1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (14 page)

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At about this time a council meeting was held at the London house of the Dominican friars, or the Blackfriars as they were also known. This was the council’s usual meeting place in the king’s absence. Unfortunately the minutes are simply dated ‘February’ – but the presence of at least one councillor, Thomas Beaufort, in Paris by 21 February (at the latest) points to a meeting early in the month.
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Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham, who travelled to France with
Thomas Beaufort, was also present. The other councillors there were Henry Beaufort (the chancellor), the archbishop of Canterbury, the duke of York, Lord Scrope, Sir Thomas Erpingham (the steward of the royal household), and John Prophet (keeper of the privy seal). The purpose of their meeting was to decide what measures were necessary to safeguard the realm during the king’s expedition abroad, presuming the ambassadors failed to arrange peace.
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The first striking thing about this council meeting is that there was no doubt in these men’s minds that war was inevitable. There was no discussion of what would happen if the ambassadors to France were successful, even though two of them were present. Already it was a foregone conclusion that they would fail to secure a suitable peace.

The measures the council recommended for the safety of the seas ‘during the voyage of the king’ required a small force of two great ships (defined as capable of carrying a load of 120 tuns in peacetime), five barges (100 tuns) and five balingers. Each great ship and each barge was to be manned by forty-eight mariners, twenty-six men-at-arms, and twenty-six archers. Each balinger was to be manned by forty mariners, ten men-at-arms and ten archers. The council directed that the coast from Plymouth to the Isle of Wight should be guarded by the two ships, two of the barges and one balinger. Two barges and two balingers should patrol the sea from the Isle of Wight to Orfordness, in Norfolk. The remaining two balingers and one barge should guard the coast from Orfordness all the way north to Berwick. It sounds a paltry force to cover nearly a thousand miles of coastline, but even that thin coverage required a thousand men. The men-at-arms would expect to be paid 1s per day each, the archers 6d per day, the master mariners 6d per day, and the mariners 3d per day.
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This amounted to £732 per month in wages alone for the twelve ships.

Guarding against a substantial Welsh or Scottish raid during the king’s absence was council’s next task. For the whole of Wales they allotted only one hundred men-at-arms and two hundred archers. Forty of the men-at-arms and eighty of the archers were to be stationed at Strata Florida, and the rest in the north. As for the Scottish Marches, the provision was even smaller. Just one hundred men-at-arms were allocated to guard the East March, stationed at Berwick – the council added that it was necessary to speak to the king about repairing Berwick Castle. The West March received no extra troops at all. Calais
was relatively well provisioned by comparison, with an extra one hundred men-at-arms and two hundred archers.

This is the second striking thing about the council meeting. It recommended that very few men be stationed at the most dangerous places in the realm. The reason for this sparse allocation was hinted at in the next paragraph of the minutes. Councillors agreed that no final decision about payment should be made until the treasurer of England had made a full report of the finances of the kingdom. They urged the king to make a full enquiry into the state of the finances of his household, the income from the royal estates, and all the debts he had incurred since his coronation, including the annuities paid out. Only after these things had been seen to could the king make his expedition like a good Christian prince, they said, with God’s approval, to accomplish the object of his voyage.

Sunday 3rd

With Candlemas over, Henry’s representatives at Constance set about the serious business of their mission. The first objective was to secure the recognition of England as a ‘nation’.

In the fourteenth century, the idea of a ‘nation state’ as we know it did not exist. Europe was made up of kingdoms (such as England and France), independent princedoms, duchies and counties (such as the palatine county of the Rhine, the duchy of Milan, and the duchy of Holland) and, in Italy especially, a number of independent city states, such as Venice and Florence. Some duchies, counties and city states – especially in Austria, Germany, Eastern Europe and the Low Countries – were part of the Holy Roman Empire, governed by the emperor, an elected overlord. The idea of a political ‘nation’, in which the people participated in one single financial, legal and defensive sovereign government, which supposedly ruled in the interests of the entire nation, was only just beginning to develop. The furthest along this line of development was England, which had seen a nationalist programme of reform under Edward III. This extended to parliamentary representation, the promotion of a national language, the adoption of a common law, and nationwide taxation for national defence. Even so, England would not yet have been described as a political ‘nation’ in the language of the time.

The word ‘nation’ did, however, have meaning in ecclesiastical circles. The Italian peninsula might have been made up of many city states, papal states, and the kingdom of Naples and the duchy of Milan, with no single over-arching government, but it was a ‘nation’ in the sense that all its prelates were regarded in the eyes of the Church as being part of the Italian nation. Likewise Spain was regarded as a nation, for the separate kingdoms of Portugal, Castile, Aragon and Navarre all fell geographically within Spain in the eyes of the Church. France – with all its semi-autonomous duchies and counties – constituted a third ecclesiastical nation. And the united kingdom of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, and all the states under the titular authority of the Holy Roman Emperor, were regarded as forming the German nation.

The anomaly was the British Isles. Traditionally the kingdoms of England and Scotland were regarded as part of the German nation, and their bishops and abbots sat with their German counterparts. But at the council of Pisa, England had been recognised as a nation in its own right.
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The question was this: did the decision at Pisa constitute an aberration? Or should England be considered a fifth nation?

This was not just a matter of national pride. If England was an ecclesiastical nation, and if voting was to be done by nations, then there were four national votes to be cast at Constance – those of Germany, Italy, France and England. (No delegation from any part of the Spanish nation had yet arrived.) In such circumstances England’s prelates would constitute one whole quarter of the electorate. Henry’s ambassadors would find it much easier to carry out their king’s wishes than those from all the German, Italian and French realms and states, who would first have to persuade the representatives of rival governments before securing the vote of their nation. On the other hand, if England was simply part of the German nation, then Henry’s handful of ambassadors would simply be swallowed up. Henry’s programme of ecclesiastical reform would be very unlikely even to be heard, let alone agreed.

Jacob Cerretano, the Italian papal notary, was clearly bored by the English insistence that England should be recognised as a nation in its own right. He described the discussions on this day as ‘some difficulties raised by the English nation’.
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However, in using that very term, ‘nation’, Cerretano reflected an important point. The English had already taken the matter into their own hands by sitting
independently. While the Germans sat in the chapter house of the Franciscan monastery in Constance, the English had established themselves in the refectory. They had thus resolved the issue
de facto
. Furthermore, as they were soliciting Sigismund for a treaty, and likely to be amenable to his own programme of reform, the emperor saw possible advantages in recognising the English nation as an independent body. No doubt he thought that the English would act as a sidekick to his German prelates, and a counterbalance to the French and Italians present.

Monday 4th

The Issue Rolls record various payments under today’s date.
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There were the usual administrative payments, such as money paid by Sir Roger Leche, treasurer of the royal household, for ‘mercery wares’. Two men were paid for auditing the chamberlain’s accounts from South Wales. And there was a payment of 100 marks to the duke of York which had been owing since the reign of Edward III. This was originally part of a sum granted by the crown to the duke’s father; it therefore marks a form of dynastic settling-up. It also included a sum of £94 8s 9½d paid to the late duke’s widow, now the wife of Lord Scrope, in respect of her dower.

There are just three payments relating to the defence of the realm. Like the January entries, they reveal a concentration on the two ports: Calais and Southampton. Roger Salvayn, treasurer of Calais – whom Henry had commissioned to requisition ships the previous month – was paid 16 marks (£10 13s 4d) for his wages and for employing six men at Calais to shape stones for the guns to defend the town. The victualler of Calais, Richard Threll, was paid simply for ‘stuff’.

At Southampton Henry was building up his navy. The ships he had inherited from his father were being refitted under the clerk of the king’s ships, William Catton. Two of the largest, the
Trinity Royal
and the
Holy Ghost
– each requiring a crew of two hundred men – were being made ready for the forthcoming expedition. With only twenty or twenty-five vessels in his possession, all the ships had to be ready, seaworthy and defensible.
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The reconditioning of the
Holy Ghost
was nearing completion. On this day William Soper was paid £4 13s 4d ‘for
timber and making a swan and an antelope for the king’s new great ship, called the
Holy Ghost
, built at Southampton’, these animals being the royal heraldic insignia with which it would set sail.
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By far the most important entries on this roll are two payments concerning the king’s diplomatic activities. John Chamberlain, a clerk of the admiralty, was paid for a mission to the duke of Brittany for ‘certain causes considered necessary by the king’.
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Brittany – one of the most independent of the semi-autonomous duchies owing allegiance to the king of France – was home to many of the pirates who harassed English shipping in the Channel. Although the duke was the son of the dowager queen of England (Henry’s stepmother, Queen Joan), piratical raids repeatedly took place. Henry’s own ship, the
Gabriel of the Tower
, was a captured and reconditioned Breton vessel. Because of this, Henry had sought an agreement with the duke even before his accession. A ten-year truce had been agreed on 3 January 1414 and confirmed on 18 April that year. It specifically bound the duke not to assist Henry’s enemies.
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That was why Henry had been so keen in the subsequent parliament to pass the Statute of Truces. Any damage to the truce by continued piracy could threaten his invasion plans. In the light of the king of France’s newly drafted
ordonnance
, which required all treaties between his subjects and Henry to be annulled, the duke of Brittany had to make a choice. Would he observe his ten-year truce with Henry? Or his oath of loyalty to the king of France?

Even more significant is another entry on this roll. It begins:

To various messengers sent with letters under the privy seal of the king to various archbishops, bishops, dukes, earls and other lords directing them to be at Westminster for a council of the said lord king there being held the 15th [day] after Easter next [15 April], for certain causes and necessary matters of the said lord our king.
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This was to be the great council at which Henry declared openly his plans for invading France. His peace negotiators had only just set out – and already Henry was preparing to announce that England was going to war. As the council minutes of early February made clear, and as this payment shows, peace was not an option.

It is typical, however, to note that on the same day as the above
message was first circulated, relating to a bellicose act, Henry made a grant of a charitable nature. He ordered that the warden and scholars of King’s Hall in the University of Cambridge be paid the sum of 50 marks yearly, in lieu of a grant originally made to them by Richard II.
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Tuesday 5th

John Conyn, the king’s tent-maker, was today commissioned to employ workmen to make the tents necessary for the king’s household and retinue on the forthcoming expedition, and to arrange the carriage of the said tents.
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Other minor issues dealt with today include the king’s personal order to Henry Kays, the keeper of the hanaper in chancery, to deliver to the master of the king’s minstrels, John Clyffe, and one Thomas Trompenell, letters patent granting them both royal pardons against any crime they might have committed, including treason, rape and murder.
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Pardons of a different sort were granted to Sir Thomas Pomeroy and William Cheney for failing to deliver the requisite amounts due at the exchequer when they had each been sheriff of Devon.
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Losses by Pomeroy in his time in office led to the king letting him off £30; and Cheney was forgiven £60 of his debt. Sir Lewis Robesart, one of the king’s most trusted household knights, received a grant of £40, payable by the sheriffs of London, for his good service to the king.
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