Henry IV (40 page)

One further decision was arguably very costly. On 10 March, the last day of the parliament, the king issued a general pardon to those who had rebelled in September, but with three named exceptions: Owain Glyn Dŵr and Rhys and Gwilym ap Tudor.
⁷²
It was the Tudor brothers who, three weeks later, launched the assault on Conway which reignited the rebellion and realized the commons' worst fears. The main reason why they did so was to pressurize the crown into pardoning them in return for surrendering the castle.

¹
PROME
, viii.15, 18–20.

²
Cf. the Percy manifesto of 1403: Thomas Gascoigne,
Loci e Libro Veritatum
, ed. J. Rogers (Oxford, 1881), 229–30;
Hardyng
, 352–3;
PROME
, viii.30;
SAC II
, 222. Henry was probably referring inter alia to the grant of the wool subsidy for life in 1398.

³
Cf. Thomas Hoccleve,
The Regement of Princes
, ed. F. Furnivall (EETS, London, 1897), 174, who thought a king should ‘live of your own good, in moderate rule’.

⁴
CE
, 387;
Usk
, 131. Usk said that it was the women of Bristol who led the protest; the sum involved may have been the £333 from the citizens of Bristol recorded as having been paid into the royal chamber on the same day that the sergeant-at-arms was paid (E 403/569, 27 March). Those who had lent Henry aid in the summer of 1399, such as the citizens of York with their loan of 500 marks, may have believed that they especially would be relieved of further demands under the new regime: C. Liddy,
War, Politics and Finance in Late Medieval England: Bristol, York and the Crown 1350–1400
(Woodbridge, 2005), 214–15.

⁵
J. Nuttall,
The Creation of Lancastrian Kingship
(Cambridge, 2007), 75–93. However, the well-informed Philip Repingdon said nothing about promises to restrict taxation in the letter he wrote to Henry in the summer of 1401 (
Usk
, 136–43).

⁶
Castor,
King, Crown and Duchy
, 27;
PROME
, viii.37; DL 28/4/1, fos 13v, 31v.

⁷
Castor,
King, Crown and Duchy
, 29; DL 28/4/1, fo. 25r. The annuities which Henry had been paying from his own (Bohun) estates before 1399 were also now paid from the duchy (DL 42/15, fo. 75r).

⁸
PROME
, viii.163–4;
Foedera
, viii.162–3 (Ikelyngton's acquittance, wrongly dated to Nov. 1400). For Richard's wealth and Holt castle, see
RHKA
, 89–90.

⁹
A. Steel,
Receipt of the Exchequer 1377–1485
(Cambridge, 1954), 81–2; E 403/564, 1 Dec.; above, pp. 171–2.

¹⁰
PROME
, viii.62–4. Exchequer officials spent three days valuing the jewels and plate which had once belonged to Edward III, Richard II, Queen Anne, the duchess of York and the duke of Gloucester (whose wife and son had both died), as a result of which 340 items, some of considerable value, were passed by them to the king's chamber on 20 November 1399 (
Antient Kalendars
, iii.313–58). Yet Henry also passed about £10,000 from the chamber to the exchequer between Oct. 1399 and Jan. 1401 (
RHKA
, 88–91).

¹¹
Nuttall,
Creation of Lancastrian Kingship
, 79–83. The 1,000 marks which Londoners gave him as a coronation gift must also have gone to the chamber, since it is not noted in exchequer records: C. Barron,
London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People, 1200–1500
(Oxford, 2004), 12.

¹²
Antient Kalendars
, iii.358–61; DL 28/4/1, fos. 5r, 18r, 19r; E 403/565, 1 Dec., 16 Jan., 7 April; E 404/15, nos. 455, 459; Steel,
Receipt
, 83.

¹³
Steel,
Receipt
, 83–4.

¹⁴
POPC
, i.102–9: the thirteen bishops in attendance agreed to advance him a clerical tenth from their dioceses and to ask the religious houses to do likewise, while twenty temporal lords promised to provide a total of 146 men-at-arms, 352 archers and ten fully equipped ships of war for three months at their own expense. In return, Henry undertook to ensure that the buyers for his household paid for what they purchased rather than abusing the royal right of purveyance.

¹⁵
E 403/ 569, 9 May, 13 July; E 404/15, no. 172; E 28/7, nos. 62, 63.

¹⁶
Whittington loaned £1,666 and was probably instrumental in persuading the city to loan the king £1,333 on 6 July 1400: Steel,
Receipt
, 82–4, 113; E 403/565, 10 December (1,000 marks from Archbishop Arundel); E 403/567, 15 July, 27 September (days when large loans were received); E 403/569, 7 February.

¹⁷
E 403/569, 5 November; E 404/15, no. 477. The only occasion when Whittington and Brampton were recorded as attending the council was in June 1400 (
POPC
, i.122).

¹⁸
Wages totalling about £5,000 were paid to Henry's supporters in 1399 (
CR
, 252–3). Richard's household debts were around £12,000, unpaid wages for the Calais garrison £6,664 (
RHKA
, 96, 101; E 403/565, 1 December); Queen Isabella had over fifty servants, and many household debts; the cost of conveying her to France was estimated by the council at £8,242 (
CPR 1399
–1401, 323; E 404/16, nos. 219, 273;
POPC
, i.154); there were back payments to annuitants and debts to London drapers and goldsmiths to be cleared; £1,000 was given to the executors of Henry's old foe Thomas Mowbray to clear his debts at Venice (E 403/565, 17 December, 1 March; E 403/569, 26 March;
CPR 1399–1401
, 231, 307); the widows of those whom Henry had executed needed to be supported, such as Henry's sister Elizabeth, countess of Huntingdon, given 1,000 marks a year for life, her daughter Constance and Isabel, widow of William Le Scrope (E 404/16, no. 219;
CPR 1399–1401
, 201, 285).

¹⁹
POPC
, i.154; it also included sums of £16,000 ‘for the recent loan made to the king's use’ and £8,242 for the return of Queen Isabella. When Prince Thomas became lieutenant of Ireland in July 1401 he was promised £8,000 a year (E 404/16, no. 728).

²⁰
J. Bean, ‘Henry IV and the Percies’,
History
44 (1959), 212–27. Thomas Percy was given over 1,400 marks to raise a fleet to counter French piracy in November 1399 (E 403/565, 28 November; C 49/48/1).

²¹
POPC
, i.109–10;
RHKA
, 203–57.

²²
Thus Thomas Percy, earl of Worcester, was given 500 marks a year for life in December 1399, in place of lands granted to him by Richard II following the 1397 forfeitures which he had been obliged to return to Arundel's and Gloucester's heirs (
CPR 1399–1401
, 178). The duke of York had an annuity of 1,000 marks dating from 1385.

²³
POPC
, i.154;
RHKA
, 135–6; A. Rogers, ‘The Royal Household of Henry IV’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 1966), 71–2, counted annuities totalling £22,351 on crown revenues during the first year of the reign, excluding grants of land, offices, wardships, etc.

²⁴
PROME
, viii.48–9.

²⁵
RHKA
, 94, 278.

²⁶
RHKA
, 79, 87, 112.

²⁷
Rogers, ‘Royal Household’, 347–8.

²⁸
E 403/567, 13 July 1400.

²⁹
D. Nicol, ‘A Byzantine Emperor in England: Manuel II's Visit to London in 1400–1401’,
University of Birmingham Historical Journal
12 (1969–70), 204–25. He had been waiting to cross to England since September: E 403/567, 13 August, 25 September;
Saint-Denys
, ii.774;
RHL
, i.39–40. He visited Becket's shrine and was greeted by Henry at Blackheath on 21 December.

³⁰
Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, i.163;
SAC
II, 306–11;
Usk
, 118–21;
CE
, 388. For his time in Paris, see
Saint-Denys
, ii.754, 774–5.

³¹
Lambeth Palace Ms 78. Henry later divided the piece of tunic into two, gave one to Westminster abbey and the other, ‘because of his great trust and close friendship’, to Thomas Arundel, who in turn gave it to the high altar of Canterbury cathedral, where it was placed in a silver-gilt reliquary which also contained a thorn from the crown of thorns and a drop of the blood shed by Becket during his martyrdom. My thanks to Rob Bartlett for this reference.

³²
J. Barker,
Manuel II Palaeologus (1391–1425): A Study in Late Byzantine Statesmanship
(New Brunswick, 1969), 178–80.

³³
E 403/569, 26 March.

³⁴
HOC
, iv.306–10. He had been a knight of Richard II's chamber during the 1390s.

³⁵
Although he waited until the last day of the session to refuse Savage's request, which rather defeated the point of it (
PROME
, viii.101, 106).

³⁶
PROME
, viii.94–5, 132, 139; A. Rogers, ‘The Political Crisis of 1401’,
Nottingham Medieval Studies
12 (1968), 85–96;
RHKA
, 107–8. Tutbury had been keeper of Gaunt's wardrobe in the early 1390s, Litton controller of Henry's household in the late 1390s, and Rempston Henry's standard-bearer and companion in exile, 1398–9.

³⁷
The commons commended Clifford's talents to the king (
PROME
, viii.111–12).

³⁸
A. McHardy, ‘John Scarle: Ambition and Politics in the Late Medieval Church’, in
Image, Text and Church, 1380–1600. Essays for Margaret Aston
, ed. L. Clark, M. Jurkowski and C. Richmond (Toronto, 2009), 68–93, at p. 89.

³⁹
For evidence of confusion in household finance see the pardons for ‘missing money’, cited in Rogers, ‘Royal Household’, 652–3, and ‘Political Crisis of 1401’, 90; on 26 March 1401 the officers and chamberlains of the exchequer were paid for having spent three days at Westminster ‘arraying and amending’ various records of the treasury (E 403/569, 26 March; and for evidence of confusion in the Duchy accounts at this time, with conflicting orders as to where receivers were supposed to present their accounts, DL 42/15, fos. 75r–v).

⁴⁰
PROME
, viii.152; A. Brown, ‘The Commons and the Council in the Reign of Henry IV’,
EHR
79 (1964), 1–30; G. Dodd, ‘Henry IV's Council’, in
Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime 1399–1406
(York, 2003), 95–115, p. 110, argues that this was presented to the king shortly after parliament was dissolved, but it clearly envisages that the commons would still be at Westminster.

⁴¹
For example, the esquires John Doreward, John Frenyngham and Thomas Coggeshall (sometimes called John in council documents) (E 404/16, no. 550; E 403/569, 5 Nov., 21 Nov.).

⁴²
Only about 10 per cent of the 600 or so members of Richard II's household in 1396 were still in the royal household in 1402, compared to over 40 per cent of Edward III's household servants in 1376–7 still employed in Richard II's household in 1383 (
RHKA
, 56; dates based on surviving wardrobe account books).

⁴³
D. Biggs, ‘The Reign of Henry IV: The Revolution of 1399 and the Establishment of the Lancastrian Regime’,
Fourteenth Century England I
, ed. N. Saul (Woodbridge, 2000), 195–210, at pp. 207–9.

⁴⁴
G. Dodd, ‘Conflict or Consensus: Henry IV and Parliament, 1399–1406’, in
Social Attitudes and Political Structures. The Fifteenth Century Series 7
, ed. T. Thornton (Stroud, 2001), 118–49; Dodd, ‘Henry IV's Council’, 113.

⁴⁵
Castor,
King, Crown and Duchy
, 7–21. For livery badges and livery legislation, see below, pp. 393–5.

⁴⁶
Convocation met on 27 Jan. at St Paul's.

⁴⁷
Usk
, 8;
PROME
, viii.105, 118–19, 125–6. For these issues, see below, pp. 352–60 and 368–9.

⁴⁸
PROME
, viii.98. This was the only time that this phrase was included in the opening sermon.

⁴⁹
PROME
, viii.110, 121.

⁵⁰
Records of Convocation
, ed. G. Bray (10 vols, Canterbury, Woodbridge, 2006),
IV
, 214–15. The delegation was led by Northumberland, Erpingham and Norbury; the quid pro quo was that the clergy were expected to grant a tax.

⁵¹
Records of Convocation IV
, 216–26; P. McNiven,
Heresy and Politics in the Reign of Henry IV
(Woodbridge, 1987), 81–6. When first questioned on 12 February, Sawtre tried to conform, but as the trial progressed he adopted a more aggressive, even impertinent, tone.

⁵²
Foedera
, viii.178;
PROME
, viii.108–9. A. McHardy, ‘De Heretico Comburendo, 1401’, in
Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages
, ed. M. Aston and C. Richmond (Stroud, 1997), 112–26, at p. 115 (where she points out that there is no evidence that heresy was discussed in parliament before 2 March). Purvey had been Wyclif's secretary and had translated the Lollard Bible into English.

⁵³
Usk
, 122–3;
CE
, 388.

⁵⁴
Records of Convocation IV
, 226–9.

⁵⁵
A. E. Larson, ‘Are all Lollards Lollards?’, in
Lollards and Their Influence in Late Medieval England
, ed. F. Somerset, J. Havens and D. Pitard (Woodbridge, 2003), 59–72, at p. 61; P. Cavill, ‘Heresy, Law and the State: Forfeiture in Late Medieval and Early Modern England’,
EHR
129 (2014), 270–95, at p. 274 (citing Bracton and Britton).