1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (50 page)

falsely and treacherously conspired … having gathered to themselves many others, both of the retinue of the lord king and of his liege subjects, to take Edmund earl of March to the parts of Wales … to elevate him to the sovereignty of the realm of England in the event that the lord Richard II after the Conquest, lately king of England, was found to be dead, and to make a certain proclamation in the said parts of Wales in the name of the aforesaid earl of March, as heir to the crown of England against the said present lord king, by the name of Henry of Lancaster, usurper of England to the end that many of the lieges of the same present lord should join themselves to the said earl of March and quickly adhere to him.
⁷

There followed three more specific charges, levelled against just Cambridge and Gray. These were that they were planning to redeem Thomas Warde of Trumpington and Henry Percy from Scotland and to bring them and the men of Northumberland to do battle with the king; and that they would hold castles in Wales against the king. The last was a shock: they were charged with plotting to kill the king and his brothers.

As we now know, this charge was false, trumped up by the government in order to bring the trial to a speedy conclusion.
⁸
It was an inference based on the character of the plot to make the earl of March king. If Edmund were to be crowned, then Henry and all three of his brothers would have to be removed from the order of succession. Therefore the plotters were assumed to have compassed this crime, and therefore they were charged with plotting to kill all four of Henry IV’s sons. Moreover, it was not just Cambridge and Gray who were
charged with conspiring to murder the king: Scrope was too. The charge specifically laid against him was that he

was consenting to destroy and kill the present lord king and his brothers, and lords, magnates and liegemen aforesaid, and to commit and perpetrate other aforesaid evils, as already stated; and so these things should be done he communicated with the same earl of Cambridge and Thomas Gray, and with divers other lieges of the said present lord king, and falsely and treasonably concealed these things from the same present lord king.
⁹

The accused men must have been profoundly shocked. When asked how they wished to plead, Cambridge and Gray both stated that they were guilty of each and every one of the charges in the form stated, even though the murder charge was simply an inference drawn by the judges. Frantic with fear, they submitted themselves to the grace of the king, imploring his forgiveness. Scrope was the only one who kept his head. He admitted discussing these matters but had never done anything to aid them. As for killing the king – he had never even considered that. He claimed that he had communicated with the others

with the intention of ascertaining the malice of the aforesaid Richard earl of Cambridge and Thomas Gray in the premises. And so, having obtained knowledge aforesaid in that matter, his intention was to impede that malicious purpose of theirs. And as to the concealment of the aforesaid treasons from the lord king … he put himself in the grace and mercy of the lord king. And concerning the imagining of the death of the lord king and his brothers, or of any other persons whatsoever, as was previously put to him, he said that he was in no way guilty of it. And moreover he said that he was a lord and one of the peers of the realm of England, and asked that he should be tried and judged by his peers …
¹⁰

There could be no refusal to this request without a severe infringement of lordly rights, and so Scrope and Cambridge were both returned to the custody of Sir John Popham to await trial. Gray was not a peer, however. Having pleaded guilty, he stood to be judged and punished forthwith. The justices presiding decided that, as he was by his own admission a traitor to the king and the realm, he should be drawn, hanged and beheaded. At this the king spoke that he remitted the two
first penalties, namely the drawing and the hanging. He needed only to be beheaded, and his head sent to Newcastle upon Tyne to be fixed above the gate for all to see.

Later that day Gray was led on foot through the middle of Southampton as far as the North Gate. There he was beheaded in public. His goods and chattels, lands and tenements were all declared forfeit to the crown. As for the other two accused men, Cambridge and Scrope, the duke of Clarence was commissioned to empanel twenty lords to hear their cases. The trial would take place on the 5th.

Henry himself then turned his attention to the north, and the implications of a Scottish invasion in the wake of Cambridge’s plot. He ordered a writ to be sent to all the sheriffs that all the ‘fencible lieges’ or militia should be arrayed ready to defend the kingdom against the Scots and the king’s enemies ‘as the king has particular information that those enemies and their adherents are purposing shortly with no small power to invade the realm by divers coasts’.
¹¹

*

In Calais, anticipating that Henry would have set sail already, the extra men-at-arms stationed there began to make raiding parties into the area around Boulogne. Perhaps Henry had ordered this, to create a diversion. But his ships were still at Southampton, going nowhere. The dauphin sent David, seigneur de Rambures, and Jacques de Longroy with five hundred men-at-arms to defend the country.
¹²

Sunday 4th

In all the preliminary arrangements over the years, nothing had prepared Henry for this becalmed frustration. Many men were now urging him to cancel the campaign. The contemporary author of the
Gesta
, who was there with the army at Southampton, put it well in describing affairs in the camp at this time:

Many of those most devoted to the king wanted him to abandon his resolve to make such a crossing, both in case there should be any similar acts of treason still undiscovered and also, and especially, on account of the madness of Sir John Oldcastle and those of his persuasion – rumours spreading of an insurrection by him after the king had sailed.
¹³

The Lollards were indeed again on the move. Not so much in London, where Henry had perhaps expected them to make a stand when he sent his letter on the 31st. The reply from the mayor, Thomas Falconer, promising he would keep the city safe, arrived back in Southampton today; in it he gave no indication that there was a Lollard threat.
¹⁴
Rather the Lollards were stirring in the Welsh Marches, where Oldcastle had taken shelter. According to Thomas Walsingham, ‘as if by agreement, and as if they knew about the plot [of the earl of Cambridge], there was a rising of the Lollards’.
¹⁵
Cambridge had repeatedly discussed arranging a Lollard rising to support his own plot. Interestingly, Walsingham described them ‘vomiting blasphemies against the king’, drawing attention to how deeply ran the idea that rebellion and blasphemy, like treason and heresy, were intertwined. He added that the Lollards wrote tracts that they fixed to the doors of churches, aiming for ‘the overthrow of the king, the subversion of the orthodox faith, and the destruction of the Holy Church’.

The Cambridge plot had one serendipitous result for Henry. Because the fleet had not set sail as intended on 1 August, he was still in England when Oldcastle came out of hiding. The Lollard lord had been sheltering near Malvern. He assumed that Henry must already have set sail and so chose this moment to send threatening letters to Sir Richard Beauchamp, lord of Abergavenny. Sir Richard responded by sending out messengers in the king’s name to Worcester, Pershore and Tewkesbury that same night, summoning his loyal men to come to him armed at daybreak at Hanley Castle. The prelates of these towns also supported action against Oldcastle and urged their flocks to obey. Enough men gathered to drive Oldcastle back into hiding. Several Lollards were captured by Sir Richard and forced to reveal where their leader had hidden his weapons and money. Breaking down a false wall in the identified house, Sir Richard discovered not just weapons and money but other symbols of the heretical revolt, such as:

a standard on which had been painted a chalice and the host in the shape of a loaf of bread, just as if that was the element in the sacrament that was to be worshipped … And there was also seen there a sort of crucifix with scourges, and a spear with nails, which he had had painted on his banners to deceive the simple-minded, if ever he had had a chance to raise the banners in support of a public show of madness.
¹⁶

Had Oldcastle waited until the king had actually set sail, perhaps many more Lollards would have taken up the cause. As things were, the king was still in England at the head of an army. It was just too risky.

Nevertheless, these stirrings were ominous. After all the months of preparations, all the diplomacy, financial arrangements, musters, gathering of weapons and supplies – there were religious factions who wanted to stop him. There were still secular lords who wanted to see him dethroned. And although their little rebellions were easily quashed, and the tracts of Lollards were easily denounced, there was no knowing when one of these objectors might get lucky. Historians, intoxicated with the great-man view of Henry V, have often remarked how these rebellions were of little consequence – that he easily overcame them. But they were important at the time on account of what they represented. Each one was another sign of dissent and delayed him more. But his resolution held firm. Those telling him he should cancel the expedition were ignored. In this respect he was very like his father. No matter what obstacles were placed in his way, he was determined to overcome them all.

Monday 5th

For the trial of Cambridge and Scrope, the duke of Clarence enlisted all the most senior lords then present at Southampton: himself, his youngest brother, Humphrey; his cousin the duke of York; the Earl Marshal; the earls of March, Huntingdon, Arundel, Salisbury, Oxford and Suffolk; and lords Clifford, Talbot, Zouche, Harrington, Willoughby, Clinton, Maltravers, Bourchier and Botreaux. The duke of York asked to absent himself from the trial; so the earl of Dorset took his place. The reason publicly given for York’s withdrawal was that Cambridge was his brother. Perhaps we should also bear in mind the fact that the model for Lord Scrope’s actions was precisely what
York himself had done in 1399–1400. On that occasion York had withheld information about the attempt on the king’s life for a full two weeks; there could easily have been a dramatic scene if Lord Scrope objected that among his peers was a man who had committed the same crime as him.

Sir John Popham led the two accused men into the hall of Southampton Castle. Their confessions were read out to the nineteen seated lords. Both had drawn up a final letter imploring mercy; these were also read out. Scrope’s letter is now very damaged, and beyond a few words clarifying his intention that key parts of his will be carried out, especially his desire to be buried in York Minster, it is difficult to determine what he wrote. Cambridge’s last letter is complete:

Mine most dreadful and sovereign liege lord, I, Richard of York, your humble subject and very liege man, beseech you of grace and of all manner of offences that I have done or assented to in any kind, by stirring of other folk egging me thereto, wherein I know well I have highly offended to your highness; beseeching you at the reverence of God that you like to take me into the hands of your merciful and piteous grace, thinking you will, of your great goodness. My liege lord, my full trust is that you will have consideration, though that my person be of no value, your high goodness where God has set you in so high estate to every liege man that to you [it] belongs plenteously to give grace, that you [will] accept this my simple request, for the love of Our Lady and of the blissful Holy Ghost, to whom I pray that they may induce your heart to all pity and grace for their high goodness.
¹⁷

There was never any doubt that both men would be found guilty. The duke of Clarence had been commissioned not only to hear the case but to proceed to execution immediately thereafter.
¹⁸
The king had clearly washed his hands of Scrope and wanted him executed. The proceedings of the previous trial on the 2nd were read out once more and the actions of these men were ‘unanimously adjudged and judicially affirmed as high treason damnably and wickedly imagined, conspired and confederated against the lord king and realm of England’, in line with the false accusation of attempting to kill the king. They were condemned to be drawn, hanged and beheaded, and their families were to forfeit all their goods and chattels.

The earl of Cambridge’s confidence that the king would forgive him was misplaced. As a member of the royal family, Henry did spare him the drawing and hanging but insisted that he be beheaded. Lord Scrope was spared the hanging but not the drawing. He was downgraded from his membership of the Order of the Garter, dragged through the town from the Watergate to the North Gate, and there beheaded. Henry ordered that Scrope’s head be taken and stuck up on one of the gates of the city of York.
¹⁹

So ended the plot of the earl of Cambridge. It was an incompetent series of protests from two angry and frustrated men. And the manner of its ending was equally angry and frustrated. Cambridge and Gray had actually
done
nothing; they had no ‘grounded purpose’, to quote Scrope’s words. The charge that they had planned the death of the king was completely false: it was concocted by either the commission of enquiry or (more probably) by the king himself, through his lawyers, to hasten the process of dealing with the plot.
²⁰
It was later circulated in order to justify the killing. Scrope was not a leading protagonist, and he was less culpable than the earl of March or Walter Lucy. Neither March nor Lucy was charged with any crime – even though the whole plot was largely down to Lucy’s loose tongue, encouraging Scrope to believe the earl of Cambridge was more dangerous than he really was, and leading Gray to believe that the plot had the backing of Scrope and Arundel. March was certainly guilty of treasonable intentions, even if he did eventually betray the plotters. Scrope by comparison had no more to hide than Lord Clifford, Sir Robert Umphraville and Sir John Widdrington, whom Gray and Cambridge also implicated. But although Henry sent for Umphraville this same day, and suspended him as constable of Roxburgh Castle, he took no further action against any other men.
²¹
Those he initially arrested were condemned, all the others were forgiven.