Henry IV (97 page)

¹⁰
PROME
, viii.464–5.

¹¹
PROME
, viii.476, 482–3.

¹²
PROME
, viii.476. Warwick was in the Holy Land in 1409, but returned to England early in 1410; he and the earl of Arundel joined the council on 2 May 1410, at the end of the parliament (E 404/27, nos. 169, 268). Burnell and Charlton, as well as the two earls, had served extensively in Wales with the prince. Westmorland was asked to serve on the council, but he and Langley claimed to be too busy defending the north and were replaced by Warwick and Chichele; in fact Langley attended frequently in 1410, though Westmorland did not.

¹³
PROME
, viii.453, 461. The effectiveness of this restraint in one case is shown by the order from the king to the exchequer dated 26 December 1412 to pay to Richard Cressy, sergeant of the hall, the arrears of an annuity of £34 originally granted to Adam Colton, the king's fruiterer, which Colton was unable to realize ‘because of the restraint of such grants by us made in our parliament of the twelfth year’; Colton transferred his annuity to Cressy, his senior, to act as his attorney, but ‘nevertheless our chancellor [Thomas Beaufort] did not wish to suffer our letters patent for them to be sealed until the eighteenth day of January last past’ [1412, by which time Archbishop Arundel was chancellor and the restraint had been lifted]. Thus the king ‘of his special grace’ ordered the arrears of the annuity for the period from September 1410 to January 1412, amounting to £55, to be paid to Cressy, ‘as attorney of the said Adam’; on 21 Jan. 1413 the annuity was transferred from the exchequer to the ulnager of York (E 404/28, no. 210;
CPR 1408–13
, 370, 453). The restriction imposed in the January 1410 parliament may have covered more than royal grants (below, p. 496).

¹⁴
Council records for these years are intermittent, but indicate that those who attended most frequently were the prince, the two Beauforts, Langley, Bubwith, Chichele, Arundel, Warwick, Le Scrope, Prophet and Burnell (
POPC
, i.331–51). In March 1410 the king granted Prince Henry Coldharbour House as his London residence; he also had a chamber next to the chapel in Westminster palace, overlooking a garden (E 403/603, 20 March;
Foedera
, viii.628).

¹⁵
For example, E 403/608, 23 July (1411), a messenger sent to the king at Leicester, the prior of Ely and the prince at Arundel on urgent business concerning the
statum
of the king and the prince.

¹⁶
See Appendix. For the king's visit to Gloucester in May 1411, see
CCR 1409–13
, 152, and E 403/608, 22 August.

¹⁷
See his letters to Arundel signed ‘Your true son, Henry’, and ‘your true friend and child in God’ (
Signet Letters
, nos. 717, 736). Henry was at Lambeth on at least six occasions in 1410 and eight occasions in 1411.

¹⁸
POPC
, ii.6–13;
Foedera
, viii.679;
CCR 1409–13
, 150;
CPR 1408–13
, 286 (pardons to the obscure William Compton and Alice Heyward for treason etc., since Henry could see clearly ‘the graces poured upon him [the king] by the Most High King, not by his own merits, but by His ineffable goodness, and wishes to expend on his subjects the gifts of grace, and that his affection may have effect, and mutual charity, without which other things are in vain, may flourish, and his lieges may have more cheerful hearts’).

¹⁹
E 403/591, 1 June; E 403/595, 7 July; E 403/605, 3 June; E 403/606, 23 March; E 403/608, 28 Aug.; E 404/24, nos. 533, 538;
Giles,
43, 55–60.

²⁰
For France and Ireland, see below, pp. 493–508.

²¹
The deaths of her brothers in 1400 and 1408 left her with much of the Holand inheritance as well as her husband's lands, amounting to
c
.£1,400 a year (R. Shaw, ‘Margaret Holand’,
ODNB
, online). The papal dispensation for the marriage, requested by both princes, was dated 16 August 1410. Cf. Harriss,
Cardinal Beaufort
, 63–5.

²²
Giles
, 62, stated that Prince Thomas ‘was unable to harass [Bishop Beaufort] beyond what was reasonable’.

²³
PROME
, viii.452–3, 461, 476, 482–3; Carus-Wilson and Coleman,
England's Export Trade
, 122–3.

²⁴
CCR 1409–13
, 25–6;
CFR 1405–13
, 162–4; E 403/605, 31 July;
POPC,
i.333, 339–40.

²⁵
CPR 1408–13
, 182, 228;
CFR 1405–13
, 179.

²⁶
POPC,
i.331–52. This was the Privy Council, not a great council as in 1407–9. The prince presided, and Henry and Thomas Beaufort, Bishops Langley, Bubwith and Chichele, the earls of Arundel and Warwick, Henry Le Scrope, John Prophet and Hugh Burnell attended. Meetings were held in London, at the Friars Preachers, at Westminster, the bishop of Hereford's house, and at Robert Lovell's house. The retrospective assignment list drawn up in March 1411 may provide a better indication of what was actually paid out (
POPC
, ii.6–17).

²⁷
Thomas seems initially to have been promised new tallies for £3,939 to cover assignments which had failed because of the change of customs collectors, but this was later reduced to £2,666. Yet in March 1411 it was said that he had been given £5,016 from the wool subsidy before Michaelmas 1410 (
POPC
, i.340, 350; ii.8, 15).

²⁸
The Scottish marches probably received a maximum of £6,000 (
POPC
, ii.15–16); as with Ireland, different sums were agreed at different times (
POPC
, i.333–6, 346, 349; ii.8, 15–17). Harriss,
Cardinal Beaufort,
52–4, arrived at slightly different figures from those given here; the memoranda are confusing and often contradictory.

²⁹
POPC
, i.346 (it was reckoned the first half fifteenth and tenth would yield £18,600 in November 1410).

³⁰
CPR 1408–13
, 204; E 403/605, 23 June;
POPC
, i.343, ii.114; Steel,
Receipt
, 100. Despite its reservation, Calais needed an immediate injection of £1,400, which treasurer Le Scrope personally lent to the prince. Tallies for these loans were issued on 23 June, 23 and 31 July, but would not be cashable for many months.

³¹
Henry Beaufort lent £1,000, Bubwith, Le Scrope and the earl of Warwick another £1,000:
POPC
, i.347–9.

³²
Foedera,
viii.651; Harriss,
Henry V
, 163, 168–74; Castor,
King, Crown and Duchy
, 34–6;
RHKA
, 245. By 1422 exchequer annuities had been cut to £12,000 (from £20,000 or more under Henry IV) and the duchy bill from £8,000 to £5,600.

³³
E 403/606, 23 Feb.; E 403/608, 28 May; E 403/609, 26 Feb.; E 404/26, nos. 111, 283, 379;
CCR 1409–13
, 148; Nuttall,
Creation of Lancastrian Kingship,
84–93; Hoccleve,
Regement of Princes
, 34, 68–9, 157–8, 172–3.

³⁴
CPR 1408–13,
446.

³⁵
CCR 1409–13
, 152;
Foedera
, viii 656, 685 (the latter, dated 20 May 1411, ordering the exchequer to punish sheriffs who had neglected to enforce distraint); E 403/606, 9 Dec.; E 403/608, 23 July (the fines, given to the household). This was the first distraint for knighthood for many decades.

³⁶
Steel,
Receipt
, 100.

³⁷
POPC,
ii.6–13. The additional schedule on pp. 14–17 is retrospective, a statement of ‘various warrants under the privy seal made and passed, directed to [the exchequer] to be paid’. There are a few additional items from the budgets prepared during the previous year, such as the £4,666 loan repaid to the Londoners (lent in Nov. 1409) and £666 due to Robert Umfraville for his maritime exploits in the north.

³⁸
In fact the wool customs only yielded
c
.£23,000 (Grummitt, ‘Financial Administration’, 295, n. 5).

³⁹
This included £120 for the king's lions in the Tower and £1,772 for the Hanse under the 1407 treaty.

⁴⁰
Harriss,
Cardinal Beaufort
, 55; Harriss,
Shaping the Nation
, 534; Griffiths, ‘Prince Henry, Wales and the Royal Exchequer’, 215;
POPC,
ii.16; E 403/608, 15 May 1411 (£1,000 to Beaufort); Summerson,
Medieval Carlisle
, 402–3. For Longe, see below, pp. 486–8.

⁴¹
PROME
, viii.466.

⁴²
Below, p. 514.

⁴³
Bolton,
Money
, 228–94.

⁴⁴
For the Employment and Hosting acts, see above p. 333; Ormrod, ‘Finance and Trade’, 166–7; Bolton,
The Medieval English Economy 1150–1501
(London, 1980), 246–7; M. Allen,
Mints and Money in Medieval England
(Cambridge, 2012), 267. I am grateful to Dr Allen for giving me a copy of his paper, ‘The English Crown and the Coinage, 1399–1485’, ahead of publication.

⁴⁵
Gold was the preferred metal of the wool trade. For the Anglo-Flemish ‘war of the gold nobles’, see J. Munro,
Wool, Cloth and Gold: The Struggle for Bullion in Anglo-Burgundian Trade 1340–1478
(Brussels, 1972), 43–63.

⁴⁶
Allen,
Mints and Money
, 313 and Appendix, Table C.3; N. Mayhew, ‘From Regional to Central Minting’, in
A New History of the Royal Mint
, ed. C. Challis (Cambridge, 1992), 151.

⁴⁷
Bolton,
Medieval English Economy
, 234.

⁴⁸
CPR 1408–13
, 55, 102. It was the master who ran the mint, the nominally superior wardenship being a sinecure. Italians were reckoned to have expertise in recoinage: M. Allen, ‘Italians in English Mints and Exchanges’, in
Fourteenth-Century England 2
, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Woodbridge, 2002), 53–62. Shortly after this, Garner was granted the right to export 1,200 pieces of tin from the Devon mines, elsewhere than through the staple, each year for seven years, in return for a promise to take half the value of his tin exports in bullion to the mint, and to pay forty marks a year at the exchequer (
POPC
, ii.115–16).

⁴⁹
Mayhew, ‘From Regional to Central Minting’, 172; Allen,
Mints and Money
, 87–8; C. Blunt, ‘Unrecorded Heavy Nobles of Henry IV and Some Remarks on that Issue’,
British Numismatic Journal
36 (1967), 106–14, where the indenture, from a Society of Antiquaries Ms, is translated in full.

⁵⁰
After almost dying around 20–21 January, the king said he had been ‘gravely ill’ for six weeks: above, p. 305.

⁵¹
POPC
, i.350, July 1410 (
Item, touchant la gouvernance de la monoye
).

⁵²
Munro,
Wool, Cloth and Gold
, 61;
PROME,
viii.540.

⁵³
Allen,
Mints and Money
, 150–1, 285 and Appendix, Table C.3.

⁵⁴
Bolton,
Medieval English Economy,
238; Allen,
Mints and Money
, 199–200 and Appendix, Table D.1;
Giles
, 63, blamed the necessity for a recoinage on debasement by foreigners.

⁵⁵
Garner's goods at the Tower, in the city and at Dover castle, were valued by the exchequer in July 1413 (E 403/613, 7 July).

⁵⁶
Mayhew, ‘From Regional to Central Minting’, 172–3; Allen,
Mints and Money
, Appendix, Tables C.3, D.1, and ‘Italians in English Mints’, 62–3; Allmand,
Henry V
, 387.

Chapter 31

‘THE GREATEST UPRISINGS’ (1409–1412)

Finance apart, the most pressing domestic problem facing Prince Henry's administration was disorder. ‘Why,’ wrote Thomas Hoccleve, ‘soffrest thou so many an assemble/ Of armed folk? Wel ny in every shire/ Partye is made to venge her cruel ire.’
¹
Henry IV's later years saw lawlessness in parts of England reach epidemic proportions, although this was not so much the mob violence that had marred the post-revolution years as the gentry feuding (or ‘fur-collar crime’) indicative of a more purposeful flouting of the government's authority. In January 1410 the commons identified ten shires where ‘the greatest uprisings have been’, and asked that commissions of
oyer et terminer
be sent to deal with them.
²
Apart from Devon, where the immediate cause of concern was a resurgence of the decade-long dispute between Sir Thomas Pomeroy and the Courtenay family over the Chudleigh inheritance,
³
they were all in the north or north Midlands: Cumberland, Westmorland, Northumberland, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.

Some of these, such as Staffordshire and Derbyshire, were counties rich in duchy lands where periodic visits by the king during the first half of the reign had bolstered his supporters and allowed him to intervene personally in local disputes, but as his energy declined the Lancastrian retainers who had monopolized local government became more exposed to the envy of the disenfranchised.
⁴
One of those who had suffered not simply through
exclusion from the charmed circle but also from partisan legal judgments was Sir Hugh Erdeswick of Sandon (Staffordshire), who in 1408 teamed up with the brothers Thomas, Robert, William, and John Mynors, an old Lancastrian family that had fallen out of favour, to form a gentry gang bent on targeting duchy officers and tenants. Their preferred victim was Sir John Blount, one of the leaders of the Lancastrian affinity in the north Midlands and, as steward of Newcastle-under-Lyme, the man charged with arresting them. In March 1409 the Erdeswick–Mynors gang tried to abduct Sir John from his mother's house to kill him, and although nothing came of it they now embarked on a campaign to destroy seigneurial resources and drive tenants off duchy lands. They also killed a royal tax-collector and allegedly threatened to break the king's head if he intervened. The king's reaction was to back his retainers to the hilt: the detailed and partisan catalogue of the gang's crimes presented to the 1410 parliament was recast as an indictment, and Erdeswick and his accompliceswere told that if they failed to appear to answer it they would,
ipso facto
, be declared guilty.
⁵
Erdeswick and five of his fellows surrendered and were pardoned in February 1411, but the Mynors brothers were unrepentant. Thomas and Robert were killed by local vigilantes while attacking Wolverhampton church, but William and John pursued the vendetta, blockading Wolverhampton in January 1412 despite having been summoned to appear before the council three months earlier. By May, however, they too had surrendered and received pardons.
⁶
By now they had made their point. Local government in the north Midlands became more inclusive, and Hugh Erdeswick and the surviving Mynors brothers went on to play important roles in county society – what they had always desired, probably, but had been prevented from achieving by a cartel unwilling to share power or patronage. The belated acknowledgement after 1410 that to use the Lancastrian affinity as the instrument of royal government in the localities was not commensurate with the judicial responsibilities of a king was probably Prince Henry's doing, for he did not have a personal following on the same scale as the king in the north Midlands, and could afford to broaden the base of government there.