Henry IV (3 page)

(b) reverse: the king as warrior.

14 Petitions to the king from (top) Robert Hallum, archdeacon of Canterbury; (middle) Sir Matthew Gournay; (bottom) Garcius Arnald of Salins in Guyenne. Each one is endorsed at the top in Henry&s hand. On the petition from Hallum, he has written ‘H. R. volons et avons grante toute ceste bille qil soit fet’ (‘We King Henry wish and have granted this entire bill so that it be done’).

15 The Chapel in the Crag, Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, a wayside shrine carved out of the cliff above the River Nidd by John the Mason in thanksgiving for his young son being miraculously saved from falling rock. Henry IV granted permission for the shrine in 1407.

16 Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, Lambeth Palace. This nineteenth-century portrait is said to be based on a fifteenth-century original, but is unlikely to have pre-dated Holbein and may be even later. Arundel was vilified for his ‘heretic-burning’ during the Reformation, but this more sympathetic portrayal suggests a revival of his reputation.

17a Battlefield Chapel, near Shrewsbury, dedicated to St Mary Magdalene and founded by Henry IV
c
.1409 on the site of the battle of Shrewsbury as a house of prayer for the souls of those who had died at the battle.

17b Statue of Henry IV on the east gable of the church.

18 Thomas Hoccleve, poet and clerk of the privy seal, presents his
Regement of Princes
, written in 1410–11, to Henry, Prince of Wales, ‘hye noble and myghtty prince excellent/My lord the prince and my lord gracious’.

19 Henry IV&s Great Bible, at 63 x 43 cm. the largest illuminated bible made in medieval England. The illuminated initial portrays St Jerome in his study, showing desks similar to the ‘great desk’ on two levels built for the king&s study at Eltham, in which he kept his books.

MAPS AND TABLES

MAPS

1
Principal holdings of the duchy of Lancaster

2
Crusading in the Baltic

3
The revolution of 1399

4
Wales and the Glyn Dŵr Revolt

5
The battle of Shrewsbury

6
Ireland in Henry IV's reign

7
The duchy of Guyenne

TABLES

1
The House of Lancaster and the Crown

2
Descendants of John of Gaunt

3
Episcopal translations in the reign of Henry IV

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people have helped me to write this book, some by alerting me to references, some by reading sections, some in fruitful discussions. I hope I have remembered to thank them all at the appropriate point, and if not I apologize.

I have had the good fortune to spend my career in the Department of Medieval History at the University of St Andrews, surrounded by stimulating friends and colleagues, teaching able and interested students, in an environment which, for a medievalist, could hardly be bettered. I am grateful to them all. In 2013–14 I also spent a year working on this book at Fordham University in New York; thank you to Maryanne Kowaleski and her colleagues for making me so welcome there. I am very grateful to Nora Bartlett for her help in compiling the index. The many librarians and archivists who have helped me during the course of researching this book have also been unfailingly helpful; I would especially like to thank the staff of The National Archives at Kew, London, where the majority of the manuscript research for this book was done.

Whenever I go to London, I stay with my sister Rosalind in her house in Clapham, where she and her husband Paul invariably greet me with warmth, good food, good wine and good conversation. I have thought many times how much less pleasant my research would have been without their decades of generous hospitality.

This book is dedicated to Alice, Rachel, Hannah, Paul, Polo, Roxana, Neko, Luna and Cody, in the hope that they will always be safe and happy.

Chris Given-Wilson

St Andrews, March 2015

ABBREVIATED REFERENCES

Titles are given in full in the Bibliography.

All manuscript references are to documents in The National Archives, Kew, London, unless otherwise indicated.