Henry IV (17 page)

Another lasting consequence of Henry's expeditions was the formation of a tight-knit circle of companions who would continue to provide him with service, advice and friendship for the remaining two decades of his life. Fellow travellers such as Thomas Swynford, his chaplain Hugh Herle, and his chamberlain Hugh Waterton had been with Henry since his childhood, but others became attached to him principally because of their shared adventures. Peter Bukton, John Norbury, Thomas Erpingham, Thomas Rempston, Robert Litton, Richard Goldesburgh, Ralph Rochford, Francis de Courte and John Dalingridge would all later become officers of Henry's royal household or knights of his chamber; William Lord Willoughby, who accompanied him on both expeditions, was one of the first lords to join him when he returned from exile in 1399; Richard Kingston, his treasurer while abroad, later served as treasurer of the royal household. Sir John Malet did not live to see the usurpation of 1399, though he too was intimate with Henry in the early 1390s. Young and vigorous, Henry enjoyed the camp-fire camaraderie of these years, and although a man of his means would never have had trouble in finding men to serve him, it is worth remembering that their loyalty to him would be repeatedly tested over the next dozen years and never found wanting.

The cost of Henry's grand tour of 1392–3 was £4,915, the great majority of which was once again supplied by his father.
⁵⁸
The return on Gaunt's investment was to see his son's reputation for militant piety enhanced yet further. Fifty years later the Augustinian friar John Capgrave wrote an account of Henry's second expedition almost certainly based on a contemporary newsletter. The emphasis throughout was on godly works, the language quasi-hagiographical. The ‘pious and venerable’ Henry venerated at the Holy Places ‘with great devotion’; he tended to paupers ‘with great clemency’; he paid large sums to purchase captives so as to restore them to ‘the lands of the faithful’; he gazed upon the tomb of St Augustine ‘with great contemplation’ and successfully ‘found the way of peace’ by mediating in a dispute between Gian Galeazzo and the Augustinian friars of Milan; indeed, throughout this year of ‘solemn pilgrimage’ he bore himself and conducted his men so prudently that he brought pleasure to God, honour to the kingdom, and friendship to all with whom he came into contact.
⁵⁹
Another piece of the jigsaw of Henry's self-image was slotted into place, and contemporaries were impressed. The original prologue to John Gower's poem
Confessio Amantis
included a dedication to Richard II, but when Gower revised it for the second time in 1392 or early 1393, he replaced this with a dedication to ‘mine own lord/Who is called Henry of Lancaster:/The high God has proclaimed him/Full of knighthood and all grace’.
⁶⁰
Such was the renown to which men of Henry's breeding aspired.

¹
Goodman,
John of Gaunt
, 345;
Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land Made by Henry Earl of Derby in the Years 1390–1 and 1392–3
, ed. L. Toulmin Smith (Camden Society, New Series, 1894), lxxxvi; Palmer,
England, France and Christendom
, 142.

²
According to the chronicler of Bern, Gaunt despatched his herald to various parts of Europe to proclaim the jousts: Froissart,
Oeuvres
, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels, 1867–77), xiv.105–51, 406–20;
Saint-Denys
, i.673–83; English chroniclers were less well informed, but see
Knighton
, 432;
Westminster Chronicle
, 432.

³
Most of them acquitted themselves respectably, although the anonymous poet named eight Englishmen who ‘failed in their duty’ and were disgraced; according to Froissart a Bohemian knight in the following of Queen Anne of England, ‘Herr Hans’, dishonoured himself by striking a foul sideways blow at Boucicaut.

⁴
‘Le Livre des Faicts du Bon Messire Jean le Maingre dit Boucicaut’, in
Collection Complète de Mémoires Relatifs à l'Histoire de France
, ed. M. Petitot, vols 6–7 (Paris, 1819), vi.430.

⁵
‘In sum, so that the truth be known/In all, there jousted one hundred and five/But let it never be forgotten/That the noble earl of Derby/Ran, against each of our men/Five lances, as I myself saw’:
Chronographia Regum Francorum
, ed. H. Moranvillé (SHF, 3 vols, Paris, 1891–7), iii.99; Froissart,
Oeuvres
, xiv.417, 419;
Knighton
, 432. Strangely, Knighton did not mention Henry, instead singling out John Lord Beaumont and Sir Philip Courtenay as the Englishmen most deserving of praise. Indeed, Henry's presence at the jousts seems to have gone unremarked in English sources: Richard II's safe-conducts to the French knights were issued at the request of Beaumont, Sir Peter Courtenay, Sir Thomas Clifford, Henry's brother-in-law John Holand earl of Huntingdon, and his former co-Appellant Thomas Mowbray, the earl marshal:
Foedera
, vii.663 (9 March), 665–6 (13 March).

⁶
The names of Henry's retainers were so comprehensively garbled by the French chroniclers that most of them are impossible to identify. The monk of Saint-Denys gives the following names: Henry Percy, John Courtenay, Robert de Britenac, Herbelain Alain, Thomelin de Fanteston and John Harrington; the anonymous poet has Hervi de Persy (Percy), John Coutenai, Robert Bridelai, Eloi Barclai, Thomelin Nosenton and Jehan Hareton. Despite the variations, these are clearly attempts at naming the same six persons (
Saint-Denys
, i.683; Froissart,
Oeuvres
, xiv.415).

⁷
The idea that Henry was already planning in January 1390 to go to Prussia is based on the misdating to 27 January 1390, rather than, correctly, to 27 January 1391, of a letter from Richard II to the king of Poland requesting a safe-conduct for Henry. The letter clearly states that Henry was already (
jam existens
) in Prussia, and that what he sought was permission to venture further into ‘very remote parts’:
The Diplomatic Correspondence of Richard II
, ed. E. Perroy (Camden Third Series, 48, 1933), no. 116 and p. 218; F. Du Boulay, ‘Henry of Derby's Expeditions to Prussia 1390–1 and 1392’, in
The Reign of Richard II
, ed. F. Du Boulay and C. Barron (London, 1971), 153–72, at p. 155.

⁸
Westminster Chronicle
, 432–4; DL 28/3/2, fo. 18v;
Expeditions
, xxxix–xlii, 8, 15.

⁹
Froissart,
Oeuvres
, xiv.154–5. It is worth noting that Boucicaut was also prevented by the French king from joining Bourbon's expedition; Bourbon's crusade was regarded with a degree of disapproval in Paris.

¹⁰
For the grant to Gaunt, which named Richard II as king of France and thus probably ruffled some feathers at the French court, see Goodman,
John of Gaunt
, 195; it is possible that Richard, jealous of Henry's growing reputation, influenced the decision (C. Tyerman,
England and the Crusades
(Chicago, 1988), 278–9).

¹¹
The writ by which Henry appointed his clerk, Richard Kingston, as his treasurer of war, which was dated 6 May 1390 at London, designated Kingston's responsibility as being ‘for these journeys which we have arranged to make to the parts of Barbary and of Prussia’. What exactly this tells us about Henry's intentions is, however, far from clear. He may already, on 6 May, have suspected that he might be denied a safe-conduct by Charles VI (
Expeditions
, 1–2, and for Henry's household expenses in Calais, 5–34).

¹²
On board were fine spices, fruit and nuts (including 450 lbs of almonds), silver-embossed crockery and jewellery, weaponry, saddles, ropes and cages full of live poultry:
Expeditions
, 23–4, 27, 31–2, 37–8.

¹³
T. Guard,
Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade: The English Experience in the Fourteenth Century
(Woodbridge, 2013), 72–97; E. Christiansen,
The Northern Crusades: The Baltic and the Catholic Frontier 1100–1525
(London, 1980), 132;
Crusade and Conversion on the Baltic Frontier 1150–1500
, ed. A. Murray (Aldershot, 2001); W. Paravicini,
Die Preussenreisen des Europäischen Adels
(2 vols, Sigmaringen, 1989–95).

¹⁴
Expeditions
, xiv–xv; du Boulay, ‘Henry of Derby's Expeditions’, 157–9.

¹⁵
A. Ehlers, ‘The Crusade of the Teutonic Knights against Lithuania Reconsidered’, in
Crusade and Conversion
, ed. Murray, 21–44. The crusading status of the expeditions organized by the Knights was open to some doubt, for although terms such as ‘pilgrimage’ and ‘fighting against the enemies of God’ were commonly used by Westerners to explain their participation in the
reysen
, there is little evidence of crusade preaching, ‘taking the cross’, or the issue of crusading bulls by the papacy, as was commonly done for Mediterranean campaigns against the infidel.

¹⁶
What the Order laid on for them has been described alternatively as a ‘safari’ or as ‘a knightly package tour, complete with feasting, hunting, military action, and even a system of prizes to appeal to the most restless and vainglorious noblemen’: Christiansen,
Northern Crusades
, 151; Tyerman,
England and the Crusades
, 267. The prizes were awarded at the
Ehrentisch
, the table of honour at which foreign knights were fêted once the
reyse
was over, with those reputed to have performed best being allowed the top places at the table. See Chaucer's comment on the Knight in the
Canterbury Tales
(Prologue, lines 52–4) that ‘Ful ofte tyme he hadde the bord bigonne/Above alle naciouns in Pruce./In Lettow hadde he reysed and in Ruce’.

¹⁷
Fowler,
King's Lieutenant
, 106; Tyerman,
England and the Crusades
, 268; Guard,
Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade
, 144–58.

¹⁸
Gaunt's Iberian expedition of 1386 was, officially, a crusade against the Schismatic Castilians, but not quite the same as ‘proper’ crusading: Cf. Goodman,
John of Gaunt
, 200–3.

¹⁹
Tyerman,
England and the Crusades
, 264–5; E. Siberry, ‘Criticism of Crusading in Fourteenth-Century England’, in
Crusade and Settlement
, ed. P. W. Edbury (Cardiff, 1985), 127–34. Wyclif's followers often criticized crusading, yet several of the Lollard knights of the 1380s and 1390s – John Clanvow, William Nevill, Lewis Clifford, John Montague – themselves went on crusade.

²⁰
His household account for the full eight months is printed in
Expeditions
, 36–142; see also du Boulay, ‘Henry of Derby's Expeditions’.

²¹
Expeditions
, xliii–xlvi, 128–42.

²²
Expeditions
, 49–50; for the climate and terrain, see Christiansen,
Northern Crusades
, 161–5.

²³
Westminster Chronicle
, 445–9;
SAC I
, 902–3; the two chroniclers clearly used the same source: an eye-witness account written by someone in Henry's following and probably sent across to England once they had arrived back in Königsberg.

²⁴
Westminster Chronicle
, 449;
SAC I
, 903.

²⁵
Wladyslaw Jogailo wrote to his commander at Vilnius, Clemens of Mostorzow, vice-chancellor of Poland, in early December, congratulating him on his successful resistance:
Expeditions
, cix–cx, 105.

²⁶
Du Boulay, ‘Henry of Derby's Expeditions’, 165;
Westminster Chronicle
, 449;
Expeditions
, cviii, cx.

²⁷
The winter-
reyse
season might begin in late December, but more often in January or February; it was shorter than the summer season, usually lasting less than a month, and was not infrequently cancelled, either because it was too cold or not cold enough: Christiansen,
Northern Crusades
, 163–6.

²⁸
It may have had something to do with the release of two of his knights, John Clifton and Thomas Rempston, who had been captured during the
reyse
, and on whose behalf Henry twice sent Derby Herald to parley with Wladyslaw, as well as getting John of Gaunt to write to the Polish king:
Expeditions
, 108, 111, 139;
Diplomatic Correspondence
, ed. Perroy, 116, 218. Lancaster Herald and the esquire Janico Dartasso were sent back to England with Henry's letters in November (
Expeditions
, 107–8). According to the report used by the Westminster chronicler, Marshal Rabe and Henry set off again nine days after arriving back at Königsberg to intercept an army with which Wladyslaw/Jogailo was planning to invade Prussia, but this is incorrect. Presumably the author of the report heard rumours of a planned second campaign, but left for England with his letters before it was cancelled:
Westminster Chronicle
, 449.

²⁹
Expeditions
, xxxii, 31, 61, 68, 79, 89, 91–2, 100, 103, 107–11, 115. Henry brought six of his own minstrels with him from England; his gambling losses amounted to £69: Guard,
Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade
, 87–9.

³⁰
The number of ‘boys’ was probably less than ten; no figure is given for the women: they were lodged with various women at Königsberg and provided with clothes, shoes and food. One of the boys was named after Henry (
Henricus Lettowe
):
Expeditions
, 52, 65, 68, 88–9, 90, 92, 110, 113, 116–17.

³¹
Westminster Chronicle
, 449; cf.
SAC I
, 902–3, which gives ‘eight’ (an error for ‘eight thousand’) prisoners taken back to Prussia and three thousand to Livonia. Wigand von Marburg said that 7,000 of the enemy were killed or captured, ‘most of them pagans’ (
Expeditions
, cx).

³²
Henry, his personal servants and close followers took lodgings in a town house belonging to a burgess called Klaus Gottesknecht (which Henry promptly had decorated with a shield of his arms), while his other retainers were accommodated a little outside the city at the bishop's manor:
Expeditions
, xxxii–xxxiv, 72–88, 111. Relations with the local community were not always harmonious: a certain Molwyng Makenhagen, a merchant from Stralsund who had outstanding claims against English pirates, was taken prisoner at one point by some of Henry's men in Gdansk, at which he later protested to Richard II:
Diplomatic Correspondence
, ed. Perroy, p. 213. Pope Boniface IX had declared 1390 to be a jubilee year, so Henry took advantage of the time to gain his indulgence (
absolucione a pena et a culpa
) by offering alms as a pilgrim at each of four churches in Gdansk on seven consecutive days:
Expeditions
, 116–17. It is worth stressing that this was not a crusading but a jubilee indulgence: see Ehlers, ‘The Crusade of the Teutonic Knights’, 43n.