Henry IV (34 page)

⁴⁵
SAC II
, 224–5;
Chronicles of London
, 48;
Usk
, 70.

⁴⁶
The scribe of one Froissart manuscript added cattily, ‘for he had great need of it [confession]’:
Oeuvres de Froissart
, xvi.206.

⁴⁷
Traïson et Mort
, 226;
SAC II
, 226–7.

⁴⁸
Adam Usk, who was there, said that it was unsheathed but without a point, to symbolize the execution of justice without rancour, but the symbolic meaning of these swords was interpreted variously: the London chronicler stated that the Curtana ‘betokened peace’, while one of Froissart's scribes asserted that it was the sword of the Church and that Northumberland's was the sword of justice, but another reversed this (
Oeuvres de Froissart
, xvi.206 and n;
Usk
, 72–4;
Chronicles of London
, 49;
Foedera
, viii.90–1). Walsingham said it was decided that four swords would be carried in future (
SAC II
, 262;
Coronation of Richard III
, 237–44).

⁴⁹
Oeuvres de Froissart
, xvi.207. See the Illustration in Strong,
Coronation
, 160. It would be another three weeks before Arundel was formally restored by Pope Boniface IX to the see of Canterbury, but neither Arundel nor Henry recognized Roger Walden, intruded to the see by Richard II, and Arundel had simply resumed the archbishopric after Richard's capture, presenting the pope with a fait accompli (cf.
Usk
, 78–82).

⁵⁰
Usk (p. 73) said: ‘I heard the king swear to my lord of Canterbury that he would strive to rule his people with mercy and truthfulness in all matters’. Richard took the oath
before
the acclamation, thus rendering any vestige of the ‘elective’ process virtually redundant, but Henry reverted to the correct order as set out in the coronation
ordines
.

⁵¹
Froissart says he was anointed in six places; the
Chronicles of London
(p. 49) in four.

⁵²
CR
, 188; above, p. 143.

⁵³
There are several versions of this story; one of them relates that Richard took the ampulla to Ireland in 1399 and was relieved of it by Archbishop Arundel at Chester (
SAC II
, 236–41;
CE
, iii.380, 384; Strong,
Coronation
, 116–18). Before 1399, kings were anointed with two oils, those of St Mary of Sardinia and St Nicholas; Becket's oil was regarded as both holier and more exclusive, and continued to be used throughout the fifteenth century: C. Wilson, ‘The Tomb of Henry IV and the Holy Oil of St Thomas at Canterbury’, in
Medieval Architecture and its Intellectual Context: Studies in Honour of Peter Kidson
, ed. E. Fernie and P. Crossley (London, 1990), 181–90. John Gower noted: ‘H[enry] the eagle has captured the oil, by which he has received the rule of the realm’ (
The Minor Latin Works of John Gower
, ed. R. F. Yeager (Kalamazoo, 2005), 46–7).

⁵⁴
Saint-Denys
, ii.732–3.

⁵⁵
This is quite plausible, since after his anointing a cap was placed on the king's head and not removed for a week, allowing any infection to fester:
Usk
, 242.

⁵⁶
Oeuvres de Froissart
, xvi.207: this has
archie en trois
, probably a scribal error for
archie en croix
, although the meaning would be much the same: P. Grierson, ‘The Origins of the English Sovereign and the Symbolism of the Closed Crown’,
British Numismatic Journal
33 (1969), 118–34, at p. 129, n.2.

⁵⁷
Anne of Bohemia, the daughter of Emperor Charles IV, might have encouraged its use, for Holy Roman Emperors usually wore a closed rather than an open crown. Although there is little before the sixteenth century to indicate any widespread association in England between a closed crown and imperial pretensions, Henry V and his successors did use a closed crown (Strong,
Coronation
, 120–2; Grierson, ‘The Origins of the English Sovereign’, 130–3).

⁵⁸
It had been usual since Edward I's time for new kings to receive homage from the nobility during the mass, but Henry delayed this until the parliament the next day, perhaps because it had in effect been done on 30 September (Given-Wilson, ‘Coronation of Richard II’, 206–7;
Chronicles of London
, 50;
Usk
, 76–7).

⁵⁹
BL Harleian MS 1386, fos. 17–18.

⁶⁰
Usk
, 72–3;
Foedera
, viii.90–1;
Chronicles of London
, 49. There were always disputes over the right to perform these offices. Thomas Mowbray's attorneys claimed the office of marshal, but in his absence it was assigned to Westmorland; Aubrey de Vere, as earl of Oxford, claimed the office of chamberlain, but was made ewerer instead, Erpingham's claim being preferred; Ivo FitzWarin challenged d'Argentan's right to carry the golden goblet, and the mayor of London challenged Arundel's right to be butler, but was asked instead to pour the wine; John Drayton unsuccessfully challenged Lord Grey's claim to be naperer. For the proceedings of the Court of Claims, which was presided over by the earl of Worcester as deputy for the steward of the realm, the king's son, Thomas, see BL Add. MS 35,861, fos. 5–43, BL Lansdowne Ms cclxxx, BL Cotton Vespasian C.xiv, fos. 149–56, and BL Stowe MS 579, fos. 24–40.

⁶¹
Oeuvres de Froissart
, xvi.208. The
Traïson et Mort
said that a few servants of the dukes of Berry and Orleans attended, but that other foreigners were excluded; this, however, is implausible.

⁶²
Sir Thomas's father had acted as champion at Richard's coronation, although the family's right to the office was challenged both in 1377 and 1399 by the Freville family; Adam Usk drafted the petition on behalf of Dymmok for the Court of Claims on 4 October, and preserved it in his chronicle (
Usk
, 74–5).

⁶³
Usk
, 72–3;
Chronicles of London
, 49–50.

Part Two

A KING AT WAR, 1399–1405

Chapter 11

‘IN THIS NEW WORLD’ (1399–1400)

Despite the undoubted popular support for Richard II's deposition, what Henry effected in 1399 was less of a revolution than a
coup d'état
. Westminster-based offices such as the chancery and exchequer had by now developed a civil service ethos allowing them to bridge royal minorities and political crises with a minimum of disruption, and apart from some changes at the higher levels, government could be expected to continue much as before. Moreover, since England was the most centralized and manageable large kingdom in fourteenth-century Europe, control of Westminster went a long way towards ensuring control of the country. Yet this coup was more than a dynastic side-step. The Lancastrian affinity, having delivered the throne to Henry, now became the dominant power-network in the kingdom, and one of the questions facing the new king was the extent to which he could afford to allow others to share that power. Allegiance to the Lancastrian regime was the challenge that Henry's usurpation set to the English polity, and it entailed acceptance of the Lancastrian affinity.

It was certainly the question of allegiance that dominated the proceedings of the parliament that reassembled at Westminster on 14 October, the day after the coronation. United by a sense of shared complicity in the overthrow of Richard's regime, the knights and burgesses seem to have been almost more Lancastrian than the king.
¹
While Henry sought reconciliation and a springboard to launch his rule, the commons and some of the lords saw the parliament as an opportunity to avenge themselves on the former king's chief abettors, and as a result the focus of the assembly was more retrospective than constructive. The tone was set from the start. John Doreward, a former retainer of the duke of Gloucester who would shortly be appointed to the Privy Council, was chosen as speaker;
²
the acts of the 1397–8 parliament were repealed and its victims or their heirs restored to
their lands and titles; and the decisions of the Merciless Parliament were reaffirmed. Then, on Thursday 16 October, the fury erupted. William Bagot, shipped back in chains from Ireland, was brought in and asked, under interrogation, whether he stood by a bill he had drawn up. He replied that he did, thereby pointing the finger directly at the duke of Aumale as the former king's chief accomplice in both the murder of the duke of Gloucester and the confiscation of the Lancastrian estates following Gaunt's death. Aumale vehemently denied any involvement in Gloucester's death, hurling down his hood as a gage of battle against anyone who so accused him. Henry told him to retrieve it, but not in time to prevent Walter Lord FitzWalter from taking up the challenge. Yet if the lords and commons really wanted to know what had happened to Gloucester, said Bagot, they should interrogate a valet called John Hall who was currently being held in Newgate prison.

Manacled and shackled, Hall was brought into parliament on Saturday 18 October. The details which he revealed of Gloucester's murder – suffocated under a featherbed by half a dozen esquires and valets in a back room of the Princes' Inn at Calais – were shocking enough, but equally so was his unequivocal testimony that the men behind it were Richard II and the dukes of Aumale and Norfolk.
³
Aumale's life now hung by a thread: ‘You, Aumale, were responsible for the death of the duke of Gloucester! You were midwife to his murder!’ cried FitzWalter, casting down his hood as he did so. Some twenty other lords followed suit, and there was ‘such a mighty tumult and clamour from the commons offering battle on this point that the king was afraid that the duke was about to be put to death before his very eyes’. It was the first real test of Henry's authority. Crying out for restraint, ‘he first begged, then warned, and finally ordered them not to do anything which was against the law, but to act legally and only after proper discussion’.
⁴
Order was eventually restored, but only on condition that Aumale and the other Counter-Appellants be put on trial. Meanwhile John Hall, who had admitted being present at Gloucester's death (though only, he claimed, because forced to by the duke of Norfolk on pain of a similar fate), was adjudged to suffer ‘the harshest death to which he could possibly be sentenced, since the duke of Gloucester was so great a personage’. He was drawn on a hurdle from Tower Hill to Tyburn that
same afternoon and there disembowelled, hanged, beheaded and quartered.
⁵

The next week was devoted to drawing up indictments against the six surviving Counter-Appellants, and debating the fate of the former king. On Tuesday 21 October the commons asked that Richard be brought into parliament to stand trial. This Henry was reluctant to do, partly for fear that it would stir up further division between the lords (how far, after all, might the guilt be held to have spread?), but also on constitutional grounds: could parliament try a king, even a deposed one?
⁶
Instead the lords were asked individually what they thought should be done with Richard, for, Henry declared, he did not wish to deprive him of his life. It was agreed that he be imprisoned for life, and on 29 October the former king was removed from the Tower. Although his destination was initially kept secret, by Christmas it had become known that he was being held in Pontefract castle.
⁷

The trial of the Counter-Appellants also began on 29 October. The charges against them were essentially threefold: that they had presented the appeals in the 1397–8 parliament, consented to Gloucester's murder, and assented to the confiscation of Henry's inheritance. The second charge they denied absolutely – on this their lives depended. The first and third they could scarcely deny, but pleaded coercion by the king and William Le Scrope. Once again parliament erupted, with gages and accusations hurled across the chamber. Thomas Lord Morley challenged the earl of Salisbury to a duel; FitzWalter once again challenged Aumale. But Henry had no desire to see further blood spilt, and when, on Monday 3 November, Chief Justice William Thirning delivered judgment on them, it spoke more of mercy than of vengeance. Aumale, Surrey and Exeter were stripped of their ducal titles; John Beaufort lost his marquisate of Dorset; and Thomas Despenser his earldom of Gloucester. The lands and goods which any of them had acquired since September 1397 (chiefly the forfeited estates of the three Appellants) were confiscated. As security for their future behaviour, they were also prohibited from distributing livery badges and told that if they tried to restore Richard to the throne, they would
ipso facto
be guilty of treason.
⁸
Nor did it end there, for a proclamation was made throughout the realm inviting anyone who wished to complain of their misdeeds to
come forward and justice would be done to them. The earl of Salisbury was excluded from the judgment since, having accepted Morley's challenge, his case had been referred to the Court of Chivalry. This met on 9 December and decreed that they should fight a duel at Newcastle in February.
⁹

Parliament remained in session for a further two weeks, until 19 November, but made disappointingly little provision for the future. The wool subsidy was renewed for three years, but tunnage and poundage and direct taxation were neither requested nor granted. Instead, Henry was exhorted to recover the former king's jewels and other moveable wealth, which were believed to be of great value, although he was also encouraged to settle Richard's debts and repay his loans.
¹⁰
Titles were heaped upon the thirteen-year-old Prince Henry, who became prince of Wales and duke of Guyenne and Lancaster. Once the former king and his chief accomplices had been dealt with, however, the momentum of the session ebbed away. Punishing the Counter-Appellants was doubtless a cathartic and bonding process, but it also threatened new divisions, for there was a widespread feeling that they had been treated too leniently, with some even alleging that Henry, Archbishop Arundel and the earl of Northumberland had been bribed to spare the lives of men ‘whom the common people thought evil and who deserved to die’. Just as the king was about to dissolve parliament, a letter was found in his chamber threatening a rebellion if he allowed the Counter-Appellants to live. The lords and commons denied all knowledge of it, but Henry's desire for reconciliation evidently did not chime with the mood of the country.
¹¹
Whether it would win over Richard's supporters also remained to be seen. Publicly humiliated and widely reviled, only by pleading cowardice had they succeeded in saving their skins – at least for the moment. Whatever he might have hoped, Henry's expectations of their future allegiance are unlikely to have been high.