The Book of Ancient Bastards (33 page)

Why You Should Be Nice
to Your Relatives

( A.D. 1366–1413)

King Henry would never have been king . . . if his cousin Richard had treated him in the friendly manner he ought to have done.
—Jean Froissart, Chronicles

The son of John of Gaunt (himself the younger son of King Edward III), Henry Bolingbroke, who held the titles duke of Hereford and earl of Derby, was a peer of the realm, a cousin of the current King Richard II, and an accomplished military man by the time he was suddenly exiled by the king in A.D. 1398. Richard went on to seize all of Bolingbroke’s lands the following year, dispossessing him utterly and leaving him nearly penniless. Before he was finished, Bolingbroke would famously make Richard pay for this insult when he usurped the throne in A.D. 1399, deposing the king and having himself crowned as Henry IV.

One of the Lords Appellant, a group of powerful nobles who pulled a power play and forced the then-underage King Richard II to dismiss some of his more tyrannical government ministers, Henry incurred Richard’s wrath. Added to this smoldering resentment was Richard’s nagging suspicion that Henry had designs on his crown.

But Henry was such a successful general in Richard’s service (trained by two of the best generals of the Middle Ages: his own father, John of Gaunt, and his uncle, Edward the Black Prince) that his accomplishments couldn’t be ignored. Richard made him a duke in A.D. 1397, but, alarmed at Henry’s increasing popularity, banished him the very next year. When John of Gaunt died in A.D. 1399, Richard seized all of his lands before Henry could inherit them.

That was the last straw for Henry. He returned from exile in France at the head of a tiny force of 300 men. At first he said that he was only interested in securing his inheritance. That changed, however, when thousands began to flock to his banner.

Within weeks, Richard, who at first cowered in hiding in Wales, was deposed and thrown into prison by Henry, who had himself crowned as King Henry IV. Having surrendered and agreed to abdicate in return for having his life spared, Richard was initially treated well. But once a plot to murder Henry came to light, Henry agreed that Richard was too dangerous alive, and murdered him by starving him to death, sometime in early A.D. 1400.

Henry thought such a move would secure the throne, but he was very much mistaken. Reigning for another thirteen years, he put down rebellion after rebellion until his health broke, and he was forced to look on nearly powerless as his son, Henry, prince of Wales (later King Henry V), took the reins of the kingdom, paving the way for his own subsequent and even more violent reign.

Leprous Bastard?

Beginning in A.D. 1406, Henry IV began to exhibit symptoms of a wasting disease that may have been leprosy. At the time, people believed that leprosy was a punishment sent from God for egregious sin. Because Henry had executed the archbishop of York without trial on a charge of treason, there was widespread belief among his subjects that Henry’s disease was just such a punishment. By the end of his life, Henry agreed with them.

Don’t Let That Frat-Boy Act Fool Ya

( A.D. 1387–1422)

As you have kept the crown by the sword, so will I keep it while my life lasts.
—Henry, Prince of Wales (future King Henry V) to his father,
King Henry IV

Despite what you may have gleaned from watching Shakespeare’s play of the same name, King Henry V of England was not some dilettante, angst-ridden romantic initially acting out against daddy only to come to his senses on his father’s death, turn all vice to virtue, and become some sort of all-wise warrior-philosopher king.

What he was, in fact, was the strong-minded son of a strong-minded father, raised, as Philip of Macedon had raised Alexander, with kingship and conquest in mind. While it’s true that Henry had a wild youth, loved to party, and, upon becoming king, issued a decree that none of his drinking buddies were allowed to come within ten miles of him, it’s not as if the guy turned into King Arthur.

First and foremost, Henry was (like his father before him) a soldier. The young prince was leading successful military campaigns against Welsh rebels in the English marches while still in his early teens. Like Richard the Lion-Hearted before him, Henry had a talent for war.

Upon taking the throne at age twenty-six in A.D. 1413, Henry let it be known that he intended to declare war on France unless he was immediately acknowledged the rightful king of France and heir to the throne. Henry pushed his admittedly flimsy claim (it was through his great-great-grandmother) because the French king, Charles VI, was apparently mad as a hatter. Henry’s demands got him a good laugh across the Channel for his trouble, and he invaded France in A.D. 1415.

Striking quickly and making use of the longbowmen whose long-range “artillery” gave the English forces a decided tactical advantage over their French adversaries, Henry and his tiny army destroyed a French army nearly four times their size at the Battle of Agincourt later that year. On that day alone, 5,000 French knights died in the mud, shot from their saddles as they charged the English lines, dead before they could come within striking distance of the enemy.

In A.D. 1420, Henry parlayed this and several subsequent victories into a peace treaty with the French that called for him to be named regent for the now hopelessly insane Charles VI, to marry Charles’s daughter, Catherine de Valois (more about her later), and to rule in the king’s name. Also by terms of the treaty, Charles’s son, the dauphin (“crown prince”), was dispossessed and disinherited.

Battle-Scarred Bastard

In A.D. 1403, while fighting with his father against the forces of the Northumberland rebel Percy family, the sixteen-year-old Prince Henry was hit in the face by an arrow, with the point left lodged in his head. Luckily, his father had one of the most skilled doctors of the age in his service at the time. The doctor treated the injury with honey, removed the arrowhead, then doused the wound with alcohol before stitching it up. Left alive (the mortality rate for this sort of wound was high in the fifteenth century) but badly scarred, Henry fared better than Henry Percy, leader of the rebels, who was also hit in the face by an arrow during the same battle and killed instantly.

A harsh treaty imposed on a large and resourceful country. Because he had the bad grace to die of dysentery within two years of forcing it on the French, Henry left behind an infant son incapable of ruling on his own, and utter chaos in France. The result would be another thirty years of war, with a cost of untold millions in coin and countless lives.

And that can all be laid at the feet of that glorious bastard, Henry V.

Grand Inquisitor, Closet Jew

( A.D. 1420–1498)
—The hammer of heretics, the light of Spain, the saviour of his country, the honor of his order.
—Medieval chronicler Sebastián de Olmedo

Once synonymous with words like honor and duty, the name Torquemada is now pretty much associated with fanaticism and torture. And it’s all due to the actions of one energetic man: Tomas de Torquemada, grand inquisitor of Spain.

Born and raised in Valladolid, Torquemada began his life in religious service as a cook-monk in a Dominican monastery. Over the next several decades, he worked his way up through the order’s ranks until he was named the private chaplain of Isabella of Castile (the same queen who bankrolled Columbus’s voyage of discovery), and eventually grand inquisitor in A.D. 1483.

As such, Torquemada spearheaded the Spanish Catholic Church’s crusade to enforce purity of belief. In this, he did not focus on cradle Catholics, or unbelievers like Jews or Muslims. Instead, his passion was reserved for ensuring those who had converted (conversos) to Roman Catholicism remained good, orthodox Christians and didn’t backslide. And if he had to order a little waterboarding (they called it the “water cure”), or use of the strappado (a leather strap used to lash a person’s arms behind their back from which they were hung, causing intense pain and dislocation of one or both shoulders), or a turn of the rack, or the odd burning at the stake to ensure this result, then it must be God’s will, right?

There’s a trend among modern historians to try to rehabilitate Torquemada’s image, but the guy was a sadistic bastard, directly responsible for the torture of thousands, with many of his victims dying as a result of their interrogation. And more, he was an absolute hypocrite.

Why?

Because Tomas de Torquemada was Jewish!

Well, actually it was his great-grandparents who were. This according to a contemporary converso historian named Hernando de Pulgar, who wrote about Torquemada’s uncle Juan: “his grandparents were of the lineage of Jews converted to our holy Catholic faith.” In addition, at least one modern historian has asserted that one of Torquemada’s grandmothers was also a convert.

To top it off, late in life, this nasty bastard was the driving force behind the Alhambra Decree, which expelled the Jews from Spain. There can be little doubt that numbered among the tens of thousands of Jews kicked out of Spain at Torquemada’s request were many of his own blood relatives!

During his own lifetime, Torquemada became the focus of such hatred on the part of the Spanish people that he never went anywhere without a retinue of at least fifty hired bodyguards. After he died in A.D. 1498, he was buried with honors in what had been a Jewish cemetery before he had it seized and converted into the cemetery of a Dominican monastery he ordered built on the spot.

In A.D. 1832, liberals with sort of sense ironic humor that Torquemada so obviously lacked dug up his bones and burned them. Fiery bastard.

What’s in a Name?

In one of history’s great ironies, Torquemada was the nephew of a reforming Dominican friar named Juan de Torquemada, who wrote several well-respected tracts about the importance of religious tolerance to a healthy Catholic Church. In fact, this Torquemada was a leading defender of conversos throughout Spain, the very people his nephew later targeted for torture!