1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (36 page)

Hus did his best to defend himself, but his attackers were not looking to debate with him. Nor did they wish him to amend his ways. They wanted to condemn him, and force him to admit he was wrong. Enemies like Michael de Causis were calling with the rest of the prelates for Hus’s books to be burned. When Hus tried to explain some of the finer doctrinal points underpinning his books, he was shouted down. When he tried to respond to a difficult question with a difficult answer he was told, ‘Leave off your sophistry. Answer yes or no!’ He began to realise that no one was listening to his arguments. He had been a fool to believe that the council would. So he decided to be silent. Some of his more ardent opponents jeered at him further: ‘Look – he cannot answer! He admits these errors!’

The meeting came to an end. Clearly, given the sensitivity of his case with regard to his lords and the apparent support of the emperor, the prelates could not condemn him straight away. Instead they adjourned his case until the following Friday. The bishop of Riga was instructed to return Hus to his cell.

As Hus left the refectory, and passed the lords gathered outside the door, he reached out to them, saying, ‘Do not worry for me.’

‘We do not fear,’ they replied, grasping his hand as he was led away.

‘I know, I know well,’ he told them.

The bishop and his guards led him up some steps. At the top he turned and saluted his friends before being walked back to his cell.

That night he wrote to the lords who had helped him that day. In this respect he was better off than he had been in Gottlieben Castle, where he had been from 30 March to 2 June, and from which he had been unable to send any messages at all.
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He did his best to be optimistic:

Almighty God today gave me a courageous and stout heart. Two articles are already deleted. I hope however that by the grace of God more will be struck out. Almost all of them shouted at me like the Jews did to Jesus. So far they have not come to the principal point – namely that I should confess that all the articles are contained in my works … The presidents said that I should have another public hearing. They do not wish to hear arguments about the Church.
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*

Henry’s most important business today was issuing the warrant for Master Philip Morgan to go to Calais and liaise with Sir William Lisle, acting lieutenant of the town, to prorogue the truce with France.

Much to Henry’s annoyance, his attempt to hurry the French diplomats by extending the truce only to 8 June had failed. They had disobeyed him, taking their time when he had urged them to hurry. Henry did not like to be disobeyed in this manner, but he had no choice. He could not be seen to be refusing peace initiatives. Morgan and Lisle were thus empowered to extend the truce for as long as they deemed necessary. It took five days for the warrant to reach Calais – presumably carried
by Philip Morgan – and they extended the peace to 15 July, probably as a result of verbal instructions given to Morgan today.
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All the time Henry was putting back the departure date for the expedition. First it had been 8 May, then 24 June, then 1 July, and now it was possibly as late as 15 July. Surely he could now expect the ambassadors to hurry up and arrive?

The rest of Henry’s business was a series of grants and petitions. The people of Winchelsea were given authority to reduce the size of their town. Edward I had refounded it on a new site in 1288 – just as the old site slipped beneath the waves of the Sussex coast – and had made sure it was laid out on a grid pattern. More recently the French and Castillians had attacked the town and damaged it; so in 1414 a programme of strengthening the defences had begun. Now, however, the area being enclosed within the defences seemed too large: could the townspeople please enclose a smaller area? Henry, ‘liking such places to be strengthened,’ and considering the important position this port occupied on the south coast, granted their request.
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Henry granted to Master Richard Dereham, archdeacon of Norfolk, the wardenship of King’s Hall, Cambridge, with his fees and gowns to be paid for by the sheriff of the county.
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Also today he ordered that the people of Northampton be granted a tally acknowledging that they had lent the king £66. He appointed John Hayne to be chief ranger in the forest of Wolmere and Aliceholt, Hants, and granted his servant John Green, keeper of the king’s beds, one third of the tolls for crossing the Tweed.
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Last but by no means least there was a grant of £20 to his old nurse, Joanna Waring or Waryn, the woman who had suckled him in infancy.
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Along with the gift to Blanche Chalons (on 28 May), it is one of the very few signs of intimacy in 1415 between Henry and female companions. It is interesting that both women’s relationship with Henry was that of looking after him in his youth.

Thursday 6th

Henry’s preparations for the forthcoming campaign had to meet a wide variety of challenges. For example, he was taking cannon to attack
Harfleur, with the intention of effecting an entry by smashing the walls down. Although it was to be expected that the townsmen would quickly surrender when they realised they were facing large cannon, it was probable that there would be some damage. Therefore, presuming he was successful in taking the town, he would need to rebuild the walls again very quickly, to make them defensible and capable of withstanding a reprisal siege. Likewise he was bound to come across bridges that had been destroyed. He would need craftsmen by the dozen. For this reason he ordered Simon Lewis and John Benet to ‘arrest’ (the usual word for requisitioning workmen) one hundred masons for the forthcoming expedition. He also commissioned Thomas Mathews and William Gill, to ‘arrest’ 120 more carpenters; and William Marsh and Nicholas Shockington were commissioned to take on forty more blacksmiths. All these men were to come from the city of London and the home counties (Sussex, Surrey, Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Middlesex), and they were all to assemble in London on 17 June. There was not much time. John Southmead was ordered to find an extra sixty carts and bring them to the city by that date, to transport everything necessary down to Southampton.
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Friday 7th

This morning at 7.12 a.m. there was a near-total eclipse of the sun. The fact is known from contemporary chronicles as well as modern astronomical calculations. At Constance, Peter of Mladoňovice noted the second day of the trial of Hus as taking place ‘about an hour after the almost total eclipse of the sun’.
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The atmosphere was even graver than before. The Franciscan friary was surrounded by armed guards – men of the city armed with swords, crossbows, axes and spears. The emperor himself came, bringing with him Lord Wenceslas of Dubá and Lord John of Chlum. All the prelates were in attendance.

The prosecution took a new direction, concentrating on Hus’s affinity with Wycliffe. Many of Wycliffe’s teachings had clearly inspired Hus – such as there being a single universal Church whose head was Christ, the limited authority of the pope, and the necessity for the Church to return to its poor and humble roots. But these had all been declared
heretical. It therefore followed that if Hus could be shown to have preached the same things, he too was guilty of heresy. Hus’s Bohemian enemies now swore that he had preached Wycliffe’s heresies openly in Prague in 1410, and they specifically accused him of teaching that the bread and the wine of the host remained bread and wine even after its consecration.

Hus denied the accusations vehemently, but first Cardinal d’Ailly interrogated him on the subject and then a whole succession of English theologians did so. The third of the Englishmen to rise and speak was Master William Corfe, who had been appointed by the English nation to deal with Hus’s case. ‘Look!’ declared Corfe, ‘He is speaking evasively, just as Wycliffe did, for he too conceded all the things that this man concedes and yet held that the material bread remains on the altar after consecration.’ Then one of Henry V’s own representatives at the council, John Stokes, took up the accusations. ‘I saw in Prague a certain treatise ascribed to this Hus in which it was expressly stated that the material bread remains in the sacrament after consecration.’ It was as if the English felt they had a monopoly on assigning Wycliffe’s guilt where they wanted, using their nationality as a qualification for the right to lay accusations of heresy.

Hus’s dilemma was that Wycliffe
was
the foundation of his questioning of the Church. He could not simply shift the blame onto his teacher’s shoulders; Wycliffe had not forced him to follow his teachings. Although he might answer the English theologians, and even prove them wrong, he had been condemned as soon as Wycliffe had been condemned. The argument grew more and more bitter. He was challenged as to why he had not condemned the heretical articles in Wycliffe’s writing himself – he answered that he had refused to do so on the grounds of conscience. The bishop of Salisbury attacked him over the question of whether the payment of tithes could be refused. Other Englishmen poured scorn on him for his claim that a miracle had prevented Wycliffe from being tried in St Paul’s Cathedral. The longer the inquisition went on, the more farcical the trial became. Eventually, under tremendous pressure, Hus declared, ‘I do not know where Wycliffe’s soul has gone; I hope that he is saved but fear lest he be damned. Nevertheless I desire and hope that my soul were where the soul of John Wycliffe is!’ At this apparent confession to suffer the same fate as a condemned heretic, there was general laughter.

Hus had no hope of escape. Eventually Sigismund intervened and gave a speech that went to the heart of the matter.

Listen, Jan Hus! Some have said that I gave you the safe conduct fifteen days after your arrest. I say, however, that that is not true … I gave you the safe conduct even before you had left Prague. I commanded Lords Wenceslas of Dubá and John of Chlum that they bring you and guard you in order that, having freely come to Constance, you would not be constrained but be given a public hearing so that you could answer, concerning your faith. The council has given you a public, peaceable and honest hearing here. And I thank them, although some may say that I could not grant a safe conduct to a heretic or one suspected of heresy … I counsel you to hold nothing obstinately but, in those things that were here proved against you and that you confessed, to offer yourself wholly to the mercy of the council; and they … will grant you some mercy, and you will do penance for your guilt. But if you wish to hold all that obstinately, then they know well what they must do with you. I told them that I am not willing to defend any heretic; indeed, if a man should remain obstinate in his heresy, I would kindle the fire and burn him myself. But I would advise you to throw yourself wholly on the mercy of the council, and the sooner the better, in case you involve yourself in greater errors.

The formal charges were then read out against Hus, and he was led away by the bishop of Riga, back to his cell.

*

At Westminster the king’s clerks began drawing up the rest of the warrants to pay the companies of men-at-arms and archers. It took them another nine days to complete the task. Henry commissioned two men to find appropriate manors near Plymouth for the safe harbourage of Sir John Tiptoft and his men making their way to Gascony.
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He also made a grant to the bailiffs of Sudbury who had lent 40 marks towards his voyage.
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It was a modest acknowledgement. A far greater one came from John Hende, the richest London merchant of the day, who handed to the treasurer 2,000 marks (£1,333 6s 8d).
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Saturday 8th

This morning, at about eight o’clock, the bishops of Carcassonne and Evreux were about to set out through the forest on the border between Lorraine and Bar in France. They were on their way from Constance to Paris, their mission being to arrange for the emperor to travel through France later in the summer. Sigismund hoped to meet with King Ferdinand of Aragon to arrange the deposition or resignation of Pope Benedict XIII. He also hoped to meet with the French and English kings to persuade them to come to terms peaceably.

Eighteen men of their company had already gone ahead, to arrange accommodation for the large households of the bishops for the next night. Among them was Master Benedict Gentien: a theologian from the University of Paris. Suddenly ‘ten men with drawn swords rushed out at us from the forest behind us, and beating and wounding us, forcibly dragged us to the castle of Souci, where they promptly stripped us of money, horses and clothing’. One of the priests in the company suffered a head wound but otherwise everyone was unharmed. That was not the end of the matter, however, for these were not merely thieving brigands. They wanted the bishops who were following. Later that day, about three o’clock in the afternoon, they found the main group and attacked them too, killing a priest. The two bishops were forced to ride to Souci, arriving there about three hours after midnight.

The culprit was one Henri de la Tour. When the bishops demanded to know why he had taken them prisoner, he told them who had ordered it: Charles de Deuil, lord of Removille. And why? As representatives of the king of France attending the council of Constance, they had often spoken against the honour of John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy. Now they were to pay the penalty.

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Henry’s navy was beginning to take shape. Two dozen royal ships were on their way to Southampton. Most of the English merchant fleet was heading similarly to one of the three designated ports. Benedict Espina, an agent of the Jurade of Bordeaux, wrote from London to the mayor of Bordeaux today, stating that Henry was planning to write himself
asking for two siege engines called
brides
to be sent to him (the letter in question was indeed sent a few days later). Espina added that in England cannon and brides were being loaded every day, and twenty-two thousand mariners had already been employed to assist with the crossing.
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Seven hundred ships were expected to arrive shortly from Holland. ‘It is also said that the son of the king of Portugal is coming with a large company of galleys and men.’ How many ships were really being prepared in Holland is open to question, for a report from Bruges stated that 125 cogs had been collected for Henry’s navy, plus 181 other vessels.
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But these three hundred may have been just the start of a larger flotilla. In addition, Henry could rely on the Cinque Ports to send out their core fleet of fifty-seven vessels; more ships would come from other ports.