Henry IV (54 page)

Yet if Bordeaux and its hinterland had been saved, the survival of English Guyenne was in the balance. The crown's influence in Saintonge and the Agenais was dwindling, fighting in Périgord was almost continuous, and a French offensive in Les Landes led to the loss of Aire-sur-l'Adour. Bayonne was also threatened, and Gaillard de Durfort was
sent to take control of the city.
⁵⁶
The Bordelais was becoming ever more isolated. Once again, however, the lethal power struggle at the heart of France's royal family came to the rescue of the Anglo-Gascons. After two years, during which Orléans's ascendancy had remained almost unchallenged, the new duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless – a ‘stunted, stern, suspicious man’ – chose the summer of 1405 to start asserting himself. Once again France was brought to the brink of civil war, and although on this occasion Orléans and Burgundy managed, just in time, to pull back from the edge, their mutual hatred made it almost impossible to coordinate French policy. It was, as ever, the Lancastrian usurper who was the chief beneficiary.
⁵⁷

Henry's imperial policy thus went through three phases between 1399 and 1405. At first he seems to have been reluctant to commit resources to the defence of his dominions. Financial caution, distrust of some members of the aristocracy, and the nonage of his sons must all have played a part in his thinking. By mid-1401, two factors in particular made him change his mind: the spread of the Welsh rebellion, which also posed a threat to Ireland, and the likelihood of war with France following the dauphin's creation as duke of Guyenne.
⁵⁸
His response – the second phase – was to look to the royal family for lieutenants, as his predecessor Edward III had done.
⁵⁹
Prince Henry, aged fourteen, was sent to his principality of Wales to exercise command; his brother was despatched to Ireland; the king's cousin, Rutland, was sent to Guyenne, and his half-brother John Beaufort was made captain of Calais. These appointments were not merely symbolic, although the symbolism of England's dominions under unitary family governance, each with its own great Plantagenet as the king's alter ego, was certainly important. Yet great men could not be fobbed off with inadequate resources, and Henry also made extravagant funding promises to his new viceroys. Here lay the catch, for the exchequer was quite unable to honour them, and Prince Thomas and Rutland both came home within two years. Their frustration is understandable, but compares unfavourably with Prince John's equally cash-starved ten-year tour of duty in the north.
Nor were they replaced, despite Rutland demitting office and Thomas not returning to Ireland for five years. Instead – the third phase – the king now decided to rely on deputies, who might not have carried the inherent authority of a royal lieutenant but whose experience and local contacts were invaluable, as was the support of Gascon or Anglo-Irish nobles such as Durfort and Ormond, and of Archbishops Cranley of Dublin and Ugguccione of Bordeaux.

Nevertheless it proved difficult to stem the tide. By 1405, it was clear that Louis of Orléans had set his heart on the recovery of Guyenne and that Glyn Dŵr, despite recent reverses, had rekindled a fire long smouldering. A hundred years earlier, the British Isles had seemed on the verge of becoming the English Isles: the principality of Wales had been annexed, administrative structures were being created to service English rule in Ireland, and most of the Scottish nobility had submitted to Edward I. Just forty years earlier, in the 1360s, Guyenne had stood at the heart of a vast English domain encompassing between a quarter and a third of the French realm. By September 1405, the view across Henry's empire was a study in disintegration: one French army lay before Bordeaux; another marched through South Wales. Wherever Henry looked, he saw a landscape of castles and towns surrendered, raids, destruction and defection. The 1406 parliament was told by the speaker, Sir John Tiptoft, that no less than ninety-six strongholds in Guyenne had fallen to the French in the course of the previous year.
⁶⁰
The death of the earl of Ormond and the dalliance of Prince Thomas left a power vacuum in Dublin, as did the destruction of Percy power in the Scottish marches. Calais and its satellite fortresses were under constant threat of attack, their garrisons underpaid and restless. Here, as in Wales, Ireland and Guyenne, the balance of financial profit and loss had tipped unsustainably towards the latter. In sum, the English king simply did not rule the majority of what he claimed to rule, and he was beggaring himself in the attempt. The very survival of England's empire was in question.

¹
For a ‘wild Irishman’, see
Select Cases Before the King's Council
, ed. Leadam and Baldwin, 86.

²
In the 1360s, however, a period of peace with France, Edward III gave his son Lionel of Clarence large resources to try to re-establish control of Ireland.

³
P. Crooks, ‘Representation and Dissent: ‘Parliamentarianism’ and the Structure of Politics in Colonial Ireland’,
EHR
125 (2010), 1–34 at p. 28.

⁴
R. Frame, ‘Lordship Beyond the Pale: Munster in the Later Middle Ages’, in
Limerick and South-West Ireland: Medieval Art and Architecture
(British Archaeological Society Transactions 34, Leeds, 2011), 5–18.

⁵
A New History of Ireland II: Medieval Ireland 1169–1534
, ed. A. Cosgrove (Oxford, 1987), 545; P. Crooks, ‘Factions, Feuds and Noble Power in the Lordship of Ireland,
c
.1356–1496’,
Irish Historical Studies
35 (2007), 425–54.

⁶
R. Frame,
The Political Development of the British Isles
(Oxford, 1990), 216; J. Lydon, ‘Ireland: Politics, Government and Law’, in
A Companion to Britain in the Later Middle Ages
, ed. S. Rigby (London, 2009), 335–56, at p. 347; Crooks, ‘State of the Union’, 35–8.

⁷
Roger was in Irish dress and was thus not recognized by his killers (R. Davies, ‘Roger Mortimer VII, Fourth Earl of March’,
ODNB
, 39.403–4.

⁸
Foedera
, viii.114–15 (15 December 1399); P. Crooks, ‘Factionalism and Noble Power in English Ireland,
c
.1361–1423’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Trinity College, University of Dublin, 2007). I am grateful to Dr Crooks for his advice on Anglo-Irish history in Henry's reign.

⁹
CPR 1399–401
, 92; E 404/15, no. 133 (Stanley's appointment, 10 December). As deputy to Robert de Vere, duke of Ireland (1386–8) and justiciar of Ireland (1389–91), Stanley had gained a reputation for administrative competence and a disregard for the claims of the native Irish (M. Bennett, ‘Sir John Stanley’,
ODNB
, 52.226; E. Matthew, ‘The Financing of the Lordship of Ireland under Henry V and Henry VI’, in
Property and Politics in Later Medieval English History
, ed. A. Pollard (Gloucester, 1984), 97–115, at pp. 98, 109; Thomas Holand was promised £7,666 a year in 1398, all from the English exchequer (Saul,
Richard II
, 287–8).

¹⁰
A point noted by the council (
POPC
, i.182–3, April–May 1401, not 1402).

¹¹
See, for example, £1,400 worth of uncashable tallies exchanged in November 1400: E 403/569, 21 November (also 26 October, 4 November, 9 December and 26 February); Steel,
Receipt
, 133, counted uncashable tallies to Stanley of £4,405, but some of these doubled as replacements for each other.

¹²
E 403/565, 16 December;
CIRCLE PR 1 Henry IV
, nos. 70, 127, 155 (Perers), 94 (Ormond);
CIRCLE PR 2 Henry IV
, nos. 24, 29, for Ormond, ‘the king's beloved cousin’.

¹³
Ancient Irish Histories
, 17.

¹⁴
CPR 1399–1401
, 397;
CCR 1399–1402
, 338;
Ancient Irish Histories
, 17; Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, i.228–9;
POPC
, ii.43–52. Cranley was accompanied by the archbishop of Armagh; Usk heard them ‘complaining vehemently’ to the king (
Usk
, 134–5); D. Johnston, ‘Thomas Cranley’,
ODNB
, 14.10–11.

¹⁵
E 404/16, no. 728; Matthew, ‘Financing’, 98.

¹⁶
Owain's letter to the Irish lords, dated 29 Nov. 1401, did not reach its destination, since his messengers were beheaded (
Usk
, 148–53); cf. Lydon, ‘Ireland: Politics, Government and Law’, 345.

¹⁷
CIRCLE PR 3 Henry IV
, no. 30; Cranley had also been chancellor in 1398–9; Merbury replaced him in July 1406. For Cranley, see the fulsome obituary in
Ancient Irish Histories
, 26–7.

¹⁸
CIRCLE PR 3 Henry IV
, nos. 84, 137, 222, 251. Both Dartasso and Scrope had shown conspicuous loyalty to Richard II in 1399, accompanying him to Conway, where Dartasso refused to discard the king's livery badge; Le Scrope (the brother of William, executed at Bristol in July 1399) was suspected of involvement in the Epiphany Rising, but exonerated: S. Walker, ‘Janico Dartasso: Chivalry, Nationality and the Man-at-Arms’, in S. Walker,
Political Culture in Later Medieval England
, ed. M. Braddick (Manchester, 2006), 115–35; E. Curtis, ‘Janico Dartas: Richard II's “Gascon Esquire”: His Career in Ireland, 1394–1426’,
Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland
63 (1933), 182–205; A. Dunn, ‘Loyalty, Honour and the Lancastrian Revolution: Sir Stephen Scrope of Castle Combe and his Kinsmen,
c
.1389–
c
.1408’,
Fourteenth Century England III
, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, 2004), 167–83.

¹⁹
Crooks, ‘Factionalism and Noble Power’, 257–64;
CIRCLE PR 3 Henry IV
, no. 112 (grant to Ormond of custody of Desmond lands in Tipperary), 192, 212.

²⁰
CIRCLE PR 3 Henry IV
, nos. 232–6 (indentures with Irish lords), 154;
CIRCLE PR 4 Henry IV
, no. 197 (making truces).

²¹
The king rewarded Drake by granting the city one of his personal swords as a special mark of favour; known as the Great Sword, it is still regularly used for its original ceremonial purpose: C. Blair and I. Delamer, ‘The Dublin Civic Swords’,
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy
(1988), 87–142.

²²
New History of Ireland II
, ed. Cosgrove, 544; Walker, ‘Janico Dartasso’, 123;
Ancient Irish Histories
, 18;
CIRCLE PR 4 Henry IV
, no. 93.

²³
CIRCLE PR 3 Henry IV
, no. 15;
CPR 1399–1401
, 519. Rede's kidnappers were pardoned, as were some but not all of those who murdered Dowdall; without their cooperation the county could not be defended: B. Smith,
Crisis and Survival in Late Medieval Ireland
(Oxford, 2013), 94–102;
CIRCLE PR 4 Henry IV
, nos. 48–59.

²⁴
New History of Ireland II
, ed. Cosgrove, 581; K. Simms, ‘The Ulster Revolt of 1404 – An Anti-Lancastrian Dimension?’, in
Ireland and the English World in the Late Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Robin Frame
, ed. B. Smith (Basingstoke, 2009), 141–60;
CIRCLE PR 4 Henry IV
, no. 241;
PROME
, viii.261–2, 301–2.

²⁵
Crooks, ‘Factionalism and Noble Power’, 280–92;
CIRCLE PR 4 Henry IV
, no. 192.

²⁶
RHL
, i.74; Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, i.232–3. About £8,900 was sent across to him in 1402–3 (E 403/573, 21 July; E 403/574, 9 Dec.; E 403/576, 12 June). The figure of £18,000 for uncashable tallies given in Steel,
Receipt
, 133–4, conflates several attempts to replace the same assignments and thus exaggerates the level of crown default. See also B. Blacker, ‘A Lancastrian Prince in Ireland’, in
History Ireland
(1998), 22–6. In March 1403 a new indenture granted Thomas all the profits of the Irish administration without obligation to account to the English exchequer, but in return he was expected to sustain all the expenses of ruling the lordship, and in practice he found the revenues hard to collect (
Foedera
, viii.293).

²⁷
CPR 1401–5
, 188.

²⁸
CIRCLE PR 5 Henry IV
, nos. 35, 131;
CIRCLE PR 6 Henry IV
, no. 30;
RHL
, ii.29–35 (1404, not 1405); Le Scrope left ‘suddenly’, perhaps in connection with the talk in the January 1404 parliament of replacing Prince Thomas as governor (
PROME
, viii.279). Ormond's letters to the king dated 18 March ostensibly asked to be excused from office, but in reality were probably a plea for adequate funds to be made available to him.

²⁹
One of Ormond's first acts was to pardon himself and his mistress, Katherine of Desmond, for having alienated and acquired lands without licence: Crooks, ‘Factionalism and Noble Power’, 264–9;
CIRCLE PR 5 Henry IV
, no. 118.

³⁰
Crooks, ‘Factionalism and Noble Power’, 293–4 (quote).

³¹
C 47/25/6, nos. 28–9 (oaths of allegiance in 1399–1400; the Black Prince secured more than 1,000 oaths of homage when he became prince of Aquitaine in 1363);
CGR 1399–1400
, nos. 8–28; E 404/15, no. 161 (Caumont's indenture, 24 Feb. 1400). My thanks to Guilhem Pepin for his help with Guyenne in Henry's reign.

³²
CGR 1399–1400
, no. 53; Durfort's appointment concerned some on the king's council (
POPC
, i.181).

³³
M. Vale,
English Gascony
(Oxford, 1970), 27–54; for Gaunt in Guyenne, see above, pp. 89–92.

³⁴
CGR 1400–1
, no. 10. Froissart, perhaps overstating the case, said Richard's deposition was greeted in Bordeaux with ‘great sorrow’ (
Oeuvres de Froissart
, xvi.211–21).

³⁵
CGR 1399–1400
, no. 146;
CPR 1399–1401
, 271.