1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (12 page)

Henry’s embassy had been travelling for about ten weeks – very slowly, perhaps on account of snow blocking the roads, or floods comparable to those in Northern France. The leader was Henry’s great friend Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. Now thirty-three years of age, he had a wealth of experience, including fighting alongside Henry in Wales, travelling to Rome and the Holy Land, fighting
in Prussia, and serving on Henry’s council. With him were Henry’s chamberlain, Lord Fitzhugh, and Sir Walter Hungerford and Sir Ralph Rochford. These three men had also been crusaders with the Teutonic Knights in Prussia; all three had been to Jerusalem. In addition, they were marked out by personal demonstrations of piety. Lord Fitzhugh had become acquainted with the ideas of St Bridget in Denmark, and was also familiar with the teachings of English mystics. Hungerford had been educated for the church, was a collector of books on theology, and had founded several chantry chapels.

The clerical leader of Henry’s embassy was Robert Hallum, bishop of Salisbury. He had been chancellor of the University of Oxford, had spent time at the papal curia of Gregory XII, in Rome, and had represented the English church at the council of Pisa in 1409. He had degrees in both civil and canon law, and was famous for his oratorical skill. He was accompanied by Nicholas Bubwith, bishop of Bath and Wells, John Catterick, bishop of St David’s, and the abbots of Westminster and St Mary’s, York, the prior of Worcester, and a small army of lawyers and theologians, headed by the king’s protonotary, Dr John Hovingham.
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The abbots of Fountains, Jervaulx, Selby and Beaulieu were also in attendance, as Cerretano noted.
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Although these men were representing their monasteries, their presence must have made the English delegation seem all the more impressive.

Why did a delegation to a religious council include laymen like the earl of Warwick? The main reason was that Henry sought an alliance with Sigismund against the French, and looked at Constance as an opportunity to achieve it.
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Henry’s council in the autumn of 1414 had recommended that he send ambassadors to ‘every party’. All these leading delegates to Constance were given a second commission expressly empowering them to treat with Sigismund. One of them, Sir Walter Hungerford, had already been in negotiations with Sigismund’s ambassadors the previous year, when Henry had proposed a three-way agreement between the empire, France and England.
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It is possible that Henry now sought to revive the idea of the three-way treaty. Almost certainly he sought to justify the war he was about to launch, and hoped for the emperor’s acquiescence. All we can be certain of is Sigismund’s response – the emperor was
not convinced that Henry had done all he could to avoid a conflict with France.
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Tuesday 22nd

Henry issued a commission to two royal judges to investigate cases of counterfeiting money in the county of Essex.
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This crime, although it does not sound of the greatest seriousness to us, was regarded as high treason, punishable by hanging, drawing and quartering. It was a particular concern of Henry’s in this year, as further commissions of enquiry reveal.

Wednesday 23rd

On days when Henry was not sitting in state, or otherwise engaged with important council business, he would have a large cushion set up on a sideboard in his great chamber – a large but private audience chamber – and there he would spend an hour after dinner listening to petitions brought to him by his subjects.
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It was a custom of engaging directly with the administration of justice which he had inherited from his father, who had also listened to petitions in this way. After the petitioner or his representative had been admitted by the king’s chamberlain – or, during Lord Fitzhugh’s absence at Constance, his underchamberlain – Henry would decide whether he would act or not in line with the petitioner’s wishes. If he agreed, the bill would be endorsed by the acting chamberlain, and the bureaucratic machinery of government would do the rest.

Gerard Sprong came to see Henry today. He asked humbly to be discharged of accountability for the two tons of metal in a great cannon called the Messenger, which had blown up at the siege of Aberystwyth in 1407. He also wished to be discharged of his liability for a great gun called the King’s Daughter, which had exploded at the siege of Harlech. Another gun which could not be salvaged was one which had shattered at Worcester, when being tested by Anthony the gunner. He also wished to be discharged of a number of other things he had delivered, including large quantities of gunpowder and smaller
iron guns taken by Helman Leget to Bordeaux, or sent with Sir John Stanley to Ireland, as well as 1,500 quarrels used at the sieges of Aberystwyth and Harlech.
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Henry gave his assent. Sprong was simply guarding his back against the king’s auditors questioning how he could have lost so many tons of bronze and iron. Besides, if Henry wished to have sufficient guns to conduct a siege of a major town or city, he would need every gun he could get, and Sprong was a key agent in amassing and organising his artillery.

Thursday 24th

Although the French council had decided in principle to prolong the truce with England on 2 January, official confirmation had yet to be drawn up. Today, Guillaume Boisratier, archbishop of Bourges, and Pierre Fresnel, bishop of Noyon, together with Charles, count of Eu, and Guillaume Martel, lord of Bacqueville, the king’s chamberlain, authorised the extension of the truce in King Charles’s name.

Not all of Henry’s chief ambassadors were in France for the occasion. Bishop Langley and Thomas Beaufort were still in England, for they are recorded in the minutes of a privy council meeting in early February 1415.
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It seems rather that Henry’s ambassadors travelled separately or in small groups. Sir William Bourchier was the first to set out, on 10 December, travelling down to Southampton and from there to Harfleur.
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Richard Courtenay, bishop of Norwich, was next: he left London on 12 December 1414 and sailed from Dover to Calais.
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Sir John Phelip and William Porter set out two days later, following Bourchier down to Southampton and from there across to Harfleur. Richard Holme, Henry’s secretary, set out the same day, but went via Winchelsea and Calais. Philip Morgan, a lawyer commissioned to attend the embassy, might have been with him. The other members – Bishop Langley, Thomas Beaufort, and Lord Grey of Codnor – followed afterwards, sailing from Dover to Calais.
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Thus it seems that Courtenay, Holme and Morgan were the principal ambassadors in France in January, and it was these men who actually agreed the extension of the truce.

The chief of these three was Bishop Courtenay. Six feet tall, with golden brown hair, and strikingly handsome, he was about thirty-three years of age – four or five years older than Henry himself. He was a grandson of the earl of Devon, intelligent, studious and pious. In Wales he had served Henry as a royal clerk, and was responsible for administering the oath to the Welsh garrison of Aberystwyth which resulted in Henry’s greatest military mistake to date. He therefore shared his moment of shame: a bonding experience every bit as significant as sharing a moment of glory. When Henry had succeeded to the throne, Courtenay found himself elected bishop of Norwich and appointed to the sensitive position of keeper of the king’s jewels and treasurer of the chamber. The king was as close to him as he was to any man.

Courtenay had seen all the dealings with the French since Henry’s succession. He knew that his current mission was, on the face of it, a futile one. He was only in Paris so Henry could be seen to have done what his council had advised. He knew that the French were never going to negotiate on Henry’s terms. From their point of view, the forthcoming peace negotiations were not about war so much as the terms under which Henry V would marry Katherine of France. To them, the continuation of the war was just a negotiating tactic; no one really wanted to resume hostilities – or so they thought. Once the marriage was agreed, Henry would not threaten France for want of King John’s ransom, surely? Nor would he jeopardise the restored parts of Gascony for a few more towns of dubious loyalty.

In the official documents for the truce, sealed today, the English referred to the French king as ‘our adversary of France’ and the French referred to Henry as ‘our adversary of England’. The French wrote their documents in French, and Courtenay responded on Henry’s behalf in Latin. All the formal insults and marks of honour were preserved on each side.
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But Henry’s vision of future Anglo-French relations involved his domination of the French, not a negotiated settlement. It involved revenge for wounded pride. Just yesterday he had written to the Jurade of Bordeaux stating that he expected that the throne of France would soon be restored to him.
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And he was not referring to the likely success of the forthcoming embassy.

Saturday 26th

Henry ordered Nicholas Calton, clerk, and Richard Clitherowe, esquire, to muster 150 men-at-arms, three hundred archers and three hundred mariners. They were ‘going on the king’s service to sea in the company of Sir Gilbert Talbot and Sir Hugh Standish, and John Burgh esquire, in ships in the port of London and ports and places adjacent.’
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This was a significant move to ensure the safety of the south coast. Sir Gilbert Talbot was one of Henry’s most capable enforcers – another one of those men who had served with him in the Welsh wars. He had been a captain in Henry’s victorious army at the battle of Grosmont in March 1405, and had been nominated a Knight of the Garter in about 1408. When the great fortress of Harlech finally fell to Henry’s army, it was Sir Gilbert Talbot who was in charge. He had subsequently continued to patrol Wales with three hundred men-at-arms and six hundred archers. If anyone was capable of protecting the south coast ports from a French naval attack, it was him.

Monday 28th

Among the royal grants recorded at Westminster for today we find one made to Henry, Lord Scrope of Masham, and his wife Joan.
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Scrope was about forty, eleven years older than the king. He had fought on a crusade in his youth, and this chivalric status had served him well when Henry’s crusading father became king. He was made constable of Laugharne Castle in South Wales, and fought alongside Henry and his father at the battle of Shrewsbury. Like so many men of the court, his relationship with Henry blossomed in Wales. When Henry became regent at the end of 1409, Scrope was appointed treasurer of England and admitted to the Order of the Garter. After Henry’s accession he became a regular member of English embassies to France, dealing with the Burgundians as well as the French. He was a man whom Henry both respected and trusted greatly.

The previous December, Henry had forgiven Scrope and his wife,
the dowager duchess of York, all their debts to him. Today’s new grant of £46 15s annually was just one of a number of payments he settled on the couple, and a sign of his continued affection for them both.

Also today Henry confirmed the alien priory of Appuldurcombe (on the Isle of Wight) on the abbess and convent of Franciscan nuns outside Aldgate (otherwise known as the Minoresses). Alien priories were monasteries dependent on a foreign religious house – Appuldurcombe being a daughter of Montébourg in France. They supplied revenue back to their foreign parent monasteries, and these in turn supplied taxation to the French government in wartime. Therefore there was a long tradition of English kings confiscating the incomes of alien priories during periods of conflict. At the Leicester parliament of 1414, Henry had been petitioned by the commons to declare that, even if there were to be peace, he would never return the alien priories but would dissolve them all. He had already taken about fifty-four into his own hands: a precursor to the complete dissolution of all the English monasteries by Henry VIII in the 1530s. In many cases he had granted the estates to friends, family and supporters, thereby relieving himself of some of the financial pressure which his father had suffered. But in this case, Appuldurcombe was handed over to supplement the income of the Minoresses. Henry Kays, keeper of the hanaper in chancery, was ordered to deliver letters patent to them at the same time, freeing them forever from having to pay any taxes levied on these lands.
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Finally, Henry was petitioned in his capacity as the highest justice in the land concerning John Elynden of Hawkhurst, who had been taken to court by a creditor and ordered to pay 28 marks and 10 marks compensation. He had been unable to pay, and subsequently surrendered himself to the Fleet Prison as a debtor. Unfortunately, while in prison he had failed to appear before a royal judge commissioned to hear legal cases in Kent, and had been outlawed. Technically, this meant he could be killed on sight – he had no protection in the eyes of the law. However, as he could show that he had in fact paid 10 marks of the 38 marks he owed, and as the creditor had now died, and as he obviously could not have attended the court due to being in prison, Henry wiped the slate clean, pardoned his outlawry and ordered the debt to be cancelled.
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Wednesday 30th

There were three distinct themes to Henry’s vision of kingship: military leadership, piety and justice. All three featured throughout this month, for example: in the expedition to Constance, in his continued gathering of munitions and weapons for an expedition to France, and in the answering of petitions from his subjects. Today, all three featured on the same day.