The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King (24 page)

SIX

Curst Melancholy

Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks

And given my treasures and my rights of thee

To thick-eyed musing and curst meancholy?

Henry IV Part One,
Act II, Scene 3

Imagine Henry, on the deck of his ship, the day he returned to England. There he stands, looking at the chalk cliffs of the south coast as the ship rolls over the waves. Ahead of him lies the road back to London, through Canterbury and Sittingbourne. Ahead of him too lies the meeting with his family, his wife, Mary, and his four sons and a baby daughter, Blanche, named after the mother he never knew. No doubt he is looking forward to meeting his father too, and telling him about Prague, Vienna, Venice and, above all else, Jerusalem. He is brimful of confidence that the story of his travels is one worth telling everywhere. And yet there is something more in his mind. As he stands on the deck, looking at England, he knows that this is the one place in Europe where he will not be respected as a visiting prince. In England he is merely a vassal, and treated with less respect than he had received in the courts of Europe.

Henry could not but have cast his mind ahead to the reception that awaited him in his home country. The last time he had returned, from his crusade, he had been fêted as a hero. This time he had completed a journey every bit as remarkable, yet he had no way of knowing the political climate in England, with the exception of rumours he had picked up in Paris. There he had arrived just after his father’s departure with a draft agreement for a permanent peace between England and France. With his father’s apparent success, and the tale of his own adventures to tell, Henry may have expected his homecoming to be as much of an excited celebration as his last, two years earlier.

It was not. The country was uneasy. The draft treaty which John and his brother, the duke of Gloucester, had negotiated was not to the liking of the English court. Some lords were positively hostile to the idea of giving up the claim to the sovereignty of France. Elements of the commons too were deeply suspicious of the motives for peace. Even before Henry
had arrived back in England a great number of men had gathered in Cheshire and Lancashire intent on killing him, his father and his uncle Gloucester. They accused them of plotting to deprive the king of England of his sovereignty for their own personal benefit, and openly declared their ambition of assassinating all three men. The rebels gathered in unlawful assemblies under the leadership of Thomas Talbot, their ranks swelled by those who saw the likelihood of mayhem and the opportunity for plunder. The earl of Arundel, equally angry at the likely turn of peace, did nothing to put down the revolt. As for the king, although he did belatedly send representatives to calm the insurgents, he was suspected of turning a blind eye.
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When Henry rode into London on 5 July 1393 he must have been worried. His own name was linked with this unpopular peace, even though he had had no part in forming the draft treaty. Moreover, he must have wondered why his father had agreed to such unpopular terms. Was this the logical and inevitable outcome of all those years of talks, patiently seeking a path between the warmongers and the mercenary captains? If so, it meant that John had come to prefer the kingship of Richard II to that of Edward III, if only for the pragmatic reason that Richard was incapable of leading an army in battle. But that was not the case. The reason why John was following the king’s bidding in seeking peace at any price was because Richard had no heir. John was putting all his efforts into supporting Richard’s ambition for peace so that Richard would acknowledge Henry as his successor. John had set himself on the narrow path of absolute loyalty, with his son’s eventual succession as his ultimate goal. He would do nothing to discourage Richard from recognising the Lancastrians as the rightful heirs to the throne.

Henry seems to have gone directly to his father on his return to England, who was marching north to confront the rebels.
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John was at Lancaster on 10 and 14 August, and it is likely that Henry was with him. Thomas Talbot admitted his misdeeds before Henry and Lord Lovell, who perhaps had gone as representatives to negotiate with him.
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Following the breakup of the revolt, John went to Beverley and Henry went south, to join his wife at Peterborough.
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A few weeks later, Mary was pregnant again. Henry remained with her there until December, when they both joined his father at Hertford, and Henry took part in the traditional Christmas tournament. Happy to be back with his family, he paid for a new suit of armour for his half-brother, Thomas Beaufort, so he also could take part in the festive joust.
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The king of France’s own jester joined them, and was rewarded by Henry with a gift of forty shillings.
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New Year’s presents were received from the king and queen, his father and stepmother, the duke and duchess
of Gloucester, his mother-in-law the countess of Hereford, Thomas Mowbray, the countess of Norfolk (Mowbray’s grandmother), the bishop of Salisbury and Lady Audley.
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Those to whom Henry gave presents included his old governess, Katherine Swynford, his heralds, his loyal friend, Thomas Erpingham, Katherine Waterton (the wife of his chamberlain, Hugh Waterton), and Sir John Bussy, Speaker of the House of Commons.

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Henry remained at Hertford with Mary in January 1394, delaying setting off for parliament until the end of the month.
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When he finally departed, he sent her a present of oysters, mussels and sprats.
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It was just like the last time he had left her in mid-pregnancy to attend parliament, when he had sent her a present of apples and pears. As before, the gift marked a contrast between his happy, homely life with his wife and children, and the harsh exposure of politics at Westminster. At about this time he purchased a brooch for his own use which bore the motto
sanz mal penser
(‘think no evil’), along with elaborate prayer books and crucifixes.
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It smacks of apprehensiveness, echoing the Garter motto,
‘honi soit qui mal y pense
(shame on him who thinks it evil)’.

Parliament met on 27 January. Almost immediately, John of Gaunt and the earl of Arundel were at loggerheads. The chancellor declared that one of the reasons for the parliament was the peace of the kingdom, following the Cheshire uprising. John bitterly accused Arundel of doing nothing to control the revolt, even though the rebels’ declared intention was to kill him and Henry, and despite the fact that Arundel had been encamped in Cheshire with an army at the time. Arundel retorted with a stinging attack on John, accusing him of being too friendly with the king. The parliament roll (which offers the most precise account of the argument) omits John’s accusations against Arundel, and states that Arundel decided to unburden himself of matters on his conscience, namely that it was not to the king’s honour to spend so much time with his uncle, nor that he should wear the livery of the Lancastrians. Why did he not treat his other uncles with similar favour? Why had John benefited so much from the money for his Spanish campaign, which had ultimately achieved nothing more than the enrichment of the Lancastrians? And what right did John have to give up the king of England’s authority to the French throne?
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Richard placated the earl of Arundel. He explained it was only natural that there should be affection between nephew and uncle, and he was not aware of treating John differently from his brothers. As to the Spanish money, Richard pointed out sensibly that it was parliament’s wish that John undertake his Spanish campaign, and in France he had simply negotiated
a draft agreement, as he was charged to do as an English ambassador. Nothing yet was set in stone on that matter. So there was no damage either to the king’s honour or to John’s. Arundel was forced to apologise publicly to the duke for his accusations.
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But the uneasiness did not end there. Despite his crusade and pilgrimage, Henry had been overlooked by the king when it had come to appointing receivers of petitions in parliament. In the last two parliaments at which he had been present – those of 1390 and 1391 – he
had
been appointed, along with the earls of Kent, Salisbury, Arundel and Warwick. In January 1394, all four of these earls were reappointed; not Henry, though. This may have been a further cause of upset for John. His son and heir was now approaching the age of twenty-seven, and had every right to be regarded as one of the most important men in the country. It was a clear slight to him that he was not. As a result, when Richard declared that he intended to lead an expedition to Ireland, the question arose as to who should be keeper of the realm in his absence overseas. Normally the next in line to the throne was appointed keeper.
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John understood that he was next in line, as his father had stipulated, but he was aware that he would have to go to Gascony. So he formally asked that Henry be appointed. In effect this was asking Richard to recognise that Henry was the heir apparent, in line with Edward III’s settlement. The twenty-year-old Roger Mortimer, earl of March, heard this and was outraged. He believed that he was the heir apparent, not Henry: the king had declared as much in 1386. Richard did not want to deal with such issues then and there, where he might provoke uproar. So he commanded both John and the young earl of March to be silent. He himself said nothing more on the subject.

For Henry, the parliament of 1394 amounted to another grinding disappointment, in which nothing of substance was resolved to his benefit. Even if his father was not politically damaged by Arundel’s stinging criticisms, Henry himself was. There was now a serious rift between the house of Lancaster and the earl of Arundel, a kinsman and a fellow Appellant. That, coupled with a property dispute, led to a further rift between Henry and the earl of Warwick.
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After all the honour foreign princes had afforded him, and after his journey to the Holy Land, it must have seemed incredible to Henry that he should be so disregarded by the king and members of the English court. Why were the earls of Arundel, Warwick and Kent appointed to be receivers of petitions, when Henry was now the best-known Englishman in wider Christendom, with the exception of his father and the king? And to whom was the king planning to entrust the realm if not to him? As for his feelings towards the earl of Arundel, it was unbecoming for that man to lecture his father on honour and loyalty. Had not John
striven hard all these years to do the king’s bidding? Had he not forgiven the king for trying to murder him, and trying to undermine his authority, as well as accusing him of treachery without good reason? What more did John have to do to prove himself a loyal servant of the king?

Such arguments had damaging consequences outside parliament too. With the king planning an expedition to Ireland, further taxation was required. For many people this represented a dangerous precedent: direct taxation was supposedly only levied in wartime. But this was the third instance of Richard demanding subsidies while pursuing a peace-making policy. And still he was unable to make ends meet. Many believed that the ills which had caused the Lords Appellant to take action were still with them, and yet those one-time champions of the people were now accusing each other of dishonour and selfishness. Only the younger Appellants, Henry and Thomas Mowbray, remained outside this criticism. The poet John Gower, having concluded the first draft of his great work,
Confessio Amantis,
in 1390 with passages praising the king, was sickened. He now deleted his lines in favour of Richard and dedicated the entire work to Henry. In return Henry gave him a Lancastrian livery collar, which the poet wore with pride until his death.
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*

As Henry and his father rode back from Westminster to Hertford Castle following the conclusion of the parliament, they both had reason to be disappointed.
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All John’s hard negotiations had ended in his draft treaty being rejected by parliament. Henry had simply been ignored. But perhaps the most worrying consequence of the session was the realisation that the king did not need either of them any more. Richard had defended John against Arundel’s accusations, not vice versa. And when it had come to clearing up the question of the succession, Richard had refused to recognise Henry’s claim. He no longer needed John’s help to fend off the royal uncles or the troublesome senior Appellants. John was still a dignified royal uncle and ambassador but the idea that he represented the rightful line of inheritance, as Henry had insisted in 1387, had dissolved in the turbulent waters of Richard’s personal kingship.

Unfortunately Henry’s accounts for the spring of 1394 do not survive, so it is not possible to determine where he was between March and June of that year. He may have accompanied his father and uncle Gloucester on their expedition back to Leulinghen to let the French ambassadors know the English answer to the proposed treaty. It is equally likely that he stayed at Hertford with his wife. Either way, a few days after his father set out, Henry heard the sad news that his stepmother, the duchess Constanza,
was dead. She had died unexpectedly, probably after a short illness, on 24 March.
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