Henry IV (74 page)

By 1407–8, therefore, Henry had, by and large, got the bishops he wanted. Those whose promotion he had especially sought – Beaufort, Bowet, Repingdon, Mascall, Langley, Bubwith – were a mixture of personal friends, spiritual advisers and high-ranking ministers; all were utterly dependable Lancastrians.
³⁷
The king's willingness to face down the pope and other interested parties, especially in securing Henry Bowet's two promotions, says much for his determination to transform the episcopal bench into the clerical arm of the Lancastrian affinity, as well as to ensure that his servants were given the status they needed. Scrope's execution made this more difficult, but filling episcopal vacancies was never straightforward. The ambition of individuals, the patronage of great ecclesiastics (for Arundel, it is clear, did not always follow the king's lead immediately, though he usually did in the end), the obduracy of a cathedral chapter, or
the claims of even a weakened papacy were all capable of upsetting the king's plans. Such willingness openly to challenge Henry parallels the plain-speaking which he periodically encountered in parliament, even from well-wishers, and resulted in a number of undesirably long vacancies, especially at York – although these were not intolerable to Henry, for they could bring substantial profit in the form of
sede vacante
revenues.
³⁸
Moreover, some prelates probably paid for promotion. An anecdote remembered many years later told how the king once asked Henry Bowet why bishops were no longer translated from their graves after death (in preparation for canonization). Bowet said nothing, but a clerk who overheard the question replied that it was because whereas God used to choose bishops, now kings did; that whereas men used to accept episcopal office reluctantly, now they offered bribes to be promoted; and that whereas bishops used not to be translated from one see to another for larger revenues, now they paid money for the privilege. One, he said, was known to have paid two thousand marks to be translated from his bishopric to an archbishopric. Henry found this amusing, though not Bowet, to whom it referred.
³⁹

Despite their differences, neither king nor pope wanted an open breach over episcopal appointments. In the case of the Schism, a more fundamental issue was at stake: the integrity of Christendom. Everyone agreed that the Schism was a scandal, making the Church an easy target for heathens and heretics and hindering international peacemaking as well as ecclesiastical reform. Hitherto, English involvement in the quest for unity had been half-hearted. It was the French who had taken the lead, trying to draw Richard II into a scheme to withdraw obedience from the rival popes, and for five years (1398–1403), under Burgundy's influence, unilaterally severing their ties to the Avignon pope, Benedict XIII.
⁴⁰
During the first two years of Henry's reign, before war and rebellion overwhelmed him, he had attempted to persuade the new emperor, Rupert, to summon a general
council to resolve the situation, but the escalation of Anglo-French hostilities from 1402 made international cooperation difficult, and the decision by Louis of Orléans in May 1403 to restore French obedience to Benedict seemed for the moment to dash hopes of progress.
⁴¹
What altered the situation was the death in rapid succession of two Roman popes, Boniface IX (October 1404) and Innocent VII (November 1406). With criticism mounting, the Roman cardinals swore before each new conclave that whoever was elected would do everything in his power to achieve unity, including resignation if necessary. Innocent VII's pontificate was too brief for him to be put to the test, but eighteen months into Gregory XII's reign it was becoming clear that he had little intention of keeping his promise, and in May 1408 most of his cardinals deserted him. In the same month, with Orléans out of the way, a great council in Paris once again withdrew French obedience from Benedict XIII.
⁴²

Present at this meeting was Henry IV's representative, William Lord Willoughby. This was not the first sign that the English king was now serious about taking action over the Schism. Cheyne's and Chichele's embassy to the Curia in 1406 included a stop in Paris to try to coordinate a plan of action, and when he discovered that Innocent was dead the king wrote to them again (and to the college of cardinals) expressing the hope that a new conclave might be delayed in the interests of unity. If, however, an election had already taken place, he advised circumspection: ‘We would not wish,’ he wrote, ‘to be either the first or the last in such an important matter’ – that is, the question of whether or not to recognize the new pope.
⁴³
By the time his letter arrived, however, it was too late, and for the next fifteen months it probably suited him quite well to deal with an increasingly beleaguered pope, for all the time the momentum for change was building. Henry and Arundel worked closely through this period: if it was the king who took the lead, there is little sign that the clergy resented this.
⁴⁴
From late May 1408, when Henry heard that Gregory's cardinals had left him, events moved quickly. On 24 June the king ordered the withholding of the payment of papal annates. A few days later, Canterbury and York convocations were summoned to St Paul's and the lords and
knights of the realm invited to join their deliberations.
⁴⁵
English interest in the Schism was now awakened, and the meeting on 29 July was well attended. ‘Arise! Why do you sleep?’ was the theme chosen for the opening address. ‘We in the kingdom of England,’ declared Arundel, ‘have done little as yet to work for union, as a result of which England's reputation has declined.’
⁴⁶
Conference responded, extending the withholding of annates to all monetary payments, and shortly afterwards the king wrote to Gregory threatening him with a complete withdrawal of obedience if he did not fulfil his oath.
⁴⁷

Arundel probably favoured the immediate withdrawal of obedience, but Henry was not yet ready to commit himself. The crucial decision was whether or not to send an English delegation to the general council which the cardinals had summoned to meet at Pisa on 25 March 1409. Henry's caution was well advised: since the autumn of 1407 Gregory had accommodated the king's wishes, and an English decision to attend the council would jeopardize cooperation if matters went awry, as they often did when England and France tried to work together. In August 1408, Gregory made a final attempt to win over the English king, assuring him that he, too, planned to summon a general council and would abide by its decision, but his credibility was spent. The cardinals' riposte was to send Henry's friend, Cardinal-Archbishop Ugguccione of Bordeaux, to the English court. Greeted with pomp and reverence, Ugguccione addressed the enthroned king and a great gathering of nobles and clergy at Westminster on 28–29 October, reminding them of Gregory's broken promises and warning that those who continued to support him would share the perjurer's guilt and be accounted fomenters of the Schism, which was tantamount to heresy.
⁴⁸
He had already been to Paris and reported that the French intended to go to Pisa. ‘The holy college’, he concluded, ‘urges and pleads with you to show your devotion [and] make provision for the prelates of your realm to attend the said council.’ Within two weeks, Henry had made up his mind, although he still wrote to Gregory exhorting him to swallow his pride and
attend as well. To mark this triumph of Anglo-French cooperation, an eighteen-month truce was agreed on 31 October.
⁴⁹

Once the decision to go to Pisa had been announced, convocation was summoned to choose the English delegates, but scarcely had it met (on 14 January 1409) when the king fell gravely ill. Arundel, who had been hoping to resign the chancellorship in order to attend, therefore decided not to go, and instead Robert Hallum, now bishop of Salisbury, led the English delegation.
⁵⁰
It was a deft choice, for Hallum's rhetorical skill and wider vision of what might be achieved earned much respect at Pisa. Precisely what this first general council of the Church for a hundred years could be expected to achieve was, however, an open question. That it would depose Gregory and Benedict was almost a foregone conclusion; that it would then proceed to the undisputed election of a new and mutually acceptable pope was widely anticipated; and in fact both objectives were achieved without difficulty, so that on 26 June 1409 it was announced that Peter Philargi, the Franciscan cardinal-archbishop of Milan, had been elected as Pope Alexander V. This was satisfactory as far as it went, but Hallum and some of the other English delegates – especially Henry Chichele, Thomas Chillenden, prior of Christ Church Canterbury, and Thomas Spofforth, abbot of St Mary's York – hoped that the council would then move on to a discussion of ecclesiastical reform, in anticipation of which Hallum had encouraged the Oxford theologian Richard Ullerston to write a tract as a basis for discussion.
⁵¹
Entitled
Petitiones Ricardi quoad Reformationem Ecclesiae Militantis
, this set of sixteen proposals was, at the request of the king's confessor, Roger Coryngham, presented to Henry IV, and it is likely that he approved it.
⁵²
But it was not to be: there was some discussion of reform before the council broke up in early August, but having achieved their main objectives the delegates saw their task as securing recognition for the new pope. Even this, however, proved difficult: since Pisa had recognized Wenzel as emperor, Rupert declined to recognize Alexander as pope, and
then, by a cruel stroke of luck, Alexander V died suddenly on 3 May 1410. The Schism had not been healed after all.
⁵³

Ullerston's
Petitiones
are nevertheless a guide to what leading reformers within the English hierarchy believed to be necessary, and what is striking about them is that whereas continental reformers, broadly speaking, were concentrating at this time on reform at the centre (the Curia, papal bureaucracy, the
camera
and its financial apparatus), the emphasis in the
Petitiones
was on reform at the diocesan and parochial levels.
⁵⁴
It was matters such as appropriations and the disruptive effect of papal dispensations, exemptions and privileges on the spiritual life of dioceses and parishes which constituted the main thrust of Ullerston's argument. Bishops, their ordinaries, and other local people should be consulted, he declared; most appropriations were unnecessary and should be annulled; indeed, the whole question of privileges should be reviewed.
⁵⁵
Reform at the centre was undoubtedly necessary too: simony was a great evil in Ullerston's view, as were annates, both symptomatic of Curial avarice. Yet the Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire had given the English a shield against claims of papal sovereignty, so it is not surprising that it was with diocesan and parochial matters that English reformers were principally concerned; and they had, in Henry, a king who shared their concern.

Although these issues were discussed at Pisa, probably on Hallum's initiative, little or nothing was done about them. Yet if this was an opportunity missed, and if Alexander V's death subsequently took the shine off its success, the Council of Pisa marked a turning point in the search for a solution to the Schism. It was the first time that a general council of the Church had met without papal summons, and it was the harbinger of its more celebrated successor, the Council of Constance, which met five years later and finally ended the Schism.
⁵⁶
Especially notable was the role of the great powers, the French and English kings, in making it possible. There was obvious danger in this for the papacy: the risk of increasing state control, of monarchs browbeating popes or legislating to exclude their influence (as the English had done) – the danger, in other words, of national churches replacing a universal Church – and to some extent this happened
in the fifteenth century, so that it was as much Gallicanism as Conciliarism that Pisa heralded. And while Anglo-French cooperation soon evaporated in the heat of political rivalry, this shift in the balance of power between Church and state in England would prove more enduring, evident not simply in the lead taken by Henry IV in the debate over the Schism but also in the question of reform at the national level.

¹
J. Aberth,
Criminal Churchmen in the Age of Edward III: The Case of Bishop Thomas de Lisle
(Pennsylvania, 1996); L. Gabel,
Benefit of Clergy in England in the Later Middle Ages
(New York, 1964 reprint), 35, 58–9, 122; J. Bellamy,
Criminal Law and Society in Late Medieval and Tudor England
(New York, 1984), 116–17.

²
Concilia
, iii.243–5;
Records of Convocation IV
, 204–6 (for treason, see article 55).

³
Also convicted were Richard II's chaplains, Maudeleyn and Ferriby, executed on 29 January; the ex-primate Roger Walden and the abbot of Westminster were tried but acquitted; Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich, was imprisoned, but not brought to trial (
SAC II
, 296–8;
CE
, 387;
Foedera
, viii.123; Wylie,
Henry the Fourth
, i.108–9;
Select Cases in King's Bench VII
, 102–5).

⁴
Usk
, 92–4.

⁵
POPC
, i.115–17 (BL Cotton Cleopatra E. II, fo. 255);
Foedera
, viii.150;
CPR 1399–1401
, 385. He was released on 26 January 1401, the day Canterbury convocation opened (
Select Cases in King's Bench VII
, 105).

⁶
Usk
, 122–3. Clerk was condemned in the court of chivalry, which employed summary procedures. Above, p. 208.

⁷
PROME
, viii.177–9 (cf.
Records of Convocation
, iv.246, 249–51). The clarification relating to common theft and highway robbery focused on the inclusion of the words
communes latrones
and/or
depopulatores agrorum et insidiatores viarum
in indictments against the clergy, for which see Gabel,
Benefit of Clergy
, 58–9, and R. Storey, ‘Clergy and Common Law in the Reign of Henry IV’, in
Medieval Legal Records in Memory of C. A. F. Meekings
, ed. R. Hunnisett and J. Post (London, 1978), 343, 361.