Henry V as Warlord (10 page)

There had been long discussions between March, Lord Clifford – who refused to be drawn into the conspiracy – and the two other ring-leaders, Sir Thomas Grey and Lord Scrope at the Itchen ferry, under the very walls of Southampton, and also at supper parties at March’s manor of Cranbury near Winchester. A plan to fire the invasion fleet was rejected. Finally it had been decided to assassinate King Henry on the very day that March had his audience.

Henry struck at once. Cambridge, Scrope and Grey were arrested without delay and a jury was impanelled the same day. The following day they were found guilty and a commission presided over by Clarence sentenced them to death. Grey was executed at once but, as was their right as lords, Cambridge and Scrope demanded to be tried by their peers. Many of these were at Southampton waiting to go over to France and twenty soon met, under Clarence’s presidency, confirming the sentences. Henry commuted these to beheading, the privilege of lords, though he had Scrope dragged ignominiously on a hurdle through the streets of Southampton – no doubt to be pelted with filth and stones – to the place of execution outside the north gate, where ‘their heads were smit off’.

The plot has not been taken seriously enough by historians (even if Wylie calls it a ‘really formidable shock’), because it failed. Yet the conspirators included a member of the royal family, a magnate who was a former Treasurer of the Household, and a redoubtable and extremely influential soldier. Cambridge and Scrope were genuine powers in the land, both Knights of the Garter, with many friends, allies and clients. Walsingham says that the tender-hearted king wept at their fate. He is more likely to have shed tears because of their denial of his right to the throne.

Richard of Coninsburgh, Earl of Cambridge, was the younger brother of that arch-intriguer, the Duke of York, who was, however, not implicated in the plot. As well as being March’s brother-in-law, Cambridge had been Richard II’s godson. No doubt Henry thought he had secured his loyalty by creating him an earl. His daughter was married to the eldest son of Sir Thomas Grey of Heton Castle (and of the Towers of Wark-on-Tyne and Nesbit) in Northumberland, constable of Bamborough and Norham Castles in the same county – both key strongholds. Grey was also a son-in-law of the Earl of Westmorland while his wife’s brother-in-law was the Earl of Northumberland. He was therefore very well connected and very much respected throughout the North Country. The
Gesta
admits that he was ‘a knight famous and noble if only he had not been dishonoured by this stain of treason’.
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It was the defection of Scrope which shook Henry, the enmity of someone so brilliant, who had been one of his closest friends. Presumably he would have endorsed Friar Capgrave’s verdict; ‘Sober was the man in word and cheer and under that hypocrisy had he a full venomous heart.’ Indeed the attempted coup has earned Lord Scrope the contempt of history. Shakespeare makes Henry rebuke him with an extremely plausible speech:

Ingrateful, savage and inhuman creature!

Thou, that didst bear the key of all my counsels
,

That knewst the very bottom of my soul

Yet Scrope’s real motives have never been identified. The contemporary rumour that he had been bought by the French for ‘a million of gold’ was without foundation. He himself said that the conspirators had invited him to join them because he was the nephew of the murdered archbishop, which seems the most likely explanation; his piety verged on mysticism, and he cannot have been unmoved by the cult of ‘St Richard’ at York Minster. The person who knew Henry best, outside his family, was not prepared to have him as his king.

The ‘Southampton Plot’ was inept and ill conceived. The devout Lord Scrope could never have brought himself to join forces with the Lollard heretics, whom he detested, and at one point he appears to have tried to talk his fellow plotters out of going ahead with it. Nonetheless Henry had only been saved at the last moment because March lost his nerve. If Cambridge’s confession is to be believed, the earl’s chaplain had urged him ‘to claim what he called his right’ and his household had been convinced that he meant to do so. March undoubtedly feared that the king intended to ‘undo’ him, and had recently been shattered by Henry forcing him to pay 10,000 marks (nearly £7,000) as a marriage fine to ensure he remained subservient and did not meddle in politics. During the final French attempt to avoid war the astrologer Jean Fusoris, who accompanied the embassy to England, heard that many people would have preferred March to be their king. But he possessed either too little ambition or too little self-confidence. He seems to have been an unusually amiable and kindly young man, moderately gifted, with a healthy sense of self-preservation. He was understandably reserved and somewhat suspicious, and above all very much in awe of the cousin who had stolen his crown. Investigating his personal accounts McFarlane discovered that he had a weakness for gambling – losing £157 between the autumn of 1413 and the spring of 1414 at cards, tables, raffles and dice, and betting on cockfighting. ‘There are also some suspiciously large payments to a certain Alice at Poplar and some other signs of a fondness for low as well as high company.’
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Later March served Henry well enough during the campaigns in France, though he was to fall under suspicion at least once again. He died childless in 1425 when his claims passed to his sister, the Countess of Cambridge (the widow of the earl who had perished in the Southampton Plot). Her son Richard, Duke of York, was to claim the throne in 1460 – on being asked why he had not done so before, he replied, ‘Though right for a time rest and be put to silence, yet it rotteth not nor shall it perish.’

Henry V believed that there was only one way to end ‘all this clamour of King Richard’, as his father put it. He had to prove to the world that God’s blessing was on the new dynasty. The sole method of doing so was trial by battle.

V

The English Armada

‘We exhort you in the bowels of Jesus Christ to execute and do that thing that the Evangelist teacheth, saying “Friend, pay that that thou owest and restore that that thou wrongfully detainest.” And to the end that the blood of innocence be not spilt, we require due restitution of our rightful inheritance by you wrongfully witholden from Us.’

Henry V to the Dauphin, 1415

‘Nor with you can our sovereign lord safely treat.’

The Archbishop of Bourges to Henry V, 1415

H
enry’s preparations for his grand design, the invasion and conquest of France, are further evidence of the many-sided genius he had displayed in Wales and in ruling England during his father’s illness. He solved with ease countless problems of logistics and organization. He also showed himself to be a skilled and ruthless diplomat.

Almost from the moment he succeeded to the crown, he was making ready for war with France. As early as May 1413 he had ordered that no bows or guns were to be sold to the Scots or to other foreigners. Throughout 1413–14 he was buying bows, bow strings and arrows, while guns were being founded at the Tower and at Bristol, and gun powder and gunstones manufactured in large quantities. He also purchased, or had manufactured, siege towers, scaling ladders, battering rams and other tools for demolishing and breaching walls, and collapsible pontoon bridges. Timber, rope, mattocks, picks and shovels were stockpiled, together with every other conceivable necessity for siege warfare – from calthrops to iron chains, from sea-coal to wood-ash. In October 1414, 10,000 gunstones costing £66 13
s
4
d
were delivered to the Tower.
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Yet at the same time the king was negotiating with the French. Full-scale civil war had broken out between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs. The Duke of Burgundy sought military assistance from England – understandably the Armagnacs tried to outbid the duke at the English court.

Although the king wanted war, he was careful to give every appearance of taking seriously the negotiations which took place in 1413–15. At this stage his aims were probably limited to recovering Aquitaine as it had been under the Black Prince, after the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360. This included not just Guyenne, Poitou and the Limousin but almost all France between the Loire and the Pyrenees west of the Massif Central – amounting to a third of the realm. Had he obtained it through diplomacy there is little doubt that he would have demanded more territory, which would inevitably have led to conflict.

The first thing Henry needed for an invasion was money. He made every effort to improve the collection of revenue and see that it was spent to maximum effect. He increased the yield from Crown lands and such dues as marriage fees and wardships. The excellent relations he had established with the Commons when Prince of Wales stood him in good stead – they were impressed by his businesslike ways and trusted him. They approved his right to regain his ‘inheritance’ in France in the Parliament of November 1414, while urging him to exhaust every diplomatic possibility before going to war. One reason for their co-operation was satisfaction with his proclamation of a general pardon. Even so he had to borrow. He did not possess the enormous credit facilities extended to his great-grandfather Edward III by the Florentine banking houses. His only source of credit was his revenue and his personal valuables – and only the revenue of the year in hand, since he refused to anticipate future revenue.

Commissioners were sent all over England to raise loans from prelates and religious orders, from noblemen and country gentlemen, from city corporations and from merchants great and small – Dick Whittington, the London merchant (and sometime mayor) advanced some £2,000, while large numbers of tradesmen lent sums as small as 10
d
. The biggest creditor was Bishop Beaufort who contributed not less than £35,630 in the course of his nephew’s reign. Nevertheless the king still had to pledge all his jewellery and not just his ‘little jewels’ as in the past but the very vestments from the Chapel Royal, even his crowns: of the ‘Harry Crown’ Sir John Colvyl held a fleur-de-lys with rubies, sapphires and pearls; John Pudsey, esquire, a pinnacle with sapphires, a square ruby and six pearls; Maurice Brune a pinnacle similarly ornamented; and John Staundish another pinnacle likewise ornamented. He was to go on borrowing throughout his reign, though most loans would be paid back in full.

In August 1414, after having manoeuvred the Duke of Burgundy into offering neutrality should he attempt to make himself King of France, Henry sent an embassy to Paris led by Richard Courtenay, Bishop of Norwich. First the embassy demanded the French crown and kingdom for its master, then it lowered its terms to Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, Poitou and the lands between Flanders and the Somme, and Aquitaine as it had been in 1360. This amounted to all western France. They also demanded the still unpaid ransom of King John II (who had been taken prisoner at Poitiers in 1356), most of Provence, and the hand of Charles VI’s daughter, Catherine, with a dowry of two million crowns. In response, the Armagnac Duke of Berry – effectively Regent of France since Charles had gone off his head again – offered most, though not all, of Aquitaine and a dowry of 600,000 crowns. His terms were rejected. The following month the Armagnacs again made peace with the Burgundians, and Henry had to reassess his bargaining position.
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In February 1415 Bishop Courtenay led another embassy to Paris, asking this time merely for Aquitaine in full sovereignty and a dowry of only a million crowns. The French refused to improve their previous offer apart from raising the dowry to 800,000 crowns. These were generous terms yet they were rejected once more. The original version of Shakespeare’s story of the tennis balls probably dates from the embassy’s return, that the haughty French ‘said foolishly to them that as Henry was but a young man they would send to him little balls to play with and soft cushions to rest on until he should have grown to a man’s strength’.
³
(This is from the almost contemporary chronicle of Canon John Strecche, who had many informed friends at Court.) The tale may well have been a piece of propaganda, invented and put about by Henry’s agents.

By June the king was at Winchester, ready to receive one final despairing embassy from the French before launching his invasion. He received the envoys at the bishop’s palace on the 30 June, giving every appearance of taking them seriously. He was in cloth of gold from top to toe and leant against a table – flanked by the royal dukes on one side, by the Chancellor, Beaufort, and various prelates on the other. During the ensuing negotiations the French offered to add the Limousin to their previous offer, to no avail. Their leader Guillaume Boisratier, Archbishop of Bourges, lost his temper when Henry said that if Charles VI did not meet his ‘just’ demands he would be responsible for a ‘deluge of Christian blood’. ‘Sire,’ retorted the prelate, ‘the King of France our sovereign lord is true King of France, and regarding those things to which you say you have a right you have no lordship, not even to the kingdom of England which belongs to the true heirs of King Richard. Nor with you can our sovereign lord safely treat.’ At this Henry stormed out of the conference chamber.

The Chancellor, Beaufort, then read out a prepared document. The gist was that if Charles VI refused to hand over the Angevin empire immediately, Henry would come and take it by the sword, and the crown of France with it, that he had been driven to this course by Charles’s delays and refusal to do him ‘justice’. The archbishop answered that the English were mistaken if they thought that the French had offered concessions out of fear and the English king might come when he liked to be defeated, killed or taken prisoner.

On 6 July 1415 Henry declared war formally, a war for which he had been preparing for over two years. He called on God to witness that it was the fault of Charles VI, for refusing to do him ‘justice’. The author of the
Gesta
tells us the king had copies made of ‘pacts and covenants entered into between the most serene prince the King of England Henry IV, his father, and certain of the great princes of France on the subject of his divine right and claim to the duchy of Aquitaine’ and sent transcripts to the Council of the Church at Constance, to the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund and to other monarchs, ‘that all Christendom might know what great acts of injustice the French in their duplicity had inflicted on him, and that, as it were reluctantly and against his will, he was being compelled to raise his standard against rebels.’
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