23. Signet Letters, p. 150. The signet letter from Henry was sent on 22 February; the council sent the letter in his name as if he witnessed it being sealed with his privy seal in person at Westminster on 26 March at Westminster. See RHL, ii, p. 240.
24. The privy seal writ predates the patent letter by five days. See Signet Letters, p. 150.
25. He appropriated revenues from four nearby churches in order to endow the church, for which he later came in for criticism, especially from Wylie, who compared this religious foundation with Eton and King’s College at Cambridge, both founded by Henry VI. See Wylie, iii, p. 243.
26. Signet Letters, p. 152.
27. Signet Letters, p. 152. The spelling has been modernised and the grammar slightly changed for the sake of readability.
28. Williams (ed.), Correspondence of Bekyngton, ii, p. 368.
29. Wylie, iii, p. 252.
30. Williams (ed.), Bekyngton, ii, p. 366.
31. Brut, ii, p. 369.
32. Allmand, pp. 41–2.
33. For example, Badby, pp. 151–2; ODNB, under ‘Thomas of Lancaster’.
34. It was Henry V who brought Richard II’s body back from King’s Langley to be buried at Westminster, and the story goes that he had always been fond of Richard, who had knighted him in Ireland in 1399. Likewise they may have had different views about Hotspur, many of whose servants and followers came to be employed by the prince. See Kirby, p. 227.
35. Allmand, p. 397; PROME, 1423 October, item 35. Henry Beaufort seems to have taken against her too. See PROME, 1426 February, introduction.
36. Allmand, pp. 49–50; PROME, 1411 November, introduction, quoting A. H. Thomas & I. D. Thornley (eds), The Great Chronicle of London (1938), p. 90.
37. That this was intentional is made likely by the fact that it had been Edward III’s entail which had brought John of Gaunt’s children closer to the throne than his older siblings’.
38. Such a view is outlined in EC, p. 37, where it is dated to 1412–13, and A. H. Thomas & I. D. Thornley (eds), The Great Chronicle of London (1938), p. 90, where it is dated to 1411. Such an opinion is likely to have been held for some while before this.
39. It should be noted that Thomas of Lancaster and Henry Beaufort were unfriendly towards one another at this time. In 1411, when Thomas obtained dispensation to marry John Beaufort’s widow, Henry Beaufort attempted to stop him. See Kirby, p. 234; Allmand, p. 53; CB, pp. 64–5.
40. CB, p. 48.
41. Wylie, iv, pp. 298–9. It is perhaps significant that he is not known to have stayed with Henry Beaufort in this year, although he had stayed with him in previous years.
42. CB, p. 44.
43. CB, p. 49; Wylie, iii, p. 284. Kirby, p. 225, gives 19 December.
44. The king travelled eleven miles per day, slow by normal standards but a rare example of sustained road travel at this time in his life. See Appendix Five.
45. For a view supporting the sustained friendship between Henry and Archbishop Arundel at this time, see Badby, pp. 149–50, 188. An alternative reading is suggested in Allmand, p. 42. This is that Arundel was dismissed because he ‘may not have been high in the royal favour’. Two reasons are given by Allmand for this tentative suggestion: that he had not always been a firm supporter of the king and that Henry did not appreciate the archbishop’s restrictions on his financial practices. The first of these is difficult to see, given Arundel’s pro-royal role in parliaments throughout the reign, especially that of 1407. The second is speculation. What is not in doubt is that the close bonds between Henry and Arundel in 1407 grew – if anything – closer in 1408 and 1409, when Arundel was chancellor and leader of the council. Henry wrote notes in his own hand in these two years thanking him for his work, and often stayed at the archbishop’s own houses. (Henry is known to have stayed at Lambeth, for example, in January, February, March, April and May 1410: see Badby, p. 188; Wylie, iv, p. 299). In March 1409 he granted Arundel the royal castle of Queenborough, and later that year the royal manor of Sheen (Badby, p. 156). The archbishop was with him in his sicknesses in 1408 and 1409, and witnessed his will on 21 January 1409. It is also striking that Arundel witnessed almost every charter on C 53/178 (10–12 Henry IV) even after he was no longer chancellor. The only exception is no. 9, sealed on 12 November 1409 (no. 10, dated 17 February 1410 having no witnesses). Other strong evidence for the reading given in the text here – that Arundel resigned against the king’s will – is Henry IV’s emphatic support for Arundel in his argument with Oxford University in 1411 and the fact that Henry brought back Arundel as chancellor when he reasserted his own authority at the end of 1411. It is far more likely that in December 1409 Arundel was no longer able to tolerate the assertiveness of the young prince, who sacked him as chancellor on the day after Henry IV died.
46. Henry is not known to have visited Southwark Palace in 1409 or 1410 (unlike 1408). In later years, Henry Beaufort was questioned in parliament over his loyalty to Henry, and at the end of the reign he was widely thought to have tried to persuade the king to abdicate. For obvious reasons, it would be quite understandable if Henry had always been a little cautious of his father’s other son called Henry.
47. It would appear that the king’s half-brother was trying to undermine the king’s friend in ecclesiastical as well as political matters. See Badby, pp. 153–4.
48. For Thomas Beaufort as the member of the prince’s party ‘most acceptable to the king’, see Badby, p. 202.
49. CM, pp. 377–9; PROME, 1410 January, introduction and appendix.
50. For a full discussion of this scheme see Badby, pp. 192–5.
51. CM, p. 379.
52. Badby, p. 207.
53. Royal Wills, pp. 208–11.
54. According to Kirby, p. 230, only these three attended a meeting on 8 February 1410.
55. Kirby, p. 241. The existence of this measure is known only from its annulment. That councillors swore to abide by the Thirty-One Articles again, and that this was struck from the record is not impossible. Some such measure would explain how the prince and the council was able to overrule the king in his assent to the fifteenth article of the commons petition of 23 April.
56. Signet Letters, p. 154.
57. C 53/178. Of the seven which fall in 1410 (nos 2–8), only two were granted by the king in person, and both of these were during the first session of parliament. The remainder were granted on the strength of a privy seal writ.
18: In That Jerusalem
1. Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 137. The importance to Henry can be gauged from his statement in 1407, when he declared that those currently serving him should be paid their annuities as a priority, over and above recipients of grants in earlier years.
2. PC, ii, p. 7. These were in addition to the prince and the three officers (treasurer, chancellor and keeper of the privy seal).
3. PC, ii, pp. 8–12.
4. Wylie, iii, p. 431.
5. Signet Letters, p. 154.
6. Kirby, p. 236.
7. On 29 November 1410 Henry appointed ambassadors to negotiate with representatives of Castile and France. The same day he separately licensed the prince to grant safe-conducts to the ambassadors of the duke of Burgundy, even though he himself was happy to issue safe-conducts to the French negotiators. In addition, he directed the instructions to the French embassy to be sealed with the great seal and the privy seal (both controlled by members of the council) but not the signet, his personal seal. Although the split with the council was some way off, the difference in policy towards France was perhaps clear to Henry long before the dispute became open. See Nicols, Privy Council, ii, pp. 5–6; Syllabus, ii, p. 566.
8. Allmand, p. 48.
9. Wylie, iv, p. 36; Allmand, p. 48.
10. Wylie, iv, p. 38.
11. For example, Kirby, p. 238, and Wylie, iv, p. 40. McNiven in ‘Health’ allows that problems with the prince may have been the real reason. It should be noted that the king was well enough and sane enough at this time t
o write letters in his own hand (for which see Signet Letters, p. 155).
12. Syllabus, p. 568 (ships); PROME, 1411 November, introduction (summons). If Wylie, iv, p. 41, is correct in stating that plans for the parliament were being made as early as 28 August, this might suggest that the council was planning to hold a parliament in Henry’s absence, in which case there can be little doubt that the purpose was to gain parliamentary approval for his deposition.
13. PROME, 1411 November, introduction.
14. Kirby, p. 234; Allmand, p. 53; CB, pp. 64–5.
15. Eulogium, iii, pp. 420–1. In addition there is the prince’s open letter of 1412, which accuses others of claiming this about him (for which see CM, p. 384) and similar claims in February 1426 against Henry Beaufort regarding his disloyalty to Henry IV. The latter accusation was on the testimony of Henry V himself, who reported to his brother Humphrey that when Henry IV had been extremely ill, Henry Beaufort had said to him that the king, being so racked with illness that he was not compos mentis or able to speak, was not capable of governing his people, and so he urged him to take the government and crown upon himself (PROME, 1426 February, appendix).
16. PROME, 1411 November, introduction, quoting J. A. Giles (ed.), Incerti Scriptoris Chronicon Angliae (1848), p. 63.
17. PROME, 1411 November, item 25.
18. PROME, 1411 November, item 26.
19. CCR 1409–13, p. 311. The sole exceptions were Owen Glendower and Thomas Ward of Trumpington (the man impersonating Richard II in Scotland).
20. Henry’s final council is named in PC, ii, pp. 31 (twice, once without Lord Roos), 36 and 38. Bowet was appointed on 6 January 1412 (Wylie, iv, p. 52). See also King’s Council, p. 164, where it is stated that the duke of Clarence was a member of the council. This is unlikely, as he was abroad from shortly after his creation as duke.
21. Allmand, p. 61. On p. 54 Allmand suggests that Henry chose to support the Armagnacs because he wished to demonstrate his independence from his son’s policy in supporting Burgundy. However, Henry is unlikely to have made his mind up on which faction to support only in the wake of dismissing his son; it is far more likely that this was a bone of contention leading to the prince’s dismissal.
22. For enmity between the duke of Brittany (son of the queen of England) and Burgundy, see Monstrelet, i, p. 209. In addition, it should be noted that Arthur of Brittany, son of Queen Joan of England, had been brought up in the household of the duke of Orléans (Wylie, iv, p. 67). For the alliances between the Armagnacs and Navarre, Gascony, Brittany and Aragon see CM, p. 382.
23. Representatives of the duke of Burgundy were in England discussing the potential marriage alliance from 1 February to 4 March 1412. Henry had given them safe-conducts on 11 January 1412 and appointed negotiators to deal with them on 10 February. The Armagnacs sent negotiators on 24 January; they received safe-conducts on 6 February. See Syllabus, ii, p. 569; Wylie, iv, p. 64.
24. CM, p. 385.
25. C 53/179 no 07.
26. The prince received one thousand marks on 18 February (Wylie, iv, p. 51); payments for their services also went to the prince’s treasurer, Henry Scrope, and the earls of Arundel and Warwick. Allmand, p. 53, quoting E 404/27/168–9, 214, 268.
27. C 53/179 nos 5, 6. The earlier of these was the foundation by the duke of York of the great collegiate church at Fotheringay. That Henry visited Windsor in the meantime is suggested by the itinerary in Wylie, iv, p. 301.
28. As Henry declared on 16 May. See Syllabus, p. 571.
29. For the naming of the prince as a supporter of the king on this expedition, see CM, p. 386.
30. C 53/179 no. 2. This took place on 5 July 1412, four days before Thomas of Lancaster was created duke of Clarence. Extraordinarily, these creations were the only ones in the whole of Henry IV’s reign (except passing the royal and Lancastrian titles to his son and heir in 1399). It is surprising that until now he had not raised his younger sons to dukedoms, even though parliament had urged him to do so regularly since 1406. There are two obvious reasons why he had been reluctant. One was that he could not afford to endow his sons with the lands required to maintain them in the dignity of dukes. The other was the lesson of Richard’s reign, in which so many dukes had been created that the dignity had been cheapened.
31. C 53/l79 no. 5.
32. CM, p. 386.
33. Wylie, iv, pp. 92–3.
34. CM, p. 386, has 29 June. Wylie, iv, p. 90, states that the prince was at the bishop of London’s house from 30 June to 11 July. There are several accounts of what took place in his meeting with his father, but it seems that two separate meetings have been confused by contemporary writers: one following the prince’s letter of 17 June and the other following accusations of the prince’s sequestration of the money for Calais in September. Wylie associates the prince drawing a dagger in the king’s presence and asking the king to kill him to the late June reconciliation; Allmand and ODNB (under ‘Henry IV’) date it to the September one. The closeness of the suspicions harboured by the king in the First English Life of Henry V to those mentioned by Walsingham in relation to June, combined with the presence of the earl of Ormond (who sailed to France with the duke of Clarence in August), favour the late June meeting. See Wylie, iv, pp. 53, 90–91; Allmand, pp. 57–8; C. L. Kingsford (ed.), The First English Life of Henry V (Oxford, 1911), pp. 11–12; EHD, p. 206; CM, p. 387.
35. Wylie, iv, p. 90; John Stow, Chronicle of England (1615), p. 339. But note Wylie’s word of caution on not finding Ormond’s testimony in Stow’s supposed source.
36. EHD, p. 206.
37. John Stow, Chronicle of England (1615), p. 340. Whether this scene relates to the reconciliation in late June or early July, or to a second meeting of the king and his son in late September, is not certain. However, a meaningful reconciliation did take place between Henry and his son at this time, followed by a show of reconciliation between Henry Beaufort and Thomas of Lancaster. On 13 July 1412 Henry Beaufort received a pardon which specifically named him as executor of his brother’s will, reflecting on his dispute with Thomas (CPR 1408–13, p. 420).
38. Wylie, iv, p. 72.
39. PC, ii, p. 33; Wylie, iv, p. 77, has different figures, taken from the St Denis chronicle.
40. PC, ii, pp. 34–5. This is undated but it includes a reference to paying wages to the prince for the service of sixty men-at-arms for 203 days from 9 March, i.e. to 25 September.
41. Walsingham also claims this in relation to the June reconciliation. In relation to these earlier claims, Arundel had received a general pardon on 15 June (Syllabus, ii, p. 571). Walsingham gives very little information for the last year of the king’s life, however, and is less reliable as an authority for this period.
42. PC, ii, pp. 37–8.
43. Wylie, iv, p. 102.
44. EHD, p. 206.
45. Wylie, iv, p. 38, n. 1.
46. Or the Bethlehem Chamber, according to Elmham, a royal chaplain. See Wright (ed.), Political Poems, ii, pp. 122.
47. Brut, ii, p. 372; EHD, p. 207.
48. Monstrelet, i, pp. 239–40; Waurin, pp. 166–7. Monstrelet was Waurin’s source (Gransden, Historical Writing II, pp. 289, 291–2). Monstrelet himself does not fail to compliment Henry on his virtues; he describes him as ‘a valiant knight, eager and subtle against his enemies’, and states that the prince was ‘honourably crowned’, so the bias of the story was not his own. But we should be suspicious of the veracity of a French tale which casts the Lancastrians in an unworthy light and conflicts with what was recorded in England.
49. Gransden, Historical Writing II, pp. 389–90.
50. IH, p. 124.
51. Capgrave, Chronicle of England, pp. 302–3.
52. See ODNB, under ‘Henry IV’ and ‘Elmham, Thomas’; Wright (ed.), Political Poems, ii, pp. 118–23.
53. Foedera, ix, pp. 9–10; Issues, pp. 334–5. Henry V purchased his father’s goods on 15 May for £25,000 so he could ‘perform his will’. Henry V had not managed to pay all
his father’s debts by the time of his own death in 1422. Further evidence that Henry made his second will on his deathbed may be found in Brut, ii, p. 372.
19. That I and Greatness were Compelled to Kiss
1. PK, p. 401.
2. Waurin, pp. 63–4.
Appendix One
1. For Henry V, whose birth is sometimes wrongly assigned to August 1387, see Appendix Three.
2. For a history of the royal Maundy ceremony, see the two books by Brian Robinson, Royal Maundy (1977), and Silver Pennies and Linen Towels (1992).
Appendix Two
1. CR, p. 166.
Appendix Three
1. Kirby, p. 16; Register 1379–1383, i, pp. 180, 222, 232; ii, p. 309. This last shows that Mary’s mother was paid for her daughter’s upkeep for a year on 31 January 1382, presumably in advance. See also CPR 1381–85, p. 95: this shows that Mary was still living with her mother on 6 February 1382.
2. LK, p. 17.
3. Wylie, iv, p. 166. The use of both English and Latin is common in Wylie’s appendices.
4. Wylie, iv, p. 167.
5. Alison Weir, Britain’s Royal Families (Pimlico edn, 2002), p. 124.
6. DL 28/1/1 fol. 5r.
7. CIPM, xvii, pp. 376–80. Odd IPMs also give his age as fourteen or sixteen, but most agree on ‘15 and more’.
8. John Rylands Library, French MS 54; Allmand, pp. 7–8.
9. Allmand, p. 7.
10. DL 28/1/2 fol. 20v., noted in Wylie, iv, p. 159. A payment to the midwife who assisted at Thomas’s birth is also noted in this account, as are cloth, kirtles, tunics and sandals for Thomas as well as his older brother.
11. DL 28/1/2 fol. 28. This is an indenture between Henry of Lancaster’s chamberlain and treasurer, dated 24 September 1386.
12. E 101/404/23 fol. 3r.
13. Allmand, p. 8. Also see the ages for Henry cited in Wylie, iii, p. 324.
14. DL 28/1/2 fol. 17r.
15. ODNB, under ‘John of Lancaster’, CP, ii, p. 70.
16. Expeditions, p. 107.
17. Wylie, iii, p. 248.
18. Goodman, John of Gaunt, p. 155.
The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King Page 60