Henry IV (73 page)

Yet Henry had to tread carefully, for this was a subject on which many in the commons felt passionately. Initially their hostility had been directed primarily against foreign provisors, who were not merely habitual absentees from their livings (or, if present, suspected of espionage) but also deprived
the realm of bullion.
¹⁵
From around 1390, however, it encompassed English provisors too, and there was growing emphasis on the misappropriation of alms and tithes, which should have been used for charitable purposes, and on the effects of non-residence on pastoral care and hospitality.
¹⁶
Yet papal provisions also had their supporters. To Henry, they afforded a useful bargaining tool with Rome, and there was a widespread view, shared by Arundel and the king, that they were the best way to ensure the promotion of deserving university graduates.
¹⁷
The problem lay in agreeing who was deserving. Royal clerks competed shamelessly with papal, episcopal and noble protégés, and lawsuits between them, sometimes accompanied by violence, were far from uncommon. Despite prohibitions on seeking benefices at the Curia, it was hard to prevent such disputes. Adam Usk repeatedly sought a bishopric during his four years in Rome (1402–6), thereby infuriating Henry; not surprisingly, he was an advocate of papal provisions.
¹⁸
To characterize the problem as essentially a battle between pope, king, nobles and bishops for rights of patronage over the English Church is by no means unjustified, but risks ignoring the insatiable appetites of the clerks who sought that patronage, at times exploiting the legislation, at others evading it.
¹⁹

Given these competing pressures, Henry was aware of the need for self-restraint, and for the first five years of the reign he used his
soefferance
sparingly, granting an average of less than ten licences a year to evade the statute. In June 1402, following discussion in the council, he promised to review the question in the next parliament and to abstain entirely from granting licences thereafter, but by March 1403 he was once again granting them, and two years later the number began to rise alarmingly, to 27 in 1405 and 64 in 1406.
²⁰
This produced a storm of complaints from the commons: reminding the king of his promise, they asked him never in future to grant licences for livings which were already vacant. These, as they pointed out, were the ones that caused disputes, since an English patron was likely already to have presented an alternative candidate.
²¹
Henry promised nothing, however, and in October 1407 the commons once again submitted two petitions to the king begging him to uphold the statutes. The king agreed, but only saving his customary prerogatives – in effect, a rebuff. However, the number of licences he issued fell sharply after 1406, to roughly the same level as before 1405, and perhaps as a result the matter was not raised in parliament again.
²²

The likely reasons for the spate of royal licences in 1405–6 were, first, because Henry needed to placate Innocent VII, with whom he was embroiled in a number of disputes over episcopal appointments (to say nothing of the backwash from Scrope's execution), and, secondly, because he was short of money and such licences were a useful form of clerical patronage. Yet throughout his reign Henry showed determination not to allow the Statutes of Provisors to be applied inflexibly. Like kings before him, he wanted the freedom to negotiate individual appointments with the papacy. Nor would he have been insensible to the fact that the provisors legislation proclaimed the Englishness of the English Church and the primacy of royal authority over it. In 1409, during a lawsuit over a prebend at Salisbury, Justice Hankford remarked that ‘the pope can do anything’ (
papa omnia potest
); ‘That was in ancient times,’ objected Chief Justice Thirning, ‘but I cannot see how he by his bulls can change the law of England.’
²³
Henry VIII could not have put it better.

Despite their concern over provisions, the commons generally knew better than to interfere with bishoprics, a more lofty and complex matter.
²⁴
Four parties were involved in filling episcopal vacancies: the dean and chapter of the cathedral in question, whose theoretical right to elect their own bishop was frequently (but not always) overridden; the pope, without whose formal provision to the see no appointment was canonically valid; the primate, who admitted the chosen candidate and received his profession of obedience; and the king, who in practice usually had the greatest influence. All this made for a competitive and confusing situation.

The episcopal bench which Henry inherited in 1399 consisted largely of Richard II's nominees, although Henry's reinstatement of Arundel to Canterbury in the autumn of 1399, presented to Boniface IX as a fait accompli, established a measure of control as well as making it clear that
he would not allow Rome to push him around.
²⁶
During the next four years few vacancies occurred, and only one caused controversy. When the see of Bath and Wells fell vacant early in 1400, Boniface provided Richard Clifford, the keeper of the privy seal, while the king proposed his friend Henry Bowet. Deadlock ensued until the fortuitous death in June 1401 of Tideman of Winchcombe, bishop of Worcester, allowed both sides to save face: Clifford went to Worcester, Bowet to Bath and Wells. The vacancy at the latter had lasted eighteen months, hardly ideal from a pastoral point of view, but in the end Henry got his way.
²⁷

Such obduracy meant that when, in the years 1404–7, nine of England's seventeen bishops died, and three of the four Welsh sees became vacant through either death or defection to Glyn Dŵr – a three-year episcopal casualty rate unmatched during the late Middle Ages – conflict was likely, for this was Henry's chance to reshape the episcopacy. Yet initially things went smoothly. Winchester, the richest see in the country, vacated by William of Wykeham's death, went to the king's half-brother, Henry Beaufort. He was replaced at Lincoln by Henry's friend and confessor, Philip Repingdon, while Hereford, following the death of John Trefnant, was given to Robert Mascall, another of Henry's confessors. Rochester and London, which became vacant in April and August 1404, respectively, proved more problematical. Boniface IX translated Richard Young from Bangor to Rochester, but Arundel refused for nearly three years to admit him, perhaps because the king's first choice was Roger Walden, perhaps in the hope of preventing the papal candidate for Bangor, Lewis Byford, from obtaining that see, for he was suspected of sympathizing with Glyn Dŵr.
²⁸
When London became vacant a few months later, Henry proposed his privy seal keeper, Thomas Langley, while Arundel initially supported Robert Hallum, theologian and chancellor of Oxford University,
although he later switched to the king's candidate.
²⁹
However, the new pope, Innocent VII (1404–6), ignored them both and provided Walden. Although this had the advantage of freeing up Rochester for Young, neither the king nor Arundel was satisfied, and both sees in practice remained unoccupied.

Matters were further complicated by Scrope's execution on 8 June 1405 and the subsequent excommunication by Innocent of those responsible. Wishing to offend the papacy no further, Henry quickly agreed to accept Walden for London, probably at Arundel's urging. Yet Scrope's death also created a vacancy for England's second archbishopric, and above all the king was determined to have his way at York. Thomas Langley (now chancellor) and Henry Bowet were once again his preferred candidates, and in July the York chapter agreed to elect Langley. The pope prevaricated, however, while Langley himself may have wished to wait until Durham, which he coveted, became vacant. He did not have to wait long: Walter Skirlaw, who had held it for nearly twenty years, died after a long illness in March 1406, and seven weeks later Langley was provided in his place after Bowet (who had also shown interest in Durham, a wealthy and palatine see) agreed to step aside on condition that Langley support his own candidacy at York. Another vacancy at London – which arose when Walden, having enjoyed his temporalities for less than six months, died in January 1406 – might have resolved the situation, but was instead reserved for Langley's successor as privy seal keeper, Nicholas Bubwith, whose claim to a bishopric the king now viewed as urgent. This was on 14 May 1406, the day Langley was provided to Durham, but Innocent VII did not stop there, for, on the same day he also provided Hallum to York. This put Henry in a quandary: he did not lack respect for Hallum – far from it – but with the disturbed state of affairs in the north he needed the two major sees there to be in the hands of men of proven political mettle, not theologians. Arundel, who had supported Hallum, was thus once again persuaded to switch candidates, and in August Henry Chichele and John Cheyne were despatched to Rome to persuade the pope to quash Hallum's provision.
³⁰

Arriving there, they discovered that Innocent VII had died and that a new pope, Gregory XII, had been elected. This was not necessarily a desadvantage, for Gregory soon fell out with his cardinals over the Schism,
making it more important for him to placate secular rulers. However, he was not yet ready to compromise. The vacancy created when Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich since 1369, died on 26 August 1406, presented another opportunity, but the chapter quickly elected their venerable dean, Alexander Tottington, whom the pope confirmed. The king in frustration imprisoned Tottington for several months in Windsor castle, declaring that ‘he would never suffer the said bishop-elect to enjoy the episcopal dignity’, but faced with capitular election and papal provision there was little he could do – a reminder of the limits to royal masterfulness.
³¹
Thus only with the death of Richard Medford, bishop of Salisbury, in May 1407, did it become possible to clear the logjam. This time the government reacted immediately, despatching a messenger within days to the dean and chapter, and the swiftly taken decision to move Bubwith from London to Salisbury (effected by 22 June) undoubtedly met with the approval of both king and archbishop.
³²

This paved the way for the resolution of the outstanding issues between king and pope. In the autumn of 1407 Gregory XII, whose position at the Curia was now too weak to allow him to hold out, agreed to provide Bowet to York. This freed up Bath and Wells, to which Bubwith was now translated (his third see in fifteen months), while Hallum, abandoning his bid for York, was given Salisbury. At the same time, Tottington was released from prison and made his submission to Henry and Arundel during the Gloucester parliament.
³³
All this took place in October 1407 as part of an unofficial concordat between king and pope, which also encompassed the withdrawal of Innocent's bull of excommunication. Perhaps for appearances’ sake, the latter was held over until the spring of 1408, when Chichele, who, along with Cheyne, had spent the past year at the Curia brokering the Anglo-papal deal, was also provided to his first see, St David's; six years later he would succeed Arundel at Canterbury.
³⁴

Chichele's appointment also set the seal on a period of turmoil for the Church in Wales. Poor and war-ravaged (both Llandaff and Bangor cathedrals were gutted by fire during Glyn Dŵr's revolt), the Welsh sees were nevertheless sought after as a first rung on the episcopal ladder. Adam Usk tried for both St David's and Bangor, as well as the marcher see, Hereford, while he was in Rome. He eventually accepted Llandaff, but his provision went unrecognized in England since it had been made by the Avignon pope, Benedict XIII, following Glyn Dŵr's decision in March 1406 to defect from Rome.
³⁵
This decision confounded an already confused situation. John Trevaur of St Asaph had defected to Glyn Dŵr in 1404 and had not been replaced, and in 1406–7 the rival popes both provided candidates to Welsh sees, while Lewis Byford, although provided to Bangor by Boniface IX in 1404, was never recognized by the English and eventually joined Northumberland's last rebellion in February 1408; he was then captured and forced to resign. By this time, with Glyn Dŵr's fortunes ebbing, so too were those of the Avignonese candidates, and the appointments of Chichele to St David's, John de la Zouche to Llandaff, and Benedict Nicholls to Bangor, all in 1408, effectively signalled a return to normality – that is to say, bishops provided by Rome and supported by the English king.
³⁶