Henry IV (57 page)

Mowbray's input to the articles which he and Scrope distributed in York and its vicinity was probably not as extensive as the archbishop's, but it was not negligible. Several versions of their manifesto survive, the most authentic of which is that preserved by Walsingham, which he claimed to have translated ‘almost word for word’ from the English in which it was broadcast. This and the summary version in the
Continuatio Eulogii
both included clauses stating that lords who had been deprived of their inheritances should be restored to them, as was their birthright, a demand not restricted to Mowbray but very probably inspired by him.
⁴⁷
Three other themes are prominent in the manifesto: first, that the financial impositions of the crown on both laity and clergy were excessive – not just the frequent tenths and fifteenths but also the customs and subsidies which impoverished merchants, ‘confiscations in the guise of loans’, and the abuse of the royal right of purveyance; associated with this was the fact that these levies were not put to the purposes for which they were raised but were squandered or appropriated by the ‘greedy and covetous’ councillors surrounding the king, who should be replaced. The second main theme was parliament: a meeting was urgently requested in which grievances could be remedied, and it was to be conducted in the proper manner, that is to say, knights and burgesses should be freely elected rather than nominated by the king, lawyers should not be excluded, and the assembly should be held in London, ‘which is a more public place, and where these matters can best be corrected’. Thirdly, Walsingham emphasized that the liberties of the Church should be upheld, although this was not a point especially emphasized in the
Continuatio Eulogii.
The manifesto ended with the claim that once the realm was thus reformed, the Welsh would soon return to their accustomed obedience to the English crown, an indication (were it needed)
of the disastrous impact of the continuing revolt in Wales on Henry's reputation.
⁴⁸

Several further versions survive of what were alleged to be Scrope's complaints against Henry and his supporters, although their authenticity is questionable.
⁴⁹
Especially dubious is the claim that Scrope ‘desired that the crown of England should be restored to the right line or descent’. Had Scrope and Mowbray expressed such a wish publicly, it would have been manifest treason and would have aligned their declared aims more closely with those of Northumberland and Bardolf, but the assertion that they did so is almost certainly a later, Yorkist-inspired gloss associated with the hagiographical tradition which grew up around Scrope's martyr cult. The more reliable accounts of Walsingham and the
Continuatio Eulogii
author point instead to a series of demands broad enough to appeal to a range of interests in the kingdom, both popular and elite, without presenting a direct threat to the regime. Taxation, needless to say, was never popular, and the previous six months had seen unusually heavy impositions, with an almost unprecedented two lay tenths and fifteenths (in addition to other fiscal novelties) granted at the parliament of October 1404, the level of taxation on customs higher than at any time since the 1340s, and the northern and southern convocations providing at least two clerical tenths, each within less than a year. Scrope's York convocation would have felt especially aggrieved, for between 1399 and 1403 they had only granted one clerical tenth, but in 1404 not only were they pressurized into granting one in June and another in December, but also, for the latter, into abolishing the traditional exemption threshold of £10, thus bringing even the poorest benefice-holders within its ambit. Then in early May 1405 Scrope attended the council held by the king at Worcester, where it was decided in addition to oblige stipendiary chaplains (also formerly exempt) to contribute to these demands. This may have been the trigger for his sermon in York minster two weeks later.
⁵⁰
Unlike the southern convocation, which almost invariably met at the same time as parliament, the northern clergy did not
benefit from regular opportunities to present their complaints to a wider audience in the form of gravamina. Scrope's emphasis on parliament as the fount of remedies would thus have resonated with many of the clergy who were so prominent among his followers, just as his emphasis on the burden of customs duties and the plight of the merchants would have struck a chord with the citizens of York, many of whom also supported him.
⁵¹
To contemporaries, his unhappiness at the conduct of parliament had unmistakable relevance to the moment, for the October 1404 assembly was not held in London, lawyers were excluded from it, and there were accusations that the elections had been rigged.
⁵²
Yet by couching his grievances in the customary language of reform and correction – of estates and liberties, the concept of fiscal proportionality and the salvation of the realm and the faithful community – Scrope was also appealing to a well-established audience for the expression of ‘loyal opposition’ to the crown, a stage on which English archbishops had always played a leading and, at times, tragic role.

What soon became all too clear to him and Mowbray was that the king saw their protest movement in a very different light. The enthusiastic response to their exhortations probably exceeded their expectations and may have contributed to their downfall, for whatever Henry believed their motives to be, the appearance on Shipton Moor of 8,000 or 9,000 men, some armed, was too threatening to be regarded as a loyal or peaceful movement. The composition of their host must also have irritated the king. The level of clerical involvement, recalling the treasonable activities of Richard II's chaplains in January 1400, of dissident friars in 1402 and of Maud de Vere's fellow-conspirators in 1403–4, probably persuaded the king that if an example was not made there would be no end to priestly sedition. He also seems to have interpreted the mass resistance of the citizens of York – the only major town openly to defy Henry during his reign – as a challenge to his support for William Frost, the cooperative but lofty mayor who had been ousted in February 1405 after five consecutive years in office.
⁵³
Armed urban uprisings were common enough on the continent, but remarkably rare in England and to be firmly discouraged.

Yet if all this goes some way towards explaining why Henry was prepared to risk such a disproportionate reaction to the northern rebellions of May 1405, there is still something puzzling about the king's ferocity. The
degrading submission ritual performed by the massed ranks of York citizenry (not just a representative group of them, which was customary), the harvest of heads across the north-east, the deployment of cannon for the first time on English soil, and the first judicial execution of an English bishop were clearly Henry's way of signalling that enough was enough. Yet despite the allegation that the rebel hosts had arrayed themselves for war, with banners unfurled, it is worth remembering that neither at Topcliffe nor at Shipton Moor was there any suggestion of armed resistance to Westmorland and Prince John, nor was a single life lost on the royalist side. The result was a propaganda coup for Henry's opponents – already a regicide, this was a king who also executed archbishops – and ecclesiastical censure was bound to follow, as it duly did a few months later when the pope excommunicated all those involved in the archbishop's death (although without naming them).
⁵⁴
Yet, although Henry would later be made to pay for his show of force, it would be difficult to deny that it worked in the short term. The earl of Northumberland was now a broken reed, his followers cowed into submission, and the spate of domestic rebellions that had plagued the king since the start of his reign at last abated.

By the summer of 1405, it must have seemed as if Henry had perfected the art of falling and falling without ever quite hitting the ground. He had led campaign after campaign – to Scotland, to Wales, to Shrewsbury, to the north – but what they had achieved was no more than a measure of containment, although given the odds he faced this was no small feat. Looking back a few years later, however, contemporaries would have identified 1405 as the turning-point of the reign. The commitment to suppressing the Welsh rebellion had begun to pay off, and the English Channel was a good deal safer than it had been a year or two earlier. It was within England itself, however, with the brutal crushing of the northern risings, that this year really marked a watershed. Henceforward, England was not a land at war with itself, and in this convalescent nation there was time to make plans for the future.

¹
PROME
, viii.233–4; Northumberland provided the required assurances, which was a little ironic since he himself had just denied any foreknowledge of his son's conspiracy.

²
PROME
, viii.239, 243, 255, 279, 312–13; Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, i.411.

³
J. Ross, ‘Seditious Activities: The Conspiracy of Maud de Vere, Countess of Oxford, 1403–4’, in
Fifteenth-Century England III: Authority and Subversion
, ed. L. Clark, (Woodbridge, 2003), 25–41 (quote at p. 31). New beacons to warn of invasion had recently been set up:
Giles
, 35–6. A letter purporting to come from Richard was also sent to the parliament of January 1404, but its bearer hastily denied that the former king was alive and the matter seems to have been dropped (
CE
, iii.400).

⁴
It is possible that one conspirator, William Blithe, was executed: Ross, ‘Seditious Activities’, 35.

⁵
SAC II
, 414;
CE
, iii.401–2;
Select Cases in the King's Bench VII
, ed. Sayles, 151–5. It was also alleged that the Scots and the Welsh were involved in the conspiracy.

⁶
SAC II
, 417;
CE
, iii.402;
Usk
, 176;
English Chronicle
, 35, 123; BL Add. Ms 24,512, fo. 119, for Serle's interrogation at Southwark and the death of his accomplice, Richard Tighler (who was executed at Pontefract), and the distribution of his body parts. Details of Serle's fate differ slightly, but Henry himself commented that he ‘endured great number of pains, more severe than other traitors heretofore’ (
CCR 1402–5
, 203, 352–7;
CPR 1401–5
, 441).

⁷
PROME
, viii.362; Walker, ‘Rumour, Sedition and Popular Protest’, 39–41, 60.

⁸
CP
, viii.450–1;
CPR 1401–5
, 406 (£200 a year annually for their maintenance); Given-Wilson,
Chronicles
, 200–1.

⁹
W. Dugdale,
Monasticon Anglicanum
(6 vols, London, 1846–9), vi (Part 1), 355 (Wigmore Chronicle);
SAC II
, 431–3.

¹⁰
PROME
, 291, 302–3; R. Horrox, ‘Edward of Langley, Second Duke of York’,
ODNB
, 17.801–03. £3,445 was assigned to York from the exchequer the day after Constance made accusations against him (E 403/580, 18 February 1405).

¹¹
Foedera
, viii.386–7;
CE
, iii.402.

¹²
CP
, iv.281; E 403/580, 2 March; for petitions from York and his wife in June 1405, see
Foedera
, viii.387–8.

¹³
SAC II
, 433–5, said that ‘he was excused for the arrest of the duke [of York] and of the aforesaid lady [Constance] and all the others’, which might imply that he was alleged to have been a party to their conspiracy but might equally imply that he was involved in their arrest; he went on to deny that he had ever communicated ‘anything sinister’ to anyone about the king, at which Henry expressed delight. Around this time Arundel's sister, Joan, countess of Hereford, wrote to Hugh Waterton complaining that she and her brother were being slandered to the king:
ANLP
, no. 334 (dated 28 October, either 1404 or 1405).

¹⁴
On 1 March 1405 the council advised the king to keep Edmund and Roger with him at all times, and if he campaigned in Wales, they should be placed in a secure marcher fortress, but no further action was taken against them (
POPC
, ii.105–6).

¹⁵
It is possible that the Tripartite Indenture dates from February 1405: below, p. 317.

¹⁶
It was to these two that northern rebels had to sue for pardon after the battle of Shrewsbury (
PROME
, viii.244, 277–8).

¹⁷
SAC II
, 435;
PROME
, viii.234–5; A. Tuck, ‘Ralph Neville, First Earl of Westmorland’,
ODNB
, 40.516–21.

¹⁸
POPC
, i.244, 250; ii.98, 103–4; J. Nuttall, ‘
Vostre Humble Matatyas
: Culture, Politics and the Percys’, in
The Fifteenth Century V
, ed. L. Clark (Woodbridge, 2005), 69–83. Northumberland was aged 64.

¹⁹
SAC II
, 435; J. R. Whitehead, ‘Robert Waterton’,
ODNB,
57.576–7; Henry knew of Waterton's seizure by 22 May (
Signet Letters
, no. 370).

²⁰
Whether Bardolf joined the raid on Witton-le-Wear is not clear; he was due to accompany the king to Wales but secretly slipped away from London, probably during the second week of May ‘towards the parts of the north’; astonished and fearing trouble, the council despatched William Lord Roos and Chief Justice William Gascoigne to follow him (
POPC
, i.262). Walsingham (
SAC II
, 456–9) said that Northumberland and Bardolf were admitted to Berwick after telling the mayor that they remained loyal to the king, and when the mayor found out the truth he begged forgiveness from Henry, but according to the indictment in the 1406 parliament the earl took it by force and allowed the Scots to loot the town and carry off the mayor (
PROME
, viii.410). On 9 June, Prince John wrote to his father from Durham saying that he had been informed by the mayor of Newcastle (Roger Thornton) that Bardolf, Northumberland, and ‘a great company of Scots’, including the earl of Orkney, had taken over Berwick town and castle (
RHL II
, 61–3). For the Scots looting Berwick, see also
POPC
, ii.xiii.