Henry IV (11 page)

By now Richard's mind had turned to ways of avenging himself on those who had humiliated him. Early in August, while at Shrewsbury, he summoned the royal justices and sergeants-at-law and placed before them a list of ten questions to which he required answers; three weeks later at Nottingham, he repeated the process. Some of these ‘Questions to the Judges’ dealt in general terms with the king's exercise of his prerogative, others referred specifically to the parliament of 1386. The answers given by the justices, who later claimed coercion but also took their lead from the strongly royalist Chief Justice, Robert Tresilian, were precisely those which the king would have wished to hear: they affirmed the king's control over the agenda and proceedings of parliament and declared that the impeachment of de la Pole and the establishment of the Commission of Government had been illegal; those who had been responsible for them deserved to be punished like traitors. So dire were the ramifications of these responses that Richard initially tried to keep them secret, but by October 1387 Gloucester had learned of them and had informed his chief allies among the lords, the earls of Arundel and Warwick.

Events now gathered pace. The Commission of Government's term of office was due to end on 19 November, and Richard, anticipating his resumption of power, returned in splendour to London on 10 November and summoned Gloucester and Arundel to his presence. They refused to come, saying they feared for their lives. The king sent the earl of Northumberland to arrest Arundel at his castle of Reigate, but Arundel slipped away and, on 13 November, joined Gloucester and Warwick at Harringay, five miles north of London. Each of the three lords had his retainers with him. On the following day, at Waltham Cross (Hertfordshire), they met a delegation from the king led by the archbishop of Canterbury and the duke of York, where they proclaimed the Appeal of Treason from which derives the name by which they are commonly known, the Appellants or Lords Appellant. The Appeal set out charges of treason against five men close to the king: Robert de Vere, Michael de la Pole, Chief Justice Tresilian, Nicholas Brembre, the former mayor of London, and Alexander Neville, archbishop of York. On 17 November, accompanied by 300 retainers, the three Appellants came before the king in Westminster Great Hall and repeated their appeal. Richard calmly assured them that their accusations would be heard in the next parliament, which would meet on
3 February 1388; in the meantime, the five accused would be kept in custody and the Appellants' safety was guaranteed.
³¹
Yet within days it had become apparent that Richard would not keep his word. De la Pole and Neville were allowed to flee, eventually reaching Paris,
³²
while Tresilian went into hiding and Brembre tried to rally the Londoners to Richard's cause. Meanwhile de Vere had decided on resistance: armed with letters from the king, he hastened northwards to Cheshire and Lancashire where, together with his agent Sir Thomas Molyneux, constable of Chester castle, he managed within a few weeks to raise some 3,000–4,000 troops.
³³
The Appellants were aware of his movements, however, and by early December both sides were preparing for war.
³⁴

It was at this point that Henry, along with Thomas Mowbray, the young earl of Nottingham, joined Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick, and on 12 December the five Appellants, as they now were, gathered at Huntingdon to plan their campaign.
³⁵
Whether Henry and Mowbray made their decision jointly or individually is not clear. When Gloucester first heard of the Questions to the Judges (in October), he had apparently tried to persuade Henry to join them.
³⁶
If true, this meant that Henry must have weighed up his options for some two months before eventually throwing in his lot with them. As to his reasons for doing so, there must have been more to it than Fovent's belief that Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick made Henry and Mowbray partners in the appeal ‘because of affinity’, although that may have played a part.
³⁷
For Henry, the deciding factor was probably de Vere's
recruitment of forces in Lancashire and Cheshire, and the consequent undermining of Lancastrian influence there. Gaunt's absence had left his county palatine vulnerable, not just to royal encroachment but also to the local rivalries and ambitions which even the most powerful resident magnate found it hard to keep in check, and there were plenty of men in Lancashire (to say nothing of Cheshire, of which Richard was the earl) who felt themselves excluded from the duke's patronage. Sir Thomas Molyneux, de Vere's chief agent in Cheshire, was a disaffected former Lancastrian retainer who must have relished the chance to strike a blow at Lancastrian influence in the north-west.
³⁸
Richard II had also taken advantage of the week that he spent at Chester from 12–16 July 1387 to bolster his support in the region through the issue of pardons and other favours. The threat to Gaunt's position in the north-west was real enough, and when Henry heard of the musters taken by Molyneux at Flint and Pulford (Cheshire) in the first week of December, it was clear that the defence of his father's interests brooked no further delay.
³⁹
Issuing orders to his servants to send his equipment to Stony Stratford, Henry marched north from London for the ‘riding against the duke of Ireland’.
⁴⁰

From Huntingdon, the Appellants could either march south to London to confront the king directly, or west to intercept de Vere's army before it could reach the king. Both options were considered. At their trial in 1397, Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick were alleged to have wanted to depose Richard forthwith, but were dissuaded by Henry and Mowbray from doing so.
⁴¹
Henry's own evidence corroborated this: ‘Did you not say to me at Huntingdon,’ he said to Arundel, ‘where we first gathered in revolt, that before doing anything else it would be better to seize the king?’ ‘You, Henry
earl of Derby, you lie in your teeth’, replied Arundel, protesting that he had always sought the king's welfare and honour.
⁴²
These accounts need to be treated with caution (for Henry, in a sense, was also on trial in 1397), but they are far from implausible. Warwick may also have argued that, rather than deposing Richard, they should direct their energies against de Vere, but on balance such sentiments are more in keeping with Henry's and Mowbray's views.
⁴³
Warwick, as far as can be gathered, stood firm with Gloucester and Arundel throughout the crisis: the ‘undivided trinity’, as Fovent called them.
⁴⁴

Yet if Henry and Mowbray acted as a moderating influence on their senior colleagues, this was not the main reason why they joined the Appeal. Both of them, after all, were of an age with Richard and had been brought up with him; both also had private scores to settle with de Vere and may well have believed that, once his influence had been eliminated, the king should be given another chance. Moreover, if Richard were to be deposed, who would replace him? He and Anne of Bohemia had been married for nearly six years but had failed to produce an heir, and the succession was an increasingly live issue in 1386–7. An entail of the crown drawn up by Edward III in 1376–7 had stated that, should Richard die childless, the throne should pass to John of Gaunt and then to his male heirs, failing whom to his other two sons (the dukes of York and Gloucester) successively, and to their male heirs.
⁴⁵
With Gaunt out of the country, however, his (and thus Henry's) claim might fail by default. Here, then, was another reason why Henry could not afford to remain aloof in 1387, for although the existence of Edward III's entail was not widely known, and there is no evidence that Henry ever cited it, he was probably aware of its terms.

The Westminster chronicler said there were four main reasons for the Appellant rising: first, the rumours that Richard was planning to abandon or sell various English territories and rights in France to the French king; secondly, their belief that England was being misgoverned; thirdly, the incompetence of the king's advisers; fourthly, their fear that the king's counsellors were actively planning their death.
⁴⁶
Yet if the Appellants
shared a dissatisfaction with the way in which England was being governed, they also feared for their own lands and families should the king and de Vere be permitted to win this trial of strength – and none more so than Henry.

¹
E 101/400/12, m. 4; E 101/401/6, mm. 19, 23; E 101/401/16, mm. 20, 24 (rolls of great wardrobe liveries 1379–87). The household account book for 1383–4 is E 101/401/2.

²
For two minor favours granted at Henry's request in November 1380 and February 1384, see
CPR 1377–81
, 561 and
CPR 1381–5
, 374.

³
Saul,
Richard II
, 108–10.

⁴
Goodman,
John of Gaunt
, 96–103.

⁵
Westminster Chronicle
, 36–7.

⁶
Westminster Chronicle
, 68–80.

⁷
Westminster Chronicle
, 90–6;
SAC I
, 728–30. Northampton was initially condemned to death, but subsequently imprisoned instead following the intercession of Queen Anne.

⁸
For this and what follows, see
Westminster Chronicle
, 110–15, which added that ‘these temporal lords went in constant fear of the duke of Lancaster because of his great power, his admirable judgment, and his brilliant mind’; Goodman,
John of Gaunt
, 102–3.

⁹
Westminster Chronicle
, 116–17;
SAC I
, 754–6, states that he was so angry with Courtenay that he wanted to deprive him of his temporalities; when John Devereux, John Trivet, and the chancellor Michael de la Pole advised him against this, he accused them of treason.

¹⁰
Trinity College Library Dublin, MS 500, fo. 3. C. Given-Wilson, ‘The Earl of Arundel, the War at Sea, and the Anger of Richard II’, in
The Medieval Python
, ed. R. Yeager and T. Takamiya (New York, 2012), 27–38.

¹¹
Versions of the dispute differ, with Froissart placing much of the blame on the earl of Oxford for his insinuations regarding Gaunt's motivation. See
Westminster Chronicle
, 128–30, and
SAC I
, 762, where Gaunt is said to have advised the king to cross the Firth of Forth; Froissart,
Chroniques
, ed. S. Luce (SHF, Paris, 1869), xi.271–5, said that Gaunt wanted Richard to head south-west to cut off a Franco-Scottish raiding-party in Galloway, but that de Vere warned Richard that Gaunt only wanted to pursue the Scots because he hoped that Richard might be killed, whereupon Gaunt could claim the throne. Cf. Goodman,
John of Gaunt
, 104–5; Saul,
Richard II
, 145. See also Froissart's comment (
Chroniques
, xii.121) about de Vere's influence at this time: ‘par celui estoit tout fait et sans lui n'estoit riens fait’.

¹²
J. Sumption,
Divided Houses: The Hundred Years War III
(London, 2009), 560–8.

¹³
PROME
, vii.6–7. The amount granted to Gaunt by the commons was £13,300, but it was understood that he would also use his own resources. In February 1386 the king lent him a further £13,300: Goodman,
John of Gaunt
, 115–16.

¹⁴
See the comment by Froissart,
Chroniques
, xii.297: ‘Et estoit l'intencion du duc qu'il emmenroit avecques lui femme et enfans et feroit de biaux mariages en Castille et en Portingal avant son retour, car il ne voloit pas si tost retourner, et bien y avoit cause, car il veoit les besongnes d'Engleterre dures et le roy son nepveu jone, et avoit d'en costé lui perilleux conseil, pour quoy il se departoit le plus volontiers’.

¹⁵
Here they remained for most of the next three months, although Knighton says that on 22 April Gaunt and Duchess Constanza paid a final visit to the court to say farewell; they were each presented with a golden crown by the king and queen, and Richard issued an order that Gaunt was in future to be known as ‘king of Spain’. Gaunt and Henry also attended the Garter ceremonies at Windsor the following day:
Knighton
, 340; E 101/401/16, m.20 (issue of Garter robes).

¹⁶
Sumption,
Divided Houses
, 582, says that Gaunt's army of about 5,000 men was transported in a total of 104 ships: 18 from Portugal, 75 English merchantmen, and 11 chartered from Germany or the Low Countries.

¹⁷
Knighton
, 341.

¹⁸
Walker,
Lancastrian Affinity
, 106.

¹⁹
It is worth noting that when Mary de Bohun came of age in December 1384 and was granted livery of her inheritance, Richard told Gaunt to take Henry's fealty rather than receiving it himself:
CPR 1381–5
, 511–16.

²⁰
Goodman,
John of Gaunt
, 98–9;
Foedera
, vii.412–14, 418–21. For his presence on the 1385 campaign, see
The Scrope and Grosvenor Controversy
, ed. N. H. Nicolas (2 vols, 1832), i.50; ii.165–6. It has been claimed that Henry accompanied Gaunt on his brief raid into Scotland in April 1384: A. Tuck, ‘Henry IV and Chivalry’, in
Henry IV
:
The Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406
, (York, 2003), 56; J. Kirby,
Henry IV of England
(London, 1970), 22, but there is no contemporary evidence for this. On 19 February 1386, father and son were admitted to the fraternity of Lincoln cathedral, with Sir John Beaufort, his illegitimate half-brother; Sir Robert Ferrers; Sir Thomas Swynford; Sir William Hauley; Thomas Bradley, Edward Beauchamp and Arnald of Gascony, esquires; and Philippa Chaucer, sister of Katherine Swynford and wife of Geoffrey Chaucer:
Chaucer Life-Records
, ed. M. M. Crow and C. C. Olson (Oxford, 1966), 91–3.

²¹
CCR 1381–5
, 511–16; Holmes,
Estates of the Higher Nobility
, 24–5. For the division of the Bohun inheritance see DL 41/240, which assigned lands worth £931 per annum to Eleanor, mainly in England, and lands worth £913 (including the great Welsh lordship of Brecon, said to be worth £624 per annum) to Mary. See below for discussion of Henry's income at this time, pp. 80–1. For Henry V's date of birth, see C. Allmand,
Henry V
(New Haven, 1997), 7; Mortimer,
Fears
, 371.