1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (74 page)

THE FORMAL BEGINNING
of winter: the season of the dead. Now the light was fading earlier in the afternoon, and the working day was shorter. At this feast of All Saints, men’s and women’s thoughts turned to the departed. People wore their mourning clothes. Traditionally men around the king wore black funeral robes, and the king himself put on a purple velvet gown. Churches burnt candles late into the night, and in some places torches were carried in procession. Many churches began ringing their bells after the evening service – and carried on ringing them until midnight – in an attempt to comfort the souls of the dead in Purgatory. Had you been walking through the streets of London on this moonless night, you would have heard the bells of many parish churches ringing out in the darkness, across the cold ground. Had you been living in a rural village, from the quiet of your bedchamber you may well have heard the distant ringing coming across the fields. Those in the churches, their faces solemn in the golden glow of candlelight, would have remembered and prayed for their lost family members – fathers, mothers, children, many of whom would have died before their time due to war, childbirth and disease.
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In Northern France the candles, prayers and commemorative ringing would have had an extra poignancy. Many of the Frenchmen slain at Agincourt came from the vicinity of the battle, from Artois, Picardy and Flanders. Whole families had been wiped out. In many cases three or four members of one family had proudly ridden out to join the army defending France one week earlier. Now their wives and mothers were bereft, lighting the candles and hearing the bells, not knowing whether their husbands died unshriven of their sins, and without hope
of entering Heaven. Many others did not know whether their husbands and sons were alive or dead, hoping against hope that they had been taken as prisoners by the English to Calais. Many women would have understood their fate in terms of a sudden legal danger, realising that their lands would now fall to another member of their husband’s family – a brother or cousin, perhaps – with the result that they stood to lose wealth, status and protection. Some women would just have looked at the late-night candles, simply trying to come to terms with the knowledge that the men to whom they had been closest in life were now among the dead, and that the sound of the bells ringing out from the church was their last communication to them.
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Saturday 2nd

At Perpignan, in Aragon, the Holy Roman Emperor was furious. He was seeing his entire mission to reunite the Church threatened by another self-interested pope.

Sigismund had left Constance on 17 July and headed towards Nice and then Narbonne. There, at the end of August, he had declared that his purpose in travelling was to secure the resignation of Benedict XIII, and he would wait there for the pope.
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Benedict had travelled as far as Perpignan, where he had learnt that his protector, King Ferdinand of Aragon, was very sick. Although Ferdinand was still not yet thirty-five, he was dying – and his physicians advised him not to travel to Narbonne. Nevertheless Ferdinand disregarded their dire warnings and had himself carried on board a ship, by which he travelled to Perpignan, there to confront the recalcitrant pope. He invited Sigismund to join them; Sigismund obliged, arriving on 19 September. There had followed six weeks of bitter wrangling.

The problem was that Benedict had no intention of simply abdicating, as Gregory XII had done. Rather, like John XXIII, he wanted to use the negotiations to secure certain advantages. At one point he went so far as to suggest that he himself should personally choose the next pope for the whole Church. He also was keen that the council should be removed to a place more in keeping with his tastes – somewhere by the sea, perhaps. Eventually Sigismund demanded a simple abdication. It was refused.

King Ferdinand watched all this with the impatience of a dying
man. He knew that Benedict would be lost without his support – only the Spanish nation was standing by him. But after the weeks of wrangling, Ferdinand could see that if he died of his present sickness, which was likely, it might be said of him that he had abetted Benedict in his determination to cling on to power. The time had come for a drastic measure. Yesterday Ferdinand had sent his son and heir, Alfonso, to Benedict with a summons and a demand that he resign the papal title immediately. Benedict had responded by publicly creating several cardinals and declaring he was going to move his papal court to Peñiscola, a castle on the south coast, south of Valencia. Clearly the purpose was to avoid further negotiations with Sigismund, Ferdinand or any part of the Church outside Spain. Today Ferdinand sent his son back to Benedict, to demand once more that he abdicate. The pope evasively answered that he would send his answer from Peñiscola.

This was the point at which Sigismund lost his temper. Hearing that Benedict had taken ship, he declared he was returning to Narbonne. He did not even bother sending a farewell salutation to Ferdinand but set out immediately for Serrano. Ferdinand hurriedly sent a solemn embassy after him, imploring him to return to Perpignan and promising that he would act in such a way as to satisfy him. But Sigismund had had enough. If Ferdinand wanted to communicate with him further, he would find him at Narbonne.

There could be no more hesitation for Ferdinand. Benedict was no longer worth supporting; he stood alone. All the other nations were insistent on the reunification of the Church. On top of this, if Ferdinand continued to hesitate, then he would jeopardise his agreement with Henry V, who had no regard for the French pope. Accordingly Ferdinand did as Sigismund requested. He sent further ambassadors to Narbonne to negotiate Benedict’s abdication. At the same time he sent another summons to Peñiscola. The days of Benedict’s pontificate were numbered.
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Sunday 3rd

The interim government in England was dealing with the routine business arising from the year’s events. Following the death of Bishop Courtenay, the duke of Bedford and the council gave permission for
the monks of Norwich Cathedral to elect a new bishop. And Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, was peremptorily reminded that he still owed a fine for his marriage. The first instalment of the 10,000 marks was set at £2,000 by the council; payment was required immediately.
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William Zouche, Lord Zouche of Haringworth, died today. He had been at Southampton at the time of Henry’s departure, and had sat as one of the judges at the trial of the earl of Cambridge and his co-conspirators. Although it is not certain that he was on the campaign itself, the king had recently nominated him as a Knight of the Garter, to succeed the recently deceased John Daubridgecourt, who had contracted dysentery at Harfleur. He may therefore have been nominated in respect of his good service on the campaign. Either way, he was never installed in his seat of honour at one of the two round tables at Windsor. His place was eventually offered by Henry to the Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund, who came to England to be installed the following year.
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Monday 4th

Relatively few noblemen gathered at Westminster for the parliament that opened today. Most secular lords were still with the king in France. Only nineteen were present in the Painted Chamber alongside the forty-nine prelates and approximately two hundred representatives of the shires and the boroughs to hear Chancellor Beaufort make the opening speech.

How different the mood would have been had the original news received at Westminster – about an English defeat – been true! As it was, Beaufort knew he had a willing and a thankful audience. With the duke of Bedford presiding, Beaufort declared emphatically that those present should ‘honour the king, because he himself honours God Almighty above all others’ and because the king had protected the rights of the Holy Church. Many of those hearing those words ‘honour the king’ would have understood the biblical connotation – from the first letter of Peter:

17. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.

18. Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle but also to the froward.

When Duke John acknowledged the rightness of these sentiments, and officially declared that parliament was in session, Beaufort continued in the same manner of lauding the king. This parliament, he declared, had been summoned for two reasons. He explained that both might be best understood through the biblical line from Judges 15: 11: ‘as they did unto me, so I have done unto them’. Except in Beaufort’s phrasing it became ‘As he did unto us, so let us do unto him’.

The first reason why parliament should ‘do unto Henry as he had done unto them’ was that he had striven for good government. Ever since his coronation, the king had worked ‘for the preservation and reform of the law, and for the peace of the land, and for the benefit, safety and tranquillity of all his subjects’. So they were obliged to offer Henry something in acknowledgement of his labours.

The second reason concerned France. Beaufort explained that although Henry had done all he could to secure a lasting peace and avoid the shedding of Christian blood, he had been unable to secure a restitution of his rights through diplomacy. Thus, ‘forsaking all kinds of personal pleasure, comfort and safety, he undertook the same expedition and venture for that reason, believing wholeheartedly in his lawful quarrel and in Almighty God, in accordance with the words of the wise man who says, “strive thou for justice, and the Lord shall fight with you”’ (Ecclesiasticus, 4: 33). And with that Beaufort went on to tell the story of the whole expedition – from the siege of Harfleur, ‘the strongest town in this part of the world’, which had been ‘surrendered without the loss of life’, to the march across Northern France.

Already the propaganda elements were in place – not the least of which was the obfuscation of the fact that forty or so men had lost their lives in pursuit of the king’s ambitions at Harfleur. Beaufort went on to stress that Henry took only ‘a small number of men in comparison with the might of his enemies’ and that he

encountered and fought with a large number of dukes, earls, barons and lords of France and other lands and countries overseas, and with all the chivalry and might of France and the same lands and countries; and how finally, with the Almighty’s help and grace, all the French were defeated, taken or killed, without great loss to the English; and how he, after such a glorious and marvellous victory, has now arrived safely at his said town of Calais with his men and prisoners, praise be to God, with the greatest honour and gain that the realm of England has ever had in so short a time.
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Having reminded all those present of the drama of the expedition, and the courage of the king, and above all else the judgment of the Almighty, Beaufort then delivered the rhetorical flourish, repeating ‘as he did unto us, so let us do unto him’. He declared that this glorious victory was just the beginning, and that without their continued help, the honourable and profitable expedition would be unable to continue. It was the duty of each and every man present at that parliament to consider how he might make provision for the continuation of the king’s military success.

It was a recipe for an ongoing war of aggression. But in the euphoria of the moment, that was exactly what the English parliament wanted. Nothing illustrates better how Henry was a man of his time than the ecstatic reception of the news that the English were going to sustain the war effort in France, on a permanent basis. The English parliament seems to have forgotten that the war aims did not extend beyond the king’s dynastic security and personal pride.

Wednesday 6th

Beaufort had concluded his opening address on the 4th with an exhortation to the commons to elect their Speaker immediately, and to present him the following day. There was a delay. But today the commons presented Sir Richard Redman, the duke of Bedford’s own councillor. It was a tacit acquiescence of Henry’s triumph over parliament as well as over the French nobility. Whatever the king’s uncle and brother asked for would be granted.

In the meanwhile the government continued to support the king at Calais. An order was issued from Westminster that no corn should be exported to any port on the continent except Calais or Harfleur.
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Friday 8th

The crimes of the earl of Cambridge, Sir Thomas Gray and Lord Scrope assumed a different complexion in the light of Henry’s victory. Any public belief in Scrope’s innocence was eradicated by the judgment of God in Henry’s favour. In that sense Agincourt acted as a sort of baptism in which all Henry’s past sins and errors were wiped clean away, and all his decisions justified – however doubtful they may have seemed at the time. Henry’s malicious propaganda, concerning the attempt on his life and Scrope accepting bribes from the French, was accordingly accepted throughout the kingdom. Members of Parliament were left in no doubt that Scrope’s execution was entirely justified.

The confirmation of the judgments was the business of today’s parliament. The confessions of each executed man were read out, and the lords declared that the judgments were all good, just and lawful. The prelates also supported the judgments, in case any trace of guilt remained attached to Henry’s name for acting in such a ruthless manner. Every effort was made to present Henry as a scrupulously pious and God-fearing man.

Aside from the business of parliament, the royal council ordered that the prior of the House of Jesus of Bethlehem – Henry’s new Charterhouse at Sheen – be paid £20 for the new works he had undertaken there. Presumably finances for this project were limited by the war effort; work was still underway two years later.
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