Shakespeare's Kings (53 page)

This
inquiry
was
held
in
the
chapter
house
of
St
Paul's
on
23
and
25 September
1413;
with
Archbishop
Arundel
were
Richard
Clifford
and Henry
Beaufort,
respectively
Bishops
of
London
and
Winchester,
with

twelve doctors of law or divinity sitting as assessors. Old
castle
- who was at this time in regular correspondence with the Bohemian reformer John Hus - made a full statement of his beliefs, from which he once again refused to be shaken. He confirmed his belief in all the sacraments ordained by God, describing that of the Eucharist as 'Christ's body in the form of bread'; if the Church maintained that after consecration it was bread no longer, then the Church was wrong - infected, doubdess, by the poison of Popery. As to the act of confession, it might often be salutary but it was not necessary for salvation. The discussion grew increasingly heated, until finally Old
castle
denounced the Pope as Antichrist, with the prelates his members and the friars his tail. After that, there was no more to be said in his defence. Arundel relucta
ntly
declared him a heretic and handed him over to the secular arm for punishment. Even then he was given the usual respite of forty days, during which both Henry and the Archbishop sent learned theologians to him in the Tower in a last effort to persuade him to recant; but he remained adamant.

Then, on the night of
19
October, he disappeared. How he did so we do not know. There was a persistent rumour that the King, or possibly Beaufort, was behind the escape, but from what we know of Henry this seems unlikely: he had sworn to crush the Lollards, Old
castle
was their leader, and it would have taken more than an old tie of friendship to prevent him from doing his duty. According to the royal chaplain, Oldcastle had pretended to capitulate, after which his fetters were removed and he seized the opportunity to flee. There seems in any case to have been some sort of conspiracy, in which many thousands of
his co-religionists were involved; and the weeks that followed brought increasing signs of impending rebellion. The first plan - to seize the King in his palace at Eltham during a performance by a company of mummers on the Feast of Epiphany,
6
January
1414
— was revealed just in time to Henry. He returned at once to London, where he took up residence in the priory of Clerkenwell; and it was there that news was brought to him that some
20,000
armed Lollards from all parts of the kingdom were planning to assemble three days later in Fickett's Field (now Lincoln's Inn Fields), whence on the following day they proposed to march through London for a confrontation with 'the priests' prince'.

In his childhood Henry would surely have heard many stories of Wat Tyler's rebellion, only six years before his birth; and he had no
desire
for
a
repetition.
On
the
evening
of
the
9th
he
ordered
all
the London
gates
to
be
closed,
thus
cutting
off
the
demonstrators
already within
the
city
from
those
who
were
advancing
upon
it;
then
he
himself, with
a
considerable
armed
force,
moved
to
St
Giles's
Fields,
a
mile
or two
to
the
northwest
of
the
assembly
point,
from
where
it
was
a
simple matter
to
intercept
the
Lollard
bands
as
they
approached,
disarm
them and
place
them
all
under
arrest.
A
special
commission
was
appointed to
sit
in
judgement
over
them;
meanwhile,
in
sinister
anticipation
of the
verdicts,
four
new
sets
of
gallows
were
erected
in
St
Giles's
Fields. The
precise
intention
of
the
rebels
is
unknown;
their
objectives
may well
have
been
peaceable
enough,
and
limited
to
obtaining
the
right to
practise
their
religion
as
they
wished,
without
interference.
But Henry
was
taking
no
chances.
In
the
official
indictment
they
were accused,
ludicrously,
of
plotting
to
kill
the
King
and
his
brothers, together
with
the
principal
prelates
and
other
noblemen;
to
destroy and
despoil
cathedrals,
churches
and
monasteries
and
to
distribute
the proceeds
among
themselves;
to
force
all
monks
and
nuns
into
secular employments;
and
to
appoint
Oldcastle
regent
of
the
kingdom.

Many
of
the
Lollards
may
have
understood
in
time
what
was
happening
and
turned
back;
many
others
probably
managed
to
escape
in
the darkness.
Even
then,
over
a
hundred
were
executed
at
St
Giles's
alone, before
the
commission
extended
its
work
to
the
country
as
a
whole. But
the
rising,
such
as
it
was,
had
been
such
an
obvious
fiasco
that
by the
end
of
the
month
Henry
ordered
an
end
to
the
persecution,
and
in March
he
felt
secure
enough
to
declare
a
general
amnesty.
Those
rebels who
were
still
in
custody
were
granted
their
freedom
in
return
for heavy
fines,
and
returned
to
their
homes.
As
for
their
leader,
Sir
John Oldcastle,
despite
the
reward
of
a
thousand
marks
that
had
been
offered for
his
recapture,
he
remained
nearly
four
years
at
large
-
during
which he
continued,
in
the
name
of
his
faith,
to
make
what
trouble
he
could. Only
at
the
end
of
1417
was
he
finally
run
to
ground
in
the
Welsh marches
and
brought
back,
severely
wounded,
to
the
capital.
By
then he
could
expect
no
mercy,
and
received
none.
On
14
December
he was
summarily
condemned
as
an
outl
awed
traitor
and
convicted
heretic, and
on
the
same
day
was
'hung
and
burnt
hanging'
at
St
Giles
-
a
fate similar
to
that
suffered
by
his
friend
John
Hus
in
Bohemia,
just
two and
a
half
years
before.
But
the
blood
of
martyrs,
as
we
have
learnt,
is the
most
effective
of
all
fertilizers;
and
the
faith
for
which
Oldcastle
and
Hus both died has lived on, only slightly transmuted to Protestantism, to the present day.

With the Lollard danger successfully averted, the King could turn his attention to what his second parliament - which met at Leicester on
30
April
1414
- was already referring to as his 'adversary of France'. The Hundred Years War still continued: the previous two reigns had marked only a lull, procured by a series of truces intermitte
ntly
renewed - the most recent one, for twenty-five years, sealed by Richard II in
1396
when he married little Isabelle of France. But such truces bought only comparative peace. Even when there were no armies on foreign soil, neither the French or English coasts were safe from occasional incursions: both Rye and Winchelsea had been burnt to the ground by French raiding parties in the
1370s,
¹
and thirty years later the ports and coastal villages of northern Brittany were being persistently harried by English pirates. The French attack on Bordeaux in
1406,
with the expeditions of Arundel in
1411
and Clarence in
1412,
had kept the pot boiling: throughout the country it was generally understood that full-scale war would be resumed before long, and Henry was determined to lose no time in winning what he seems genuinely to have believed was his birthright: the French crown.