Agincourt (55 page)

15
Original Letters Illustrative of English History
, pp. 45-6; Pugh, “The Southampton Plot of 1415,” p. 65; “The Conspiracy of the Earl of Cambridge against Henry V,” 43rd Report of the Deputy Keeper of Public Records (HMSO, London, 1882), App I, §5.
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16 Pugh, “The Southampton Plot of 1415,” pp. 83, 64.
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17 The Scottish link, for instance, was established beyond doubt, which was not surprising, given the northern English origins of most of the conspirators, Cambridge included (Cambridge lived on his brother’s charity at Conisburgh Castle, near Doncaster, in Yorkshire). Murdoch’s abduction in Yorkshire makes sense if its purpose was to enable the plotters to use him as a bargaining counter with the Scots—and Cambridge was able to tell Grey that Murdoch was safe in their hands a week later. He was also able to produce a letter that he said was from the duke of Albany, offering to send him Percy and the “Mommet” in return for his son. A Welsh supporter of Oldcastle was captured near Windsor Castle, where King James had been held; he was carrying large sums of money and a list of places between Windsor and Edinburgh (the medieval equivalent of a modern map), and confessed that he had been trying to assist the Scottish king’s escape. As we have seen, there was indeed a Scottish invasion only nine days before March revealed the plot to Henry V, even though Umfraville routed it, rather than joined it. The “crown of Spain on a pallet,” which Cambridge had promised to display in Wales, together with a banner of the arms of England, when March was proclaimed king, was actually in his possession: Henry V had given it to him as security for the wages of the men whom he had contracted to take with him on the Agincourt campaign.
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It should not be forgotten, either, that the muster at Southampton provided the perfect cover for the plotters to raise an army. The leading conspirators were all committed to providing some of the biggest contingents of the forthcoming campaign. Cambridge and March had each undertaken to bring sixty men-at-arms and one hundred and sixty mounted archers, Scrope to bring thirty men-at-arms and ninety mounted archers. All in all, including the forty knights or esquires whom the Lollards had promised would desert from the muster to support an uprising, the conspirators could count on raising a force of almost eight hundred armed and fully equipped men from within their own ranks before they had even left Southampton: “The Conspiracy of the Earl of Cambridge against Henry V,” p. 582; W&W, i, pp. 518-9; Bradley, “Henry V’s Scottish Policy—a Study in Realpolitik,” p. 183; Nicolas, pp. 373-4, 385; James Hamilton Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,”
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
, 3rd series, vol. v (1911), pp. 136-7.

18
ELMA
, p. 324.
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19
Brut
, ii, pp. 375-6;
St Albans
, pp. 87-8; W&W, i, pp. 507-8. Cambridge, who was probably illegitimate, had inherited nothing from his nominal father and was financially entirely dependent on the goodwill of his brother, Edward, duke of York. Grey, who had already been outlawed twice for failure to pay debts, received a payment in May 1415 of £120 from the exchequer in compensation for giving up his post as constable of Bamburgh Castle, a sale that may have been forced on him by his need to fulfil his contract with the king to raise twenty-four men-at-arms and forty-eight archers for the Agincourt expedition:
ODNB
; Pugh, “The Southampton Plot of 1415,” pp. 71-3, 79; W&W, i, p. 517 n. 3.
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20 Pugh, “The Southampton Plot of 1415,” pp. 62-4, 67-9, 83-4; W&W, i, pp. 523-33;
CPR
, p. 409; Powell, p. 131.
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21
Original Letters Illustrative of English History
, p. 48;
CPR
, p. 349.
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22 Bellamy,
The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages
, p. 222.
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23 There was an ironic postscript to the story. Less than three months after Cambridge’s execution, Edward, duke of York, was one of the two English magnates who fell at the battle of Agincourt. Had the earl of Cambridge remained loyal to Henry V, he would have inherited his brother’s title, lands and wealth, and achieved the position of power and influence he craved, without resorting to the treason that cost him his life.
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CHAPTER SIX: “HE WHO DESIRES PEACE, LET HIM PREPARE FOR WAR”

1 Vegetius,
De Re Militari
, quoted by Pizan,
BDAC
, p. 27 n. 23.
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2 W&W, i, pp. 38, 39 n. 9.
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3 Ibid., pp. 45-6, 39 and nn. 1, 3-7.
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4 Ibid., i, p. 41 and nn. 4-6. “Scuratores” was a Calais-specific term for scouts, and not “scourers” as W&W translate the word: see R. E. Latham,
Revised Medieval Latin Word-List
(published for the British Academy, Oxford University Press, London, repr. 1980), p. 170.
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5 John Kenyon, “Coastal Artillery Fortification in England in the Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries,” in Curry and Hughes, pp. 146-7; Michael Hughes, “The Fourteenth-Century French Raids on Hampshire and the Isle of Wight,” ibid., pp. 133-7.
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6
Rotuli Parliamentorum
, iv, p. 53; Kenyon, “Coastal Artillery Fortification in England in the Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries,” p. 146.
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7 W&W, i, pp. 161, 160 n. 1.
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8 During a lull in the fighting at Poitiers (1356), English archers ran forward to pull arrows from the ground, and from dead or wounded men and horses; they were then able to use these against the next French attack: Strickland and Hardy, p. 301.
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9 Paul Hitchin, “The Bowman and the Bow,” in Curry,
Agincourt 1415
, pp. 44, 46-7. The English were defeated at Ardres (1351) when the archers ran out of arrows too early: Strickland and Hardy, p. 231.
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10 Hitchin, “The Bowman and the Bow,” pp. 45-6 and illustration, though the “type 16” arrowhead is actually on the third row, not the second, as it is captioned.
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11 Strickland and Hardy, p. 313; Robert Hardy, “The Longbow,” in Curry and Hughes, p. 168.
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12 Andrew Ayton, “Arms, Armour, and Horses,” in Keen,
MW
, p. 205 and illus., p. 72; Jim Bradbury,
The Medieval Archer
(Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1985, repr. 2002), pp. 146-50. Strickland and Hardy, pp. 34-48, effectively demolish the myth of the shortbow, a third category of weapon which was an invention of nineteenth-century military historians.
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13 W&W, i, p. 159 n. 7; Ayton, “Arms, Armour, and Horses,” p. 204;
Foedera
, ix, p. 224.
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14 Hitchin, “The Bowman and the Bow,” pp. 42-4; Ayton, “Arms, Armour, and Horses,” p. 204; Bradbury,
The Medieval Archer
, p. 107. But see Strickland and Hardy, p. 227.
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15 Ibid., pp. 17-18, 199, 30; Hardy, “The Longbow,” p. 179.
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16 Maurice Keen, “The Changing Scene: Guns, Gunpowder, and Permanent Armies,” in Keen,
MW
, pp. 274-5 and illus. p. 156; Clifford J. Rogers, “The Age of the Hundred Years War,” ibid., pp. 156-8; Richard L. C. Jones, “Fortifications and Sieges in Western Europe,
c
.800-1450,” in ibid., pp. 180-2; Pizan,
BDAC
, pp. 122-3; Robert D. Smith, “Artillery and the Hundred Years War: Myth and Interpretation,” in Curry and Hughes, pp. 156-7; Richard L. C. Jones, “Fortifications and Sieges in Western Europe,
c
.800-1450,” in Keen,
MW
, p. 182.
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17 Nigel Ramsey, “Introduction,” in John Blair and Nigel Ramsay (eds),
English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products
(Hambledon Press, London and Rio Grande, 1991), p. xxxii; Pizan,
BDAC
, pp. 117-19; Jones, “Fortifications and Sieges in Western Europe,
c
.800- 1450,” p. 181.
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18
Foedera
, ix, pp. 159, 160;
CPR
, p. 292.
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19 W&W, i, pp. 161 n. 2, 265 n. 2; Henrietta Leyser,
Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England 450-1500
(Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1995), p. 162; Jane Geddes, “Iron,” in Blair and Ramsay (eds),
English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products
, p. 187.
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20 Ibid., pp. 168, 170-2, 174-5.
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21 Ibid., pp. 186 and 187 (fig. 86). See plate 5.
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22 C. F. Richmond, “The War at Sea,” in Fowler, pp. 111-12, 108.
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23 This meant that although he was a clergyman, he had not progressed to the rank of priest nor taken his final vows as a monk. Most clerks in the royal services were of this rank and never became fully ordained.
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24 Richmond, “The War at Sea,” pp. 112-13; W. J. Carpenter-Turner, “The Building of the
Holy Ghost of the Tower
, 1414-1416, and her Subsequent History,”
The Mariner’s Mirror
, 40 (1954), p. 270; W. J. Carpenter-Turner, “The Building of the
Gracedieu
,
Valentine
and
Falconer
at Southampton, 1416-1420,” ibid., p. 56.
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25 Ibid., pp. 65-6; Richmond, “The War at Sea,” pp. 112-13, 104-7.
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26 Carpenter-Turner, “The Building of the
Gracedieu
,
Valentine
and
Falconer
at Southampton, 1416-1420,” pp. 62-3; Carpenter-Turner, “The Building of the
Holy Ghost of the Tower
, 1414-1416, and her Subsequent History,” pp. 271, 273. The sums involved equate to almost $1,352,400 and $2,999,430 in modern currency, but there was almost certainly further expenditure.
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27 Richmond, “The War at Sea,” pp. 121 n. 55, 113-14.
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28
CPR
, pp. 294-5; W&W, i, p. 448 and n. 2.
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29 Fernández-Armesto, “Naval Warfare after the Viking Age,
c
.1100- 1500,” pp. 238-9; Ian Friel, “Winds of Change? Ships and the Hundred Years War,” in Curry and Hughes, pp. 183-5.
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30
Foedera
, ix, pp. 215, 216; W&W, i, pp. 45, 104.
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31 Vaughan, pp. 241-4. See above, pp. 62-3, 65-6 for the Anglo-Burgundian negotiations.
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32
Registres de la Jurade: Délibérations de 1414 à 1416 et de 1420 à 1422: Archives Municipales de Bordeaux
(G. Gounouilhou, Bordeaux, 1883), iv, p. 193.
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33
Foedera
, ix, p. 218; Antonio Morosini,
Chronique d’Antonio Morosini 1414-1428
, ed. by Germain Lefèvre-Pontalis and Léon Dorez (Librairie Renouard, Paris, 1899), ii, pp. 20-5, 34-5, 44-5.
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34
Foedera
, ix, pp. 224, 238-9, 248-9;
CPR
, pp. 325, 329, 343;
CCR
, p. 232.
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35
Foedera
, ix, pp. 250-1, 261;
CPR
, pp. 327, 346.
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36
Foedera
, ix, pp. 251-2, 253;
CCR
, pp. 214, 217, 218.
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37 Ibid., p. 278;
Foedera
, ix, pp. 288-9; H. J. Hewitt, “The Organisation of War,” in Fowler, pp. 81-2.
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38 See, for example, Henry’s writ of 26 May 1415 to the sheriff of Kent:
Foedera
, ix, p. 251.
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CHAPTER SEVEN: OF MONEY AND MEN

1 Pizan,
BDAC
, p. 19.
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2 Harriss, “Financial Policy,” in
HVPK
, pp. 163-74. See also Edmund Wright, “Henry IV, the Commons and the Recovery of Royal Finance in 1407,” in R. E. Archer and S. Walker (eds),
Rulers and Ruled in Late Medieval England: Essays Presented to Gerald Harriss
(Hambledon Press, London and Rio Grande, 1995), pp. 65-81.
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3 Harriss, “Financial Policy,” p. 163.
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4 Ibid., p. 177.
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5 Harriss, “The Management of Parliament,” pp. 137-8, 156; Saul,
The Batsford Companion to Medieval England
, pp. 200-2.
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6 See, for example,
Rotuli Parliamentorum
, iv, pp. 3, 15, 34; Harriss, “The Management of Parliament,” pp. 143, 145.
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7 Ibid., pp. 145-6, 158.
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8
Rotuli Parliamentorum
, iv, p. 34.
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9 Ibid., iv, p. 35; W&W, i, p. 434.
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10
Memorials of London and London Life
, pp. 603-5;
Letter-Books
, pp. 135, 143; Nicolas, p. 14; Marks and Williamson (eds),
Gothic Art for England 1400-1547
, p. 206 and fig. 71a.
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11
Foedera
, ix, p. 241. The signet was a relatively new seal, introduced by Richard II as a means of bypassing the more ponderous administrations of the great seal (that is, the chancery) and privy seal offices: Saul,
Batsford Companion to Medieval England
, pp. 112-13.
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12
CPR
, p. 329; Nicolas, pp. 13, 14;
Foedera
, ix, pp. 285-6.
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