for the glory of the kingdom. The allusion to Hotspur – if intended – is fitting.
11. This is presuming that the letter was sent on the same day it was written, 26 June, and took five days to reach him from Healaugh, in North Yorkshire, about 220 miles distant.
12. Signet Letters, pp. 48–9; PC, i, pp. 206–7. For Elmyn or Helmyng Leget and his antecedents see T. E. Tout, ‘Firearms in England and the Fourteenth Century’, EHR, 26 (1911), p. 669.
13. Wylie notes a payment on 17 July 1403 of £8,108 for wages to four barons, twenty knights, 476 esquires and 2,500 archers. This could not relate to the present gathering, summoned to Lichfield the previous day, as the exchequer did not pay wages in advance; it might relate to the army Henry took into Wales the previous autumn. But it is perhaps indicative of the size of force which he was used to gathering, and the number of archers especially should be noted.
14. Philip Morgan, ‘Memories of the Battle of Shrewsbury’. One of the major accounts of the battle bears a number of correlations with the classical text of Lucan, and therefore probably reflects the way the chronicler hoped his account would be understood rather than what actually happened.
15. It is normally said that Henry personally reached Shrewsbury first (e.g. ‘Deposition’, p. 178). This is unlikely. According to Capgrave, Chronicle of England, p. 282, Hotspur began to besiege Shrewsbury. If so, and if Henry was not personally at Shrewsbury but with the main army behind, this would explain how he forced a battle by arriving afterwards, and stayed the night before the battle at Haughmond Abbey, to the north-east of Berwick Field.
16. See Appendix Four.
17. ‘Deposition’, p. 179.
18. Waurin, p. 60.
19. Capgrave, Chronicle of England, p. 282 (rebel army); HA, ii, p. 257 (royal army). Most modern writers tend to estimate that there were twelve to fourteen thousand men in the king’s army and ten thousand with Hotspur, but these figures are little more than educated guesses.
20. It is normally assumed that the battle was fought on a north–south axis. Given that the prince advanced from Shrewsbury and Henry from Haughmond, it is more likely that the initial confrontation was either east–west or northwest–southeast. No single source is reliable enough, and the combined narratives are too contradictory to be certain of this point.
21. CR, pp. 194–5. See also Eulogium, iii, p. 397.
22. Eulogium, iii, p. 397.
23. ‘Deposition’, p. 179.
24. Waurin, p. 61.
25. This interpretation is supported by the most accurate of the chronicles to describe the battle, the Dieulacres chronicle. See ‘Deposition’, p. 180.
26. ‘Deposition’, p. 180. Other sources, describing Stafford’s death with the other notables, have transposed his demise to a later stage of the battle, fighting alongside Blount and the king.
27. Annales, p. 367.
28. Brut, ii, p. 549.
29. Waurin, p. 62.
30. The charge of the thirty knights is reported in Eulogium, iii, p. 397 and EC, p. 28.
31. Boardman, Hotspur, p. 203, argues on the strength of a reference in Gregory’s chronicle to Stafford dying in the king’s coat armour, that ‘Stafford was the only man to adopt this changed role’. However Adam Usk, p. 171, mentions two men in the king’s armour, and Brut, ii, p. 549, specifically mentions that Blount was wearing the king’s coat armour. Although some writers assume Stafford was killed alongside Blount, for the two are mentioned together in some sources, this is only because they were the most notable casualties on the king’s side. According to the Dieulacres account, Stafford was killed by a Percy arrow, a scenario very likely in view of his leading the vanguard.
32. ‘Deposition’, p. 181.
33. See Appendix Four.
34. The statement that the bodies were spread over an area of three miles dates from a much later charter, and possibly relates to how far away the furthest bodies were from the battlefield; these were probably men cut down fleeing the battle. Wylie, i, p. 363.
35. It is usually said that the initiative for the church was local, and only later taken up by the king. This is true in so far as it was a local cleric who presented the petition to Henry in 1406 to alienate the land for the church. However, petitions do not always demonst
rate the petitioner’s initiative. Many were as the result of a prior discussion with the king. Adam Usk, p. 171, states that Henry swore to build a chapel there for the souls of the dead. It may be that the 1406 petition merely marks the formal beginning of the bureaucratic paper trail, a response by a designated man to Henry’s initiative.
36. Waurin, pp. 63–4. The text ends ‘he maintained and loved justice above all things, and besides was a very handsome prince, learned, and eloquent, courteous, valiant and brave in arms, and in short was filled with every virtue such as was none of his predecessors before his time’.
37. Wylie, iv, p. 366.
38. Eulogium, iii, p. 397; Annales, pp. 372–3.
39. Given-Wilson, ‘Quarrels of Old Women’.
40. EHD, p. 195.
15: Treason’s True Bed
1. Quoted from Chris Given-Wilson’s translation of the Durham newsletter in PROME, 1404 January, appendix.
2. PROME, 1404 January, introduction.
3. Eulogium, iii, p. 400. The gaoler is unnamed. It would either have been Thomas Swynford or Robert Waterton.
4. PROME, 1404 January, introduction.
5. It was the sixth plot if one counts Glendower’s rising as a plot, and does not count the story about the barbed metal implement in his bed. The other four were the Epiphany Rising (1400), the poisoned saddle (1400), the friars’ conspiracy (1402) and the Percy revolt (1403).
6. For the countess of Oxford’s plot, see Ross, ‘Seditious Activities’; Morgan, ‘Shadow of Richard II’, pp. 19–22; Wylie, i, pp. 417–28.
7. Wylie, i, p. 437; Syllabus, p. 550. It is not clear if Hawley was mayor at this time (Hugh R. Watkin, Dartmouth (Devonshire Association, 1935), p. 184, has no names of mayors for 1402–4).
8. Morgan, ‘Shadow of King Richard’, p. 21.
9. Wylie, i, pp. 431–2.
10. He was captured before 19 June 1404. See PROME, 1404 January, appendix; Adam Usk, pp. 176–7.
11. EC, p. 30.
12. Eulogium, iii, p. 402.
13. Kirby, p. 172.
14. However, Kirby, p. 174, prefers the idea that it was called ‘unlearned’ because of the attack on Church property by ignorant men.
The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King Page 58