Henry IV (15 page)

⁴⁰
CE
, 367.

⁴¹
Sir Thomas Trivet, who was suspected of having advised the king to lay an ambush for the three senior Appellants in mid-November, received a cloth of velvet as a gift from Henry, and Sir Richard Abberbury entertained Henry at his house and was given a livery gown by him (DL 28/1/2, fos. 5v, 11v, 16v, 5r, 17r).

⁴²
For example, he began regularly to secure pardons or grants from the king on behalf of other men:
CFR 1383–91
, 237;
CPR 1385–9
, 368, 406, 409, 439, 452, 461, 510, 531;
CPR 1388–92
, 7, 29, 41, 100, 128, 150, 177, 449, 463;
CPR 1391–6
, 189, 332, 372. He may also have used his influence to secure approval for his father's plans to make peace with Juan of Castile, although it has been argued that this was a betrayal of English interests in the Iberian peninsula: for different views of this see P. Russell,
The English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Time of Edward III and Richard II
(Oxford, 1955), 504–14; Goodman,
John of Gaunt
, 129–30;
Westminster Chronicle
, 371. Gaunt sent Sir Thomas Percy to England in the spring of 1388 to ask for approval for the settlement, and Henry certainly communicated with Percy (DL 28/1/2, fo. 5r). Gaunt was given permission by the king to finalize the settlement on 1 June 1388 (
Foedera
, vii.587–8), but even after this Gaunt may have broken the agreement.

⁴³
In London, he stayed partly at St David's Inn in Fleet Street. For medicines, smocks and breeches, and a gilded spike or needle
pro pokkes domini aperiendo
(‘for lancing the lord's pustules’), see DL 28/1/2, fos 15r–v.

⁴⁴
Ibid.;
Westminster Chronicle
, 350–1; Goodman,
Loyal Conspiracy
, 50;
CPR 1385–9
, 606, 610.

⁴⁵
PROME
, vii.121–6; Tuck,
Richard II and the English Nobility
, 134–7; Saul,
Richard II
, 199–201.

⁴⁶
C. Given-Wilson, ‘Thomas Mowbray, First Duke of Norfolk’,
ODNB
, 39.590–5.

⁴⁷
In February 1389, for example, a breastplate forfeited by John Beauchamp of Holt, one of the knights executed in the Merciless Parliament (
CCR 1385–9
, 571).

⁴⁸
Henry witnessed charters in February, June, October and November 1388: C 53/162; when not at court or in London in 1388–9, he often stayed at Kenilworth (
CPR 1396–9
, 122, 518, 548, confirmations of grants dated 17 and 18 Oct. 1388, 12 June and 1 July 1389).

⁴⁹
Westminster Chronicle
, 391–3, 401: a further wave of dismissals of those associated with the Appellants followed in July;
Knighton
, 528–31;
SAC I
, 866–7, suggests an angrier king than other chroniclers imply. The official proclamation, dated 8 May, is in
CCR 1385–9
, 671, 676. Richard's inspiration was surely the identical action taken by his near-contemporary Charles VI in November 1388 (
Saint-Denys
, 555ff.).

⁵⁰
POPC
, i.12. The last instalment of the £20,000 granted to the Appellants in the Merciless Parliament was paid a month later, on 20 October:
Issues of the Exchequer Henry III to Henry VI
, ed. F. Devon (London, 1837), 239;
CCR 1389–92
, 27, 128.

⁵¹
He witnessed two charters dated 14 November 1389 (C 53/162).

⁵²
Westminster Chronicle
, 407–9;
SAC I
, 891–5.

Chapter 5

THE MAKING OF A HERO (1390–1393)

Despite his failure to curb the cruder instincts of the senior Appellants, Henry's adherence to the opposition in 1387–8 had asserted the untouchability of the Lancastrian inheritance without causing an irreparable breach with the crown. At the same time, the credit he won at Radcot Bridge set in motion the process of fashioning for him a reputation for chivalric prowess and military ability which he would never lose, and which would win him admirers at home and abroad and attract able young warriors to his war-band and his causes. The four years following Gaunt's return to England consolidated this reputation, for a number of factors now made it possible for him to fulfil the dream of almost every young nobleman of the age: to joust with Europe's best, to crusade and to visit the Holy Land. First, Henry's father was now one of the richest men in Europe, for the 1388 Treaty of Bayonne between Gaunt and King Juan of Castile stipulated that, in return for renouncing his claim to the throne of Castile, Gaunt would receive a down payment of £100,000 sterling and an annual pension of £6,600 for life: it was Spanish gold – carried to England on the backs of forty-seven mules – which funded Henry's overseas travels between 1390 and 1393.
¹
Secondly, the three-year Anglo-French truce of June 1389 opened up the prospect of an extended cessation of hostilities such as often produced an upsurge of crusading activity (as it had in the 1360s); thirdly, the purging of the royal court in 1387–8, followed by the restoration of royal authority in May 1389, had brought a degree of calm to the English political scene. For a twenty-three-year-old with pedigree, means and a thirst for glory, this can hardly have seemed a more propitious time to set out to make a name for himself.

Opportunities to do so abounded. In the autumn of 1389, three French knights, Jean Boucicaut the younger, Renaud de Roye and Jean de Saimpy,
sent out heralds to issue a formal challenge to all comers (but especially, it is clear, to the English, whose presumption they resented) to meet them for a friendly trial of arms at St-Inglevert, halfway between English-held Calais and Boulogne. Henry soon made up his mind to attend, a fact which he and Gaunt were keen to publicize, for the St-Inglevert jousts were bound to attract attention.
²
They began on 21 March 1390 and lasted for a month, with Fridays designated as rest days. One hundred and five English knights and esquires made the journey, each of whom took his turn at jousting with one or other of the Frenchmen, but it was Henry who was singled out for his valour.
³
Gaunt had written in advance asking Boucicaut if he would be prepared to run ten rather than the usual five courses with his son, since he knew him to be an exceptionally valiant knight and wanted Henry to learn from him, to which Boucicaut acquiesced.
⁴
The monk of Saint-Denys, the French royal chronicler, and an anonymous poet who celebrated the gathering both described Henry and his retainers as the bravest of all the challengers. Also noted was the splendour of the gifts he distributed to the Frenchmen.
⁵

The core of Henry's retinue at St-Inglevert comprised his eighteen-year-old half-brother, John Beaufort; Sir Robert Ferrers, a long-standing Lancastrian retainer who in 1392 would marry Beaufort's sister Joan; Henry's boyhood companion, Sir Thomas Swynford; Henry Percy (‘Hotspur’), the son of the earl of Northumberland; and Sir Thomas Rempston;
⁶
another group of Englishmen included servants of Henry's
such as Thomas Totty, John Dalingridge and Ralph Rochford. This impressive Lancastrian showing at St-Inglevert – at least a dozen and probably more – was not merely to allow Henry to cut a figure among European chivalry; it also had a more practical purpose, for Henry had decided by now to go on crusade during the summer, and he was gathering about him like-minded young warriors to form the nucleus of his retinue.

The theatre of crusading to which Henry was initially attracted was the North African or Barbary coastline, where an expedition led by Louis II, duke of Bourbon, had been preparing for several months to besiege the principal Tunisian port of Mahdia.
⁷
On 9 May 1390, therefore, having been back in England for only two or three weeks, Henry once again crossed to Calais with a retinue of about 120 men and wrote to Paris to seek a safe-conduct from King Charles VI to pass through France to Marseilles, Bourbon's port of embarkation.
⁸
For some reason, this was refused. Perhaps, despite the truce, the French were still wary of allowing armed retinues led by English nobles to traverse the length of France.
⁹
On the other hand, John Beaufort was given a safe-conduct, as were several other English knights, and it is difficult to escape the conclusion that there was something personal involved in the rejection of Henry's request, perhaps resentment at the life-grant to John of Gaunt of the duchy of Aquitaine three months earlier, arousing suspicions at the French court that his son's retinue might be diverted on its way to Marseilles.
¹⁰
Fortunately
for Henry, he had an alternative plan.
¹¹
Returning to England on 5 June, he immediately began preparations to depart for the Baltic. While Henry and Mary (now pregnant with their fourth child) stayed first with Gaunt at Hertford and Leicester and then at Bolingbroke, stores were collected at Boston and two boats were chartered, skippered by Hermann and Hankyn from Gdansk and piloted by lodesmen from the Baltic. Wainscotting was purchased for Henry's cabin and his hammock slung in it. By 19 July all was ready. Henry and his retinue embarked, and the two boats were towed out into the Wash to begin their journey.
¹²
Three weeks later, on 8 August, Henry stepped ashore at Rixhöft, about thirty miles north of Gdansk.

By the time Henry arrived on the Baltic coast in the summer of 1390, the ‘interminable crusade’ between the Christian Knights of the Teutonic Order and the kingdom of Lithuania had already endured for over a century and had attracted the service of thousands of Western European knights, including hundreds of Englishmen.
¹³
Founded in the twelfth century to support Latin crusaders in the Holy Land, the Order had gradually transferred its energy first to the conquest of Prussia and then, once that had been achieved, to the war against Lithuania, upon which its
raison d'être
had come to depend. It was thus inconvenient for the Knights when, in February 1386, King Jogailo of Lithuania, as part of a dynastic arrangement by which he married the Polish Queen Hedwig and became king of Poland too, accepted baptism and proclaimed the conversion of Lithuania to Catholicism, simultaneously adopting the Christian name Wladyslaw. Fortunately for the Order, Jogailo appointed his brother Skirgailo as regent of Lithuania, a decision which alienated their ambitious cousin Vitold, who, in 1389, fled Jogailo's court and asked the Knights for assistance. Anxious to help him, they soon found reasons to do so:
Jogailo may have converted, but many of his subjects were slow to follow suit. Moreover, Samogitia, the ‘Wilderness’ to the north of the River Neman (or Memel), which had been fiercely contested throughout the fourteenth century, was still openly pagan. This suited Vitold well, for he claimed Samogitia as his: on 19 January 1390, therefore, he made an alliance with the Order providing for a joint campaign, or
reyse
, against Vilnius, Skirgailo's capital, and, as was customary, the participation of Western knights and nobles was invited.
¹⁴
What this meant was that the ‘crusade’ in which Henry participated in the summer of 1390 actually involved taking sides in a Lithuanian dynastic dispute
against
the ruler who had just accomplished precisely what the Order existed in order to achieve: the conversion of Lithuania.
¹⁵

There is no evidence to indicate that Henry or his hosts allowed this fact to trouble them. It is easy to take a sceptical view of the motivation of the Western European reinforcements who arrived almost every year to participate in the
reysen
: the quest for honour and reputation, the desire to cut a figure in the international theatre of chivalric renown, was certainly a powerful driving force for many who chose to make the journey, including, surely, Henry himself.
¹⁶
Yet they also sincerely believed that they were defending, even expanding, Christendom. Describing themselves more often as pilgrims than crusaders, some sought spiritual regeneration, others went as an act of expiation, in fulfilment of a vow made at a time of personal danger, or on behalf of a friend or relative unable to go in person. Any or all of these motives might have stirred Henry. Participation in the
reyse
also tended to run in families, and both Henry's grandfather, Henry of Grosmont, and his father-in-law Humphrey de Bohun had campaigned
with the Knights in Prussia, in 1351–2 and 1362–3, respectively.
¹⁷
John of Gaunt, deprived of the opportunity to crusade himself, certainly encouraged his son to go, and footed the bill.
¹⁸
Henry's half-brother, John Beaufort, and his brother-in-law, John Holand, were also enthusiastic crusaders. By the conventions of the time, this was a holy war in a noble and universal cause. Not everyone, it is true, shared that conviction, but the fact that Henry went to Prussia does not mean that he never thought seriously about the issues involved.
¹⁹

Henry remained in Prussia from 8 August 1390 to 31 March 1391.
²⁰
His household consisted of seventy to eighty men, although for the campaign into Lithuania he also recruited locally, bringing the strength of his war-band up to about 150.
²¹
The
reyse
proper began on 18 August when the company left Königsberg and struck north into ‘le Wyldrenesse’, a fearsome stretch of heavily forested and waterlogged terrain about a hundred miles wide, where additional horses had to be requisitioned to carry the provisions because the wagons became bogged down in the flooded tracks.
²²
Ragnit on the River Neman was reached on 22 August, and here Henry's contingent met up with the Order's main force under Prince Vitold and Marshal Engelhardt Rabe. Hearing that Skirgailo was encamped a dozen miles north-east of Kaunas, the allies crossed the Nerva and, against heavy opposition which claimed several lives including that of the English knight John Loudham, achieved what soon came to be trumpeted as a famous victory. According to the report that reached England, Henry's men captured three or four dukes and killed three others, along with 300 or more of the enemy's finest soldiers.
²³
There were, certainly, prisoners and much booty taken, and Skirgailo, who had watched the action from a nearby hilltop, was forced to retreat to Vilnius, pursued by
the Anglo-Prussian forces who, at the beginning of September, laid siege to the city. Once again the story of their exploits which travelled back to England grew gratifyingly (for Henry) in the telling. Vilnius was said to have been taken mainly through the daring of Henry and his men, with one chronicler even claiming that Henry himself was the first to mount the walls and place his standard there, while his Prussian and Livonian allies sat idly by.
²⁴
It was indeed an Englishman in Henry's company, a valet of Lord Bourchier, who first raised the standard, but it was not on the walls of Vilnius but on one of its outlying forts, for the city itself withstood the siege.
²⁵
This was as much success as the allies enjoyed: with winter coming on and their powder and provisions running low, the drenched and frozen crusader army abandoned the siege and made its way back to Königsberg, arriving there on 20 October.
²⁶