Henry IV (99 page)

The firm action taken by Prince Henry's administration indicated a greater willingness than his father had shown to confront magnate or gentry malefactors, but in some cases the political rivalries at Westminster to which he was a party were also part of the problem. At Lynn (Norfolk), one urban faction looked to Archbishop Arundel, the other to Thomas Beaufort and the prince, to support their mayoral candidates and discipline their opponents, and the tensions between them came to a head in 1411–12 just as rivalry for dominance at Westminster intensified.
³⁰
Although cause and effect are difficult to disentangle, the University of Oxford's defiance of Archbishop Arundel in the summer and autumn of 1411 also reflected divisions at Westminster. After he lost the chancellorship, and once he had seen off the disendowment party in the January 1410 parliament, Arundel took up the fight against heterodoxy with renewed vigour. March and April saw
De Heretico Comburendo
reaffirmed by convocation, the four orders of friars unleashed to preach far and wide against Lollardy, a royal sergeant-at-arms sent to search the houses of four Londoners for suspect books, and an enquiry begun into the activities of a chaplain called John, suspected of spreading heresy while living at Cooling castle (Kent) with Sir John Oldcastle.
³¹
It was Oxford, however – ‘that teeming nest of heresy’, according to Usk – that especially concerned Arundel.
³²
For the moment, he was prepared to allow the censors authorized by the
Constitutions
to continue their work, until on 26 June 1410 they produced their first report condemning a number of Wyclif's more notorious conclusions.
³³
This failed to silence the dissenters, however, while the committee
grew ever more unpopular: in October 1410 the king ordered the punishment of those who had made up ‘opprobrious words and rhymes’ about its members.
³⁴
Weathering the scorn, they managed by March 1411 to complete their investigation, a copy of which, proscribing 267 of Wyclif's conclusions, was sent to Arundel for approval. This was accompanied by the burning of Wyclif's books at Carfax in the heart of the city.

Still Arundel was not satisfied, and on 23 June 1411 he ordered every scholar at the university, whatever his standing, to take an oath on the gospels to shun heterodox texts and opinions; any who resisted were to be brought before him in person to explain why they should not be punished as upholders of heresy.
³⁵
He also announced his intention to conduct a visitation of the university. Visitations were often controversial, this one unusually so. Thomas Prestbury, who as chancellor of the university had publicized Arundel's decision, was forced to resign, and was replaced by Richard Courtenay. Courtenay was a protégé of Prince Henry, with whom he enjoyed the kind of intimacy that Philip Repingdon had with the king, but his failure to discipline known dissenters such as Peter Payne and William Taylor when chancellor of the university in 1406 rendered him suspect in the archbishop's eyes.
³⁶
With the prince in the ascendant at Westminster, he now wrote to the king, citing a papal bull of 1395 granting the university exemption from visitation, adding that his scholars were sworn to disperse rather than lose their liberties. Henry pointed out that the validity of the bull was disputed, but promised to protect the scholars' legitimate privileges, and a few days later he wrote to Arundel asking him to restrict his visitation to cases of heresy and suggesting they discuss the matter in person.
³⁷
By this time, however, Arundel was on his way to Oxford, where, on 7 August, he encountered violent opposition – including an audacious threat from Courtenay to excommunicate him for infringing the university's liberties – and was forced to withdraw. Oxford was in turmoil, its scholars and masters divided between the two camps, the citizens mainly supporting the archbishop against the university officials, meetings that began as debates ending as riots, and even reports of fatalities
(although whether anyone died is not clear).
³⁸
The king ordered both parties to appear before him.

The outcome of this arbitration, held on 9 September 1411, was Courtenay's resignation, but despite a royal mandate a few days later forbidding the scholars to re-elect him, this is exactly what they did. Such defiance hints at the expectation of support in high places.
³⁹
The king, however, was furious, his initial inclination to strike a balance between the defence of academic freedom and the authority of his archbishop weakening in the face of the university's recalcitrance – even if in fact the scholars were far from united in supporting Courtenay. Fortunately, parliament had been summoned to meet on 3 November, and within two weeks a compromise was agreed, although it was more to the archbishop's than the university's taste. His right to visit Oxford was upheld, the 1395 bull rejected, Courtenay wrote an apologetic letter of submission and, most importantly, the university agreed henceforth to forswear Wyclifite conclusions; to save face, however, the scholars were allowed to re-elect Courtenay as their chancellor. It was said that Prince Henry brokered this compromise, thereby sparing the blushes of his favourite clerk. Eighteen months later, he would nominate Courtenay to the first bishopric to fall vacant after he came to the throne, that of Norwich in April 1413.
⁴⁰

William Longe's barefaced defiance of the prince and the Oxford scholars' refusal to bow to the authority of the English primate hint at a contagious disregard for the sanctions of the law in the later years of Henry's reign, but the most shocking breach of the peace to come before the parliament of 1411 involved none other than a royal justice. Sir Robert Tirwhit, Justice of the King's Bench, was alleged to have brought five hundred armed men to Wrawby (Lincolnshire) on 3 October 1411 to overawe a love-day called to settle a dispute between his tenants and those of William Lord Roos.
⁴¹
Since it was Chief Justice Gascoigne who was due to arbitrate, he could bear witness to the ambush, and Tirwhit made no attempt to deny it, admitting his folly and placing himself at the king's mercy. Archbishop Arundel (a friend of Roos) and Richard Lord Grey were asked to resolve the matter, which they did by awarding that Tirwhit admit his guilt, apologize to all involved, accept Gascoigne's decision, and provide
two fattened oxen, twelve fattened sheep and two tuns of Gascon wine for a love-day with Roos and his men. Remarkably, Tirwhit remained a Justice of the King's Bench for the remaining twenty years of his life. It may have been this case, or simply the general rise in disorder, which prompted the passing of a Statute of Riots introducing more stringent procedures for dealing with violent assemblies or ‘routs’, the initiative for which came from the government rather than the commons. Its provisions included an enhanced role for the Privy Council, both in ensuring that JPs and sheriffs apprehended offenders and in determining punishments.
⁴²
It was probably the prince who was behind this. His first two parliaments as king complained much about the failure to suppress lawlessness during the later years of his father's reign, and the second of them passed a more stringent Riot Act.
⁴³

The roots of disorder were different in different parts of the country, for each region had its own political complexion, but it was the withdrawal of the king's personal involvement (especially in the north Midlands) following the onset of his illness that proved crucial in changing the balance of power. Until then he had been prepared, like the earl of Arundel in Shropshire, to delegate local control to his retainers and uphold their quarrels when necessary. This was understandable, for there was manifestly a limit to Westminster's reach, and peacekeeping was often more effective at a local level, but there was also manifestly a limit to the ability of kings and magnates to discipline their retainers. The concerns expressed in the later parliaments of the reign indicate that the upsurge of violence shocked even those inured to the routine intimidation and feuding of the propertied classes. Constant vigilance on the king's part was required to maintain an acceptable level of order. Prince Henry was less tolerant of the peccadilloes of members of his father's affinity, who by now were coming to be seen more as the problem than the solution. He did not have the personal rapport or shared history which the king had with many of his leading retainers. To be sure, the prince needed his retainers, but he did not need them as much as his father did.
⁴⁴
Yet he too was reluctant to invoke the full rigours of the law against criminals of gentry or noble status, not even a man such as William Longe who had flagrantly flouted his personal
authority. Until it could be demonstrated that royal justice was more effective than local self-help, their usefulness to the government would continue more often than not to save them from the consequences of their actions. At times, the scale of the violence practised by men such as Philip Courtenay, Robert Ogle, the Erdeswick–Mynors gang or the Corbet brothers in effect amounted to private warfare, yet hardly ever did they spend more than a few weeks in prison, after which pledges would be taken, pardons granted, love-days or other rituals of reconciliation enacted, and, it was hoped, their reintegration into local society launched. This was the point of pardons, which were not so much a sign of weakness as a useful social tool. In addition to individual pardons, Henry IV issued six general pardons during his reign, sometimes to mark notable moments in his life, such as his accession (November 1399) or his fear of approaching death (January 1409), but more often as a way to try to re-establish law and order, as in March 1401 or December 1411. Henry V issued one in April 1413 to celebrate his coronation.
⁴⁵
Being non-discriminatory, general pardons were seen as a fairer way to exercise the royal prerogative of mercy. Acts of grace on the king's part, they reasserted his authority and proclaimed the re-establishment of peace as the priority, rather than the creation of new feuds or grudges, inviting those who had offended back into the fold and giving them a stake in the upholding of the law (as happened in the case of Erdeswick, Ogle, Tirwhit and others). There was, naturally, room for debate about the balance between mercy and retribution, but in a society that relied so heavily on magnates and gentry to govern the localities, there were also realistic expectations about what could be achieved.

¹
Hoccleve,
Regement of Princes
, 101.

²
PROME
, viii.458; the king said commissions would be sent out if necessary, though little seems to have been done (E. Powell, ‘The Restoration of Law and Order’, in Harriss,
Henry V
, 175–94). Cf.
CPR 1408–13
, 374, for belated commissions to Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

³
Above, p. 213. Pomeroy's old foe Philip Courtenay died in 1406, but his second son John continued the fight, and when Pomeroy was elected as MP in the autumn of 1409 he promptly had Sir John Courtenay summoned before the Privy Council to answer for his conduct (
HOC
, iv.109;
CCR 1409–13
, 6–7). John was summoned on 8 Nov. 1409 to appear on the fifth day of the upcoming parliament; cf. Powell,
Kingship, Law and Society
, 201–8.

⁴
Castor,
King, Crown and Duchy
, 193–224; C. Carpenter,
Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–1499
(Cambridge, 1992), 363–72; Powell,
Kingship, Law and Society
, 208–16. The death of the young earl of Stafford at Shrewsbury also boosted the power of the king's retainers by removing the chief potential source of alternative lordship in the region.

⁵
PROME
, viii.471–6;
HOC
, iii.29.

⁶
CPR 1408–13
, 275–6, 320, 376, 397;
Crime, Law and Society
, ed. Musson and Powell, 72, 82–4, 203–5. Trouble briefly flared again between Erdeswick and Edmund Ferrers of Chartley in 1413–14.

⁷
Payling,
Political Society
, 121–4, 189–93, 214–15; Powell,
Kingship, Law and Society
, 224–8;
CCR 1409–13
, 243;
CPR 1408–13
, 398. Stanhope had become a Knight of the Bath at Henry's coronation.

⁸
Powell,
Kingship, Law and Society
, 193–4, 216–24.

⁹
His grandfather had been MP six times and justice of South Wales in the 1350s and 1360s (
VCH Shropshire
, iii.235;
CPR 1399–1402
, 303–4, 416;
CPR 1405–8
, 339;
CCR 1399–1402
, 175;
CPR 1408–13
, 66).

¹⁰
Only Banaster's account of the dispute survives, in the arbitration award of Dec. 1409 (Shropshire Archives Charter D.5791). Cf. K. Towson, ‘
Greves et Compleyntes:
Violence, Disputes and Arbitration in Early Fifteenth-Century Shropshire Gentry Society’ (Unpublished MLitt. Dissertation, University of St Andrews, 1997).

¹¹
The document was endorsed ‘to be delivered to William Banaster’. Although the allegations present Banaster's side of the case, the Corbets did not deny the charge of assaulting Hadnall manor, saying they had not intended to harm Banaster's wife or his servants, with the exception of one Ieuan ap Meuric with whom they had a quarrel.

¹²
Select Cases Before the King's Bench VII
, 227–9.

¹³
Powell,
Kingship, Law and Society
, 222–3;
Crime, Law and Society
, ed. Musson and Powell, 121–2, 185–6.

¹⁴
K. Stringer, ‘States, Liberties and Communities in Medieval Britain and Ireland’, in
Liberties and Identities in the Medieval British Isles
, ed. M. Prestwich (Woodbridge, 2008), 5–36; M. Holford, ‘War, Lordship and Community in the Liberty of Norhamshire’, in
Liberties and Identities in the Medieval British Isles
, ed. M. Prestwich (Woodbridge, 2008), 77–97. I am grateful to Jackson Armstrong for his thoughts on northern disorder.