Henry IV (43 page)

⁵
K. Williams-Jones, ‘The Taking of Conwy Castle, 1401’,
Transactions of the Caernarvonshire History Society
39 (1978), 7–43 at p. 13.

⁶
E 403/573, 19 April 1402: Hotspur ‘remained at the said siege for four weeks at his own expense without help from anyone apart from his own men’.

⁷
Usk,
129.

⁸
Davies,
Revolt,
79; the English were the ‘undisputed April Fools’ of 1401 (Allmand,
Henry V
, 20).

⁹
POPC
, i.147–53;
RHL I,
69–72; E 28/9, no. 2, lists 35 men to be pardoned (these pardons were confirmed on 4 July). Prince Henry received £300 for his expenses at Conway in July 1401, but Hotspur had to wait until April 1402 to receive payment of £200 (E 404/16, no. 739; E 403/573, 19 April).

¹⁰
RHL I,
152–3; Davies,
Revolt
, 105; on 30 August 1401 the king ordered Prince Henry to go to
South
Wales to suppress rebellions there (E 404/16, no. 766).

¹¹
POPC,
i.133–5 (dated at Worcester, 8 June).

¹²
Usk
, 144;
Vita
, 170. The royal army stabled their horses in the church and it was said that not a monk remained at the abbey. Many Welsh Cistercian houses had close links with the native population and were centres of Welsh culture and sentiment. See
CPR 1401–5
, 61, which blamed the devastation of the abbey on Welsh rebels as well as on the English army.

¹³
DL 29/548/9241, m. 2.

¹⁴
Vita
, 170, which adds that two of Llywellyn's sons were with Owain at the time.

¹⁵
Usk,
147.

¹⁶
POPC,
i.173, ii.59–60;
ANLP
, no. 244; Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, i.246.

¹⁷
Davies,
Revolt
, 106;
POPC
, i.173; E 403/571, 9 December 1401 (payment to Master John Barell for spending 20 days in Wales and the Marches securing obligations and submissions in the military court to secure peace and tranquillity in Wales).

¹⁸
According to
Usk
, 147, the raid took place on 30 January.

¹⁹
Vita
, 172.

²⁰
SAC II
, 323–5;
Vita
, 172–3; Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, i.250, notes that it was believed that after capturing Grey in April, Owain had spared the Mortimer lands: H. Watt, ‘On Account of the Frequent Attacks and Invasions of the Welsh: The Effect of the Glyn Dŵr Rebellion on Tax Collection in England’, in
Rebellion and Survival 1403–13
, ed. G. Dodd and D Biggs (York, 2008), 48–81, at p. 72.

²¹
Original Letters
, i.24–5; R. Davies, ‘Sir Edmund Mortimer’,
ODNB
, 39.375–6; Foedera, vii.279;
Usk,
158–60;
Hardyng
, 359;
CPR 1401–5
, 176, and E 403/574, 19 Oct., for Edmund's lands being granted away and his goods seized by the king in mid-October 1402.

²²
Davies,
Revolt
, 179–80.

²³
Giles
, 30–2, believed that Hotspur argued the case strongly to the council for offering Owain the pardon he sought, and when this was refused he left Wales for the north. According to
POPC,
ii.59, the Welsh leader also had ‘great affection and affinity’ with the earl of Northumberland.

²⁴
POPC,
i.185.

²⁵
SAC II,
324–7;
CE
, 394;
Vita
, 174; Clarke and Galbraith, ‘Deposition of Richard II’ (
Dieulacres Chronicle
), 176.

²⁶
R. Griffiths, ‘Prince Henry and Wales’, in
Profit, Piety and the Professions in Later Medieval England,
ed. M. Hicks (Gloucester, 1990), 51–61 at pp. 54–9. For garrisons set up in November 1401 see
POPC
, i.173–7.

²⁷
Allmand,
Henry V
, 23–8; Griffiths, ‘Prince Henry and Wales’, 55.

²⁸
POPC
, ii.62–3.

²⁹
J. Bean, ‘The Percies and their Estates in Scotland’,
Archaeologia Aeliana
35 (1957), 91–9.

³⁰
Given-Wilson,
English Nobility
, 132–5; M. Brown,
The Black Douglases 1300–1455
(East Linton, 1998); Dunbar castle, Earl George's ancestral stronghold, was delivered by its keeper to Douglas in July 1400.

³¹
A. Macdonald, ‘George Dunbar, Ninth Earl of Dunbar or March’,
ODNB
, 17.207–10; Brown,
Black Douglases
, 145–7.

³²
Macdonald,
Border Bloodshed
, 143–5;
POPC
, ii.52 (‘the earl of Douglas and other young lords are not in favour of a treaty of peace, but the king of Scotland, his son of Rothesay, the duke of Albany and other prelates and lords of substance of Scotland are desirous of peace, so it is said’).

³³
He died in March 1402. The official line, which even his father King Robert sanctioned, was that he had contracted dysentery: Boardman,
Early Stewart Kings
, 238–46.

³⁴
POPC
, i.168–73 (Henry's instructions to his commissioners);
Anglo-Scottish Relations 1174–1328: Some Selected Documents
, ed. E. Stones (Oxford, 1965), 346–65 (report of the meeting by an English clerk).

³⁵
It is worth noting that the Scots had said in August 1400, when Henry was in Edinburgh, that they would consider the question of homage (above, p. 170).

³⁶
£500 had recently been spent on strengthening the defences of Berwick and Roxburgh (E 28/8, 10 Dec. 1400, 19 March 1401).

³⁷
The English commissioners were also instructed to raise the question of the outstanding sums still due from the ransom of David II, but were told this was to be done amicably and not stand in the way of any agreement.

³⁸
Nicholson,
Scotland
, 219–22; Macdonald,
Border Bloodshed
, 146–7; Boardman,
Early Stewart Kings
, 239–40.

³⁹
RHL I,
52–65. Chroniclers on each side did likewise: Bower, for example, claimed that Douglas aggression was a legitimate response to attacks by Dunbar and the English (
Scotichronicon
, viii.43).

⁴⁰
Dunbar was said to have saved Hotspur's life at Otterburn in 1388 (A. Macdonald, ‘George Dunbar, Ninth Earl of Dunbar or March’,
ODNB
, 17.207–10).

⁴¹
For the ghost of Richard II, see below, p. 209. Macdonald,
Border Bloodshed
, 145–6, 150; Boardman,
Early Stewart Kings
, 240. For fleets to counter Scottish piracy, see E 403/571, 14 March, and E 403/573, 4 April. It is possible that Glyn Dŵr's letter asking Robert III for help found its way to the Scottish court (
Usk
, 149 and n. 6).

⁴²
Hepburn's force might have included men returning from a raid on Carlisle (
SAC II
, 323); Macdonald,
Border Bloodshed
, 152–3.

⁴³
For accounts of the battle see
Scotichronicon
, 43–9;
SAC II
, 328–35;
Vita
, 174–5; Clarke and Galbraith, ‘Deposition of Richard II’ (
Dieulacres Chronicle
), 177; Macdonald,
Border Bloodshed
, 153–4. The Evesham chronicler put the English army at 12,000 men-at-arms and 7,000 archers, but this sounds too high.

⁴⁴
CPR 1401–5
, 121; Walsingham said 500 Scots drowned, the Evesham chronicler 1,000.

⁴⁵
SAC II
, 332–3; the king was told that only five English were killed (
CDS
, iv.402–3).

⁴⁶
Scotichronicon
, viii.49 (quote), and
SAC II
, 333, give contemporary lists; see also Macdonald,
Border Bloodshed
, 154–5, who adds the names of some French knights accompanying the Scots.

⁴⁷
Macdonald,
Border Bloodshed
, 158–9; Boardman,
Early Stewart Kings
, 246–7.

⁴⁸
SC 1/57/122A and B, written at Daventry;
CDS
, iv.402–3;
Foedera
, viii.278–9.

Chapter 14

PIRACY, RUMOUR AND RIOT (1401–1402)

The presence of a French contingent in the Scottish army at Humbleton Hill would not have surprised the English, for Franco-Scottish collusion against the Lancastrian usurper had been growing for over a year, orchestrated by the self-appointed archpriest of Gallic Anglophobia, Duke Louis of Orléans.
¹
Around Christmas 1401, Orléans concluded an alliance with the earl of Crawford at Paris, which led to both the despatch of French knights and esquires to Scotland (including those who fought at Humbleton) and the waging of virtually open warfare on English shipping in the Channel and the North Sea. Although attacks had taken place during the previous two years, this heralded a marked escalation of the war in the Channel and North Sea: at least twenty-five English vessels were seized between March and July 1402. The English were far from passive victims, capturing at least forty-eight French ships during the summer. The fleets responsible for this were under the command of the royal admirals, Richard Lord Grey and Sir Thomas Rempston, but they were captained by men such as John Hauley of Dartmouth, Mark Mixto of Fowey, John Brandon of Lynn, Henry Pay of Poole and Richard Spicer of Southampton, whom the French had no hesitation in labelling as pirates, but who in fact operated for much of the time as privateers.
²

That the English government was using these men to attack French and Scottish shipping is clear; less so is the extent to which it was able to control their activities. This was especially the case with neutral vessels suspected of carrying enemy cargoes. Castilian merchants complained of seventeen incidents in which either their ships or their cargoes had been seized,
the Flemings twenty-seven. Worst affected, however, were the Hanseatics, who between 1402 and 1404 suffered the loss, destruction or pillage of at least fifty-nine ships. By the winter of 1404–5, the Hanse was trying to organize a general boycott of English trade.
³
Henry's increasingly urgent orders to Hauley, Pay, Spicer and their fellows to make restoration or pay compensation to the victims strongly suggest that he was losing control of the situation, but it would take years rather than months to repair the damage to England's trading relations. ‘May God sink all pirate ships!’ wrote one Florentine merchant to a colleague.
⁴
Meanwhile, the Anglo-French truce became ever more precarious.

Simultaneously with the Pirate War, the French and the Scots stepped up their attempts to discredit Henry and undermine his rule in England. From the French side, this took the form of public challenges to personal combat. The chronicler of Saint-Denis explained it thus: having conceived ‘an implacable hatred’ of the English because of their treatment of Richard II and Isabella, yet being unwilling to attack them openly lest they appear as truce-breakers, ‘they sought an honourable pretext to avenge these intolerable injuries’, and found it in the chivalric challenge.
⁵
These challenges began in 1400, but initially the lords followed the advice of the commons in 1401, who recommended that they be ignored because of the risk and expense involved.
⁶
In May 1402, however, the earl of Rutland, now serving as lieutenant of Guyenne, unwisely accepted a challenge from a group of
Orléanistes
to a seven-a-side combat at Montendre (between Bordeaux and Angoulême). Orléans's aim was to demonstrate French military superiority over the English, and this, in the estimation of his compatriots, he succeeded in doing.
⁷
One English knight was killed, the other six surrendered and returned to England ‘covered in shame and confusion’, while the victorious French, led by Guillaume de Chastel, one of Orléans's chamberlains, made their way in triumph to Paris, where Christine de Pizan composed ballads in their honour and Charles VI gave each of them 1,000 francs for vindicating French arms. Emboldened by success, Orléans now decided to challenge the English king directly, and on 7 August wrote to Henry proposing that a hundred Frenchmen should do battle against a
hundred Englishmen, led by himself and Henry, respectively, until one side forced the other into surrender, whereupon the defeated would become the prisoners of the victors. He cannot have believed for a moment that a reigning monarch would accept such a challenge: his letter was intended as an insult and was taken as such. Henry's reply, dated 5 December 1402, expressed wonderment at Orléans's temerity, advised him to know his place and mind his manners better in future, and formally annulled the personal alliance which the two men had concluded in June 1399. Around the same time, the earl of Northumberland received a similar letter from Guillaume de Chastel, to which he replied in equally brutal terms, ridiculing his presumption and informing him that if he wished to engage in combat with the earl he could find him on the Scottish march, where ‘you will behold the quivering sword of our office, which we wield against your execrable vow and your accomplices’.
⁸

Further letters followed, two more from Orléans and one from Henry, progressively more unchivalric in their language. Louis accused Henry of being a usurper and a regicide; Henry called Louis a liar, a coward and a fomenter of discord within the French kingdom.
⁹
Crude as such taunts were, they chafed at the ever-exposed nerve of great men's honour. It was the cruelty Henry had displayed towards his niece Isabella which, claimed Louis, left him honour-bound to act as her champion; Henry retorted that although it was beneath him to reply he would do so since it was a matter which concerned his honour. Yet Orléans's intemperance irritated many people in France. The monk of Saint-Denis compared their insult-trading to the bickering of old women and deemed the letters unworthy of inclusion in his chronicle, while the clerk who enrolled them in the register of the French
parlement
(apparently at Orléans's request) described them as ‘verbose and windy, without consequence or prudence’.
¹⁰
Honour must be upheld, to be sure, and Orléans clearly believed that he was defending not just his niece's honour but that of France; nevertheless there was genuine fear in Paris that his bombast would lead to open warfare.