Henry IV (55 page)

³⁶
CGR 1400–1
, no. 10 (pardon to Bayonne, 14 March 1401); E 28/8 (pardon to Bordeaux, 9 May 1401);
CGR 1400–1
, nos. 26, 34, 49 (confirmation of trading and other privileges).

³⁷
Pepin, ‘The French Offensives of 1404–1407’, 1–3. This provoked an angry response from Henry, who had appointed Prince Henry as duke of Guyenne in October 1399 (Lehoux,
Jean de France
, ii.216).

³⁸
CGR 1399–1400
, no. 172;
CGR 1400–1
, 113; Pepin, ‘The French Offensives’, 37–9.

³⁹
Henry IV welcomed the count of Périgord and offered him money and help, but he failed to regain his county:
Usk
, 134; E 403/571, 28 October 1401 (gift of £120); E 404/16, nos. 773–4.

⁴⁰
Vale,
English Gascony
, 46.

⁴¹
Rutland's indenture stated that if Henry could send one of his sons to Gascony (which was evidently to be desired), Rutland would relinquish his post and return to England (C 47/24/9, no. 6; E 404/16, no. 738; Vale,
English Gascony
, 31, 39–40, 43, 45, 48; E 403/565, 7 April, E 403/567, 11 June).

⁴²
CGR 1400–1
, nos. 31, 54, 79, 92 (Rutland's powers as lieutenant), 101, 113 (the council).

⁴³
For Montendre, see above, p. 203.
CGR1400–1
, no. 111;
CGR 1401–4
, no. 79; Given-Wilson, ‘Quarrels of Old Women’, 31–2. Hugh Despenser also died in 1401.

⁴⁴
Vale,
English Gascony
, 246;
CGR 1401–4
, no. 94 (September 1402), where Rutland was ‘former lieutenant’ and Fronsac was committed to Farrington. This may have been the source of their dispute; by November Rutland was ‘lieutenant’ once again (
CGR 1401–4
, no. 96). Given his slippery reputation and the fact that he had been deprived of the dukedom of Aumale three years earlier, he might not have thought his inheritance assured. Edmund duke of York died on 1 August 1402.

⁴⁵
Saint-Denys
, iii.69, commented on Albret's unsuitability as constable, since he was lame, short and feeble. For Armagnac, see Nordberg,
Les Ducs et la Royauté
, 75, 120.

⁴⁶
Wilson, ‘Anglo-French Relations’, 190; for the Plymouth raid, above, p. 237.

⁴⁷
Pepin, ‘The French Offensives of 1404–1407’, 3–10; Vale,
English Gascony
, 48–53;
Foedera
, viii.336 (expected invasion of Oct. 1403);
POPC
, ii.81 (escort for Anglo-Gascon wine convoy, Dec. 1403).

⁴⁸
Autrand,
Charles VI
, 402.

⁴⁹
Saint-Denys
, iii.205, said Clermont took 34 strongholds and was much praised in Paris. He also said (iii.201) that many of the Bordeaux citizens hated Henry, so Albret tried to take the city by treachery; the execution in London of ‘traitors from the city of Bordeaux’ in 1403–4 lends this some support (
CE
, 399).

⁵⁰
E 28/14,
passim.
For the confusion over the allegiance of the Count of Foix, see the letters in
RHL I
, 438–57; Pepin, ‘French Offensives of 1404–1407’, 8–9, 37–9. Henry wrote to Archbishop Ugguccione on 16 August 1404 apologizing for being so taken up with domestic problems that he had not had time to deal with overseas affairs, but now that the Scottish marches were peaceful he hoped soon to suppress the Welsh rebellion and intended to help the archbishop (
CDS
, v.281).

⁵¹
Vale,
English Gascony
, 154–5, 165–70; Pépin, ‘The French Offensive’, 36–9.

⁵²
CGR 1401–4
, nos. 110–13, 118, 121, 128–42, 149, 151, 158–61, 168;
CGR 1404–5
, nos. 2–4, 7–8, 17, 49, 52;
POPC
, i.222. Gournay may have been in his eighties rather than in his seventies: M. Jones, ‘Sir Matthew Gournay’,
ODNB
, 23.86–7. Hugh Luttrell was appointed mayor of Bordeaux to replace Edmund Thorpe in May 1404, but since he was MP for Somerset in the same year he may not have visited the duchy.

⁵³
M. Labarge, ‘Thomas Swynburne’,
ODNB
, 53.527–8; S. Walker, ‘William Farrington’,
ODNB
, 19.130–1;
CGR 1404–5
, no. 12 (Swynburne's appointment, 14 March 1405).

⁵⁴
Niño had been taken into Orléans's household earlier in the year: Wilson, ‘Anglo-French Relations’, 267.

⁵⁵
Saint-Denys
, iii.357–9, credits Armagnac with the capture of twenty strongholds, and said that he was paid by the citizens to abandon the siege of Bordeaux.

⁵⁶
POPC
, i. 250.

⁵⁷
Saint-Denys
, iii.331–45; Autrand,
Charles VI
, 404–7; Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, ii.82 (quote). Orléans and Burgundy clashed in mid-August, only agreeing to be reconciled in mid-October.

⁵⁸
See the opening speech in the 1401 parliament (
PROME
, viii.99).

⁵⁹
Ormrod,
Edward III
, 414ff. Richard II made Gaunt duke of Guyenne in 1390. He also made Robert de Vere duke of Ireland in 1386, and his nephew, Thomas Holand, lieutenant in 1398, both of whom he was said to wish to make king of Ireland (
Usk
, 76–7).

⁶⁰
PROME
, viii.339.

Chapter 18

THE DEATH OF AN ARCHBISHOP (1404–1405)

The resistance Henry encountered from every corner of his dominions in the years 1403–5 might not have surprised him greatly; that those who were not English but over whom the English claimed to rule should seek to exploit upheaval in the imperial heartland was to be expected. Within England, on the other hand, the king must have hoped that his victory at the battle of Shrewsbury would cause his opponents to think again. Three times during the autumn and winter of 1403–4, ‘in order to abolish all ambiguity or evil intention’, the lords were obliged to renew their oaths of allegiance to Henry and the prince. Yet rumour would not be silenced, and in February 1404 even Archbishop Arundel had to ask Northumberland to assure parliament that neither he (Arundel) nor the duke of York had in any way colluded with Hotspur and Worcester. York – the former Rutland – was ever the object of suspicion, but that Arundel's loyalty might be in doubt is an indication of the fevered speculation at Westminster.
¹
Spies were said to be about the king's person, some of his councillors were openly denounced as having ‘evil intentions’, and his ministers were accused of submitting fraudulent accounts.
²

Nor was this simple scaremongering, for plots continued to be hatched, such as the rather opaque conspiracy in Essex and Suffolk headed by Maud, countess of Oxford, and the abbots of Beeliegh, St Osyth and St John's, Colchester. Countess Maud was the mother of Richard II's former favourite, Robert de Vere, and seems genuinely to have believed that the former king was alive and planning to return to England. Whether or not Louis of Orléans and Waleran of St-Pol also believed this, they too were said to be in on the plot, and there was hope that St-Pol would follow up his descent on the Isle of Wight in December 1403 by landing on the Essex coast to support the rising. White hart badges were duly distributed, letters
purporting to come from Richard (though in fact sealed by William Serle in Scotland) were circulated, and beacons along the coast of Suffolk and Essex broken down ‘for the riding and coming of the Frenchmen’.
³
The ex-queen Isabella, it was said, would land at Harwich on 28 December and go from there to Northampton to be reunited with her husband. She did not do so, of course, and by April 1404 the chief conspirators had been arrested. Given that one of their alleged aims was to kill the king, they were treated with uncommon leniency: the countess and the three abbots had all been pardoned by mid-November, and although some of the lesser conspirators stood trial, almost all of them were acquitted.
⁴
It is unlikely that they had ever been seen as a serious threat: the real culprit, as Walsingham pointed out, was William Serle, and although what Countess Maud and her accomplices had planned could undoubtedly be construed as treason, Henry evidently preferred to see them as dupes.
⁵
Their willingness to pay heavy fines to regain their freedom doubtless helped sway the king, but his decision to pardon them may also have been influenced by the fact that the real culprit had by now been caught.

Serle's undoing was his misplaced trust in the integrity of a fellow-conspirator. In June 1404, with the Percy castellans in the north still refusing to surrender to royalist agents, he crossed the border, looking for support from William Clifford, captain of Berwick, only to find himself detained and escorted to Pontefract where, in return for a royal pardon, Clifford handed him over to the king. Neither man could have been in doubt as to the fate that awaited Serle: as well as committing numerous acts of treason by forging letters under the royal signet, he was also wanted for the murder of the duke of Gloucester in 1397. Taken initially to Southwark, where he confessed under interrogation that the Scottish impostor was just that, he was sent back to Yorkshire to begin a prolonged and excruciating death. Repeatedly drawn on a hurdle, hanged, then cut down while still alive in each of the major towns along the route from Pontefract to the Tower, including York, Doncaster, Lincoln, King's Lynn, Norwich and Colchester,
he was finally disembowelled, decapitated and quartered at Tyburn and his head set on top of London bridge. To Henry, Serle's drawn out passion was a calculated act of political theatre, intended to remind successive audiences of the corresponding procession of Richard's corpse from Pontefract to London four-and-a-half years earlier – the soon-to-be-dead Serle in the footsteps of the assuredly dead king – and of the fate awaiting those who stubbornly continued to defy the evidence of their own eyes and ears.
⁶

Walsingham claimed that after Serle's death the rumour that Richard was alive ceased, but such optimism was premature, for two years later it was still causing sufficient concern to be the subject of parliamentary legislation.
⁷
It was the Mortimer claim to the throne, however, which thrust itself to the fore in the early months of 1405. Edmund and Roger Mortimer, the thirteen- and eleven-year-old sons of the former earl of March, had been kept since Henry's accession in close, but not harsh, custody at Windsor and Berkhamstead and brought up alongside the king's younger children, their claim to the throne never officially discussed despite being much talked about in the country at large.
⁸
However, in mid-February 1405, an attempt was made to abduct them from Windsor castle, apparently with the intention of taking them to Wales to join their uncle Edmund and Glyn Dŵr. Behind this plot was Constance, Lady Despenser, sister of the duke of York and widow of the Thomas Despenser who had been lynched at Bristol in January 1400 after joining the Epiphany rising. Somehow she managed to persuade a locksmith to make duplicate keys to Windsor castle: spirited away during the night of 13 February, the boys were hurried westwards, but recaptured within a day or two in a forest near Cheltenham and returned to custody. The locksmith lost his head, and four days later Lady Constance was brought before the lords of the realm at Westminster.
⁹
Without denying her own part in the affair, she sought to throw the blame on others. The ‘principal instigator of the kidnapping’, she declared, was the duke of York, adding improbably that he had also planned to assassinate the king by climbing over the walls of
Eltham palace while Henry was spending Christmas there two months earlier. Her animosity towards her brother might be explained by the rumours that it was he who had betrayed the Epiphany rising, thus causing her husband's death, but may equally have been prompted by the knowledge that the duke was a man against whom much tended to be insinuated and a good deal of it believed. On the other hand, both Prince Henry and the commons in the October 1404 parliament praised York's service in Wales over the past eighteen months.
¹⁰
Perhaps this is what saved him, for he confessed to the council that he had indeed known about the kidnap plot, although he claimed to have forewarned Henry about it.
¹¹
The plot to assassinate the king he strenuously denied, and Henry evidently chose to believe him. He was nevertheless imprisoned in Pevensey castle for around ten months, and his lands and goods seized into the king's hands, before being pardoned in December 1405; his sister was also imprisoned, at Kenilworth, but by mid-1406 she too had been pardoned, a considerable act of grace on Henry's part.
¹²
Others too were alleged to have been implicated. Thomas Mowbray, the nineteen-year-old earl marshal, admitted having known about the plot, but claimed not to have approved of it and was given the benefit of the doubt. For the second time in a year, whisperers were also at work against Archbishop Arundel, who once again had to clear his name in the king's presence, this time on bended knee, although exactly what was being alleged against him is unclear.
¹³
Whether the two boys were complicit in their own abduction is also unclear, but it is difficult not to think that their uncle, Edmund Mortimer senior, and Glyn Dŵr were parties to it. Had the boys been brought safely into Wales, it was to Glyn Dŵr and his son-in-law that they would assuredly have been taken.
¹⁴
Whether or not the earl of Northumberland knew about any of these plots, he was by this time almost certainly planning once again to overthrow Henry.
¹⁵
Notwithstanding his pardon in the January parliament, 1404 had been a chastening year for him: excluded from the council, on which he had once enjoyed such a prominent role, forced to surrender his castles, his lands in Scotland, and three of his grandchildren as hostages to the king, even within his northern heartland his influence was marginalized. It was the fifteen-year-old Prince John, now constable of England as well as warden of the East March, and his mentor, the king's brother-in-law, Ralph earl of Westmorland, warden of the West March, who now exercised public authority over the borders.
¹⁶
Walsingham said Westmorland displayed ‘hatred and ingratitude’ towards Northumberland and his men, and given his role in subduing the Percy retainers in the aftermath of Shrewsbury this ill-feeling was surely reciprocated, with the two earls' stagy parliamentary reconciliation in February 1404 little more than a charade. Westmorland must surely have felt that Northumberland and his son had exercised excessive influence on the marches during the first few years of the reign, and this was his chance to even things up.
¹⁷