1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (19 page)

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Across London, in St Martin’s Lane, John Claydon was sitting in the chamber above his shop. His servant, John Fuller, had been copying out the text of a book called
The Lantern of Light
, in accordance with Claydon’s instructions. As he finished each section he would read it back to Claydon. Today they had been working since eight in the morning on the last section, and had just about finished their work by dusk. Claydon was so pleased with the results that he declared he would happily have paid three times as much for copying the book than not have had possession of such a valuable treasure.

The Lantern of Light
was a recent work, written by John Grime, a Lollard. It contained the text of a sermon preached at Horsleydown on the other side of London, which Claydon had witnessed being delivered.
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The whole book was full of passionate, heartfelt rhetoric against the authority of the pope. For example, it said: ‘that wicked antichrist the pope hath sowed among the laws of Christ his popish and corrupt decrees, which are of no authority, strength, nor value’. And on indulgences, ‘the pope’s and the bishop’s indulgences be unprofitable, neither can they profit them to whom they be given by any means’. With regard to transubstantiation it denied that the bread and wine turned to the body and blood of Christ. Herein we also find the signal line: ‘in the court of Rome is the
head of Antichrist, and in archbishops and bishops is the body of Antichrist, but in these patched and clouted sects as monks and canons and friars is the venomous tail of Antichrist’.
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These were the very words used by Sir John Oldcastle in his defiance of the king’s promulgation of orthodoxy. Claydon can have had no illusions that copying this book was anything other than heresy in the eyes of the Church. For him, however, it was the one way to salvation. It was the truth, no matter what the king or the prelates said. As the
Lantern
declared, followers of its light ‘must needs suffer travail, if we will come to rest – and pain, if we come to bliss. He is a false coward knight that fleeth and hideth his head when his master is in the field beaten among his enemies …’ Claydon was no ‘coward knight’. He had already been imprisoned for two years in Conway Castle for heresy, and for another year in the Fleet Prison – in appalling conditions. When a heretical priest, William Sawtre, had been burnt alive in London in 1401, Claydon had recanted; but still he could not alter or set aside what he truly believed – not now, after twenty years of seeking his own spiritual path.

No doubt Claydon thought he was safe with his cherished heretical books behind locked doors. But it so happened that one of his apprentices, a fifteen-year-old boy called Alexander Philip, whom he had looked after for nearly three years, heard John Fuller reading parts of the
Lantern
to his master. And when Alexander Philip was dismissed from his apprenticeship with Claydon, he found another employer. This was none other than Thomas Falconer, the mayor of London.
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Claydon was suddenly on very dangerous ground.

Tuesday 5th

If Jan Hus had seen a copy of
The Lantern of Light
, he would have been shocked at the outrageous and inflammatory language but he would have agreed with many of Grime’s theological statements. Hus also followed Wycliffe in questioning both transubstantiation and the authority of the pope. His rhetoric was more restrained but his purpose was the same: to release Christians from the tyranny of the Church. He was far more dangerous than Grime, however, for two reasons. The first was that he preached a questioning of religious
authority from within – not so much a movement against the Church as the need for the Church itself to change. The second was that he was not an obscure English Lollard in hiding but a well-known theologian who was bold enough to argue his case at Constance itself. Hence his incarceration in the Dominican monastery.

Today, from his prison cell near the monastic refectory, Hus wrote to his loyal friend Lord John of Chlum. He thanked him for his steadfast support, and expressed his wish that ‘by the mercy of God, you await the conclusion of my trial like a soldier of Jesus Christ’. In his letter he stated that he had been without news of his friends for a considerable time – to the extent that he had been led to believe Lord John of Chlum had packed up and gone home. Only some Polish knights had been to see him, apart from one or two of his countrymen. He had been suffering terribly from kidney stones, as well as vomiting and fevers. When an old friend came to see him, Master Christian of Prachatice, Hus could not help himself and burst into uncontrolled sobs and tears.

Hus knew that his physical weaknesses and social estrangement were nothing compared to the sinister powers now being lined up against him. Jean Gerson himself had issued a series of articles condemning him, and other enemies were falsifying evidence against him. Hus was too frightened to put his answers to religious questions on paper, for fear his letters would be intercepted by the guards. The letters that came to him he destroyed immediately after reading them, so they could not be used against him. He seems to have placed all his hope in the emperor: as he wrote,

I would be glad if the emperor were to command that a copy of my responses to Wycliffe be given to him. Oh, that God would inspire his lips so that he would declare himself one of the princes for the truth!
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Wednesday 6th

There are very few indicators of Henry’s activity at Westminster in late February and early March. Even the sealing of the charter of Syon on the 3rd ‘by the king himself’ does not necessarily indicate that he
was at Westminster. After all, the same document states that it was witnessed by the earl of Warwick and Lord Fitzhugh, both of whom were still at Constance. Similarly a letter to the bishop of Salisbury, dated today at Westminster, recording Henry’s assent to the election of John Brunyng as abbot of Sherborne, could have been drawn up by the keeper of the privy seal in the king’s absence.
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It is possible that the king left the palace at this time, perhaps to spend time with his closest companions away from the household, or maybe going on pilgrimage. One chronicle records that he went to several towns in person, demanding money – and the next we know of him for certain, he was doing just that, in London.

The reason for this line of speculation is not simply because of the absence of evidence locating the king at Westminster at this time. It is also because it is likely that Henry paid a visit to Southampton. Two months after this date a royal sergeant-at-arms was reimbursed for arresting one Christopher Rys and bringing him by royal command ‘to the king’s presence at Southampton’.
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This is of course a retrospective payment, like most reimbursements of expenses on the Issue Rolls. But it seems Henry may have made a short visit to his port of embarkation between the last week of February and early March, to make preparations for the embarkation in the summer and perhaps to survey the area where the troops were to be billeted.

Sunday 10th

Henry was certainly back in the city before today. He went to the Tower of London, and commanded several of the most important men of the city to join him there. Among them were the mayor, Thomas Falconer, and all the aldermen. When they were all gathered in the hall, Henry entered and addressed them:

Well-beloved. We do desire that it shall not be concealed from the knowledge of your faithfulness, how that, God our rewarder, we do intend with no small army to visit the parts beyond the sea, that so we may duly re-conquer the lands pertaining to the inheritance and crown of our realm, which have for long, in the time of our predecessors, by enormous wrong been withheld. But, seeing that we cannot speedily attain to everything that is necessary in this behalf for the perfecting of our wishes, in order that we may make provision for borrowing a competent sum of money from all the prelates, nobles, lords, cities, boroughs and substantial men of our realm, knowing that you will be the more ready to incline to our wishes the sooner that the purpose of our intention, as aforesaid, redounds to the manifest advantage of the whole realm, have therefore not long since come to the determination to send certain lords of our council to the city aforesaid, to treat with you as to promoting the business above mentioned.
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Although this record of his speech falls someway short of Shakespearian oratory, the message was clear. Henry wanted money. He intended to obtain it from the leading London citizens. And he was not going to lower himself so far as to ask them for it in person; he would send others to tell them how much he required.

Monday 11th

A great session of all the prelates was held in the cathedral of Constance in order to decide how they might elect a new pope for the whole of Christendom. Various prelates spoke. Eventually Johan von Nassau, archbishop of Mainz, stood up. He was of the opinion that they were all beholden to Pope John XXIII and should re-elect him as supreme pontiff of the reunited Church. If they did not, the archbishop declared, he himself would not sit there with them any longer, for he would never pay obedience to another man.

After all the difficulties they had faced in getting John XXIII to agree to resign, the reaction was predictable – complete uproar. Pope John was as corrupt and selfish as the worst of his predecessors; he was certainly not the man to fill the reunited Church with a sense of spiritual purpose and dignity. The patriarch of Constantinople expressed the feelings of the majority when he stood up and shouted out in Latin, ‘Who is that man? He deserves to be burned!’

The archbishop of Mainz was driven to fury. He strode out of the cathedral, demanding that all those of his obedience should follow him. He took a boat that same day and went home. The prelates,
needing time to confer with their nations and legal advisers, dispersed to their houses.
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Tuesday 12th

Bishop Courtenay stood at the black marble table in the great hall of the royal palace in Paris.
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The huge four-aisled space was filled with the dignitaries and knighthood of the kingdom of France. This sermon was not going to be an easy one. On the one hand he had to ensure that he was seen to do everything within his power to bring about a peace settlement between England and France. On the other, he had to fail.

Actual terms would be laid out formally the following day. Now was the time for a sermon on the prospect of peace. Courtenay took as his theme a line from Isaiah 39: 8: ‘Then said Hezekiah to Isaiah, Good is the word of the Lord which you have spoken, for there shall be peace and truth in my days’.
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The French prelates would have known the context of that verse. It was Hezekiah’s response to a warning that Isaiah had given him. Hezekiah had showed ‘all that is in my house’ – all his gold, silver, spices, ointments and armour – to some messengers who had come to him from the king of Babylon. Hearing this, Isaiah had said to Hezekiah, ‘Hear the word of the Lord of hosts: Behold, the days come, that all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried to Babylon, nothing shall be left, says the Lord. And your sons … shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.’ This warning was what had prompted Hezekiah to say, ‘There shall be peace and truth in my days’ – a declaration of peace despite the threat of war.

We do not know exactly what Courtenay said in elaborating on this theme, but we can see that it would have cast the prospect of peace into the shadow of war. According to the French chroniclers, Courtenay talked at length about justice. He emphatically declared that no peace was possible without it. As we have seen, justice was indeed something that principally motivated Henry. But Courtenay was referring to a particular form of justice. It amounted to the injustice of the French refusal to accept Edward III’s claim to the throne of France, and to flout the terms of the Treaty of Brétigny of 1360.
Courtenay seems to have claimed that no permanent peace was possible unless the terms of a treaty that had been set aside as unworkable and irrelevant for the last fifty-five years were now implemented.

Wednesday 13th

The day after Courtenay’s speech, the French royal family staged a show of strength. The ambassadors of John the Fearless – including the duke of Brabant, Margaret of Holland, the bishop of Tournai, the seigneur de Ront and William Bouvier – and the representatives of the county of Flanders, of which John was the overlord, swore on pieces of the True Cross that they and he would preserve the peace of Arras, which they had confirmed the previous month. The duke of Brabant and his sister also ‘certified that their brother [John the Fearless] had made no alliance with England’ and nor would he make any in future that were to the detriment of France. Following this, the old duke of Berry swore the same oath on the relics, and so did Charles, duke of Orléans, the duke of Alençon and the duke of Bourbon. The count of Eu and the count of Vendôme followed them, as well as the chancellor of France, other officials of the royal household, and a large number of archbishops and bishops.
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The oath-taking had a double purpose. The first was to strengthen confidence in the actual reconciliation with Burgundy. The second was to show the English representatives that the French royal family was once more united. If there had been any implicit threat in Courtenay’s sermon the previous day, then it was received with a demonstration of unity.

Courtenay himself would have been quietly amused, for he knew of Henry’s secret dealings with John the Fearless. Philip Morgan, who had met the dukes of Burgundy and Holland the previous year, was there in Paris with him. But this was certainly not the time and place to use such knowledge; rather this was the time to present Henry’s demands plainly, and in such a way that they would be refused.