Henry IV (89 page)

Also advantageous from the king's point of view was the fact that he could determine both the membership and the agenda of a great council unencumbered by the formalities and expectations of parliaments. Most of those who attended would probably have been regarded as members of the royal affinity. Yet, like parliaments, they sometimes occasioned fierce debate, as in 1403 and 1405 when the seizure of clerical temporalities was discussed, although generally great councils had more of the character of enlarged sessions of the Privy Council, not making policy so much as testing alternatives and planning ways to implement them. What great councils could not do was grant taxes or make statutes; rarely if ever did Henry summon borough representatives to attend them. Nor does he seem to have made attendance at them a test of political loyalty – indeed the king himself was not always present, especially after he became ill.
⁵²
Despite the uneven documentation of great councils, their frequency suggests that they afforded periodic opportunities to test the political temperature, win support for his plans, or put pressure on those from
whom more was required, and that Henry welcomed and made extensive use of them.

The king's affinity was impossible to define and equally impossible to ignore. It was the premier power-network in the land, providing the arteries by which governmental authority was explained, distributed and enforced. To disable the king, it would also be necessary to disable his retainers, a point grasped by the Percys. When Northumberland embarked on revolt in 1405, his first move was to try to seize Westmorland, the king's chief agent in the north, his second to seize Robert Waterton, the leading royal retainer in Yorkshire. His aim was to stop them raising the affinity in the north; when this failed, he fled. The earl had good reason to resent the power of the affinity: for a year or more before the battle of Shrewsbury, it had increasingly usurped the authority the Percys had hoped to make their own, probably a deliberate ploy by the king to keep their ambitions in check. Generally speaking, however, Henry was well aware of the need to avoid the charge of factionalism, and it would be unwise to judge popular perception of his affinity solely, or even chiefly, on the evidence of those regions in which Lancastrian retainers were thickest on the ground. Large areas of southern England, the most populous part of the country, had seen little Lancastrian penetration before 1399, and continued to be administered mainly by men who had exercised local authority under Richard. For some of them the revolution was an opportunity, for others an inconvenience, but for very few (after January 1400) was it an incitement to rebellion. It is worth noting that the speakers of Henry's parliaments almost all came from the southern shires.
⁵³
Conversely, it was in the north, where Lancastrian influence was strongest, that the most dangerous challenges to Henry's rule originated. If this suggests on the one hand that it was where the local power of the king's affinity was most deeply entrenched that it was also most deeply resented, it also suggests that elsewhere Henry had managed the process of accommodating local power structures to his regime with some success.

¹
S. Payling,
Political Society in Lancastrian England. The Greater Gentry of Nottinghamshire
(Oxford, 1991), 122–4; N. Saul,
Scenes from Provincial Life. Knightly Families in Sussex 1280–1400
(Oxford, 1986), 70–2; M. Bennett,
Community, Class and Careerism. Cheshire and Lancashire Society in the Age of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
(Cambridge, 1983), 215–19; Castor,
King, Crown and Duchy
, 64–8, 205–6; Harriss,
Shaping the Nation
, 495; S. Rose, ‘A Twelfth-Century Honour in a Fifteenth-Century World: The Honour of Pontefract’, in
The Fifteenth Century IX
, ed. L. Clark (Woodbridge, 2010), 39–57.

²
Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, i.427–8.

³
Above, p. 123, and
RHKA
, 203–67 (figures on p. 223).

⁴
RHKA
, 226; Rempston and Erpingham were described as king's knights as early as August 1399, but were certainly not Richard II's knights (
RHKA
, 190).

⁵
Prince Henry was in fact made duke of Lancaster in November 1399, although it is clear that it was the king who continued to determine how its resources would be utilized.

⁶
Above, pp. 393–5. Castor,
King, Crown and Duchy
, 9–19, 191–224, 307–8.

⁷
Rogers, ‘Household of Henry IV’, 596–9;
RHKA
, 251–3; D. Biggs, ‘Henry IV and his JPs: The Lancastrianization of Justice, 1399–1413’, in
Traditions and Transformations in Medieval England
, ed. D. Biggs, S. Michalove and A. C. Reeves (Leiden, 2002), 59–79.

⁸
Biggs, ‘Reign of Henry IV’, 207–9; see also Dodd, ‘Conflict or Consensus’, 123, 140–9, whose ‘deliberately . . . broad-ranging and inclusive’ criteria include membership of the 1402 commissions of the peace, attendance at the great councils of 1401 or 1403, and appointment as a sheriff within a year either side of the parliament in question, in addition to retainers, crown annuitants and officers, duchy officials, and evidence of having been involved in the suppression of rebellion. The conclusions in
HOC
, i.184–238, are more cautious.

⁹
Above, p. 284.

¹⁰
Ross, ‘The Yorkshire Baronage’, 426;
RHKA
, 228–30.

¹¹
CPR 1399–1401
, 86, 127, 182–3; E 404/16, no. 66.

¹²
SAC II
, 532–3;
Hardyng
, 364.

¹³
Castor,
King, Crown and Duchy
, 29–30, for cases of annuities refused for failure to perform military service: E 28/23, no. 9 (John Warwick, sheriff of Northants). Above, p. 231 for Luttrell.

¹⁴
RHKA
, 228–9.

¹⁵
Westminster Chronicle
, 82–3; Walker,
Lancastrian Affinity
, 255–61.

¹⁶
CE
, 407 (quote).

¹⁷
Castor,
King, Crown and Duchy
, 29. Annuities paid from the South Parts of the Duchy in 1403–4 amounted to £3,000, which included £66 to Erpingham, £200 to Thomas Beaufort, £133 to Willoughby, £20 to Rempston, £24 to Hugh Waterton, £26 to John Cornwall and £666 to Queen Joan; when Wales was included in 1409–10 this rose to £6,210 from the South Parts, although some honours normally accounting among the North Parts were included. Annuities from the North Parts of the Duchy amounted to £5,182 in 1406–7 (including £333 to Queen Joan and £206 to Westmorland), and £5,089 in 1408–9 (DL 28/27/1, 27/3, 27/9 and 27/10).

¹⁸
CE
, 395, 400;
SAC II
, 376–7, 420–2, 450–3;
Giles
, 45.

¹⁹
Below, pp. 479–92.

²⁰
Liddy, ‘William Frost’, 79–85;
HOC
, iii.138–40;
Signet Letters
, nos. 520, 944;
Historians of the Church of York
, ed. Raine, iii.291–2 (letter of Thomas Arundel and Thomas Langley, 3 Dec. 1405, to the cathedral chapter saying the king has heard of dissension between the keeper of the city and the cathedral over access to Scrope's tomb and alleged miracles there; both parties are told to desist, and the public should be discouraged from visiting the tomb).

²¹
Barron,
London
, 22, 39, 49, 58, 231–41;
POPC
, i.248.

²²
Barron,
London
, 13 (quote); Steel,
Receipt
, 141–6 and 142 n. 1. Especially useful was Londoners' ability to advance substantial sums quickly, as in July 1403 or July 1405: E 403/585, 9 Nov. (loan of £2,695 from John Hende of London on 20 July 1405).

²³
Barron,
London
, 336–7; Steel,
Receipt
, 113, 142–3;
Giles
, 7–9.

²⁴
Baldwin,
King's Council
, 151; E 403/571, 14 March; Liddy,
War, Politics and Finance
, 137–8;
Signet Letters
, no. 260, 346A. The London mayors who became treasurers of war in March 1404 were John Hadley, Richard Merlawe and Thomas Knolles; Merlawe also served as treasurer of Calais (1407–9).

²⁵
Above, pp. 333–47.

²⁶
Barron,
London
, 45, 101.

²⁷
E 403/578, 10 Dec. 1403 (Frenchman smuggling jewels worth 550 marks out of London); E 403/573, 21 July 1402 and E 403/587, 7 May (measures against corruption at Southampton and Bristol);
Signet Letters
, no. 58 (collector at Hull accused of concealing 1,600 marks); Steel,
Receipt
, 90 (corrupt collector at Melcombe); E 403/565, 7 April 1400; E 404/15, no. 26; E 403/587, 7 June (general summonses of collectors to London).

²⁸
For example, in January and July 1400 (the Epiphany rising and the Scottish campaign): E 403/565, 4 Feb. 1400; E 403/567, 13 July 1400;
Signet Letters
, no. 154 (July 1403).

²⁹
E 159/182, rotulus 9d (debts pardoned on 10 August 1405, following the northern uprisings);
HOC
, iv.596–8; Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, ii.255–6;
Signet Letters
, no. 558; Griffiths, ‘Prince Henry, the Exchequer and Wales’, 210. Thornton was mayor in 1400–1 and 1402–6; see Prince John's letter passing on his information about the 1405 rebellion (
RHL
, ii.62–4). One of Thornton's sons also married a daughter of Lord Greystoke.

³⁰
Stevens was commissioned to gather a fleet to ‘attack, capture and destroy’ Bretons who were preying on English shipping to Bordeaux in August 1403; to raise troops to resist the Welsh and French in June 1404; to provision the garrisons of South Wales throughout 1404 and 1405; and to muster a force to cross to Ireland in May 1406. In November 1403 Henry gave him twenty marks to be distributed according to his discretion among a group of mariners who had been sent from Bristol to rescue Cardiff castle (
Foedera
, viii.325–6; E 403/578, 12 Nov.; E 403/579, 17 June; E 403/587, 18 May; Liddy,
War, Politics and Finance
, 49–50, 55;
HOC
, iv.474–5).

³¹
M. Kowaleski,
Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval
Exeter (Cambridge, 1995), 29–30, 257 (Dartmouth ships);
HOC
, i.345–8 and iii.328–30;
POPC
, i.233–4; E 403/582, 9 May 1405; Hauley owned twelve ships, but fell out of favour with the king in late 1406 and was imprisoned in the Tower. For the background, see Ford, ‘Piracy or Policy’. For Dartmouth and John Holand in 1400, see
CIM
, vii (1399–1422), nos. 88–9.

³²
For Brandon, see
HOC
, ii.336–7. He also helped to organize loans from the town to the king (for example, 500 marks in 1402, 200 marks in 1410). Brandon's chief captives in 1400 were Sir Robert Logan, admiral of Scotland, and David Seton, archdeacon of Ross, King Robert II's secretary (E 403/569, 21 Nov.; cf.
CPR 1399–1401
, 291). He headed the list of burgesses who agreed in 1411 to abide by certain ordinances (C 49/68, no. 3). Cf. Parker, ‘Politics and Patronage in Lynn’, and A. Goodman,
Margery Kempe and her World
(Harlow, 2002), 24–48.

³³
Above, p. 162; E 403/565, 4 Feb. 1400;
Giles
, 7–9.

³⁴
Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, i.358–9 (1403);
SAC II
, 377–9 (1405). See also
SAC II
, 457–9, for the distress of the mayor of Berwick at having been hoodwinked into admitting Northumberland in 1405, and his abject apology to the king.

³⁵
Liddy,
War, Politics and Finance
, 211–15 and
passim
. This was especially true of the three greatest towns, London, Bristol and York, all of which had by 1399 been granted county status and thus had sheriffs, JPs and escheators who were royal officials.

³⁶
Liddy,
War, Politics and Finance
, 43–57. Almost 200 ships from Bristol alone were impressed into royal service between 1350 and 1400.

³⁷
Liddy,
War, Politics and Finance
, 102.

³⁸
L. Attreed,
The King's Towns
(New York, 2001), 40–1, 155–7; Liddy,
War, Politics and Finance
, 214–15. Londoners went one better, presenting the king with 1,000 marks as a coronation gift (Barron,
London
, 12).

³⁹
HOC
, i.525;
PROME
, viii.103–4; Attreed,
The King's Towns
, 42, 113; R. Horrox, ‘Urban Patronage and Patrons in the Fifteenth Century’, in
Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Later Medieval England
, ed. R. A. Griffiths (Gloucester, 1981), 145–66 at 149.

⁴⁰
Cf. P. Fleming,
Coventry and the Wars of the Roses
(Dugdale Society, Bristol, 2011).

⁴¹
Ten parliaments were summoned during Henry's reign, most of which lasted between six and eight weeks. The shortest was October 1404 (38 days), the longest 1406 (120 days).

⁴²
C. Given-Wilson, ‘The Rolls of Parliament, 1399–1421’, in
Parchment and People: Parliament in the Later Middle Ages
, ed. L. Clark (Edinburgh, 2004), 57–72.

⁴³
PROME
, viii.291, 303, 348; above, p. 295.

⁴⁴
Harriss,
Shaping the Nation
, 500; Harriss,
Cardinal Beaufort
, 34–6; Dodd, ‘Changing Perspectives’.

⁴⁵
PROME
, viii.428–9, 448.

⁴⁶
Dodd, ‘Conflict or Consensus’, 136–9; Pollard, ‘Lancastrian Constitutional Experiment Revisited’ (quote at p. 115).

⁴⁷
POPC
, i.155–64; and
POPC
, ii.98–9, lists over 100 people summoned to a council in 1405–6.