Henry V

by Teresa Cole

  Nor were the more traditional siege weapons ignored. Trebuchets and mangonels, used for hurling heavy stones and other missiles, would also be needed, along with the tall, multi-storied ‘belfries’ or towers on which attackers could be drawn up close to castle walls to launch their assaults. Quantities of wood were necessary for these, along with skilled carpenters and others to put them together and repair them when needed.

  Armourers were also in demand to fit out the many thousands who would march with the king, the quantity and type of armour varying with the status, wealth and role of the combatant. Archers tended to be very lightly armoured. An open-faced iron cap and a brigandine, a canvas jacket reinforced with metal plates, was the usual protection, leaving arms and legs unencumbered for speed and accuracy of shooting and mobility.

  At the other end of the scale a knight or noble would be covered from head to foot in plates of metal known as his harness. This was never a ‘suit of armour’ in the sense of a single garment. Each piece would be attached separately, from the many-plated sabatons on his feet to the helmet or bascinet, with or without a visor, on his head. The body was protected by a breastplate and backplate, usually hinged on the left side. A skirt of steel hoops hung from waist to mid-thigh, while arms and legs were protected by metal articulated at knee, elbow and shoulder. The neck and shoulders were originally covered by a flexible mail ‘aventail’, but later this was replaced by a solid metal gorget to protect the throat.

  Contrary to popular belief, this armour was not overwhelmingly heavy or cumbersome. It was worn over a thickly padded cloth jacket, the arming doublet, which not only made it more comfortable but also helped absorb the blows from an opponent’s weapons. With weight distributed more or less evenly all over, it was relatively easy for a fit man to bear. It did, however, need to be well fitting and correctly attached in order to allow free movement. Its main vulnerabilities were under the arms and in the groin area, and later the arming doublet would have mail attached to the skirt and under the arms to reduce this risk. A blow from a warhammer could also disable a joint by bending the metal plates, leaving the wearer unable to lift an arm or bend a leg.

  While all these war materials were in preparation Henry was not neglecting the part to be played by diplomacy in making ready for war. In particular his aim was to isolate France from all her traditional supporters. Negotiations with John the Fearless effectively ensured Burgundy’s neutrality, while support for the Council at Constance, pet project of the Emperor Sigismund, may, in part at least, have been intended to achieve the same results as regards the Germanic states on France’s eastern borders. Castile among the Spanish nations was a long-time French supporter, and her ships were well placed to disrupt traffic in the Channel and harry the English coast. As early as 1413 a truce was agreed to counter this risk, and in January 1414 another was signed with Brittany to halt attacks on English shipping by Bretons, whose piracy was only matched by that of the Devon sailors facing them across the Channel. Both of these treaties were firmly enforced by Henry.

  At the same time as clearing the Channel of potential enemies, the king was also planning to fill it with English ships. Always more interested than his predecessors in the security of the sea, it was partly through his influence when Prince of Wales that the number of royal ships had grown from two to six at the time of his accession. In July 1413 William Catton was appointed clerk of the king’s ships, with immediate orders to set about building and repairing vessels for the royal fleet. These were not intended as transport but as fighting ships that would patrol the coastal waters between England and the Continent. By 1415 another six had been added, and, based at Southampton Water, this became over the next decade or so at least the embryo of a royal dockyard.

  Home defences, too, were put in order at this time. Castles along the Scottish and Welsh borders were repaired and improved, restocked and fully garrisoned. South coast ports, including Southampton, had their fortifications rebuilt, some acquiring new towers with gun ports rather than arrow slits as a sign of the progressive times.

  Henry’s second parliament, sitting at Leicester in April 1414, had a strong message of law and order, both at home and on the seas. The king, declared Bishop Henry, opening the session in his role as Lord Chancellor, has set his heart to keep the laws. As if to emphasise the point, and in response to a number of petitions relating to lawlessness in the Midlands shires, the Court of King’s Bench, the most powerful of the common law courts, spent several months sitting at a number of towns around the area, dealing vigorously with the enforcement of the law.

  The Scots were always a danger when English eyes were turned to France, but Henry still had his trump card, the young King James of Scotland. As a sign of their importance both he and the Regent Albany’s son, Murdoch, had been promptly returned to the Tower of London almost at the moment of Henry’s accession, and remained there more or less throughout the build-up to war. Henry’s brother John, newly created Duke of Bedford, together with Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, had been confirmed in their posts as wardens of the Scottish March, but now Henry proposed a prisoner exchange that he felt would make the ongoing truce even more secure.

  Not the young king but Murdoch was offered in exchange for Northumberland’s grandson, Henry Percy, who had begun as a guest of the Scots but rapidly transformed into a prisoner after his grandfather’s last fruitless rebellion. The king calculated that returning Percy to his hereditary lands and titles (provided of course that he remained indebted to Henry) would add to the stability of the region, as would reuniting Murdoch with his father. In fact the exchange went badly wrong when Murdoch, on his way north, was ambushed and abducted by a renegade Lollard knight. (Some accounts suggest he in fact escaped from his escort.) Though he was soon recovered the exchange was delayed, the Scots invaded the north and were only stopped by the actions of Sir Robert Umphraville at Yeavering. This and the threat that Murdoch would not be returned prevented the incident escalating into the war that Henry had been so anxious to avoid.

  Throughout 1414 the build-up to the invasion of France continued unabated. Though Henry had consulted his council in the spring and his parliament in November, each time being told to keep negotiating, still the preparations on all fronts went on.

  Having experienced years of campaigning in Wales with insufficient money, the king was determined this would not happen again. There were basically three sources of finance available to him: income from the royal estates, money voted by Parliament and loans. While he was prepared to bide his time about the second of these, the first and third were employed immediately under the supervision of his Treasurer, Thomas, Earl of Arundel.

  Rents and profits from royal estates and fines from royal courts were rigorously overhauled from the very start of the reign. Pensions and annuities, almost scattered broadcast by Henry IV, were reviewed by his son, who possibly felt there was no need to buy popularity in that way. In general, when they were continued, some service, military or otherwise, would be expected in return. Meticulous accounts were kept, and the fact that the king himself was likely to review the figures and question any discrepancies no doubt kept his officials up to the mark. For a warrior king, Henry seemed also to possess the soul of an accountant. All of this, however, meant that money flowed into rather than out of the royal coffers.

  Money voted by Parliament came in two basic forms: subsidies, and duties on merchandise traded in and out of the country. A subsidy would be paid by anyone with moveable goods valued at ten shillings or more. Typically it would be one-fifteenth of the value of these goods for those in the countryside, and one-tenth for those in towns. Subsidies payable by the clergy, again typically one-tenth, were voted for separately by the convocations for the archdiocese of Canterbury and York.

  Duties, normally granted for a period of years, were payable on exports of English wools and hides, and, in the form of tonnage and poundage, on every tun or cask of wine and pound of merchandise imported. Foreign merchants p
aid proportionately more than their English counterparts. The wool duty was granted for a period of four years from September 1413, while tonnage and poundage, initially granted only for one year from that date, were renewed for a further three years from September 1414.

  Soon after his accession one Richard Whittington, a wealthy cloth merchant in the city of London, made a loan of £2,000 to the king. This same Dick Whittington, true to the prophecy of the bells in the children’s story, had been Lord Mayor of London twice already and would be again in the future. He was a noted benefactor to both Henry and his father, but was not the only one to contribute in this way. From the spring of 1415 the raising of money by loans became a major priority.

  In March 1415 the mayor and aldermen of the city of London were the first to be flattered and cajoled into producing from the city a loan that, in today’s terms, would be the equivalent of nearly £3 million. Then in May what was almost a begging letter went out under the king’s private seal to individuals, towns and religious communities around the country. The king was setting out to claim his rights, and without further money (to be raised by loans) his enterprise was likely to fail or at least be delayed. The amount of the loan was left deliberately vague – to be suggested by the bearer of the letter – and the money was to be produced as quickly as possible. The result of this was a flood of contributions, ranging from individual loans of some thousands from such as Bishop Henry to loans of a few hundred from important towns such as Bristol and Norwich. These latter would be made up of individual payments assessed by the town authorities, which might be as little as ten pence. In return for these loans, some of which would not be repaid for years, jewels, plate, even crowns were handed over from the royal treasury as security.

  One estimate puts the total sum raised by Henry for his wars at approaching £70 million in today’s currency, and to this sum a large proportion of the country’s population would have contributed, whether by loans, subsidies or otherwise. It was a time when unity and common purpose of the nation was beginning to be stressed, and this was certainly one way in which the whole populace could be made to feel involved in the king’s endeavours.

  A similar theme can be seen in the recruitment of men for the king’s army, which began in earnest in March 1415. The idea of a feudal army, where each man was called upon to serve his feudal lord, up to and including the king, had long been abandoned. Though Henry IV had on many occasions called out the local levies to deal with sudden emergencies, this was at best a short-term defensive solution. Poorly trained men serving for only forty days was not what was needed for an army of invasion. Instead an indenture system had been developed whereby professional fighting men would sell their services to whoever might need them.

  An indenture was a document containing two identical copies of a contract to provide specified services on specified terms. One type was an indenture for life whereby the retainer undertook to serve in peace and in war. The other was an indenture to serve for a specific time or in a particular campaign. When all the details had been listed and the document signed by both parties and often witnessed, it would be cut in half with a wavy or ‘indented’ line, each party taking one copy of the agreement. In the case of any dispute the documents could be produced and matched together, thus making any forgery almost impossible.

  It was common when raising an army that indentures would be signed with a few of the king’s chief men, who would then go away and recruit the necessary numbers in the same way. What is surprising about Henry’s army is that so many separate indentures were issued, some covering barely a handful of men. The king’s copy of each was kept in a named leather bag, and all further documents relating to it, such as muster rolls and payments of wages, would be kept together in the same bag. Well over six hundred of these bags were ordered, and though they may not all have been used, there are clear records for 250 of them. What this meant was that, instead of there being many layers between the nobles and the men on the ground, a large number of Henry’s army had contracts with the king himself – perhaps another way of making them feel a more personal share in the campaign.

  The indenture specified the name of the captain and the numbers and ranks of the men he would bring to the muster. The term ‘men-at-arms’ or sometimes ‘lances’ is used to cover all those of whatever rank who were not archers or other specialists. It might refer to an earl, a knight or a simple esquire. Unlike the archers, the men-at-arms were supposed to equip themselves with weapons and horses, and the indenture would state exactly what equipment was required.

  From the amount of money raised it might be understood that Henry was expecting a long campaign, and this is reflected in the large number of indentures now issued in April 1415 which were for one year’s service. They were remarkably vague, however, about where that service would be given. Like all commanders, Henry did not want to warn the enemy in advance about where he might strike.

  Wages had been set for the campaign by the king and his council. A duke would receive 13s 4d a day (roughly 67p), an earl half that, four shillings for a baron, two for a knight and sixpence a day for an archer. Wages were paid quarterly in advance, with half of the first quarter paid on signing on and the rest at the muster. This and a ‘regard’ or bonus payment for each group of thirty men-at-arms might have helped towards the cost of the equipment.

  There was no shortage of recruits. Even the archer’s pay was well above what an unskilled man might hope to earn in other employment, and there was always the hope of extra profit from such an adventure. Henry was very strict about looting, but the capture of a wealthy prisoner would lead to a ransom being paid, sometimes there and then in the immediate aftermath of battle if it was not set too high. Lesser folk who felt they would not be able to extract such a payment could sell a prisoner to their superiors, thus ensuring they did not miss out. One of Henry’s leading commanders, Sir John Cornwaille, was an enthusiastic buyer-up of ransoms, and his fortune and fine new residence, Ampthill Castle, was built upon such profitable trading.

  There was a general expectation that there would be such opportunities for enrichment, and the indenture would also clearly state how the spoils would be divided. In general the king would be entitled to all major prisoners such as the King of France and his immediate family, and in addition a third of the personal winnings of company leaders, and a ninth of those of the men in their companies, provided these were worth more than ten marks (nearly £3,000 today). Despite these restrictions the coffers of several noble families, the earls of Arundel and Warwick for example, were well replenished by the profits from Henry’s wars.

  With the muster set for July 1415 at Southampton, the final problems to be overcome were logistical – how to feed this vast number of men and how to transport them and their necessary supplies to France. As early as March the king’s agents were sent to the Low Countries to hire, quietly and discreetly, as many ships and crews as they could, and send these at once to the ports of London, Sandwich and Winchelsea. It is likely that they acquired in this way some six hundred ships, but that was nothing like enough. On 11 April the king ordered that all ships of twenty tons or more at any port from the Thames to Newcastle should be seized for conversion to transports. This applied whether the ships were English or foreign, and, though some compensation was paid, this did not reduce the consternation felt by foreign owners as something over a thousand ships were impounded. It is an interesting point that, while English ships were sent to Southampton, where the build-up of men and materials might be most obvious, the others went to London, Sandwich or Winchelsea.

  At the same time wagons and horses were being acquired in great numbers, together with the grooms, farriers, wheelwrights and others necessary to accompany them. Cattle and oxen were bought and driven to the Southampton area, and over several counties around bakers and brewers were instructed to begin to produce whatever would be needed to feed the king’s army. It was a feature of Henry’s campaigns that such things were bought not requis
itioned, although the payment might be a pledge that would be difficult to redeem. In theory, at least, all abuses were to be reported to officers of the king’s household so that justice could be done, something else that tended to make the king popular with the working people. Every lord, knight and esquire was told to supply himself with provisions for three months, and this too was expected to be paid for. Whatever shortfall there was in the advance wages provided had to be made up by the individual concerned.

  As all this mass of men, animals and materials began to make their way towards Southampton, the only real comparison, and in the same area, would be the build-up of men and materials prior to D-Day in the Second World War some five hundred years later. It is estimated that around twelve thousand men made up Henry’s army, and this figure probably does not include all the non-combatants needed to provide for men and beasts. In Henry’s retinue alone there were the grooms needed to look after 233 horses, armourers, a sergeant of the pavilions and his assistants to deal with the tentage, some hundreds of kitchen and other servants, minstrels, chaplains and monks to attend to spiritual needs, a personal physician and twenty-three surgeons. Hundreds of ships were needed just to transport the horses since, at the king’s expense, each duke was entitled to bring fifty, an earl twenty-four, a baron sixteen, a knight six, an esquire four and an archer one.

  The king himself left London with much ceremony on 16 June, and just when he did not want to see them a bevy of French ambassadors arrived the day after. He met with them at Wolvesey Castle in Winchester, and though it must have been obvious to all that Henry was not likely to be distracted from his purpose, once again they made a slightly enlarged offer which was immediately turned down. At this point, according to one account, the leader of the delegation, the Archbishop of Bourges, made a final riposte. Not only, he declared, was Henry not the true King of France, he was not the true King of England either, which burst of plain speaking left nothing more to say on either side.