1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (47 page)

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The duke of Albany knew there were plots afoot in England. The list of eighteen names handed to the earl of Cambridge indicates that the Scots were aware of discontented factions. They probably also knew that some men were waiting for news of a northern rising before they would take action in the name of the earl of March. They were also aware that Mordach was back in Henry’s custody and was not now going to be handed over as agreed. Consequently about this time they sent two armed expeditions into the north of England. One, led by the earl of Douglas, went into Westmorland and burnt the town of Penrith; the other went into Northumberland. The latter managed to penetrate just six miles before coming across Sir Robert Umphraville at Yeavering, near Kirknewton. Umphraville had only four hundred men with him but managed to rout the Scots, killing sixty men, capturing four hundred and sending the remainder running for twelve miles back into Scotland.
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If the copied indenture that Cresswell had showed Gray the Friday just past was Umphraville’s promise to allow the Scots to pass, then either it was a forgery or part of a plan of entrapment. Umphraville never meant to observe its terms. Cambridge had been quite foolish to believe it.

*

Gray and Cambridge gathered this evening for supper at the earl of March’s house at Cranbury, five miles north of Southampton. The plot was no doubt discussed, and so too the warnings of Lord Scrope. There was clearly a feeling that if they actually
did
nothing, they were innocent. The promise they had given Scrope not to act in the immediate future did not extend to not planning or plotting – or ‘hunting’, as Lucy put it.

*

In Paris, the five hundred Cabochien supporters of John the Fearless who had been exempted from the Peace of Arras were finally banished from the city.
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No doubt most went straight to John himself, who was then at Rouvres. Their part in the drama of the year 1415 was not yet over.

Wednesday 24th

The Portuguese fleet finally set sail from Lisbon. To the great relief of the French spies who were watching, it did not move north but south, towards the Straits of Gibraltar. It was not going to join with Henry’s fleet in an attack on France; it was heading to Ceuta, in Morocco.

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The duke of Clarence’s retinue was mustered on St Catherine’s Hill. The duke of Gloucester’s was at Romsey; the earl of Oxford’s was at Wallopforth; and the earl of Huntingdon’s on Swanwick Heath with the companies of Lord Botreaux, Lord Grey of Ruthin, Roland Leinthal, and much of the royal household. The men of Sir Thomas Erpingham and Sir Lewis Robesart gathered on Southampton Common; other contingents were at Hampton Hill.
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More than twelve thousand men were now in the area, and even more horses.

It was inevitable that there would be discontent. Henry directed a proclamation to be made telling all those who felt they had been harshly treated to complain to the steward of the treasury or the comptroller of the royal household. He also had it proclaimed that all knights, esquires and yeomen in the army were to find sufficient provisions for themselves in France for three months. This was an extraordinary amount of food for each man to provide: feeding the army was a serious concern.
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Part of the problem was that Henry was very late in setting out. Even if his original orders to take ships to Southampton by 8 May had been drawn up in the expectation that they would not actually set out until 1 June, that date had already slipped by almost two months. Even the second revised departure date of 8 July was over two weeks ago. Henry must have been getting frantic. Much more of a delay and there would be little time left for a campaign in France. And his finances were going more awry all the time. Today he had to reiterate his pledge that jewels would be made available to cover the second quarter’s wages.
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And he issued more licences for lords who had received jewels or plate as security to dispose of the said items if they were not redeemed within a certain time. Two days ago, when he
had ordered John of Gaunt’s tabernacle to be handed over to the prelates, he had licensed the recipients to sell it if he had not redeemed it within a certain time. Now he issued a licence for Sir Robert Chalons to dispose of a cup of gold, two bowls of silver gilt and a little basin of silver gilt delivered to him for security of £45. Without these licences, the pledges were of only notional value.
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A sense of financial desperation in the royal household may be inferred from such changes of strategy. When Henry had originally planned to sail, he had envisaged paying for the campaign through subsidies and loans. The need for money had grown more intense over the first half of the year; and by the end of April he was resigned to offering items from the royal treasure as security. By early June he was pawning religious artefacts too; and by mid-June he was selling off or breaking up the non-essential utensils of the royal household. Now he had been forced to allow treasures that had been handed over as security to be broken up and sold. The whole six-month progress of financial retreat must have taken a heavy toll on the nerves of the men around Henry who had to deliver this news to the king. He cannot have been pleased to hear that valuable treasures owned by his ancestors had to be broken up to pay for his war. It was not his idea of great kingliness – to
dispose
of his inheritance. The pressure told on one officer in particular. Today the aged Sir Thomas Erpingham was replaced as steward of the household by Sir Walter Hungerford. One suspects he may have asked to stand down, on account of his age and his inability to cope with the administrative pressure.

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Art MacMurrough, the native Irish lord of Norragh, was granted a two-year safe conduct for two of his men to come to see the king.
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What it was the erstwhile rebel had to tell Henry we do not know; but what is striking about this reference is that it is practically the only Irish business which we can associate with Henry all year. After appointing Sir John Talbot to govern the country in 1414, he had simply left him to it. So little had been his involvement with the country he had not even paid Talbot – even though he had budgeted for Talbot’s salary in June. And if Art MacMurrough’s representatives had anything to report to the English council it was about the utter ruthlessness
and severity with which Talbot was treating the people. In February he had ordered the arrest of all traitors, outlaws and felons, and the arrest of all the children of rebels, be they Irish or English, so that they could be brought up with the loyal English. He had then proceeded with a savage attack on anyone who dared to oppose English rule, plundering where he went and hanging rebel warriors and their sons. The Irish annals were most indignant on his plundering from the poets of Ireland.
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The irony is that Henry did not deal with even this piece of Irish business. By the time the representatives of Art MacMurrough arrived to let him know what was being done in his name, Henry was in France.

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Henry’s will was finalised today. Unlike his father’s will, this was not written in English but in Latin, the language of the Church. It began with the dedication to the Holy and Indivisible Trinity and was immediately followed by acknowledgement of the saints by whom Henry was particularly moved, namely:

The Virgin Mary,

St Michael, Gabriel and all the angels and archangels,

St John the Baptist and all the patriarchs,

St Peter, St John and all the apostles,

St George, St Thomas and all the holy martyrs,

St Edward, St John of Bridlington and all confessors

St Anne, St Mary Magdalene and St Bridget

Catherine, Barbara, Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins, and all the holy virgins, and all the celestial court

Henry specified that he wished to be buried in Westminster Abbey, to the east of the shrine of St Edward, in the place where the relics were then kept. He wanted a fine stone tomb and requiem masses sung in vast numbers, three each day by every monk of the abbey. He wanted a special altar to be set up in front of his tomb, dedicated to the Virgin; and he wanted further Masses to be said daily at the altar. So strong was his instinct to control his reputation in
death that he even went so far as to stipulate the types of Masses that were to be sung each day and which times of day each of these Masses was to be sung. He left £100 per annum to pay for all these services.

This was just the beginning of the religious requests. As one would expect, he was generous to his new foundations, Syon Abbey and the Charterhouse at Sheen, to each of which he left 1,000 marks. He left vestments, patens, chalices, candelabra, crucifixes and other religious artefacts to Westminster Abbey. In addition, he wanted thirty paupers to be kept in food and clothing for a whole year after his death: they had to be men who were genuinely in need and they all had to pray to Almighty God every day for Henry’s soul. The king willed that another three thousand Masses should be sung in honour of the Holy Trinity for the benefit of his soul. And fifteen Masses should be sung every day of the year in honour of Christ’s wounds. Five thousand Masses were to be sung in honour of the five joys of the Virgin Mary. Nine more were to be performed in honour of the nine orders of angels, three hundred in honour of the three Patriarchs, twelve in honour of the twelve apostles, and 4,125 in honour of all the saints. And all of these Masses had to be celebrated as soon as possible after his death.

With regard to the individual beneficiaries, the first-named was the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, to whom Henry left precious stones to the value of 500 marks. The list of names that follow Sigismund’s is the clearest and fullest indication we have of Henry’s friends among the aristocracy and his servants in the year 1415:

1. The Holy Roman Emperor
   
2. John, duke of Bedford
   
3. Humphrey, duke of Gloucester
   
4. Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury
   
5. Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, chancellor
   
6. Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham
   
7. Stephen Patrington, bishop of St David’s, Henry’s confessor
   
8. Joan Bohun, dowager countess of Hereford, Henry’s grandmother
   
9. Edmund Mortimer, earl of March
   
10. Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick
    
11. Thomas Beaufort, earl of Dorset
    
12. Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel
    
13. Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland
    
14. Joan of Navarre, queen of England, Henry’s stepmother
    
15. Edward Holland
    
16. Gilbert, Lord Talbot
    
17. Henry, Lord Fitzhugh, royal chamberlain
    
18. Sir Walter Hungerford, royal steward
    
19. Sir John Rothenhale
    
20. John Woodhouse
    
21. Sir Gilbert Umphraville
    
22. Sir John Gray
    
23. Roland Leinthal
    
24. William Porter
    
25. John Cheney
    
26. Roger Salvayn
    
27. John Steward
    
28. Lewis Robesart
    
29. John Waterton
    
30. William Bourchier
    
31. John Brown
    
32. Nicholas Merbury
    
33. John Botteler
    
34. John Stone, royal secretary
    
35. Stephen Payne, royal almoner
    
36. Nicholas Colnet, royal physician
    
37. John Wickham, royal chaplain
    
38. Henry Romworth, royal chaplain
    
39. Thomas Rodburne, royal chaplain
    
40. Richard Cassy, royal chaplain
    

Only after listing all these men by name, and many other servants by their offices, did Henry make a bequest ‘to our successor,’ meaning of course Thomas, duke of Clarence. This included his best two crowns, two pairs of astrological spheres, the sceptre of the kingdom, an ensign of Spain, a queen’s crown, and all his armour.
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In many ways Henry’s will confirms all the things that we have known or suspected of him to date: extreme religiosity – excessive, even for the period – huge self-importance, a great favouritism for his uncles,
no personal love for his brother Thomas, and no acknowledgement of any women except his grandmother and his stepmother. There was a single note of conscience in the will – he ordered that the 25,000 marks that he still owed to his fathers’ executors should be paid in full – but otherwise the document was a statement of Henry’s vision of his own importance and piety.

His choice of men to be executors was largely predictable: Bishop Beaufort, Bishop Langley, Bishop Courtenay, the earl of Westmorland, Lord Fitzhugh, Sir Walter Hungerford, Sir John Rothenhale, John Woodhouse and John Leventhorpe. Nevertheless, there are some surprising inclusions and omissions. It is interesting that Lord Scrope’s name does not appear – as he had been appointed a trustee of Henry’s Lancastrian inheritance as recently as 22 July and was to be re-appointed later this same month. Probably the most surprising beneficiary was the earl of March, who was also a witness to the sealing of the will.

Henry signed his will as follows: ‘This is my last Will subscribed with my own Hand. R[ex]. H[enricus]. Jesu Mercy and Gremercy Ladie Marie help.’

It is the last word that resonates.

Thursday 25th

Sir Thomas Gray and the earl of Cambridge made their way to Hamble in the Hook, where the earl of March was lodging. They wanted to know whether March was still with them or whether Lord Scrope’s warnings had dissuaded him. No, said the earl. He was still in favour of the rising. After further discussions about March’s role, Gray and Cambridge left him and went to the Itchen ferry, where they met Lord Scrope.

There are two accounts of what happened next, one by Gray and the other by Scrope. According to Gray, he and Cambridge met Scrope at the ferry and they discussed the expedition to France. Cambridge asked Scrope what he thought, and the latter declared that it was ‘best to break the voyage’ if at all possible. Cambridge agreed, and the two men asked Gray how this might be achieved. Gray responded that he did not know how they could drive so many men away from Southampton. Scrope suggested it could be managed by burning the ships; and Cambridge agreed. If Gray’s testimony on this point is correct,
Scrope was contributing ideas that might lead to the disruption of the campaign.
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However, Gray’s testimony also named men such as Robert Umphraville and the earl of Arundel as fellow plotters; it seems that he was out to implicate as many people as he could, Scrope included.