1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (34 page)

In England the most noticeable ceremonies connected with this feast were the plays and processions performed around the country. For the last forty years an increasing number of the principal towns and cities had seen religious plays performed on this date. In some places (York and Coventry, for instance) a whole series of religious plays was staged – ranging from enactments of the building of the Ark to the flight into the Holy Land. Juliana’s vision of a holy celebration was sufficiently abstract to allow medieval people to celebrate their faith in whatever way they wanted. In other places (Lynn and Exeter), the Holy Eucharist was paraded around the town in a tabernacle, followed by all the townsfolk.
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These celebrations were modestly observed in the royal household. No great feast was held to mark the day; household expenses were only a little more than usual.
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The main event of the day was rather
Henry’s formal instruction to Richard Courtenay, keeper of the king’s jewels, to deliver valuables to each of the lords, knights and esquires serving on the forthcoming expedition. The process was for the treasurer to supply a personally signed (not sealed) bill authorising the amount due for the second quarter’s service, and for Bishop Courtenay to assign gold and jewels to that value.
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Those receiving items of treasure had to seal an indenture acknowledging receipt – this somewhat recklessly promised they could keep the gold and jewels if they had not been redeemed by a certain time.

Friday 31st

Henry had as yet experienced no signal failure in his reign – but that did not mean that all was well throughout his realm. Gascony in particular had seen him exercise almost no authority since the truce of February 1414 and the end of Thomas Beaufort’s campaign. For many Gascons this was exactly as they wanted things; the less interference from the king of England the better. But for others, especially those who were directly threatened by the advancing French, it was quite the opposite. If they sided with the French, they were prey to attack from the English lords in Gascony. If they stood loyally by Henry, they were liable to be attacked by the French. Each attack cost them dearly in destroyed lives, ruined fabric, robbed churches, violated women, burnt buildings and heavy financial penalties. A light-touch approach was all very well for Henry but it was calamitous for many of his Gascon subjects.

As a result of this situation, some Gascon lords and even some ladies had decided to take matters into their own hands. One such was Jehanne d’Armagnac, the widow of Guillaume Amanieu de Madaillan, lord of Lesparre and Rauzan. Hitherto her husband’s family had been loyal to the king of England, being relatively safely situated on the west coast, south of the Gironde; but now Jehanne decided to shift her allegiance. She decided to marry the count of Foix, who had already deserted the English cause, and to arrange the marriage of her daughter with his son. Such an alliance threatened to open up the way for the French to exercise influence in Médoc, close to Bordeaux, the seat of the English administration in Gascony. With French forces
pushing in from the north towards the Gironde, and Lesparre to the south threatening to turn French, Henry stood to lose control of the river – and with it access to the region. Seated in his chamber at Westminster, Henry must have felt frustrated. Sir John Tiptoft had been appointed seneschal of Aquitaine, and he had received his instructions for negotiating a new treaty; but he had yet to set sail – and it was a three-week voyage to Gascony. All Henry could do was to order that the lordship of Lesparre be confiscated (which he did today) and hope that no more lords – or indomitable widows – chose to swear loyalty to the French king.
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Jan Hus’s friends, including all the lords who had presented their petition on 13 May, reassembled. There had been a second meeting in the interim, on the 18th, when certain implications of the lies being spread about the state of the Church in Bohemia had been discussed. Now Bohemian and Polish lords replied to accusations made at that hearing and protested against the continued detention of their preacher.

Once more Peter of Mladoňovice spoke up for Hus. In the first of two documents that he read aloud, he argued against certain heretical acts that Hus’s enemies had dreamed up to attack him. Again he argued that Hus should not be tarred with the same brush as Wycliffe himself, for, although Hus was a follower of Wycliffe, he himself was not responsible for anything that Wycliffe had written. Peter asserted that Hus had never promoted errors or erroneous beliefs, and he stressed that Hus had worked hard to eradicate errors and misunderstandings. In the second document he referred to the recent hardships of Hus, and the support he enjoyed in Bohemia. As to Hus’s own writings, Peter argued that it was obvious that Hus sought only the truth, and never to preach anything heretical or erroneous. Many of the heretical quotations supposedly found in his books were not written by him at all. Peter stressed how much of the ill-fame Hus had suffered was due to personal enemies spreading lies about him and declaring he had uttered heresies that had nothing to do with him. But the situation could yet be redeemed. All that was necessary now was for Hus to ‘be fairly heard by learned men
and masters of sacred scripture … in regard to each and every article laid to his charge, in order that he may explain his intention and meaning’.
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May it therefore please your most reverend paternities to free the said Master Jan Hus, neither convicted nor condemned, from the chains and shackles in which he is now cruelly detained, and to place him in the hands of some reverend lord bishops … in order that he, Master Jan Hus, may regain his strength and thus may be more carefully and readily examined … The lords and nobles of Bohemia offer to give a guarantee … until his process and trial has been settled.
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It was a powerful, passionate performance. Both documents were carefully copied and submitted to the deputies of the nations and also sent to Sigismund. Two other documents were submitted at the same time. The first was a record of the public testimony of the bishop of Nezero, the head of the inquisition into heresy in the city of Prague, stating that, after many conversations with Hus, he had discerned no heresy in him. The second was a letter of support from the lords of Moravia.

The patriarch of Antioch, a French theologian called Dr Jean Maroux, replied: ‘Whether his [Hus’s] protest proves to be valid will become evident in the course of the trial’. As for the false abstractions from Hus’s works and accusations made by his enemies, Dr Maroux declared that their veracity would be reflected in the final sentence on Hus. Concerning the main tenor of the petition, Dr Maroux said that the deputies of the nations ‘were willing to grant him a favourable public hearing’ and that ‘they were willing to deal kindly with him’. The trial would take place on 5 June.

There was just one fly in the ointment. Dr Maroux stated that Hus could not possibly be released from prison, regardless of the number of lords standing guarantee for him, ‘for under no circumstances is he to be trusted’. However ‘kindly’ and ‘favourably’ the deputies might treat him at his forthcoming trial, there was no avoiding the fact that, in their minds, he was guilty.

June

Saturday 1st

EVER SINCE THE
meeting of the lords during the great council of 15–18 April, Henry had known that royal jewels, treasures and precious artefacts would have to be pawned out. But for Richard Courtenay, the prospect of handing out the mass of precious items in the Jewel Tower of the Palace of Westminster must have been daunting. Here were golden collars, brooches, plain coronets, crowns dripping with rubies and diamonds, and swords with gilt handles. Here was the sword garnished with ostrich feathers, which Henry had used in Wales. Here too were helmets with golden circlets, jewel-encrusted belts, rings with precious stones, gold and silver spurs, gold and silver collars for hawks and hounds, gilt-silver candlesticks, golden dishes for spices and salt, gold plates, gold bowls for hawks, gold aquamaniles (water jugs), ewers and basins, and enamelled gilt-silver cups and goblets. Even if Courtenay was familiar with the sight of it all, never before could he have faced the prospect of giving it all away. It would be a difficult task to make sure everything was redeemed within two years.

Here and there among the chests of gold and silver were some real treasures – priceless items that would be a heavy responsibility to pass over to a creditor. The Iklington Collar was a heavy gold collar worn by Henry when he had been prince of Wales, ‘garnished with four rubies, four great sapphires, thirty-two great pearls and fifty-three lesser pearls’. Courtenay reckoned it was worth about £300. Even more valuable, at £458 13s 4d, was a pair of large gold basins, each weighing 14lbs 4oz, chased in a rose pattern and enamelled with the arms of St George in the centre, and around the rims with the arms of St Edward, St Edmund, the emperor, England and France,
the principality of Wales and the duchy of Guienne. The Tigre was another great treasure: an alms dish of gold, shaped like a ship carried by a bear, garnished with nineteen balas rubies, twenty-six pearls, weighing more than 22lbs. Courtenay placed a value of £332 on that. There was another great ship: a warship made of gilt-silver, with castles at the prow and the stern and the figures of twelve men-at-arms fighting on the deck. Its value was £156 12s. And then there was the Pallet of Spain: a helmet with a crown attached, garnished with thirty-five balas rubies, four sapphires, fifteen large emeralds, three hundred small emeralds, and three hundred small pearls, the crown alone weighing 8lbs 60z.
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All these named and exquisite treasures paled into insignificance when compared with the Pusan d’Or. It lay in a leather case. Open that case and you would have seen, in the dimness of the Jewel Tower, a great gold collar worked with antelopes and set with dozens of precious stones. It was worth ten times as much as any of the above items. And Courtenay was going to give it away.

The bishop must have looked at the thousands of precious items and mentally allocated the most valuable and important ones. The Iklington Collar would be suitable security for a large loan expected from the prior of St Mary’s Coventry and the mayor and corporation of the town. The Pallet of Spain would be suitable return for a large loan from John Hende, one of the richest London merchants; or perhaps an earl.
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The basins similarly would be good collateral against a large loan. The Tigre would suffice as security for the wages due to be paid to his men by the duke of York. And the gilt-silver ship would suffice for the wages of the earl of Salisbury’s soldiers. As for the Pusan d’Or, it could really only go to the mayor and aldermen of London – in return for the loan of 10,000 marks that the royal embassy had requested at the Guildhall on 14 March.

Then there were the crowns, and most of all the great crown: the Crown Henry. This was the crown of the Lancastrian kings, worn by Henry IV and probably made for him. It was made predominantly of gold. Rising from its circlet it had a series of gold fleurs-de-lys interspersed with pinnacles of jewels. The fleurs-de-lys were each garnished with a ruby, a balas ruby, three great sapphires and ten great pearls. Each pinnacle was garnished with two sapphires, one square balas ruby, and six pearls. But whatever the intrinsic value of its gold and
jewels, it was worth far more than the total of the gold and jewels. It was the great crown of England, and the
Lancastrian
crown at that; it had huge symbolic value. It could not be given to just anyone, however rich, not even for a loan of £10,000. When Edward III had first pawned the great crowns of England he had placed them with Italian bankers; but this was not something that Henry needed or wanted to do. It would have been politically unwise. There was only one person to whom it could realistically be entrusted: the man who was in line to inherit it – Thomas, duke of Clarence. Having contracted to serve Henry with 240 men-at-arms and 720 archers, thereby taking on the burden of a monthly wage bill of £1,000, it would be necessary to find something magnificent for such a lord. It would suffice to pay the wages of his troops.

The treasures mentioned above were all of a secular nature. What is most surprising about Henry’s allocation of treasure is that he ordered many religious artefacts – his reliquaries, crosses, tabernacles and altar tablets – also to be pawned. These too were given out as collateral for the payment of soldiers’ wages. The royal chapels at Windsor Castle were inventoried, and any valuables that could be spared were removed. Censers, chalices, coffers, lecterns, holy water stoups, ampulae, crucifixes and reliquaries – the whole range of chapel fittings and accoutrements was taken away, valued and allocated. Even the relics themselves were mortgaged: a piece of the Holy Tunic and a piece of the True Cross were marked down to be pawned. So were relics of St Christopher, St Chad and St Thomas Becket, and the head of one of the 11,000 Virgins (women supposedly martyred in Roman times). Painted icons of the Virgin, the Trinity, St Thomas, St Edward the Confessor, St Michael, St Catherine, St John and St George were similarly identified. Everything was listed by Edmund Lacy, dean of the royal chapel at Windsor and handed over today to Bishop Courtenay, to serve as a down payment for the soldiers sent to France.
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This mixing of secular and religious treasures, and the use of saints’ relics as military collateral, requires some explanation. If Henry was so fanatically religious, how did he justify the distribution of holy relics to pay for a war of aggression? On the face of it, Henry was employing religious artefacts for purely secular ends. But as we have seen, there is an explanation: he really did see the forthcoming
expedition in religious terms. The letter he had sent to the king of France on 15 April made clear how he saw the unification of England and France as a religious duty. His quotation, ‘he will turn where He wills’, from the
Codex Justinianus
also points to his belief that his will was God’s will, so that it was his religious duty to invade France. Whether it was God’s will that he should be victorious remained to be seen; but because Henry believed his determination to fight was divinely inspired, this was a religious conflict. Henry was simply acting as God’s instrument, as if he had no free will of his own. Hence it was wholly justifiable for him to call for the clergy to be arrayed to defend the realm, regardless of whether they were regular or secular, or had been granted an exemption from military service. Similarly it was wholly justifiable for him to requisition the Church’s property and pawn it to pay his soldiers’ wages. In his eyes, he and they were simply doing God’s work.