A Great and Glorious Adventure (32 page)

Arundel reached Bishopthorpe on 7 June 1405 and pleaded with the king not to execute Scrope, reminding him of the last occasion a king named Henry had been responsible for the killing of an
archbishop (Henry II and Becket). The king fobbed his old friend off, sent him to bed, put Scrope on trial that night, and had him beheaded with two others the next day. It was the first judicial
execution of an archbishop and caused horror throughout England and Europe. Even if the death sentence was justified, which it surely was, to kill an ordained cleric, never mind an archbishop, was
seen as shocking and allowed Henry’s enemies to claim that he had not only murdered an anointed king but one of God’s chosen servants as well. The pope in Rome was said to be appalled
and to have laid curses on all involved, but his opposition was short-lived and probably mollified by a monetary payment, while an outbreak of miracle-working at Scrope’s tomb in York Minster
did not last much longer. Eventually, in 1408, Pope Gregory XII officially
exonerated Henry in return for a promise to found three religious houses. Shortly after the
execution, Henry fell ill with what some alleged was leprosy. We know now, from examination of Henry’s skeleton, that he did not suffer from that most horrible of diseases to which there was
then no cure, but it suited his opponents to put it about that he was being visited by divine punishment for his treatment of Scrope. Whatever it was that ailed the king, his health became
progressively worse from 1408 onwards and eventually necessitated government being carried on by a council headed by Henry, Prince of Wales. It was a state of affairs that led to disagreements
between father and son and King Henry to suspect his eldest son of plotting rebellion against him.

Northumberland was not to be allowed to get away with yet more treason; he had forced the king to divert his planned expedition to Wales to go north and deal with him, and Henry now began
systematically to reduce those northern towns sympathetic to the rebellion. Northumberland tried to rally support in Wales, but there the uprising was beginning to collapse, and his brief trip to
France achieved nothing, the French having quite enough internal troubles of their own. In desperation, Henry Percy decided to risk all on one final gamble and invaded England from Scotland in
1408. His army was tiny – probably no more than a few hundred, perhaps a thousand men at most. In addition to those soldiers he had raised in Scotland, he included retainers from his own
lands in the north and the adherents of the bishop of Bangor and the abbot of Hayles. The invasion was short-lived. Before King Henry got anywhere near the area, the high sheriff of Yorkshire, Sir
Thomas Rokeby, with a hastily raised force of loyalist retinues and arrayed archers, met Northumberland’s men near Knaresborough and chased them twelve miles south to Tadcaster, where they
were unable to make a stand and retreated four miles west to Bramham Moor, south of Wetherby. Percy found a defensive position and awaited Rokeby, who arrived in the early afternoon of 14 February
1408, won the missile fight with his archers, and attacked Northumberland with his infantry. The result was never in doubt: the rebel army was smashed and very few got away back to Scotland. Henry
Percy himself was killed fighting furiously in a rearguard action; he was
decapitated and quartered, with his head exhibited on London Bridge. King Henry duly came north and
meted out retribution from York, assisted by a crowd of informers anxious to prove their own loyalty and no doubt seizing the opportunity to settle old scores. Among those executed was the abbot of
Hayles, but of the fate of the bishop of Bangor the chronicles are silent. Henry Percy’s titles and estates were forfeited by act of attainder.
⁷⁶

Meanwhile, in France, the descent into civil war had prevented effective action to capitalize on Henry of England’s problems. Had France been united, then, given Henry’s financial
problems, the French might easily have taken Aquitaine, but, with the ever more frequent outbreaks of Charles VI’s insanity, power was increasingly being garnered by the dukes of Burgundy and
Orléans, who, as we have seen, had very different agendas. Their enmity came to a very public head when, on the night of 23 November 1407, only a few days after a supposed reconciliation
between the two, the duke of Orléans was set upon in a Paris street and bludgeoned to death, his hand having first been cut off to prevent it casting spells on the attackers. The
assassination was widely believed to have been at the instigation of the duke of Burgundy, and he is said to have admitted it some days later.

France now split into two armed camps. The cause of the late duke of Orléans was taken up by his son’s father-in-law, the count of Armagnac, who gave his name to the
Orléanist faction. This group controlled, in broad terms, most of France south of the River Loire, less of course English Aquitaine, while the Burgundians held the north – including,
crucially, Paris – Flanders and most of the Low Countries. Brittany was generally neutral and Normandy too, with divided loyalties, managed to avoid taking sides. The duke of Burgundy had
already signed a trade agreement with Henry IV, and the threat to Calais from Flanders was now lessened, the English wool trade picked up, and the English treasury began to look a little
healthier.

In 1411, Paris was under siege by an Armagnac army and the duke of Burgundy appealed to Henry IV for help. At this stage, the Prince of Wales was leader of the
king’s council during his father’s illness, and in September an English army of 800 men-at-arms and 2,000 archers, under the command of the thirty-year-old Thomas Fitzalan, earl of
Arundel and nephew of the archbishop of Canterbury, landed at Calais. They then marched to Arras, joined with the Burgundian relieving army, and headed for Paris. On 9 November 1411, Arundel
stormed the besiegers at the Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud and, having lifted the siege, marched back to Calais and sailed to England.

The following year, with the king recovered and the prince sidelined, English support went instead to the Armagnacs, who promised in return for military assistance against the Burgundians to
support the annexation of Aquitaine to England (as opposed to it being a separate overseas province) – something which had already been enacted by the English parliament. Four thousand men
were despatched under Thomas of Lancaster, King Henry’s second son and recently created earl of Aumale and duke of Clarence, who landed at La Hougue in Normandy. The landing was opposed by
what the Brut Chronicle describes as 7,000 men-at-arms, but was probably a great deal less, under a Lord Hambe, and, having defeated them and taken prisoners for ransom, the English moved south to
link up with the Armagnacs in Poitou. By the time they got there, the two French dukes, young Orléans and Burgundy, had come to uneasy and temporary terms, so Clarence led his army on a
burning and looting spree through southern France to English Bordeaux, and only agreed to go home when he was bought off by the Armagnacs. The short peace between the two opposing French factions
brought the professed agreement by both to the English annexation of Aquitaine, but, as neither Armagnac nor Burgundian could speak for the Valois king nor for the French
parlement
, the
agreement was illegal and worthless. In any case, the peace was soon shattered when in 1413 Burgundians in Paris fell upon Armagnac supporters and began to slaughter them and set fire to their
houses and buildings. Rioting was widespread and only quelled by the arrival of an Armagnac army and the nine-year-old dauphin Charles. Burgundy was forced to yield Paris to the Armagnacs and
flee to Flanders, where he began negotiations for English support to regain his power.

Then, on 20 March 1413, Henry IV of England died, aged forty-seven. His tomb in Canterbury Cathedral is opposite that of the Black Prince, whose son Henry had put to death – a touch of
irony presumably not intended at the time. His effigy shows a face old and bloated, and indeed it is almost as if Henry were two different people. Vigorous, an accomplished jouster, well educated,
articulate and sociable as Henry Bolingbroke, he had been supported by the vast majority of those who mattered in his unseating of Richard II, and admired, as the Brut Chronicle puts it, ‘for
his worthy manhood that often times had been found in him’. Once king, however, he faced uncooperative parliaments and at least eight rebellions during his fourteen-year reign. Increasingly
suspicious and dogged by ill health, he survived by compromise and thus allowed much royal prerogative to be subsumed by Parliament – powers that it would be reluctant to give back. Although
Henry maintained the English claim to the French throne – which Richard would have given up – he did little to advance it, and the war during his reign was one of raids, piracy and
blockade. Militarily, Henry’s main preoccupation was the Welsh rising of Owain Glyn D
ŵ
r, and with that and the need to quell rebellion elsewhere there was no money for
major expeditions to Europe. Henry did little to change the organization and tactical deployment of English armies – there was no need – but he did promote the development of cannon,
which, while present in most armies since the middle of the fourteenth century, had had little effect so far on the outcome of a battle.

Although the Welsh troubles rumbled on until after Henry’s death, even before Northumberland’s last rebellion they were in decline. Owain Glyn D
ŵ
r had the support
of many, perhaps most, of the native Welsh princes, but not of the common people nor of the Anglo-Welsh and the English settlers, and he controlled only limited areas of the country. The English
commanded the seas and, with the exception of a few minor French landings, no reinforcement could come by that means. Most castles held out, and those few that did fall to the rebels were
relatively swiftly recovered. The English fortified the Marches, hemming the rebels in and preventing sympathizers from England reaching them, and, while
the Welsh could and
did mount raids over the border into Shropshire, detachments of English mounted troops were on standby to pursue them. English supply routes into and out of Wales were secured, while English
soldiers severed those of the Welsh. Many of Glyn D
ŵ
r’s own family, including his wife, were taken prisoner and lodged in the Tower, and at least one of his sons was
killed, as were increasing numbers of his senior commanders. Above all other factors, perhaps, there was that of finance. As the English exchequer grew healthier, English soldiers could be paid and
supplies purchased, while Glyn D
ŵ
r had to rely on ransom money and, when that ran out, on looting his own countrymen – not a policy guaranteed to maintain support for his
cause. That the rebellion lasted as long as it did was due to the very sensible Welsh policy of not being drawn into a conventional battle, but to harry, ambush, snipe and raid and then fade away
into the hills. But guerrillas cannot win a war all by themselves, and in the end a dogged English policy of attrition, control of the coastline, defence of the Marches and ensuring that even in
times of financial difficulties sufficient money was always found to continue the campaign was bound to win in the end, and that it did was very much to the credit of Henry IV. Glyn
D
ŵ
r’s own fate remains a mystery. He was never captured and is thought to have died sometime in 1415, but by what cause and where his body lies is unknown.

Nor was Scotland to be a problem once Northumberland’s last foray from there was defeated. It was good intelligence and skilled seamanship in March 1406 that allowed the English navy to
capture the heir to the throne of Scotland, James Stewart (later James I of Scotland), off Flamborough Head on his way to school in France; and it was good luck that his father Robert III died a
month later, allowing the English to install yet another king of Scotland in the Tower. James was well treated but remained a prisoner for eighteen years, thus ensuring that England’s back
door was reasonably secure.

Henry IV may not have been able to pursue the French war, but his son and successor certainly would. By the time he came to the throne, Henry of Monmouth had already proved himself as a soldier
– at Shrewsbury, where he may have been following the guidance of more experienced commanders but where he nevertheless showed great courage and understanding of battle management; and
subsequently
in the Welsh wars, where, as his father’s health declined, the defeat of the insurrection was more and more left to him. He learned how to keep an army in
the field in an underdeveloped country and how to conduct sieges, and he fully understood the importance of mobility and sound logistics, all of which would stand him in good stead for his future
campaigning. He is generally considered to have been something of a lad during his apprenticeship – to have been rather fond of wine, women, song and dubious companions – and he
certainly fell out with his father on numerous occasions, sometimes over foreign policy, more often when his father was concerned that young Henry was building an alternative court. But by the time
his father died, he seems to have put such misbehaviour behind him.

In twenty-first-century Britain, the queen is head of the Church of England, but in truth religion no longer has a major influence, either in government or in most people’s daily lives.
That was not the case in the medieval world, and any consideration of government and kingship then must take account of the position of the church. It is not easy in this secular, cynical,
sceptical age of ours to fully comprehend the influence of religion on our medieval ancestors. Religion was a powerful instrument of social control.
⁷⁷
In medieval England, an instruction from the king was persuasive; that it was also an instruction from God made it doubly so. There were, of course, men who engaged in something approaching what we
would today call the scientific method – nobody with any education thought the world was flat – but witchcraft and sorcery were largely tolerated until well into the sixteenth century.
(The Inquisition, which equated witchcraft with heresy and burned practitioners at the stake, was never allowed into England – as much because it was foreign as for any theological reason.)
The common man was, however, intensely superstitious. He believed that when he died he would either go to heaven, provided that he had prayed hard enough and had obeyed the dictums of the church,
or otherwise would go to
a very unpleasant eternity in hell, something that he was continually reminded of every time he glanced at the tympana above the churches’
doors. Things that were unexplained – a sudden storm, an earthquake, disease – were either expressions of God’s displeasure or the work of the devil.