Agincourt (6 page)

As Henry’s presence in Wales became less necessary, he was able to devote more time to the council and acquire that early experience in the workings of government which Christine de Pizan had recommended. Despite the fact that the appointment of the council had been forced upon the king by Parliament, it was composed almost entirely of his friends. It included at least two men who had shared his exile: Thomas Arundel, the archbishop of Canterbury, who had crowned him king and was now chancellor of England; and Sir John Tiptoft, one of his household knights, who had served as a Member of Parliament for Huntingdonshire since 1402 and speaker of the House of Commons in 1405-6, who became treasurer of England. The new council also included the king’s closest family, upon whom he had relied heavily when his own sons were too young to take an active role in politics. These were his three half-brothers—John Beaufort, earl of Somerset; Thomas Beaufort, earl of Dorset; and Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester—and their cousin and retainer Thomas Chaucer, the son of the poet, who was speaker of the House of Commons in the parliaments of 1407, 1410 and 1411. (The Beauforts, together with their sister Joan, who was married to Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, were the illegitimate children of John of Gaunt and his mistress Catherine Swynford, whom Gaunt belatedly married in 1396. Their offspring were then legitimised by the papacy and by a royal patent approved in Parliament, though they were formally excluded from succession to the throne.
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Apart from Archbishop Arundel, with whom Prince Henry seems to have quarrelled irrevocably, probably over their differing attitudes towards France, and John Beaufort, earl of Somerset, who died in 1410, all these men were to remain trusted advisors of the future king. The Beauforts’ influence, in particular, was extremely important in helping to shape Henry’s priorities and his role as both prince and king. John and Thomas Beaufort were active soldiers and veterans of the Welsh campaigns; perhaps more importantly, both men served as admiral of England and captain of Calais, roles which made them passionate advocates for the defence of the seas and for the protection of English trading interests with Flanders. This alone was sufficient to recommend them to the House of Commons, where there was a powerful merchant lobby, but their success in performing their duties also earned them parliamentary approval. Their brother Henry Beaufort was an extraordinary man whose wealth, power and influence were matched only by his ambition, energy and ability, enabling him to straddle the secular and ecclesiastical worlds with equal success. At the age of twenty-two he had been elected chancellor of Oxford University, a year later he obtained his first bishopric (which did not stop him fathering a bastard on Archbishop Arundel’s widowed sister) and in 1409, when he was still only thirty-two, he was appointed a cardinal a latere by the schismatic pope in Rome, Gregory XII. An assiduous attender of royal council meetings, he served his first stint as chancellor of England in 1402-5 and paved the way to his future role as moneylender-in-chief to the crown with a loan of two thousand marks for the defence of the seas and Calais. The identification of the Beauforts with the concerns of the House of Commons gave them both an ear and a voice in the lower house, but because they never lost the confidence of the king they were able to act as intermediaries between the two. The more receptive prince gained proportionately, being fully informed on opinions within the Commons and also acquiring friends and advocates there.
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Through his close association on the council with the Beauforts and the two speakers of the House of Commons, Tiptoft and Chaucer, Prince Henry managed to achieve the amicable working relationship with Parliament which had eluded his father (and, indeed, Richard II). He had effectively demonstrated his capacity to rule wisely, particularly during the two years when he had enjoyed complete control of the council. In that period he had re-established the royal finances by a mixture of retrenchment, prioritised and targeted expenditure and careful audit work. The security of the kingdom had been enhanced by the suppression of the Welsh revolt and by strengthening the key garrisons in that principality, at Calais and in the northern marches with men, ordnance and supplies. The alliance with the duke of Burgundy, which had resulted in Thomas, earl of Arundel’s expedition into France, had demonstrated that he appreciated the value of English trading interests in Flanders. On a different level, but almost as important as these practical proofs of Prince Henry’s abilities, was his determination to dissociate himself publicly from the “fair words and broken promises”
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that had characterised his father’s dealings with Parliament and to establish a reputation for himself as a man who did not give his word lightly but, when he did, took pride in keeping it.

When Henry IV died after years of chronic illness, in March 1413, his eldest son and heir was twenty-six years old. He had served a long and hard apprenticeship for kingship, but along the way he had gained invaluable experience as soldier, diplomat and politician. He was now at the peak of his powers. In the circumstances, it was not surprising that his accession was widely anticipated as the dawning of a new hope and a brighter future.

CHAPTER THREE

A MOST CHRISTIAN KING

The day of Henry V’s coronation, Passion Sunday, 9 April 1413, would long be remembered for the savagery of the storms that ravaged the kingdom, “with driving snow which covered the country’s mountains, burying men and animals and houses, and, astonishingly, even inundating the valleys and fenlands, creating great danger and much loss of life.”
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For an age that saw the hand of God in everything, this was not a good omen, but Henry V was not a man to let superstition of this kind stand in his way. Precisely because he was the son of a usurper, he was determined to establish the legitimacy of his kingship beyond all doubt. To do this, he deliberately set out to be the perfect medieval monarch and the coronation was a key element in his strategy.

The ceremony itself was traditionally regarded as one of the holy sacraments of the Church. The most important elements were the anointing with unction, which conferred divine and temporal authority upon the new king, and the coronation oath. The act of anointing had taken on a deeper meaning since the “discovery” of a sacred oil which, according to legend, had been given to St Thomas Becket by the Virgin Mary, who promised him that a king anointed with it would recover Normandy and the lands of Aquitaine which had been lost by his ancestors, drive the infidel from the Holy Land and become the greatest of all kings. The oil had then remained hidden away until it was “rediscovered” in the Tower of London by Archbishop Thomas Arundel, just in time for Henry IV’s coronation. The whole story was clearly a piece of Lancastrian propaganda, but neither this, nor the fact that Henry IV failed to fulfil the prophecy, deterred his son (and grandson) from using the oil at his own coronation. The small print of the legend rather forlornly specified that Normandy and Aquitaine would be recovered “peacefully” and “without force.”
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The second strand to the coronation ceremony placed equal emphasis on the duties of kingship. This was the coronation oath, sworn at the altar, in which the king promised to uphold the laws, protect the Church and do right and equal justice to all. Significantly, Henry IV had chosen to rely on this aspect of the coronation to justify his usurpation, accusing Richard II of breaking his oath to provide the country with “good governance” and therefore committing perjury that rendered him unfit to be a king. The idea that kingship was a contract between king and people, rather than an inalienable right, was not new, but Henry IV had taken it a step further, and even so ardent a pro-Lancastrian as the chronicler John Capgrave had to admit that he had succeeded Richard II “not so much by right of descent as by the election of the people.” The danger of Henry relying so heavily on the duties instead of the rights of kingship was immediately apparent. He had made himself a hostage to fortune, and throughout his reign his own failure to live up to his promises would be used repeatedly as an excuse for every sort of opposition.
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It was typical of Henry V that he was able to take two essentially flawed concepts and turn them into a position of strength. In his own mind there was no question but that he was divinely appointed to rule and, like Richard II, he insisted on the dignity due not to himself, but to his office. Richard had required his courtiers to fall to their knees whenever he looked at them; Henry, according to at least one source, would not allow anyone to look him in the eye and deprived his French marshal of his office for having the temerity to do so. Although Henry’s personal preference seems to have been for a simple, almost austere way of life, he took great care to appear in the full panoply of state whenever he considered it necessary. As we shall see, he would receive the formal surrender of the “rebel” town of Harfleur, for instance, in a pavilion on top of a hill (so that he could look down on the defeated Frenchmen as they approached him), sitting on his throne under a canopy, or cloth of estate, made of gold and fine linen, with his triumphal helm bearing his crown held aloft on a lance by his side. Yet when he actually entered the town for the first time, he dismounted and walked barefoot to the parish church of St Martin, in the manner of a humble pilgrim or penitent, to give thanks to God “for his good fortune.”
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Henry’s ability to distinguish between himself as a man and as the incumbent and upholder of his office also impressed his contemporaries: unlike most modern commentators, they were able to see that his invasions of France were not made out of egotism or the desire for personal aggrandisement, but rather because he wanted, and considered it his duty, to recover the “just rights and inheritances” of the crown. On the other hand, both contemporaries and modern commentators alike have sometimes been confused by the expression of this dual personality: the affable, straight-talking and companionable soldier “Harry” could swiftly become the cold, ruthless and haughty autocrat if he felt that the line had been crossed and unacceptable liberties were being taken.
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Henry’s character and bearing deeply impressed even his enemies. The French ambassadors sent to negotiate with him some years later came away singing his praises. They described him as being tall and distinguished in person, with the proud bearing of a prince, but nevertheless treating everyone, regardless of rank, with the same kindly affability and courtesy. Unlike most men, he did not indulge in lengthy speeches or casual profanity. His answers were always short and to the point: “that is impossible” or “do that,” he would say, and if an oath were required, he would invoke the names of Christ and his saints. What they most admired was his ability to maintain the same calm, equable spirit in good times and bad. He took military setbacks in his stride, encouraging his soldiers by telling them that “as you know, the fortunes of war vary: but if you desire a good outcome, you must keep your courage intact.”
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It was a philosophy that would serve him, and his men, well on the Agincourt campaign.

The chroniclers’ stories of Henry’s wild, misspent youth and his dramatic conversion at his coronation into a sober, just and righteous king were mostly written long after his reign was over and, although they have acquired a veneer of historicity because they were taken up by Shakespeare, the only contemporary hint of even the slightest misconduct is a comment by his friend Richard Courtenay, bishop of Norwich, that he believed that Henry had been chaste since he had become king.
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What is important about these stories is not so much their truth, but that they represent in anecdotal form the spiritual experience of the coronation: the anointing transformed an ordinary man into a unique being, part man, part clergyman, who was chosen by God to be his representative on earth.

Despite his belief in his divinely constituted authority, Henry also placed unprecedented emphasis on his coronation oath as the central theme of his kingship. Unlike his father, he treated it “almost as a manifesto, a programme for government,”
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and he was committed to its implementation. He would uphold the laws, protect the Church and do right and equal justice to all. From the moment he succeeded to the throne, he made it clear that he was prepared to draw a line under the events of the previous two decades. Among the young nobles whom he selected for knighting on the eve of his coronation were at least five of the sons and heirs of men who had died in, or been executed for, rebellion against Henry IV. The most important of these was the twenty-one-year-old Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, who had been recognised by Richard II as his heir and, as a child, had twice been the focus of rebel attempts to depose Henry IV in his favour. He had spent most of his childhood in captivity but from 1409 he had lived in the less formal prison of the future Henry V’s own household, where, although he was unable to come and go as he pleased, he was in every other respect treated like any aristocratic member of the royal court. Henry now trusted him sufficiently not only to free and knight him but also to restore all his lands and allow Mortimer to take his place in the first parliament of the new reign. Although two years later he would be involved on the fringes of the only aristocratic plot against Henry V, his sense of personal obligation was such that he revealed it to the king and remained both loyal and active in royal service for the rest of his life.
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Henry’s generosity towards another potential rival, the twenty-three-year-old John Mowbray, also paid dividends. The son of the man whose bitter personal quarrel with Henry’s own father had led to their joint banishment by Richard II, and younger brother of Thomas Mowbray, whom Henry IV had executed for treason in 1405, he had not been allowed to inherit his lands until a fortnight before Henry IV’s death. On his accession, Henry V immediately restored to him the family’s hereditary title of earl marshal. This was not an empty honour and the timing of its reinstatement was sensitively done because it enabled Mowbray to play his important traditional role at the coronation, demonstrating publicly that the feud which had plagued both their houses was at an end. Negotiations for similar restorations of titles and lands were also begun for Henry Percy, nineteen-year-old son of “Hotspur” and grandson of the earl of Northumberland, both of whom had died in rebellion against Henry IV, and for the eighteen-year-old John Holland, son of the earl of Huntingdon executed by Henry IV in 1400.
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