19. Wylie, ‘Dispensation of John XXIII for a son of Henry IV’, pp. 96–7. Edmund was in his eleventh year on 15 January 1412. It is not known why he was called ‘le Bourd’ (‘the joke’, or ‘the deceipt’), nor whom the mother might have been. He was educated in London.
Appendix Four
1. Waurin, p. 60.
2. Given-Wilson, Usk, p. 171; Wylie, i, p. 363.
3. ‘Deposition’, pp. 80–81.
4. Brut, ii, p. 549.
5. For example, the contemporary Wigmore chronicle in the library of the University of Chicago (MS 224). I am indebted to Dr Philip Morgan for this detail.
6. It may be worth noting that a mass grave of 159 feet in length and 9 feet in depth and width (IX instead of LX) would be sufficient to bury about a thousand corpses if piled four deep.
7. Eulogium, iii, p. 397.
8. Gapgrave, Chronicle of England, p. 283; Annales, p. 367.
9. On the side of the rebels, five dead knights can be identified, including those executed after the battle. These are Henry Percy himself, the earl of Worcester, Sir Richard Venables, Sir Richard de Vernon and Sir Gilbert Halsall (the last being named in the Dieulacres chronicle). On the king’s side, ten men of substance can be identified as killed in the battle: the earl of Stafford and Sir Walter Blount (according to Brut, ii, p. 549), Hugh Schirle, John Clifton, John Cockayne, Nicholas Ganville, John Calverley, John Massy, lord of Podington, Hugh Mortimer and B. Gousile (according to Annales, p. 369). The Brut also incorrectly includes Sir John Stanley, who was only wounded. See also Wylie, iv, p. 303 for other men from Cheshire and Lancashire at the battle.
Appendix Five
1. Biggs, ‘Politics of health’, p. 197.
2. Places and dates drawn from Biggs, ‘Politics of health’, p. 205.
3. Places and dates drawn from Wylie, iv, p. 291.
4. Wylie has Henry at Shrewsbury on 20 July; however, there is no evidence he was in the town. He was probably at Haughmond Abbey, five miles away.
5. Kirby, p. 213; Douglas Biggs, ‘An Ill and Infirm King’.
6. Except where stated otherwise, places and dates drawn from Wylie, iv, pp. 296–7.
7. Signet Letters, p. 145.
8. Signet Letters, p. 146.
9. Douglas Biggs, ‘An Ill and Infirm King’.
10. E 101/405/14 fol. 7v. These were made of brass and cost 50s each. This was about four times the normal price of a saddle.
11. DL 28/1/3 fol. 13v. These cost 33s 4d each.
12. Wylie, iv, p. 299.
Appendix Six
1. DL 28/1/2 fol. 15v. Twice medicines were bought for him on Middleton’s advice.
2. DL 28/1/2 fol. 26r. The author of Melton’s entry in ODNB is mistaken in stating that this service was performed on behalf of Henry. The payment occurs in the section of the account devoted to Lady Derby, and the text reads domine not domini.
3. Expeditions, p. 110.
4. Expeditions, p. 164.
5. Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society, p. 106. Here Rawcliffe states that Malvern was contracted from 1393; in her entry on Malvern in ODNB she states that he was employed from 1395.
6. He was with Henry at the execution of Scrope and present at the examination of John Badby on 2 January 1409. See Wylie, ii, p. 238.
7. Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society, p. 112; CPR 1399–1401, p. 228; CPR 1401–1405, pp. 9, 345 (Royal Mint); CPR 1405–8, pp. 22, 170.
8. E 101/404/21 fol. 45r.
9. Syllabus, ii, p. 544.
10. He may have been the same man as Richard Grisby, abbot of Dore, who received a safe-conduct to travel abroad in 1411. See CCR 1409–13, p. 160.
11. CPR 1408–13, p. 28. He arrived by the end of September 1408 (Wylie, iv, p. 231).
12. CPR 1408–13, p. 363.
13. Syllabus, p. 570; CPR 1408–13, p. 392 (denization), 397 (death). Henry wrote a close letter on his behalf on 4 April 1412 (CCR 1409–13, p. 269). Easter 1412 fell on 3 April, so presumably he died unexpectedly on or about the 4th.
14. Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society, p. 123. For Elias de Sabato see Wylie, iv, p. 231; Syllabus, p. 566; C. H. Talbot, Medicine in Medieval England (1967), p. 205. D’Alcobasso received the prebend of West Thurrock and the deanery of Wimborne Minster in February 1412: see Wylie, iii, p. 232; CPR 1408–13, pp. 363, 391, 392, 410.
15. Biggs, ‘Politics of health’, p. 192.
16. Wylie, iv, p. 204; Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society, p. 140.
17. Patricia Basing (ed.), Parish Fraternity Register: Fraternity of the Holy Trinity …, London Record Society 18 (1982), xvii.
18. E 101/404/21 fol. 45.
19. CPR 1399–1401, p. 255.
Appendix Seven
1. DL 28/1/2 fol. 14v. The entry refers to ‘swages’, very probably esses.
2. Wylie, iv, p. 116. See also the references in the note on the same page to the Lancastrian collar of the 1380s and 1390s being composed of esses.
3. It is possible that the carved collar of esses on the supposed effigy of Sir Thomas Swynford, Katherine Swynford’s first husband, who died in 1371, is the earliest extant example of a livery collar. However, it is not certain that the grave is his, nor is it known for certain when the effigy was made. Sometimes a grave went for decades unmarked by an effigy (as in the case of Henry IV’s first wife, Mary, who died in 1394 and whose effigy was not made until 1413). As Swynford’s widow was still alive, and may have initially thought she would be buried with her husband, it is quite possible that the effigy was not carved until after Katherine had married John of Gaunt in 1396.
4. Gothic, p. 206.
5. Wylie, iv, p. 116.
6. Duffy, Royal Tombs, p. 204; Nicolas, ‘Badge and Mottoes’, p. 367.
7. There is a reference to a bishop’s sovereign archbishop in 1352. The meaning of highest authority is the same as in the secular case. The word also appears with respect to the king’s sovereign territory, and wool being the sovereign merchandise (i.e. most important).
8. DL 27/310, dated 1394; DL 27/313, dated 1395. I am grateful to Adrian Ailes for these references.
9. Those for 1393–4 include a payment for ‘a gold collar made for the lord of seventeen letters of ‘s’ in the form of feathers with roundels and writing in the same with a swan in a ring’ (DL 28/1/4 fol. 16v), and those for 1397–8 include a payment for ‘a collar in esses and flowers of soveyne vous de moy’ (DL 28/1/6 fol. 22v).
10. There is at least one reference, and often two or three, to ‘souveyne vous de moi’ in the following folios: DL 28/1/3 fol. 14v & 15v, DL 28/1/4 fol. 15v & 16r; DL 28/1/6 fol. 22v, 23r & 23v.
11. DL 28/1/3 fol. 15v.
12. DL 28/1/3 fol. 14v.
13. DL 28/1/3 fol. 14v (‘a short loose gown of the lord of black velvet in the form of a curve of swages of Soveyne vous de moy’); DL 28/1/4 fol. 16r; DL 28/1/5 fol. 23r; DL 28/1/6 fol. 22v; DL 28/1/4 fol. 15v also has ‘ad modum souveyne vous de moys’.
14. HKW, ii, p. 935.
15. Radford, ‘An unrecorded royal visit’, p. 262; Issues, p. 305. The collar is possibly the one shown adorning Joan’s effigy in Canterbury Cathedral.
16. DL 28/1/3 fol. 14v.
17. Nicolas, ‘Badge and Mottoes’, p. 365.
18. In this matter, compare the feathers on Henry’s seal with those on that of the Black Prince, on which it was modelled (reproduced in this volume, as plate twelve, from Nicolas, ‘Badge and Mottoes’, p. 362). The prince’s does not have the motto. Engraved additions to seal matrices were not uncommon. Kings’ first great seals were often just altered copies of their predecessors’.
19. CR, p. 40.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX ONE
Henry’s Date of Birth and the Royal Maundy
When I began the research for this book, Henry was the only Plantagenet king whose date of birth was in doubt.1 As a consequence, and because of the importance of ascertaining his age in relation to Richard II, a considerable amount of time was devoted to this problem at the
outset. The result is a short essay entitled ‘Henry IV’s date of birth and the royal Maundy’ which will appear in the journal Historical Research. Readers wishing to check the methodology and sources used should refer to that article. What follows here is simply an explanatory note on the complications of the date of birth itself and the establishment of the part of the royal Maundy custom which relates to the sovereign’s age.
Henry was almost certainly born on Maundy Thursday 1367. Because it was such an important day in the Christian calendar, he commemorated his birthday on Maundy Thursday, not on the calendar day (15 April). In itself there was nothing unusual in this, for medieval people expressed their birthdays in terms of a saint’s feast day (i.e. Edward II spoke of his birthday as St Mark’s Day, not 25 April, and Edward III spoke of his as St Brice’s Day, not 13 November). What is unusual in Henry’s case was that the feast on which he was born was a moveable one. Thus he celebrated his birthday on a different day each year. This seems very strange to us, but it was not that uncommon in the middles ages; King John even started his regnal year on a different day each year (having been crowned on Ascension Day), with the result that his administrative or financial years were all of different lengths.
As a result of this, it is likely that Henry did not know the calendar date of his birth. If he had asked to know the exact date, he may have been told that no significant saint was celebrated on that day. So there was a good reason to continue celebrating it on Maundy Thursday. In addition, Richard II was very proud of his birth on the Epiphany; so Henry, by drawing attention to the fact that he was born on Maundy Thursday, could demonstrate that Richard was not the only member of the royal family to be so favoured by God. Indeed, by performing the traditional pedilavium (feet-washing) ritual, Henry was able to contrast his own royal humility with Richard’s style of self-interested absolutism.
An interesting by-product of this research has been the identification of the origin of the current Maundy tradition of giving alms according to the sovereign’s age next birthday. Henry himself started this tradition, on Maundy Thursday 1382, which he celebrated as his fifteenth birthday. Previously kings and other members of the royal family had made Maundy Thursday donations to thirteen, fifty or two hundred paupers (thirteen being the number of men present at the Last Supper). But in 1382, when his father gave him the money to make the usual donations of alms to thirteen paupers, Henry added the money to spread his donations among fifteen, the same number as years in his age. In later years he gave money, clothes and shoes, but the number always corresponded with either his age last birthday or his age next birthday. By 1388 the tradition had been taken up by his wife, Mary, who made a donation that year relating to her own age (eighteen), and his sons did likewise. Thus, when Henry V ascended the throne, Maundy Thursday became a sort of ‘official birthday’ for the king. The Yorkist kings dropped this custom, perhaps remembering it as Henry IV’s birthday, but even if its origins had been forgotten, it had already become a potent Lancastrian custom. Henry VII resurrected it shortly after his accession, and there is plenty of evidence that it was being adopted by many Lancastrian sympathisers in the early sixteenth century (following a similar pattern to the wearing of Lancastrian livery collars). The later Tudor monarchs perpetuated the ceremony and added to it, and thus handed it down to modern times.2
It is somewhat ironic that the one royal date of birth which has been unknown to historians for so many years is actually the one still commemorated by the sovereign to this day.
APPENDIX TWO
The Succession to the Crown, 1386–99
Many writers have considered the question of the succession in the reign of Richard II. Few, however, have considered it in the light of Edward III’s 1376 entailment of the Crown upon his male descendants. Even fewer have considered the question from Henry’s point of view, and no one (as far as I know) has fully considered the implications of Richard II making his own entailment in early 1399. As research on this book progressed it became clear that this was a significant problem, and so time was taken to examine the question in depth, attempting to ascertain how Richard’s fickle attitude to the succession affected Henry. The result, published as ‘Richard II and the Succession to the Throne’ in the July 2006 issue of the journal History, reveals several deliberate moves by Richard to eliminate Henry from the order of succession, the first dating back to the parliament of 1386. Readers who want an in-depth understanding of the matter prior to 1399 should refer to that article. What follows is a summary of the key turning points in Richard’s attitude to Henry as his potential heir.
Perhaps the most confusing aspect of the discussion is a single entry in the continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum that Richard II declared the Mortimer boys to be his heirs presumptive in the parliament of 1385. Many writers have taken this at face value. Many others have dismissed it as unsupported nonsense, asking why no other chroniclers and no official sources record such an important announcement. Richard certainly believed he had the right to appoint his successor, and there is some corroborative evidence in the Westminster Chronicle in an entry relating to the year 1387. However, if we check the text, a startling point emerges, previously unnoticed. There are at least two layers to the continuation of this chronicle. A lost original, written before 1404, was copied and substantially altered by one or more later writers, the last of whom was definitely writing after 1428 (as shown by his reference to the exhumation of Wycliffe in that year). If we examine the part relating to the announcement concerning the Mortimer boys, it turns out to have been made in the parliament of October 1386, not 1385, and to have been the work of the original pre-1404 chronicler. The writer of the original (lost) chronicle had made a mistake in placing the creation of the earl of Suffolk in the October 1386 parliament. The copyist corrected this by adding a new phrase of his own, which reads ‘however in the ninth year of Richard’s reign [June 1385-June 1386], the king held a great parliament at Westminster in which … Michael de la Pole was made earl of Suffolk’. With the use of the word ‘however’ (autem) and his reference back to the 1385 parliament, there is no doubt that this is a later interpolation, included to correct the pre-1404 continuator’s dating of Suffolk’s creation. But by inserting this detail, the later writer has dislodged the next entry from the original chronicler’s account of the 1386 parliament and inadvertently associated it with the 1385 one, for it states that ‘it was in this parliament’ that Roger Mortimer was declared the heir to the throne. Thus it can be seen that the original pre-1404 included the entry that Mortimer was declared the heir in the parliament of 1386, not that of 1385.
Redating Richard’s declaration to the parliament of 1386 explains many things. Obviously it is clear why Gaunt (Richard’s heir, according to Edward III’s entail) and Richard did not fall out over this matter: Gaunt was not at the October 1386 parliament, being in Castile. Henry was present, and reacted by joining the Appellants the following year. In addition, he was both a blood relation and a close ally of the two men who went to the king from the 1386 parliament to threaten him with deposition, namely Thomas of Woodstock and Thomas Arundel. This gives a context to the declaration, for the accepted process of deposition was to force the king to abdicate in favour of an heir. Richard was hardly likely to acknowledge Henry as his heir if he had an alternative. Thus there were good reasons for Richard to declare publicly that his successor would be Roger Mortimer, a twelve-year-old boy. It was a swiping blow to Henry’s kinsmen and allies and a sharp reminder to parliament that his youthful successor’s ruling abilities might be no greater than his own.
Following the success of the Appellants in 1387, Richard was forced to accept the terms of Edward III’s entail. Evidence from the charter rolls’ witness lists for 1394 shows that Richard gave precedence to the heirs male of Edward III’s fourth and fifth sons (John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley) over the heir general of his third son (Lionel of Antwerp). However, in that same year Richard resisted John of Gaunt’s request to recog
nise Henry as heir presumptive by appointing him keeper of the realm. Instead he appointed his uncle, Edmund of Langley. That he continued to regard Edmund as his heir is shown by three pieces of evidence. The first is Edmund’s precedence over Henry in late 1397 and early 1398 (when they were both dukes and so precedence can be compared). The second is Richard’s will (April 1399), which does not name Edmund as his successor but indicates him by default, for it includes a phrase about who was to act if his successor refused the throne, and the men who were next in the order of precedence after Edmund were all named in this capacity. The third is a petition submitted by Bagot in 1399 in which he described a discussion between him and Richard in 1398 in which Richard spoke of one day resigning in favour of Edward, duke of Aumale, Edmund’s son and heir. Crucially this discussion took place before the death of Roger Mortimer was known and before Henry’s own exile; it thus is further evidence of Richard’s propensity to favour the line of York over the lines of March and Lancaster.
As a result of all this there were three clear turning points in Richard’s view of the succession. The first was his declaration in favour of Roger Mortimer, expressed in the parliament of 1386. The second was his decision in December 1387 – at the persuasion of the Appellants – to acknowledge Gaunt as his heir, in line with Edward III’s entail. The third was his decision to subvert the entail and elevate Edmund of Langley over Henry in 1394. This remained his preferred order of succession thereafter, during which years he was probably planning to charge Henry with treason (for joining the Appellants) as soon as John of Gaunt died. When this happened, Richard very probably destroyed the original of Edward III’s entail. Either way, Henry was finally removed from the order of succession on 18 March 1399 by being branded a traitor and exiled for life.
The foregoing is the substance of the article in History. Unfortunately it was not until later, after this article had been published, that I realised that one very important piece of the jigsaw was missing. This only emerged in reconsidering Henry’s inheritance claim from Henry III. As the Crouchback legend was known at the time not to be correct (and thus a weak basis for establishing a dynasty), and as Henry’s claim from Henry III could not relate to his maternal descent (which would have implied the Mortimer family were the legal heirs), there had to be some other reason for the reference back to Henry III (who died in 1272). It is now known that in 1290 Edward I made a settlement which permitted females to inherit the throne, so Henry’s concentration on his status as the male heir seems to have been the key to understanding his claim all the way back to Henry III (as one contemporary source specifies).1 But Edward III’s settlement of 1376 would have supplanted that of 1290, and restored the male-only line of succession, so again we have to ask why Henry did not even mention it. Even if he did not have the original document, Richard II had himself observed its contents in the early 1390s. What should have been spelled out was the implication of Richard II’s recognition of the duke of York as his heir. If Richard officially settled the throne on Edmund and his family in 1399, Edward III’s entail would have been supplanted, and thus rendered void, even if Henry had had possession of the original.
The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King Page 61