Henry IV (24 page)

Henry's acquiescence in Richard's coup brought instant rewards. On the Saturday, the day following Warwick's trial, the king pardoned him and Mowbray for their role in the events of 1387–8.
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They also shared in the most lavish bestowal of new titles ever seen in England. Five dukes, one duchess, one marquess and four earls were created, among whom Henry became duke of Hereford. He was the only one of the new dukes not to have acted as a Counter-Appellant,
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and on Monday 1 October he celebrated his new status by hosting a requiem mass and dinner, attended by the king and queen, at the Carmelite friary between Fleet Street and the Thames, at which the bones of Thomas Mowbray's father, John Lord Mowbray, who had died on crusade in 1368, were ceremonially reinterred, having been brought back in a jar from Constantinople.
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A goodwill gesture towards his fellow survivor, Mowbray, the occasion must also have been tinged with relief, although both men knew that it was far from over. Parliament had been adjourned, not dissolved, and would reconvene at Shrewsbury in late January to consider the ‘weighty causes and matters . . . which cannot be decided at this time’,
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a form of words unlikely to soothe fears.

The king now moved to Windsor,
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accompanied by Gaunt and Henry. According to Henry, Mowbray told him two months later that ‘if other people had not been there’, he and Gaunt would have been either seized or killed when they came to Windsor, but this may have been a stretch of the imagination on the part of Mowbray, who by now was a man living in fear on account of the rumours circulating about his involvement in Gloucester's murder. The ubiquitous Bagot told him of the rumours in October 1397, to which Mowbray ‘swore great oaths’ that he had in fact saved Gloucester's
life for more than three weeks and only eventually did the deed ‘out of dread of the king and fear of his own life’.
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This was probably true, yet herein lay his dilemma, for his initial hesitation had also angered Richard, and before long the strain would become too much for him to bear alone. Henry, meanwhile, was undertaking a progress to the seat of his new duchy.
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Leaving London around 20 October, he visited his three younger children at Eaton Tregoz, then moved on via Hereford to Brecon, where on 6 November he presided over the chief court of his lordship of Brecon,
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before returning to Woodstock, where he spent one or two nights with the king.
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From Woodstock, Henry made his way unhurriedly back to London, but as he passed through Brentford on his way to the city, sometime during the first week of December 1397, he met Thomas Mowbray.

From the moment Mowbray began speaking to him, Henry would have been aware of the magnitude of the events unfolding ahead of him and the possibility that they would lead to the destruction of the house of Lancaster. Unfortunately there is no surviving record of Mowbray's side of the story; the words and sentiments attributed to him were written by Henry, whose first consideration was to ensure that nothing he said would be self-incriminating. There is, nevertheless, plenty of evidence to support the essential points of Henry's story, and no reason to suppose that he would have invented it. As he told it, he was riding between Brentford and London when Mowbray unexpectedly came upon him and declared, ‘We are about to be undone’.
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When Henry asked why, Mowbray replied, ‘because of what was done at Radcot Bridge’. When Henry protested that they had been pardoned by the king, Mowbray told him the king had decided to ‘annul that record’. He went on to tell Henry about the plot to seize or kill him and Gaunt when they came to Windsor in early October, adding that those responsible for it were the duke of Surrey and the earls of Wiltshire, Salisbury and Gloucester (four of the eight Counter-Appellants), whereas the dukes of Aumale and Exeter, the earl of Worcester and Mowbray himself had sworn not to allow any lords to be destroyed
without just cause; in other words, that the latter four were the ‘other people’ who had saved Gaunt and Henry at Windsor – and not just Gaunt and Henry for, as Mowbray went on to explain, he and Aumale and Exeter, as well as John Beaufort earl of Somerset, were also in danger of being ‘undone’ by Surrey, Wiltshire, Salisbury and Gloucester. Yet this was not all: the conspirators were also intent on reversing ‘the judgment concerning earl Thomas of Lancaster’, and the king himself was a party to this plot. ‘God forbid!’ replied Henry, adding (for public, and especially Richard's, consumption) that it would be a ‘great wonder’ if the king were to assent to such a scheme, since he had sworn to be a good lord to him. Yet if what Mowbray said were true, ‘we could never trust in them’. ‘Certainly not,’ agreed Mowbray, ‘since even if they are unable to achieve their purpose at present, they will be intent on destroying us in our homes ten years hence.’

Mowbray's revelations placed Henry in a quandary. Whatever the precise details of the plot or the factions involved, the idea of a conspiracy to bring down the house of Lancaster was credible, and the four lords identified by Mowbray as being behind it – Surrey, Wiltshire, Salisbury and Gloucester – plausible conspirators. Greedy for greatness, harbouring claims from bygone generations against Gaunt and his heirs, they were men who had nailed their colours unequivocally to Richard's mast.
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It is in fact difficult to believe that Henry was as innocent as he pretended to be of any suspicions as to Richard's intentions. Yet what was he to do? And what, he must have wondered, did Mowbray hope to achieve by telling him all this? Was Mowbray really in league with the king (as another account of the anti-Lancastrian conspiracy alleged),
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and setting a trap for Henry? If that were the case, and if Henry simply remained silent, he would lay himself open to a charge of misprision. If, on the other hand, he revealed to the king what Mowbray had said to him, there was no telling how Richard might react. In fact he did what he had usually done when in trouble: he turned to his father. He told Gaunt about Mowbray's revelations, and together they decided that the least dangerous option was to tell the king.
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Exactly when Gaunt told Richard is difficult to say, but it must have been by mid-January.
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Shortly after New Year, despite the midwinter
conditions, Henry went north to the shrine of John of Bridlington, where he had prayed at moments of danger or deliverance in the past; he also commissioned a London goldsmith to make him a chain for a medicinal stone to counter the effects of poison.
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On his return, he was informed that he had been summoned to Richard's presence.

Richard was staying at Great Haywood in Staffordshire between 18 and 23 January 1398, awaiting the resumption of parliament at Shrewsbury.
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When Henry arrived,
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he was asked by the king to tell him what had transpired between him and Mowbray. Richard then asked him to write it down, which Henry did, ‘on the understanding that I may enlarge upon or abridge any of the following at any time that it should please me or seem necessary to do so, always saving the substance of my accusation’. He also secured another pardon from the king for any treason or other crime he might have committed in the past.
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Mowbray was not at Great Haywood, but he must have heard about Gaunt's and Henry's revelations within a day or two, and reacted with fury. He laid an ambush for Gaunt, apparently intending to kill him on his way to the parliament, but Gaunt was forewarned and reached Shrewsbury unscathed.
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Panicking, Mowbray now fled, leaving Henry a free hand to present his side of the case, which he did on Wednesday 30 January, the third day of the parliament. Richard immediately stripped Mowbray of his office of Earl Marshal, and four days later issued orders for his arrest. Meanwhile, on 31 January, the last day of parliament, Richard announced that he did not for the moment intend to reach a decision regarding Henry's allegations, but that the matter would be referred to a commission of eighteen members of the lords and commons which included many of those mentioned in Henry's schedule, such as Gaunt, the dukes of Aumale, Surrey and Exeter, and the earls of March, Salisbury and Gloucester.
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On the same day, Henry secured yet another pardon from Richard after kneeling before the throne and confessing his part in the ‘uprisings, troubles
and misdeeds perpetrated in your kingdom’.
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Whether this made him feel more secure may be doubted. Before bringing the session to a close, Richard once again indicated his willingness to reconsider land claims dating from the reign of Edward II. The judgments against the Elder and Younger Despenser in 1321 and 1327 were overturned, and Thomas Despenser, the new earl of Gloucester, given permission to sue for recovery of their lands. So far-reaching were the ramifications of this decision that Thomas was obliged to swear on the cross of Canterbury that he would not attempt to recover any of these properties, either from Richard himself or from any of ten named lords of the realm, including Gaunt and Henry.
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Yet such judgments created uncertainty, and rumours now abounded. Adam Usk, a protégé of the Mortimers, said that Richard and his friends were also conspiring to entrap the earl of March and divide up his lands between them, but March bore himself with enough circumspection to avoid the trap.
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Seeking reassurance, Henry and Gaunt secured from the king on 20 February a quitclaim and release of any rights which Richard might have in the lands or properties formerly held by Earl Thomas of Lancaster by reason of the latter's treason, sedition or forfeiture; in other words, Richard now promised not to do precisely what Mowbray had said that he and his friends had planned to do.
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The next eight months of Henry's life were dominated by the unravelling of his dispute with Mowbray. On 23 February, by which time Mowbray had either surrendered or been arrested, he and Henry appeared before the king at Oswestry, where it was agreed that their case would be referred to a meeting of the royal council in late April. In the meantime, both men were imprisoned at Windsor, although Henry was promptly bailed by a consortium of lords headed by his father and remained at liberty throughout the spring and summer.
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Mowbray, on the other hand, was detained in
prison for several months.
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Thus far, Richard's behaviour had suggested a presumption of Mowbray's guilt, and things continued for the moment to go Henry's way. At the beginning of March, William Bagot was obliged to seal two recognizances in which he swore neither to disinherit nor to make any attempt on the life of Gaunt, his wife or his children, on pain of being put to death without further process.
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Then on 19 March came a setback: the parliamentary committee appointed at Shrewsbury met at Bristol and decreed that unless sufficient proof could be found one way or the other the dispute between Henry and Mowbray would be tried by battle.
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Henry probably felt reluctant to commit his cause to the hazard of a duel; true, he was an experienced and successful jouster, but so was Mowbray.
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He thus brought further charges, more susceptible to proof, against Mowbray. At a council meeting at Windsor on 29 April,
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he made three new accusations: first, that Mowbray was guilty of peculation with respect to his custody of Calais; secondly, that he was ‘the cause of all the treason committed in your realm these last eighteen years’; thirdly, that Mowbray had murdered the duke of Gloucester. This last charge must have been especially unwelcome to Richard. Simply to talk of Gloucester's murder was, in a sense, to point the finger at the king, for it was his contention that Gloucester had died a natural death. Henry may have hoped that Richard would take fright and proceed to judgment against Mowbray forthwith, hoping to avoid any further discussion of the question, but would Mowbray then plead that he had been acting on the king's orders? It was to neither man's advantage to have the matter discussed, and for Henry to have raised it was a dangerous, though calculated, gamble.
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In the event, Mowbray admitted receiving large sums for the custody of Calais but denied peculation, admitted having once planned to kill Gaunt but insisted that Gaunt had pardoned him, but of Gloucester's death he said nothing, and no more was heard of it. Richard asked both men if they would agree to be reconciled, but when they replied that they would not, he set a day for their combat: it would take place at Coventry on Monday 16 September. The
five-month delay was intended as a cooling-off period, but may also have been designed to give Richard time to consider his options.

Henry remained at liberty throughout these months.
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His household accounts convey a sense of restlessness. He was continually on the move, to Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk in the early summer, London at the beginning of July and various places in the west Midlands in August and September.
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The main purpose of this itineration of the Lancastrian heartlands was probably to show himself to his people, to remind them where, should it become necessary, their allegiance lay.
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He distributed over fifty livery collars in 1397–8,
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while his small band of personal friends, most of whom had been with him for many years, gathered close about him, accompanying him on his travels and directing his affairs. Peter Bukton and Robert Litton, steward and controller respectively of his household, Thomas Erpingham, the Watertons, Thomas Rempston, John Tiptoft, the Milanese esquire Francis de Courte, John Pelham and John Norbury were regularly, in some cases almost continuously, with him during 1398.
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Messages also passed between Henry and several of the French princes during the summer of 1398, indicative of foreign interest in the upcoming duel.
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Gian Galeazzo Visconti sent Henry a new suit of Milanese armour, accompanied by four of his armourers to ensure that it was properly fitted, since ‘he loved him so greatly’.
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In early August, the king made a final attempt to reconcile the two men, without success.
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On 23 August Henry's half-brother, Henry Beaufort, now bishop of Lincoln,
ordered prayers and processions for the justice of Henry's cause to be held throughout his diocese.
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By 31 August, when Richard issued a general invitation to the contest, it must have become apparent that this eagerly awaited combat really was about to take place.
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