1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (15 page)

Wednesday 6th

At Constance, English interests were under attack. The French were proposing that all decisions should be decided by a ballot – one prelate, one vote. In this they were supported by the Italians, who heavily outnumbered the other nations at Constance.

If matters were to be decided by one prelate one vote, and if only cardinals, bishops and abbots were to be able to vote, as some prelates argued, then the three English bishops and five abbots would be lost amidst the hundreds of prelates in attendance. Not for the last time
did a matter of religious protocol descend into a war of words between the English and the French. The English and Germans went so far as to state categorically that, if voting was to be conducted by heads, then they would not take any further part in the council. They demanded that an equal number of representatives from each nation should be deputed to discuss resolutions. That was not good enough for the French. The meeting broke up in disagreement.

The following morning, however, the French gave in. Voting would be conducted by nations. Perhaps they realised that they would never be able to force John XXIII to resign if every Italian prelate present had a vote on whether to depose him or not. No further objections were raised as to the English being a nation in their own right. The first of Henry’s objectives had been achieved.
³¹

Friday 8th

Henry issued a commission to Master John Eymere, doctor in law, to hear an appeal by Sir Edward Hastings against Reginald, Lord Grey, in the court of chivalry concerning a case of the right to bear a coat of arms.
³²
It is perhaps worth noting that this is the last piece of business for several days which places the king at Westminster. All other recorded entries for the next week were either routine chancery business or orders under the authority of the office of the privy seal, which did not require the king to be present.

Saturday 9th

The chronicler Enguerrand de Monstrelet noted that ‘around this time’ the English ambassadors arrived in Paris, and that their arrival was followed on the morrow with feasting and tourneying, which they attended.
³³
The date seems to be supported by the chronicler of St Denis, who notes their arrival on a Saturday after Thursday 7 February.
³⁴
However, although this evidence seems unambiguous, it is difficult to accept it for the arrival of
all
the English ambassadors. Two of them had been at the council meeting at Blackfriars, which took place on or after 1 February; so they and their entourages would have still been
several days’ away from Paris.
³⁵
They could hardly have hurried along at forty miles a day – twice the usual travelling speed – for one of the ambassadors was in his fifties, they had a huge entourage, daylight was limited, there was little moon (it had last been full on 25 January), and the roads were still very muddy.
³⁶
Thus the reference to the arrival of the English ambassadors probably relates to the arrival of
some
English ambassadors – probably those who travelled via Harfleur, or Richard Courtenay, Richard Holme and Philip Morgan, who were already in France. As we have seen, the ambassadors all set off on different days and several of them took different routes.
³⁷

Courtenay probably arrived in Paris earlier than the others, and took up residence initially in the
hôtel de Navarre
.
³⁸
There he met Master Jean Fusoris, an elderly gentleman, knowledgeable in astrology and mathematics. He had made clocks, spheres and astrolabes for the kings of France and Aragon, amongst others. Courtenay, who had been chancellor of the University of Oxford three times (although still only thirty-three), had been drawn to him on account of his astrological knowledge. The two men had talked at length, and Courtenay had bought seven astronomical instruments from the savant on his previous trip to Paris. However, he had not paid for them in full, and had left France owing 200 crowns. Having argued at the end of their first meeting about the rights and wrongs of Jean Petit’s
Justification of the duke of Burgundy
, there may have been a personal reason in Courtenay’s failure to pay what he owed.

When Fusoris called on Bishop Courtenay at the
hôtel de Navarre
, any past animosity had apparently vanished. They discussed King Henry’s demands for peace, and Fusoris consulted his charts and determined that the English would probably be successful in obtaining what they desired. Courtenay told Fusoris that he wished he could introduce him to the king, for Henry was very interested in astrology. This was true; Henry owned several astrolabes of his own and had had his birth date and time subjected to astrological prognostication.
³⁹
In the early fifteenth century it was supposed that the planets affected everything – from the origin of plagues to the outcome of wars, and even such small matters as the most propitious time to draw blood. Courtenay therefore pressed Fusoris on whether the proposed marriage between the king and Katherine of France would be a good one. Fusoris again consulted his charts and declared that it would.
Would it be accomplished in this embassy? Courtenay asked – and with that question we can see he was stringing the poor old Frenchman along. No, Fusoris declared. Courtenay, pushing disinformation out all the time, then declared to Fusoris that he knew that Henry was not in good health, and he was worried whether he would die. What did the king’s birth chart hold for the future? Fusoris refused to be drawn on this question, however. Instead he asked for his 200 crowns. Courtenay dismissed this and promised Fusoris that, if the Frenchman could arrange to come over to England with the next diplomatic embassy, he would arrange for him to be appointed physician to the dowager queen of England, as Fusoris held a master’s degree in physic. Poor Fusoris seems to have been completely outwitted by the sly Englishman, and left not quite knowing what he had to do to get his money back.

*

At Westminster, a commission was drawn up for four more ships to be made ready, with mariners and servants. These were all from the fleet harboured in ‘the pool of the Thames’, beside the Tower (now known as London Dock). Three of the four can be identified as barges on the surveys of 1417: the
Thomas of the Tower
, captained by William Hore; the
Trinity of the Tower
, captained by John Kingston; and the
Mary of the Tower
, captained by Richard Walsh.
⁴⁰
The fourth ship was the
Philip of the Tower
, commanded by Robert Schedde.

Sunday 10th

The seventh Sunday before Easter was the first day of a three-daylong period of communal over-eating, collectively known as Shrovetide. The following Wednesday would be the first day of Lent, and a six-week-long fast, so all the meat, soft cheeses and eggs had to be consumed before then. The eating and drinking was accompanied by dances, music, wrestling and games of football or camp-ball.

In Paris the courts were closed, flags were up in the streets, the taverns were open, and people were living it up. Most spectacular of all, a royal tournament was held in the rue St Antoine. Even the weak-minded
king took part. Dressed in armour, he rode against the duke of Alençon, who carefully and sportingly allowed the king to split a lance against him, for the delight of the spectators. John the Fearless’s brother, the duke of Brabant, jousted cordially with the duke of Orléans in a show of dynastic reconciliation. The dauphin, who had just turned eighteen, indulged himself to excess in all his various pleasures, as he was increasingly wont to do. The queen of France and the dauphin’s wife dressed in their finest clothes, and waited on the noblemen, ambassadors and proctors.
⁴¹

Enjoyable as this might have been for those Englishmen who had already arrived, their negotiations were not due to begin for some days. First, the terms of the
ordonnance
had to be discussed. Peace between France and England would have to wait until peace between France and Burgundy had been achieved.

Tuesday 12th: Shrove Tuesday

The third and final day of Shrovetide was the day of the greatest excess. Yesterday had been ‘Collop Monday’ when slices of meat were traditionally consumed. Today was ‘Fasting’s Eve’, or ‘Shrove Tuesday’ (the word ‘shrove’ coming from ‘shriving’, or absolution for the confession of one’s sins).
⁴²
Everything that was not eaten by the end of the day would be wasted, so gluttony – and generosity – prevailed. Cockfighting was conducted by boys, pestering the adults to bet on their birds. Towns and villages held games of football. Cockthreshing contests were held too. This was the game of trying to kill a tethered cock by throwing stones at it. The winner was rewarded with the carcass of the victim.

Wednesday 13th: Ash Wednesday

Today Henry would have washed his face and hands, dressed, and left his chamber to go into a private chapel. The crucifix would have been veiled before he entered. He would have made his confession to Stephen Patrington. A priest would have blessed ashes and sprinkled them with holy water, and then pressed some of the mixture on the
king’s forehead, saying ‘Remember O Man that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return’.
⁴³

From now until Easter there would be no feasting, no meat-eating, no eggs and no cheese. Popular dishes such as
leche Lombard
, stewed beef pottage, and bacon collops, were off the menu, as were flans and suet-based puddings.
⁴⁴
Henry’s diet would have been reduced to one of bread, fish, seafood, peas, onions, beans, raisins and nuts. Preserved fruit, such as quinces, and carefully kept apples and pears would have been available, as well as the occasional imported orange. His cooks and sauciers would have done their best to produce dishes fit for his high table, using almond milk instead of cows’ milk, and flavouring food and sauces with sugar, garlic, mustard and spices. Some exotica slipped through the legal definition of ‘fish’, such as porpoise, beaver and whale, but these were rarities. On the whole, all men of substance looked forward to the end of Lent, and the return of roast meats and dairy products.

Thursday 14th

The feast of St Valentine was not a major feast in the medieval calendar; its social significance was rather that this was the day when birds were supposed to begin their courtship flights (thus St Valentine was the patron saint of birds). The poet Geoffrey Chaucer remarked upon the belief that birds chose their mates upon St Valentine’s Day. However, he did not remark on any amorous connotations for men and women. In the later fifteenth century, Valentine’s Day gifts would be sent to friends, without any attempt at anonymity, and apparently without carnal or amorous connotations.
⁴⁵
Whether or not such presents indicated affection, it is highly unlikely that Henry regarded the day as having anything to do with love. Certainly he did not despatch any presents to Katherine – the third of the king of France’s daughters to be the focus of his plans for a diplomatic marriage.

If the day had any wider meaning for Henry, it was in relation to Richard II, the man who had knighted him. On this day, fifteen years earlier, Richard had died in prison, murdered on the orders of Henry’s father, probably by enforced starvation.
⁴⁶
The
Brut
chronicle, written in the 1430s, records how the pope had enjoined upon Henry IV the penance of burning four candles around the dead king’s tomb, and
having Masses sung for his soul, and distributing alms on the anniversary of his death.
⁴⁷
Henry IV had done none of these things, and had even temporarily buried him elsewhere, at Langley; but Henry V made good the things which his father had refused to do. Thus it was Henry V who made sure that the pennies were doled out to the paupers at Westminster, in remembrance of the murdered king, on this day.
⁴⁸

Friday 15th

As remarked above, hardly any royal business was conducted over Shrovetide this year. Henry may have taken a small band of friends with him and gone on pilgrimage. An absence of a week may suggest a pilgrimage to Canterbury, where his father and the Black Prince were both buried in the Trinity Chapel. There too was the point of the sword which had killed St Thomas Becket, and English kings had for generations made pilgrimages to it, to atone for the crime of their murderous ancestor, also called Henry. Alternatively, Henry may have taken a barge up the river to the royal manor of Sheen, where he had started rebuilding the manor house on a grand scale, around a large central courtyard, and where he was to begin work on a series of three new monasteries on both sides of the Thames.

If he had gone anywhere over Shrovetide, it is likely he was back by today. Or at least had finished his pilgrimage. A letter bearing this date was sent to the treasurer and barons of the exchequer ordering them not to trouble Lord Scrope, Henry’s close friend, for his homage as the king had already taken homage from him for all his lands at the time of his coronation.
⁴⁹

*

At Constance, the English, German and French delegations met together. For once they had a common cause. They had decided that the best way to reunite the papacy was to secure the abdication of Pope John XXIII, and if not his abdication then his deposition, in line with Cardinal Fillastre’s memorandum. Knowing that many members of the numerous Italian nation were against the deposition of the Pisan pope in principle, this meeting was to establish who was best
qualified to tackle the Italians. They decided that the bishop of Toulon should act as their collective spokesman.