Henry IV (84 page)

One area in which the council's remit expanded during Henry's reign was security. Philippe de Mézières – crusader, polemicist, chancellor of Cyprus and councillor to Charles V of France – was of the opinion that at least one-third of a king's military expenditure should be on espionage.
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Henry IV never spent more than a fraction of this on spies, but he knew the value of good information, and government documents are full of references to
exploratores
or
espies
sent to Paris, Calais and elsewhere to gather news about enemy intentions.
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Given that spying has rarely, if ever, been absent from war this is not surprising, but the undeclared and unpredictable nature of the Anglo-French war and the piecemeal Welsh revolt placed a premium on good intelligence. Vigilance was a habit Henry had learned early, in the dangerous 1390s, and which the conspiracies and betrayals of his first few years did nothing to break. In Wales, uncertainty about loyalties was endemic and both sides made constant use of spies, while almost anyone Welsh or with Welsh connections in England was suspect.
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In 1402, with his career as a crown lawyer stalled because of distrust of Welshmen, the chronicler Adam Usk left for Rome in search of advancement, only to find that even here the king's agents were watching him. ‘Adam,’ wrote a watchful English clerk at the Curia, ‘is reckoned amongst us all, on account of his words, to be in some degree not entirely faultless in relation to Owain Glyn Dŵr, and therefore we do not communicate with him openly about this or any other matter.’ Disappointed in his ambitions and shunned by the English at Rome, Usk eventually sought the bishopric he craved from the Avignon pope, but this brought him into contact with the earl of Northumberland and Lord Bardolf, by now refugees in Paris, resulting in
1407 in his outlawry, excommunication and deprivation of his benefices. A year later he was offered the chance to redeem himself. If he was prepared to go to Wales and ‘pretend to be one of Owain's supporters’ – in other words, to spy on Glyn Dŵr – then secretly slip away, the king might see his way to pardoning him: ‘and that is what happened,’ wrote Usk, ‘and it was this promise which saved my life’.
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Pardoned in March 1411, he returned to England to resume his career.

Usk's journey from watched to watcher casts a thin beam of light into one of the darker corners of early Lancastrian government. Spy-fever was rampant at Westminster, especially during the early years of the reign: there were spies at court, among the alien communities in London, foreign clergy, ambassadorial delegations and even in the royal household, and the king was frequently reminded to be discreet. Some of these allegations were true, for almost anyone sent abroad on official business – diplomats, clerics, merchants, heralds – was expected to keep their ears open for information that might be useful to their masters.
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Yet if spying on, and by, foreign powers was routine, more worthy of note under Henry was the extension of domestic surveillance, arguably the price paid by a usurper. Informers certainly believed they would be listened to. In 1400, at the time of the Epiphany rising, and again in 1408, after Northumberland's last rebellion, so many informers came forward to accuse neighbours or others against whom they bore grudges that it only made matters worse.
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However, it could end badly for them. Late in 1405 the approver John Veyse of Holbeach (Lincolnshire) accused fifty-nine heads of religious houses in England of secretly sending money to Glyn Dŵr, and although he was exposed as a liar and drawn and hanged, what is striking is the thoroughness with which his allegations were investigated.
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Concern over security encouraged the development of ‘a widespread system of public espionage’, at the centre of which was the council.
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Its powers to monitor the comings and goings of the king's subjects had burgeoned since the passing of the anti-papal statutes in the mid-fourteenth century and the inquisitorial role assigned to it by the anti-Lollard measures of the 1380s. Summoning suspects for interrogation was now
routine.
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When treason was not merely suspected but manifest, as in January 1400 or July 1403, it would have been remiss not to send spies to learn what they could,
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but the failure to anticipate the Percy rebellion encouraged the adoption of a more proactive role. When Bardolf rode north in the spring of 1405, Lord Roos and Chief Justice Gascoigne were told to follow him. In September 1405, a wayfarer called John Kingsley unwisely prophesied to two esquires whom he met up with near Walsingham (Norfolk) that Glyn Dŵr's power would grow because he paid his followers the wages he promised them. He was reported to the village constables, arrested and placed in Norwich castle to await the king's pleasure.
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Were his travelling companions agents-provocateurs or merely loyal lieges following the king's order of July 1405 that ‘vagabonds’ spreading rumours should be arrested?
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The next year saw a clampdown on sorcerers, soothsayers and necromancers, as well as further measures against heretics and rumour-mongers.
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The net was cast ever wider, creating the opportunity for one enterprising rogue, Walter Forster of East Brainford (Essex), to promise suspects that ‘thei shuld be scraped owte of the kynges bokes’ in return for payment of a mark; he was brought before the King's Bench for extortion.
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Nor was economic espionage neglected, as exemplified by the deposition presented by an obscure vigilante called William Stokes to the king's council in 1411, naming merchants and ship-owners who had evaded customs duties and requesting a commission to set up a surveillance network. It was, he declared piously, the obligation of ‘every loyal subject and liege to safeguard and be diligent for the honour, prosperity and profit of the king’ – although presumably he was not unaware that rewards were offered to those who reported evasions.
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England was no police state – the means for that were lacking – but as the English government steadily extended its definition of criminal behaviour in the later Middle Ages it simultaneously extended its reach.
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Given the obstacles to rapid and
reliable communication at the time, the information-gathering capabilities of Henry's government are impressive. The price, arguably, was the creation of a ‘culture of suspicion’, but governments generally mind less about this than do historians.
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Separate from the council, though not always as far removed from it as some would have wished, was the king's household. The household existed in order to service the king's domestic, religious and leisure requirements, to advertise his majesty through display and ceremony, to provide him with a mobile treasury (the chamber) and authoritative writing-office (the signet), to guard his person and to act as his personal retinue and command-centre when he went to war.
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In 1402–3 the number of people receiving fees or robes in the household was 522, in 1405–6 it was 644, although after this the number must have fallen.
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About 70 per cent of them were sergeants, valets, grooms, carters, huntsmen and falconers, constituting the service (or ‘downstairs’) element of the household, of whom a hundred or more were valets of the stables caring for its thousands of horses. The other 30 per cent were men of higher status: esquires, sergeants-at-arms, knights and clerks. The topmost rung comprised a dozen or so knights of the king's chamber and the household officers: the steward, chamberlain, keeper of the wardrobe, controller and cofferer; the king's secretary, confessor, almoner, physician and surgeon; the master of the king's horses and the dean of the chapel royal. The king's chamber and chapel formed his household within a household, the private apartments where he slept, prayed, relaxed, took counsel and conducted business.
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Access to it was controlled by the chamberlains, men of high status and great influence: John Beaufort was chief chamberlain from 1399 to 1410; his under-chamberlains were Thomas Erpingham (1399–1404) and Richard Grey of Codnor (1404–13). Running the hall – the public sphere of the household
– was the responsibility of the steward, a post held by key players such as Thomas Rempston (1399–1401), Thomas Percy (1401–2) and John Stanley (1404–13), who had previously been steward of Prince Henry's household (1402–4). The keeper of the wardrobe was the chief financial officer, sometimes called the treasurer of the household; the controller and cofferer acted as the steward's and keeper's deputies. The chamberlain, steward and keeper were sometimes listed among the half a dozen ‘great officers of the realm’, a reminder that their political influence and spending power made them accountable to the kingdom as well as the king. The Merciless Parliament saw the execution of Simon Burley and John Beauchamp of Holt, Richard II's chamberlain and steward, as well as several chamber knights.

Henry's ministers did not incur such opprobrium. Rempston, Grey, Norbury and Erpingham (twice) were specifically commended by the parliamentary commons for their good service to king and kingdom. The dismissals of 1401, 1404 and 1406 from the household were not for political graft but for financial or xenophobic reasons. The same holds true for almost all parliamentary criticism of Henry's household: it was too large, its expenditure was out of control, it abused its right of purveyance, and some of its officers were incompetent, but parliament did not talk of it in the terms they had talked of Richard II's household, as a malign influence on the king, manipulating the flow of royal patronage and inclining him towards duplicitous or treasonous policies. Henry was often accused of being too generous, but his patronage was generally seen as even-handed.
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Two of the household's four main departments were permanently based in London, the other two itinerated with the king. The former were the great wardrobe, which dealt mainly in textiles and was based at Baynard castle near St Paul's, and the privy wardrobe, which was responsible for the armour, artillery and weaponry stored in the Tower of London. The latter two were the chamber, the king's personal treasury, and the wardrobe of the household, which paid the living expenses of the king and his servants. Chamber accounts were not audited at the exchequer and have not survived, but it is clear that thousands of pounds were usually carried around with the household, in addition to a hoard of plate and jewels, frequently pledged for loans – hence the loss of ‘countless treasure and crowns’ when the royal baggage train was caught in a flood in 1405.
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Exchequer and duchy of
Lancaster liveries to the chamber averaged around £6,600 a year during Henry's reign, but all sorts of casual revenues and windfalls were also paid into it – fines, ransoms, forfeitures,
douceurs
, fees for licences or charters, the profits of episcopal temporalities
sede vacante
, occasional income from alien priories, and much else.
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Parliamentary or conciliar recommendations to reserve some of these sources for the wardrobe were in part an attempt to stop them being swallowed up by the chamber, for which the king resisted any suggestion of accountability. However, when the wardrobe was hard pressed, Henry sometimes authorized the transfer of sums from the chamber, around £10,000 in 1399–1401 and a further £5,445 between January 1405 and December 1406.
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The wardrobe often struggled for cash, and itineration placed additional strains on it. During the ritual half of the year, the series of solemn feasts from All Saints at the beginning of November to the Garter festivities at the end of April, the king spent most of his time in London or at Westminster, retiring for a few days or weeks at a time to Eltham, Windsor or Hertford, but between spring and early autumn he usually travelled north or westwards, staying for up to a month at favoured residences such as Pontefract, Kenilworth, Leicester or Woodstock. It was a way for the king to show himself to his people, hear complaints, gauge the political temperature of the shires and keep in touch with his supporters.
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However, it also obliged the household to requisition lodgings and supplies as it went, which often meant abusing its right of purveyance. Four of the five keepers of Henry's wardrobe ran up debts of £10,000 or more by the time they demitted office (Tiptoft was the exception). At Henry's death, unpaid bills of the household amounted to £31,500.
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The decline in household itineration following the onset of the king's illness in 1408–9 was one reason for the reduction in its expenditure.

The five or six hundred men of the household who received fees and robes comprised only the king's formal domestic establishment, the
domus
or
hostiel du roy
. The number of those ‘at court’ was often much greater. Nobles, prelates, knights, foreign ambassadors or even rulers, messengers, well-wishers and petitioners all gravitated towards the household, many of them bringing their own servants or retainers with them, often scores of them. Prostitutes, paupers and informers followed it, hoping for business, alms or reward.
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There must often have been well over a thousand people attached in varying degrees to the household, more than those who lived in most English towns, and it is not difficult to envisage the impact it had on neighbourhoods through which it passed, although naturally it also created opportunities.
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The household spent a lot of time in and around London, where it had well-established sources of supply for food, wine, cloth and much else, from which the capital's drapers, mercers, grocers and vintners made good profits, providing loans to the crown in return.

The royal bodyguard had been enlarged early in the reign following the Epiphany rising, but when the king went on campaign or faced rebellion, the household evolved into an army. For Henry's Scottish campaign in 1400, the household contingent numbered 244 men-at-arms and 1,227 archers, more than a tenth of the English forces; in March 1405, when he planned to enter Wales, it was 144 men-at-arms and 720 archers.
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Many of those who came to fight for him were his annuitants and retainers, men who were not in receipt of fees or wages and thus not of the
hostiel
, but the speed with which armies several thousand strong could be mustered was impressive, as demonstrated during the week preceding the battle of Shrewsbury. When the king campaigned in person the household also served as the nerve centre of the army, its officers responsible for musters and logistics as well as commanding detachments and securing towns or castles. When Archbishop Scrope rebelled, it was John Stanley, the steward, and his controller Roger Leche who were sent to York to secure the city ahead of the king's arrival.
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Men such as Stanley, Rempston, Erpingham and Grey were known not just for military but also for organizational ability. Between them they held several of the crucial strongholds of the realm: Rempston was constable of the Tower, Erpingham of Dover castle,
Robert Waterton of Pontefract. Windsor was held successively by Hugh Waterton (chamberlain of the duchy of Lancaster) and Stanley, Nottingham by Rempston and then Grey.
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