Henry IV (94 page)

The expertise of lawyers such as Young, Catterick, Rishton and Kington was invaluable – every embassy of importance included at least one – for documents had to be drafted with care to be watertight. The long and repetitive list of questions circulated to crown lawyers and academics in late 1400 establishing the legality of Henry's claim to the residue of King John's ransom was not just for appearance's sake, even if the responses received were probably a foregone conclusion.
³⁹
The legal defensibility or deniability of a diplomatic standpoint depended on the rigour with which it was drafted, which included the citation of authority and precedent – even that of Brutus or Arthur. Diplomats must know their business, for the
instructions issued to them left room for initiative, as in the king's letter to Chichele and Cheyne seeking their views on the way forward following Innocent VII's death and giving them permission to distribute the jewels entrusted to them as they thought best. Formal instructions were often accompanied by secret oral, or further written, advice setting limits to the discretion allowed them.
⁴⁰

Some obstacles could be anticipated, others not. Negotiations with the Danes stalled following a misunderstanding of the conventions for English royal succession, while those with the Hansa and the Flemings were constantly set back by new maritime outrages necessitating the redrafting of calculations for reparation, or threats to break off the talks.
⁴¹
Even when terms were agreed, there was no certainty that they would be respected. With Charles VI intermittently insane, Robert III a cipher, James I a prisoner, and the great and powerless empire disputed between Wenzel and Rupert, the early fifteenth century was an age of dysfunctional kingship in north-western Europe, not helped by the fact that much of the diplomacy was conducted between kings who did not recognize each other. Buffeted by the waves of belligerence whipped up by Orléans, Douglas, St-Pol and the freebooters who preyed on the Channel and North Sea ports, there were times when ambassadorial talks barely trod water. In such circumstances, the preservation of the 1396 truce was an achievement, for full-scale war would doubtless have brought even greater horrors, but in practice it was increasingly through local truces and private agreements that hostilities stood the best chance of being checked. Sometimes these were regional, backed by the public authority of powers such as the dukes of Brittany or the towns of Flanders, but often enough, especially in Guyenne and Picardy, they were little more than time-limited abstentions or ‘sufferances’ between neighbouring lords, garrisons or villages, the aims of which were to allow trade and travel for the next few months or even days, and to preserve the process of negotiation. Made and policed by local officials, these agreements were indicative of the degree to which the decision to continue or suspend hostilities had slipped beyond the reach of
the central authorities. Diplomacy, like the Pirate War, had something of the character of a private–public partnership.
⁴²

Nevertheless, the diplomatic progress of Henry's reign was far from negligible. The marriages of the king's daughters secured the neutrality at worst of Scandinavia and the Empire; the Franco-Castilian alliance was gently prised apart, if not ruptured, not least through the intervention of those excellent allies King João and Queen Philippa of Portugal; the mercantile truce with Flanders and the final settlement with the Hansa were a long time in the making, but real achievements for all that, for the Pirate War had threatened a virtual cessation of commercial traffic in English waters and created a heap of claims to be resolved. A series of long-term truces during the later years of the reign – with Scotland and Brittany in particular – also helped to smooth the path towards the hoped-for perpetual peace with France, consistently the principal aim of Henry's diplomacy.
⁴³
The fact that peace did not materialize can hardly be laid at the English king's door, for the bewildering changes of direction in Paris made it difficult to pursue a clear policy even had the English government been able to agree one. In the circumstances, Henry's diplomatic legacy was propitious: most importantly, by 1413 much of the entangling undergrowth that had accumulated since, or even before, 1399 had been cleared, affording Henry V the luxury, never enjoyed by his father, of being able to focus on the paramount ‘matter of France’.
⁴⁴

¹
Davies,
Revolt
, 237–46; J. E. Lloyd,
Owen Glendower
(Oxford, 1931), 32–5, 42–4, 54, 73, 104–6.

²
See the letters from John Stanley (
RHL II
, 76–9) and Richard Kingston (
Original Letters
, i.17–19) begging Henry to come to Wales; Watt, ‘On Account of the Frequent Attacks’, 76–80 (border devastation); at the Worcester council in October 1401 the possibility of Henry returning to Wales was discussed, but it was decided that with winter approaching he needed to return to London (
Giles
, 26).

³
Eighty-two castles in Wales and its marches were garrisoned by the English during the revolt (Davies,
Revolt
, 248–52).

⁴
Worcester spent much time in Guyenne in the 1360s and 1370s, and was seneschal of Poitou; Hotspur was lieutenant of Guyenne in the mid-1390s.

⁵
A. Bell, A. Curry, A. King and D. Simpkin,
The Soldier in Late Medieval England
(Oxford, 2014), 262–5.

⁶
A. Curry, A. Bell, A. King and D. Simpkin, ‘New Regime, New Army? Henry IV's Scottish Expedition of 1400’,
EHR
125 (2010), 1382–1413; A. Curry, ‘After Agincourt, What Next?’, in
The Fifteenth Century VII
, ed. L. Clark (Woodbridge, 2007), 23–51.

⁷
Worcester's contingent was 200 archers and 40 men-at-arms (E 101/404/24, fos. 1, 4). By 1407 the ratio of the prince's forces in Wales was 3:1 (600 men-at-arms and 1,800 archers: E 403/591, 1 June 1407).

⁸
The armies Henry led to Wales were 3,000–4,000 strong.

⁹
Gesta Henrici Quinti
, ed. F. Taylor and J. Roskell (Oxford, 1975), 36–50.

¹⁰
E 403/567, 13 July 1400 (Byker was replaced by John Albaster in 1407: E 403/591, 2 June); E 403/591, 1 June 1407; E 404/24, no. 403; BL Harleian Ms 319, fo. 52v.

¹¹
E 101/405/4, which also lists three pellet-guns, lead shot for them, 1,060 cannonballs, 1,522 lbs of gunpowder, 600 lbs of saltpetre, sixteen cannon-trunks and 1,912 tampions (
RHKA
, 84–5). For cannons despatched to Conway, Aberystwyth, Sandwich, Pontefract, and with the duke of Rutland to Guyenne, see Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, ii.230–4.

¹²
E 101/405/10 (file of writs detailing the distribution of the king's guns in 1405).

¹³
DL 42/15, fo. 70v;
CPR 1408–13
, 246. This was probably the Catchcold Tower (J. Kenyon, ‘Coastal Artillery Fortifications’, in
Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War
, ed. A. Curry and M. Hughes (Woodbridge, 1994), 145–50, at p. 146). Some artillery was still kept in the Tower: in 1409 John Bunting was appointed as keeper of the king's artillery there, replaced by Nov. 1412 by Robert Penford and Baldwin Jacobson (
CPR 1408–13
, 54, 77; E 403/611, 15 Nov.).

¹⁴
E 403/591, 23 June 1407; E 403/596, 13 Nov., 3 Dec. 1408. Davies,
Revolt
, 253. The Welsh captain at Aberystwyth in 1407 had to promise not to remove or disable the cannons he found there (
SAC II
, 526–7).

¹⁵
POPC
, ii. 91 (he also urged that Berwick be restocked with cannons); see
SAC II
, 457–61, for Walsingham's comments on Henry's cannons. He took fourteen with him to Scotland in 1400 (Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, iv.232).

¹⁶
Keen, ‘Treason Trials under the Law of Arms’, 95.

¹⁷
Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, ii.267–9; E 403/594, 17 March 1408;
Issues
, ed. Devon, 307–8.

¹⁸
Foedera
, viii.694.

¹⁹
duas parvas gunnas pro navi quas in regno nostro Angliae fecit
(
Foedera
, viii.694). The king's ship,
Le Cristofre
, also carried three cannons (
Navy of the Lancastrian Kings
, 88).

²⁰
Navy of the Lancastrian Kings
, 30–4; C. Lambert,
Shipping the Medieval Military
(Woodbridge, 2011), 12–13.

²¹
CCR 1399–1402
, 238–40;
PROME
, viii.106. However the clerk of the king's ships, John Chamberlain, did arrange for one new barge to be built for the king (perhaps by the city of York, unless this was a second) and some others repaired, for £220 (E 403/569, 26 Feb. and 5 March 1401); N. Rodger,
The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain 660–1649
(London, 1997), 68.

²²
Ford, ‘Policy or Piracy?’; C. L. Kingsford,
Henry V
(London, 1901), 187–8.

²³
For the king's ships in action in 1401, 1403 and 1405, see
Navy of the Lancastrian Kings
, 32; Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, ii.101.

²⁴
Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, ii.287, 449; iv.199, 241; E 404/27, no. 241. Not all ships
de la Tour
were royally owned. In 1405 Prince Thomas was made admiral of a fleet consisting of twenty ‘Great ships of the Tower’, some of which were Portuguese, twenty barges and twenty balingers, manned by 700 men-at-arms and 1,400 archers (
Foedera
, viii.388–9; Rodger,
Safeguard of the Sea
, 117–18).

²⁵
Beaufort was appointed admiral of the north and west in September 1408, but his remit was enlarged to cover the whole of England and its overseas dominions in July 1409, the first such all-embracing appointment (
CPR 1405–8
, 467;
CPR 1408–13
, 97, 139). One of Henry's ships was built at Drogheda (Rodger,
Safeguard of the Sea
, 474, 506–7).

²⁶
Leget was appointed in June 1411 (
CPR1408–13
, 294, 320; Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, ii.101). He doubtless accounted in the chamber, which is why no accounts for the king's ships survive for the last two years of the reign. Between 1399 and 1405 John Chamberleyn, clerk of the king's ships, accounted for expenditure of around £700 a year, but after the Pirate War subsided this fell to about £100 a year. In 1409 John Starling became clerk of the king's ships in place of Thomas Elmeton, who held the post from 1405–9 (
CPR 1408–13
, 182). Whether Leget had additional responsibilities, as Keeper rather than Clerk, is unclear.

²⁷
POPC
, ii.24–6.

²⁸
CPR 1408–13
, 320–1; E 403/608, 28 Aug. 1411 (the council allotted 1,000 marks for their preparation).

²⁹
CPR 1408–13
, 476; E 404/27, no. 426;
Navy of the Lancastrian Kings
, 34, 52–5, 85. Loveney had served Henry since 1381, went into exile with him in 1398–9, and was keeper of the great wardrobe 1399–1408; he doubtless accounted in the chamber too. These galleys were still being constructed when Henry died: J. Wylie and W. Waugh,
The Reign of Henry the Fifth
(3 vols, Cambridge, 1914–29), ii.372.

³⁰
The revival of the royal fleet in 1409–13 is sometimes credited to Prince Henry (Allmand,
Henry V
, 221–2; Rodger,
Safeguard of the Sea
, 130, 143), but there is no evidence for this assumption and Henry IV's personal interest in ships suggests otherwise.

³¹
Henry V also continued to use privateers, for example, Richard Spicer, who in 1417 contracted to provide a fleet for three months for operations in the Channel (Allmand,
Henry V
, 224–5). Tonnage at this time related to carrying capacity, not displacement.

³²
The largest ship left by Henry IV to his son in 1413 was the
Cog Johan
, around 220 tons:
Navy of the Lancastrian Kings
, 52–5; Rodger,
Safeguard of the Sea
, 68–70.

³³
Information on embassies is mostly taken from
Foedera
.

³⁴
Beds had to be carried both to Gloucester in 1407 and to Yorkshire in 1408 for the French ambassadors: E 101/405/13, m. 3; E 403/595, 11 July.

³⁵
Three embassies visiting Henry in 1405–6 stayed at the house of the Lyon at Southwark, the house of John Scryveyn in Fleet Street, and the sign of the Bell in Carters Lane (BL Harleian Ms 319, fo. 41v); in 1408–9 ambassadors were accommodated at St Bartholomew's priory in Smithfield, paid for by the king (E 101/405/23, m. 1).

³⁶
Allmand, ‘A Bishop of Bangor’, 50–3; N. Saul, ‘John Cheyne’,
ODNB
, 11.376–8;
HOC
, ii.549–52, calls Cheyne ‘a diplomat of exceptional ability’.

³⁷
Mortimer was the prince's chamberlain; as king, Henry V promoted Catterick to the bishoprics of St Davids in 1414, Coventry and Lichfield in 1415 and Exeter in 1419.

³⁸
Reitemeier,
Aussenpolitik in Spätmittelalter
, 207–64, 496–7. For German knights, see also above, p. 335.

³⁹
Usk
, 102–15.

⁴⁰
BL Cotton Cleopatra E ii, fo. 249 (262); SC 1/43/98 (letter to the chancellor about Chichele's and Cheyne's mission ending
nous volons et vous mandons que vous ne monstrez a nullui la susdite instruction
).

⁴¹
RHL I
, 119–20. Nicholas Rishton and his colleagues at Calais also objected to the use of French for diplomatic missives by their opposite numbers, which they equated to the ‘Hebrew tongue’, and tried unsuccessfully to get them to use Latin. The forthright Rishton also described the Privy Council as ‘vague, weak and divided’ for failing to send him a new commission in 1404, and a few weeks later threatened to return home because his wages had not been paid (
RHL I
, lxxvi, lxxxvi–xci, 357–8, 368, 397).