Henry IV (51 page)

The government's failure to make headway in Wales in 1403–4 was due in part to Prince Henry's long convalescence following his injury at the battle of Shrewsbury – he did not return to Wales until July 1404 – and partly to lack of money to fund operations.
³²
Between 1401 and early 1404, the exchequer had contributed around £4,000 a year to the suppression of the revolt, but during the following year Prince Henry received less than £1,000. After this, however, things improved rapidly: from the winter of 1404–5 until the summer of 1408, an annual average of some £12,000 was passed to the prince.
³³
The renewal in the spring of 1405 of his appointment as the king's lieutenant in Wales was also ominous for the Welsh, indicating that after eighteen months during which the English crown had been restricted to a policy of containment, it was now moving on to the offensive. The effect was soon felt. In April 1405, a large company of Owain's partisans was surprised in the act of burning Grosmont (Monmouthshire) by an English force led by Gilbert Lord Talbot and Sir John Greyndour. According to a letter from the prince to his father, the rebel contingent numbered 8,000 men, about one in ten of whom were killed and a ‘great chieftain’ taken.
³⁴
The numbers doubtless grew in the telling, but it was a significant check to the revolt in the south-east and was followed two months later by a still more damaging defeat at Usk, where Owain's brother was killed, his eldest son Gruffudd captured, and their ‘great host’ driven off from the castle with substantial losses. The
victorious English commanders (Greyndour again, with Richard Lord Grey) then beheaded 300 of their captives before the castle, although not Gruffudd, who was led away to London where he later died in the Tower. Then in June, Owain's brother-in-law and envoy John Hanmer was captured. Relief was also at hand for the beleaguered English castles, where garrisons were strengthened, preparations begun for the recapture of Harlech and Aberystwyth, and plans laid for another royal expedition to Wales in May or June.
³⁵
‘And from this time onwards,’ wrote Adam Usk, ‘Owain's fortunes began to wane in that region.’
³⁶
Perhaps the successes of the previous two years had made the rebels a little overconfident. It was guerrilla tactics that suited them; when they confronted English forces in open battle they were always likely to come off second best. Nor did the renewal of the crown's commitment to restoring control in Wales go unheeded. Prominent supporters of Owain's in both the north-east and the south-east sought terms in return for abandoning his cause. A contingent of Dubliners landed in Anglesey and ‘did much hurt to the Welshmen’.
³⁷
The arena of defiance was shrinking, and by the summer Owain was once again thinking in terms of making a treaty with the English king.
³⁸

Ironically, it was at this moment that the Franco-Welsh alliance concluded in the previous year delivered on its promise. In August 1405, a French force some 2,600 strong landed at Milford Haven (Pembrokeshire); its leaders were the marshal and admiral of France and the vastly experienced Jean de Hangest, lord of Hugueville, last seen by Henry when he came to England in October 1400 to negotiate Queen Isabella's return. Yet if there was no doubting the symbolic significance of the moment, the achievements of the joint Franco-Welsh force were more questionable.
³⁹
Its only tangible success was the capture of Carmarthen, and even that was achieved by negotiation rather than assault. A part of the army, though probably not all of it, penetrated into England, arriving in late August at Woodbury Hill, a few miles from Worcester where Henry was holding a council. The Burgundian chronicler Monstrelet claimed that the English
and Franco-Welsh forces confronted each other across the valley for a week before deciding against battle, but his story lacks corroboration. At any rate, within a few weeks the French had retired to Pembrokeshire; some of them returned to France immediately, others remained in Wales until early in the new year, possibly because a dozen or more French vessels on their way to Wales were seized by the admiral Thomas Lord Berkeley, and Sir Thomas Swynburn, acting in conjunction with Henry Pay.
⁴⁰
The council in Paris was disappointed with the campaign, and it seems to have made little impression in England. Doubtless it helped Owain to consolidate his hold on Pembrokeshire, at least temporarily, and he assuredly hoped that it heralded the start of an era of Franco-Welsh cooperation, for in March 1406 he wrote to Charles VI to tell him that to reinforce their alliance he was transferring the allegiance of the Welsh Church from Rome to Avignon.
⁴¹
In fact, the 1405 expedition marked both the beginning and the end of meaningful Franco-Welsh military cooperation, and did little to revive Glyn Dwr's fortunes.

Elsewhere too the year 1405 marked a perceptible shift of momentum in Henry's favour. The Pirate War was tailing off, leaving England's ports and shipping a good deal less vulnerable than they had been two or three years earlier, as is reflected in the recovery of wool and cloth exports, which by 1405–6 were back to their 1398–9 levels.
⁴²
In May 1405, Waleran of St-Pol covered himself with shame once again when he tried to seize the castle of Marck, one of the Calais bastions, but was forced to beat such a hasty retreat that he left behind his armour, pennon and siege engines; a month later he was relieved of his command in Picardy and ordered by the French council not to retaliate. Not so the English, who sent a punitive fleet under the king's second son Thomas and the earl of Kent, which raided Sluys in Flanders, burned half a dozen towns in Normandy and captured three carracks on the way home.
⁴³
For the moment, the threat to Calais was once again dispelled, although Henry knew it was only a matter of time before the French would try again. The problems involved in paying a garrison numbering over 500 men meant that wages were invariably in arrears, creating an atmosphere of discontent leading to rumours of treason and
betrayal. The debts of the town's treasurer were over £11,000, and the English ambassadors who spent much of the year there negotiating with French and Flemish envoys complained that they could not even cover their living expenses.
⁴⁴
The coming and going of foreign envoys also aroused suspicions of spying, and the negotiations made slow progress. Yet, remarkably, throughout these two years of effectively open warfare between the summer of 1403 and the summer of 1405, the fiction of an Anglo-French truce was maintained – and that, in a sense, was the point of the negotiations: by simply continuing to talk about the truce, the English and French governments colluded in confirming that it remained in existence. Stillborn they might have appeared, but the talks served a purpose.
⁴⁵

¹
A council was held at Worcester to raise loans (2–10 September). Henry reached Brecon by 21 September (E 101/404/21).

²
Davies,
Revolt
, 113–14;
POPC
, i.217–18.

³
CPR 1401–5
, 439–40.

⁴
This was not the first time that the French had come to the aid of the Welsh: see
RHL I
, xxxiii, for French adventurers in Wales in March and July 1403. In late February 1404, six French ships laden with wine and spices appeared off the Llyn peninsula; if seized, wrote the lieutenant of Conway, they would bring ‘great profit’:
Original Letters Illustrative of English History
, ed. H. Ellis (4 vols, London, 1824–7) i.30–5;
RHL II
, 15–17, 22–4; E 403/579, 17 June (Harlech); Davies,
Revolt
, 192.

⁵
On the day the truce was confirmed, 27 June 1403, the French council handed over a notarial instrument to this effect (F. Wilson, ‘Anglo-French Relations in the Reign of King Henry IV of England, 1399–1413’, unpublished PhD thesis, McGill University, 1973, 208–9;
SAC II
, 379).

⁶
Messengers went to Brittany in December 1401 (E 403/571, 15 Dec.), but the negotiations were kept secret.

⁷
Joan was the daughter of Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, and granddaughter of John II of France (d.1364): M. Jones, ‘Joan of Navarre’,
ODNB
, 30.139–41. For her letter to Henry, see
RHL I
, 19–20.

⁸
Duke John IV, Joan's first husband, had been brought up at Edward III's court and the result for the French was disastrous. Philip was called in by members of the Breton nobility who opposed the match (Henneman,
Olivier de Clisson
, 193–6).

⁹
Saint-Denys
, iii.41; F. Autrand,
Charles VI: La Folie du Roi
(Paris, 1986), 392–3. Clisson was the inveterate foe of the Breton ducal family.

¹⁰
Nordberg,
Les Ducs et la Royauté
, 152–77; G. Small,
Late Medieval France
(Basingstoke, 2009), 140.

¹¹
E 28/8, no. 40;
Foedera
, viii.170–81.

¹²
Foedera
, viii.232–3 (December 1401). The final instalment of the dowry (totalling £13,333) was not paid until 1446 (Tuck, ‘Henry IV and Europe’, 115–19).

¹³
Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, i.255–6. Her husband was 23 and much impressed with his wife, as were many other Germans. Her bejewelled crown is still in the royal treasury at Munich. The earl of Somerset led the delegation to Cologne, which cost at least £10,000 and probably quite a lot more: E 101/404/11 (expense account); E 403/573, 11 May, 15 and 21 July, 26 September (9,500 marks for her expenses).

¹⁴
Nordberg,
Les Ducs et la Royauté
, 175–6; Tuck, ‘Henry IV and Europe’, 118;
Foedera
, viii.253–4 (Henry's proposal for a treaty, 28 April 1402).

¹⁵
Tuck, ‘Henry IV and Europe’, 119–20;
RHL I
, xl–xliv;
Foedera
, viii.257, 265;
POPC
, i.222. A second marriage between Prince Henry and Eric's sister Katherine was mooted, but later dropped (E 403/573, 27 June 1402). The initial reluctance of the English council was overcome when Eric agreed not to seek a dowry. He and Philippa eventually married in 1406.

¹⁶
RHL I
, xlvi–vii;
Foedera
, viii.345, 347; E 101/404/21, fo. 40r (Spanish ambassadors in London, Dec. 1402).

¹⁷
For Guyenne, see below, pp. 253–9.

¹⁸
Saint-Denys
, iii.109–13;
SAC II
, 384–7. ‘Rebels’ in the Channel Islands may also have been French sympathizers (
Foedera
, viii.303).

¹⁹
St-Pol had conceived a particular hatred for the earl of Rutland, who he believed to have betrayed Richard II in 1399. He had an effigy of him suspended upside down outside Calais as a mark of disgrace (
Monstrelet
, i.67–8; for the date see Lehoux,
Jean de France
, ii.524, n.1; Given-Wilson, ‘Quarrels of Old Women’, 36–7). Henry did not reply, saying he ‘took little account’ of the letter.

²⁰
Schnerb,
Jean Sans Peur
, 146; Wilson, ‘Anglo-French Relations’, 222–3;
Choix de Pièces Inédites
, i.249–51. At a French council meeting in January 1404 this agreement was confirmed, but Philip had to promise that Flanders would fight the English when required to do so and allow French armies to use Flemish ports; this was confirmed by his widow Margaret after Philip's death. The agreement was both confusing and extremely difficult to enforce, for the Four Members of Flanders (the body representing the Flemish merchants) wanted Flemish ports to be open to all commerce, while the English wanted Flanders to declare its neutrality: Philip's compromise failed to satisfy the Flemings and alienated many people in Paris, especially Orléans, who was bitterly opposed to allowing separate Anglo-Flemish talks to take place. I am grateful to Dr Chris Ford for his thoughts on this topic.

²¹
Saint-Denys
, iii.117–21;
SAC II
, 391. For possible links with the countess of Oxford's conspiracy, see below, pp. 262–3.

²²
On 9 July 1404 (Schnerb,
Jean Sans Peur
, 167).

²³
Saint-Denys
, iii.157–9.

²⁴
BL Add. MS 38,525, fo. 8; dated 15 May 1404 at Dolgellau. For a note of Owain's seal, showing him seated on a throne on one side and a horse on the other, see
Choix de Pièces Inédites
, i.286.

²⁵
Saint-Denys
, iii.161, 169, 171, 223–7, 259, 317–21;
SAC II
, 399–405, 437.

²⁶
SAC II
, 407;
Saint-Denys
, iii.181, 197.

²⁷
For the treaty, dated 14 June, see
Foedera
, viii.365–6;
Saint-Denys
, iii.164–7, 197, 223–7. ‘John Spaigne of France’ commanded ships at the sieges of Harlech and Caernarfon, summer 1404 (E 403/579, 17 June).

²⁸
Original Letters
, 33–6. Baildon added optimistically that if 200 men could be sent to Conway and 200 to Caernarfon, the land could soon be pacified, for apart from 4 or 5 individuals ‘and some vagabonds’ the gentlemen of Merionethshire and Caernarvonshire wanted peace with the English.

²⁹
Davies,
Revolt
, 116.

³⁰
Watt, ‘The Glyn Dŵr Rebellion and Tax Collection’, 56–66, 77–81;
POPC
, ii.77–8.

³¹
POPC
, i.236;
ANLP
, no. 308 (dated 1400–9, but probably from the middle years of the decade).

³²
The prince's household account records that he was ‘in the march of Wales’ from 1 to 20 July 1404, then either at Hereford or at Leominster until 21 November (E 101/404/24, fos. 14r–v; Davies,
Revolt
, 118–19, 233).