Henry IV (29 page)

They never did return. On arrival at Chester, Exeter began confidently by urging Henry to beg Richard's pardon for his ‘outrage’ in returning from exile, which, he assured Henry, would be freely granted, but he was quickly brought down to earth.
⁶⁹
Cutting off his brother-in-law almost in mid-sentence, Henry told the two dukes that he had no intention of allowing them to return to Conway. Surrey was locked away in Chester castle, Exeter detained in Henry's household, although when he pleaded too insistently to be allowed to leave, Henry banished him from his presence. The next day or two were spent conducting a lightning raid on Holt castle, eight miles south of Chester, a former Arundel castle which was now the king's principal treasury in the north-west, where Henry seized at least some of the very substantial quantities of money and plate.
⁷⁰
Returning to
Chester around 12 August, he despatched the earl of Northumberland and, possibly, Thomas Arundel, to Conway to lure Richard out of the castle.
⁷¹
What happened next was disputed at the time and still is. The Lancastrian version of events was that Richard, while still at liberty at Conway, promised Northumberland and Arundel that he was willing to abdicate and asked them to set up a committee to determine how this might best be done.
⁷²
Creton, however (who fails to mention Archbishop Arundel's presence at Conway), said that Northumberland tricked Richard out of Conway by swearing on the host that he would not be deposed as long as he agreed to restore Henry to his inheritance and to the stewardship of England, and to submit five of his councillors to trial in a parliament at which Henry, by virtue of his office as steward of England, would act as ‘chief judge’; having thus inveigled the king out of Conway, the earl ambushed him (he had concealed his troops behind an outcrop a few miles down the road) and led him to Flint to await Henry's arrival.
⁷³

Creton's story is surely closer to the truth. That Richard willingly agreed to abdicate at Conway is most unlikely, although it is possible that he agreed to remain king in name while effective power would be devolved to Henry. Equally problematical is Northumberland's role: he later claimed that Henry had deceived him, having initially sworn that Richard would not be deposed but would remain king ‘under the direction, and by the good advice, of the lords spiritual and temporal’.
⁷⁴
Northumberland's feelings towards the house of Lancaster were ambivalent: he had quarrelled bitterly with Gaunt in 1381 and resented the duke's interference in the affairs of the Anglo-Scottish Marches. More to the point, perhaps, his son Hotspur was married to Elizabeth, aunt of Edmund Mortimer, whom many regarded as the rightful heir to the throne should Richard be deposed; if Henry made any promises to Northumberland, they are more likely to have concerned the succession than the question of whether or not the king had to go. Like Henry, Northumberland knew that sooner or later Richard would seek revenge. Realistically, Northumberland, Henry, and perhaps Arundel must all have told a succession of lies in order to get their hands on the king – although there was probably no other way that
they could have done so, and according to Creton Richard also lied, consoling his followers that he would never allow them to be brought to trial in parliament and would assuredly be avenged upon his enemies. Within another few hours, however, by late morning on Friday 15 August, he had fallen into Northumberland's hands, and his assurances counted for nothing.
⁷⁵

When he realized he had been led into a trap, Richard asked to be allowed to return to Conway, but the earl would have none of it: ‘Now that I have you here,’ he replied, ‘I will take you to Duke Henry as soon as I can, for you must know that I promised this to him ten days ago.’
⁷⁶
After a midday meal at Rhuddlan, the party moved on to Flint on the estuary of the Dee, where they spent the night. Henry arrived the following day, his army ‘marching along the sea-shore, drawn up in battle array’, while Richard stood on the battlements and watched them approach. A small detachment including Archbishop Arundel, Aumale and Worcester broke off from the main host and came up to the walls; Aumale and Worcester, Richard could not help noticing, no longer wore his livery but Henry's. The archbishop entered the castle first. Descending from the keep, Richard greeted him in the courtyard and the two men had a long conversation. Creton said that Arundel comforted the king and told him no harm would come to him, but another account of their exchange stated that Arundel told Richard he was ‘the falsest of all men’, that he had sworn upon the host that no harm would come to his brother the earl, and that ‘You have not ruled your kingdom but ravished it [and] by your foul example you defiled both your court and the kingdom.’
⁷⁷
Henry, meanwhile, had ordered his troops to surround Flint, but agreed to wait until the king had dined.
⁷⁸
Eventually, fully armed apart from his bascinet, he passed through the gate and Richard came out to speak to him. Both men removed their headwear, and Henry bowed twice ‘very low’. Richard spoke first: ‘Fair cousin of Lancaster, you are right welcome.’ Henry's reply was to the point: ‘My lord, I have come sooner than you sent for me, and I shall tell you why: it is commonly said among your people that you have, for the last twenty or twenty-two years, governed them very badly and far too harshly,
with the result that they are most discontented. If it please Our Lord, however, I shall now help you to govern them better than they have been governed in the past’; to which Richard answered, ‘If it please you, fair cousin, it pleases us as well.’ These were, according to Creton, their exact words,
⁷⁹
and for the moment there was no more to be said. Henry called out (‘in a stern and savage voice’) for horses, whereupon two derisory little nags were brought forward, one for Richard, the other for the earl of Salisbury, to whom Henry, remembering his visit to Paris a few months earlier, refused to speak. Leaving Flint two hours after midday, they reached Chester before nightfall, where the king was jeered by the mob before being locked in the keep with a few close friends, including Salisbury and the bishop of Carlisle. No one else was permitted to speak to him; it was the evening of Saturday 16 August, and his reign had effectively ended. It had taken Henry less than fifty days to conquer both king and kingdom, exulted Walsingham, ‘a manifest miracle of God’.
⁸⁰

¹
Saint-Denys
, ii.674 (‘as long as he remained there, he was lodged in royal residences, lavishly provided for, along with his retinue, at the king's expense, and loaded with gifts’).
Chronographia Regum Francorum
(iii.166) said that Henry also visited Meaux, just east of Paris, at some point.

²
Oeuvres de Froissart
, xvi.141–9; Salisbury was in Paris from late October to early December 1398: E403/561, 18 October; J. Laidlaw, ‘Christine de Pizan, the Earl of Salisbury and Henry IV’,
French Studies
36 (1982), 129–43.

³
The chronicler of Saint-Denis said Henry befriended the duke of Berry, but Berry was not in Paris for much of the time Henry was there: from early August 1398 until 9 February 1399 he remained on his estates in Berry and Auvergne. Nor did he favour Henry's marriage to his daughter (F. Lehoux,
Jean de France, Duc de Berri
(3 vols, Paris 1966), ii.394–407).

⁴
The Hôtel de Clisson, built around 1370, was a monument to the wealth and power of this former constable of France: J. Henneman,
Olivier de Clisson and Political Society in France under Charles V and Charles VI
(Philadelphia, 1996); Lehoux,
Jean de France
, ii.201.

⁵
He was in Paris in April 1399, however, at the
Parlement
(Henneman,
Olivier de Clisson
, 171, 191, 304).

⁶
Note Henry's earlier request to take Henry Bowet to Lombardy, above, p. 117. P. Pietresson de Saint Aubin, ‘Documents inédits sur l'installation de Pierre d'Ailly à l'évêché de Cambrai en 1397’,
Bibliothèque de l'école des Chartes
(1955), 121–2, 138–9;
CR
, 26–9. John of Nevers was the son of Philip, duke of Burgundy; it was said that Burgundy and Orléans had settled their differences, but this was optimistic. The possibility of a marriage between Henry and Lucia Visconti, Gian Galeazzo's cousin, was also still being discussed as late as May 1399.

⁷
Oeuvres de Froissart
, xvi.116, 137; E. Collas,
Valentine de Milan, Duchesse d'Orléans
(Paris, 1911), 253; BL Add. Charters 3066, 3404. Duchess Valentina gave Henry a diamond and a set of seven enamels on this occasion, costing 862 francs; she also gave two diamonds worth 30 francs each to two of Henry's esquires with him at Asnières on 27 January. See also ‘Histoire de Charles VI, Roy de France, par Jean Jouvenal des Ursins’, in
Choix de Chroniques et Mémoires sur l'Histoire de France
, ed. J. Buchon (Paris, 1838), 323–573, at pp. 405–7.

⁸
H. Kaminsky, ‘The Politics of France's Subtraction of Obedience from Pope Benedict XIII, 27 July 1398’,
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
115 (1971), 366–97. Orléans supported Benedict XIII, who supported Orléans's ambitions in Italy: B. Schnerb,
Jean Sans Peur, Le Prince Meurtrier
(Paris, 2005), 164.

⁹
Henneman,
Olivier de Clisson
, 153–4, 169–71;
Foedera
, viii.52; Craon received £666 13s 4d of this (E 403/561, 6 November, 8 January; E 403/562, 2 May, 13 May, 9 July), and accompanied Richard to Ireland (
CPR 1396–9
, 553).

¹⁰
E 403/561, 21 February.

¹¹
Henry's ministers' accounts show constant messengers between England and Paris (DL 28/4/1, fos. 2r, 4v, 6r, 7r). When Marshal Boucicaut invited him to join an expedition against the Turks to avenge the disastrous defeat by a crusading army at Nicopolis in 1396, Henry sent Sir Thomas Dymmok to ask Gaunt if he ought to go. Gaunt advised against it, saying that if he felt the urge to travel, he would be better advised to visit his sisters in Portugal and Castile. Dymmok took the opportunity to visit Henry's children and make a tour of his English estates (
Oeuvres de Froissart
, xvi.132–7).

¹²
Goodman,
John of Gaunt
, 168, 174, quoting the Kirkstall chronicle. Gaunt had secured a pardon from the king for all his debts on 30 December, and £1,000 in restored tallies on 8 January (
CPR 1396–
, 467; E 403/561, 8 January).

¹³
‘My beloved consort Blanche’, he called her in his will. J. Post, ‘The Obsequies of John of Gaunt’,
Guildhall Studies in London History
(1981), 1–12, at pp. 2–4, suggests that Henry may have slipped across from Paris for the funeral, but this is most unlikely; several of Henry's letters were dated from London in the spring of 1399, for he had left a seal in the hands of his chief ministers while he was abroad (DL 28/4/1, fos. 2–7).

¹⁴
In other words, to take whatever measures he deemed necessary, force included. The messenger was Roger Smart. According to Bagot, Richard vowed that as long as he lived Henry would never return to England. C. Fletcher, ‘Narrative and Political Strategies at the Deposition of Richard II’,
Journal of Medieval History
30 (2004), 323–41, has questioned whether Richard did extend Henry's sentence of exile from ten years to life, correctly pointing out that this is not specifically stated in the Record and Process. Yet it is mentioned by two contemporary chroniclers as well as by Bagot, and it seems fairly clear that this was Richard's intention (
CR,
75, 97–8, 211–12;
Chronicles of London
, ed. C. L. Kingsford (Oxford, 1905), 53). Richard retained Bagot that day as a member of his council with an annual fee of £100:
CPR 1396–9
, 494.

¹⁵
CR
, 92; identical letters granted to Mowbray in October 1398 were revoked the same day, so when Margaret, duchess of Norfolk, died on 24 March, Richard seized her estates, although Mowbray was her heir.

¹⁶
CPR 1396–9
, 490 (grant of the stewardship to the duke of York).

¹⁷
Usk
, 38–9; Usk says 20,000 turned out to greet March, but this is hard to believe (
PROME
, vii.425; Davies,
Lords and Lordship
, 71; Saul,
Richard II
, 442–4;
CPR 1396–9
, 350, 365). The son of the decapitated Earl Richard of Arundel was called Thomas. For the rising, see
Oxfordshire Sessions of the Peace in the Reign of Richard II
, ed. E. G. Kimball (Oxfordshire Record Society 53, Banbury, 1983), 82–9; Bennett,
Richard II and the Revolution of 1399
, 123–4. The rising took place in the same area as the battle of Radcot Bridge a decade earlier.

¹⁸
CPR 1396–9
, 505 (repeated a few months later:
CCR 1396–9
, 505).

¹⁹
CR
, 31–2; Bennett,
Richard II and the Revolution of 1399
, 123.

²⁰
Historical Collections
, 98–101. The blank charters were stored in the royal chancery (
CCR 1396–9
, 488, 503).

²¹
Most of this was paid, up until 20 June 1399, plus a gift of 1,000 marks to help him move to Paris. The future Henry V was also given £500 a year plus £148 to pay for his equipment in Ireland (E 403/561, 14 November, 7 December, 21 February, 5 March; E 403/562, 2 May, 6 May, 20 June). Mowbray got £1,000 a year during his exile.

²²
The esquire was Peter Breton. This entry appears in the exchequer issue roll under 8 January (E 403/561), but another entry under the same date records payments to messengers to summon lords to Gaunt's funeral, and since Gaunt did not die until 3 February these entries must have been inserted under the wrong date.