Agincourt (7 page)

In his choice of councillors and officers of state the new king also displayed both wisdom and tact, building round him a team upon whom the success of the Agincourt expedition would depend. He was always prepared to promote talent wherever he found it, keeping on those who had served his father well, whether they were career civil servants, such as John Wakering, the keeper of the chancery rolls, whom he would promote to the bishopric of Norwich in 1416, or aristocrats, like Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, who was confirmed in his office as warden of the west marches of Scotland.

On the other hand, key posts were also given to those who had been part of his inner circle as prince of Wales. His half-uncle and long-term ally Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, was appointed chancellor of England and keeper of the Great Seal on the first day of the new reign, ousting the sixty-year-old Archbishop Arundel. This combined office made Beaufort the most powerful government minister in the kingdom. As chancellor he controlled the office which issued all the writs in the king’s name by which government business was carried out. The Great Seal, which was attached to these orders, was instantly recognisable (even to the illiterate) as the official seal of England whose authority outranked that of any other individual or department of state. Thomas, earl of Arundel (the archbishop’s nephew), replaced Sir John Pelham as treasurer of England and was also appointed to maintain the country’s first line of defence from invasion as warden of the Cinque Ports and constable of Dover. Richard Beauchamp, the young earl of Warwick, who had already demonstrated outstanding negotiating skills as well as military ones, was immediately employed on several sensitive diplomatic missions and, at the beginning of 1414, would be entrusted with the strategically important post of captain of Calais.
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Almost as important as this choice of advisors was Henry’s refusal to promote those who might have expected office, honour and profit from the new king. Henry Beaufort’s financial skills, powers of oratory and influence in the House of Commons made him an exemplary chancellor, but the post was not enough to satisfy his limitless ambition. When Archbishop Arundel died on 19 February 1414, Beaufort expected to be rewarded with the see of Canterbury. Instead, Henry appointed a man who was both a relative newcomer and, compared to the aristocratic Arundel and Beaufort, an outsider. Henry Chichele was the sort of clergyman whom the new king liked to have around him. A Londoner, whose brothers were eminent aldermen in the City, he was an Oxford graduate and an expert in civil law who had served on an embassy to France, as king’s proctor in Rome and as a delegate to the general council of the Church at Pisa. Since 1408 he had been bishop of St David’s in Wales and in 1410-11 he had served on the royal council when it was headed by Henry as prince of Wales. Significantly, he had not attended after Henry’s removal, indicating that he was already identified as one of the prince’s men.

Fifty-two years of age when he was appointed to Canterbury, Chichele had a wealth of experience as an administrator and a diplomat, but in two important aspects he was the antithesis of the king’s half-uncle. First, he was solid, dependable and tactful, a servant of the Church and king, rather than of his own personal ambition. Second, unlike the flamboyant and worldly Beaufort, he was genuinely pious, with a touch of that severe self-discipline and restraint which Henry shared and admired in others. Henry’s own piety would not allow him to appoint as leader of the Church in England a man who did not have the spiritual interests of that Church at heart. Chichele amply repaid Henry’s trust by the quiet efficiency with which he led both diplomatic embassies and Church affairs. His appointment also served as a warning shot across the bows that the new king would not allow anyone, however high his rank or long his service, to presume upon his favour. It was a lesson Beaufort should have learnt in 1414 but would have to be taught more harshly a few years later.
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The most significant person to be excluded from Henry V’s inner circles and favour was his brother Thomas, duke of Clarence. Despite the fact that for the first eight years of Henry’s reign Clarence was next in line to the throne, he was never appointed regent, never received a major independent military command and was never given a significant position of trust. Although he set off for home as soon as news of Henry IV’s death reached Aquitaine, he did not arrive in time for his brother’s coronation. He was thus accidentally deprived of the opportunity to carry out his duties as steward and constable of England at the ceremony. And, shortly after his return, he was deliberately deprived of his office as king’s lieutenant in Aquitaine, which was given to his half-uncle Thomas Beaufort, earl of Dorset, who had remained in the duchy with Edward, duke of York. Not long afterwards, he lost the captaincy of Calais to the earl of Warwick, though he remained captain of the less important adjacent territory of Guînes.
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Although Henry carefully avoided humiliating Clarence by compensating him for the loss of his offices with a handsome pension of two thousand marks, the new king’s determination to foster a spirit of reconciliation does not seem to have genuinely embraced his brother. Was Henry being vindictive? Was Clarence being punished, even persecuted, for having been his father’s favourite? His treatment is in marked contrast to that meted out to his younger brothers. John, who was twenty-four at Henry V’s accession, was allowed to remain in office as warden of the east marches of Scotland and twenty-two-year-old Humphrey was appointed chamberlain of England. They each received advancement at Henry’s hands too: John was created duke of Bedford and Humphrey duke of Gloucester on 16 May 1414. More significantly, both men would serve as regents in England while Henry was away fighting in France.
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Hot-headed, quarrelsome and lacking in judgement, Clarence had never made any secret of his support for the Armagnacs. Indeed, it was typical of the man that in 1412, not content with just leading a military expedition to their assistance, he had also taken the step of forming an intimate personal bond with their leader. Reserving only his allegiance to the king of England (who was then his father, not his brother), Clarence had sworn a formal oath to become the brother-in-arms of Charles d’Orléans, promising to “serve him, aid him, counsel him, and protect his honour and well-being in all ways and to the best of his powers.”
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The kindest interpretation of this action is that it was indiscreet, but Clarence had compromised himself further during the winter of 1412-13 by forming military alliances in Aquitaine with Bernard, count of Armagnac, and Charles d’Albret.

Clarence’s commitment to the Armagnacs raised suspicions that he was trying to carve out a principality of his own. Indeed, this may have been his father’s intention when he appointed Clarence his lieutenant in Aquitaine in the first place, for there was, as we have seen, a precedent in Richard II’s plans to hive the duchy off from the crown and bestow it on John of Gaunt. And if Henry gave up his own title of duke of Aquitaine to his brother when he became king, it would resolve the problem of homage once and for all, since there could be no objection to Clarence and his heirs doing homage to the king of France. A proposal of this nature might also be traded for a recognition of increased rights and expanded boundaries in Aquitaine, which had always been the principal aim of Henry IV’s foreign policy. But Henry V had no intention of relinquishing his duchy to anyone, since to do so would undermine his own claim to the rest of his “just rights and inheritances” in France.
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One of Henry V’s first acts as king was to offer the olive branch in the form of a general pardon for all treasons, rebellions and felonies committed in his father’s reign to anyone who cared to seek it. “Whereas we are mindful of the many great misfortunes which have arisen out of faction . . . ,” he proclaimed, “we have firmly resolved, since it would be pleasing to God and most conducive to the preservation of good order, that as God’s pardon has been freely bestowed on us, we should allow all the subjects of our kingdom . . . who so desire, to drink from the cup of our mercy.” Suing for a pardon did not necessarily imply guilt. It is difficult to believe that the elderly bishop of Hereford, a former royal confessor, really needed his pardon “for all treasons, murders, rapes, rebellions, insurrections, felonies, conspiracies, trespasses, offences, negligencies, extortions, misprisions, ignorances, contempts, concealments and deceptions committed by him, except murders after 19 November.” Nevertheless, a pardon was a useful insurance policy in uncertain times and the response—some 750 individual pardons were issued before the end of the year—suggests that this conciliatory gesture was welcomed in many quarters.
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Within a few days of his accession, Henry dispatched Thomas, earl of Arundel, to Wales with special powers to receive former rebels into the king’s grace and to grant them pardons at his discretion. The results were spectacular. Six hundred inhabitants of Merionethshire appeared before Arundel admitting that they deserved death as traitors but asking for mercy; when he granted them a communal pardon on Henry’s behalf, they fell on their knees and thanked God for the magnanimity of their king. More than fifty condemned rebels from Kidwelly were also spared death, fined and had their lands restored. This granting of pardons and restoration of lands to former rebels was not simply an act of royal mercy and charity. It was also highly profitable. In just two years Henry raised more than five thousand pounds—well over four million dollars in today’s currency—from fines collected from his Welsh lands.
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While it might be tempting to see fund-raising as the real reason for the whole exercise, it was nevertheless true that the pardons and restorations allowed those Welshmen who had been tempted to rebel to put the past behind them and make a clean start. The success of this policy was demonstrated by the fact that, although Owain Glyn Dw?246-136?r was still at large in the mountains (and never would be captured), at no time was he ever able to attract enough malcontents to raise the standard of revolt again. Significantly, too, there was a genuine attempt to pursue and punish corrupt royal officials who had abused their powers in the principality. Thomas Barneby, the chamberlain of north Wales, at first successfully evaded indictment by bribery, but Henry’s commissioners did not give up and a few months later he had to face thirty charges of extortion and embezzlement and was removed from office. Another royal official, Sir John Scudamore, the steward of Kidwelly, was similarly deprived of his post, even though it had been granted to him for life.
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Such actions did much to redress the balance: the king might penalise those who had rebelled against his authority, but he was also prepared to punish those who had abused it. Henry was demonstrably carrying out his oath to do right and equal justice for all in Wales. It was a policy that clearly won him friends in the principality, judging by the huge numbers of Welshmen who signed up for the Agincourt campaign.

The same was true of the rest of his kingdom. Violence against persons and property, riots and disorder, were endemic in medieval England.
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The principal reason for this was not simply that society was naturally more criminal, but rather an inability to obtain justice, which encouraged those who perceived themselves to be victims to seek redress or revenge themselves. Since there was neither a police force nor a public prosecution service to investigate crimes or indict criminals, the judicial process relied almost entirely on local men (and they were nearly always men) who served as jurors, sheriffs or justices of the peace. Inevitably, these were also the people most vulnerable to bribery, corruption and intimidation because they were dependent for their offices on the goodwill, power and patronage of the magnates and aristocrats, the super-rich whose landholdings and influence crossed county boundaries and ultimately led to the fount of all good things, the royal court and the king himself.

In Shropshire, where the most powerful magnate was Thomas, earl of Arundel, one of Henry V’s closest friends, a small group of his retainers had acquired a stranglehold on local administration. Their crimes ranged from the obvious—peculation, extortion, terrorising and destroying the countryside at the head of armed bands of men—to the ingeniously devious, such as securing the appointment of their opponents to the unpopular post of tax-collectors. Henry IV had not dared to intervene for fear of offending Arundel, whose support was essential in crushing the Welsh revolt, but Henry V had no such qualms. He appointed a special commission of central court justices from the king’s bench at Westminster with extraordinary powers to suppress the disorder in Shropshire. This was a bold move (commissions of this type had roused such violent popular opposition under Richard II that Henry IV had been afraid to use them and had never allowed the king’s bench to leave Westminster), but it proved its worth immediately. Over the course of the summer of 1414, almost eighteen hundred indictments were received and proceedings were begun against sixteen hundred individuals.
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The seven leading culprits were prosecuted, found guilty and forced to give bonds for the enormous sum of £200 each (the equivalent of $133,300 today) to keep the peace in future. Arundel himself was obliged to give a further bond of £3000 ($2,012,500 today) as a pledge for their good behaviour. This alone was a powerful demonstration that Arundel’s friendship with the king did not allow him, or his retainers, to be above the law.

In less sure hands, such exemplary punishment meted out to a powerful aristocrat and his supporters would probably have provoked a hostile reaction, possibly even armed revolt. The success of Henry’s policy is therefore all the more remarkable, particularly as the experience in Shropshire was repeated throughout the rest of the country. The knights and esquires of the shires, who should have been the natural upholders of local justice, were specifically targeted by Henry’s special courts and made to pay the price for deviating from that role. Critically, however, it was not such a high price that it drove them into opposition. Even Arundel’s notorious band of seven was given a second chance. They all received pardons and, more importantly, redeemed themselves by active military service: six of them served in Arundel’s retinue on the Agincourt campaign; the seventh remained at home as a captain entrusted with the guardianship of the Welsh marches.
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Many of their own servants, who had also been indicted for the same offences, played a vital role as archers at Agincourt.