Henry V as Warlord (5 page)

On 2 November 1401 Owain Glyn Dŵr unfurled his banner of a golden dragon on a white field, before the walls of Caernarfon. He was accompanied by a great host of Welsh, but the garrison and townsmen sallied forth and drove them off. He nonetheless kept complete control of all the country round about. At the beginning of 1402 he burnt Ruthin and in April took prisoner his old enemy, Lord Grey. By now Owain was sending letters to the King of Scots and to the Wild Irish chieftains, asking them for help against the tyranny of their mortal foes, the Saxons.

The King tried to bolster up his position by impressive dynastic alliances with other royal families. In April 1402 he himself married Joan of Navarre, the widow of Duke John IV of Brittany and sister of King Charles III of Navarre. In July his daughter Blanche married Louis of Bavaria, the son of Rupert, Duke of Bavaria, who had just become King of the Romans. Negotiations were begun for the marriage of Henry’s youngest daughter to the young King Eric of Denmark and Sweden, though the wedding did not take place until 1406.

In August 1402 the Scots crossed the border in strength but were routed by the Percies at Homildon Hill. Five earls were captured. In view of his own dismal military record such a victory was an embarrassment to King Henry. He gave orders that the prisoners must on no account be allowed to ransom themselves, depriving the Percies – to whom he owed the then vast sum of £10,000 – of a valuable windfall. They had thought him ungrateful enough before, after all they had done to help him win the crown. Hotspur refused to hand over the most important prisoner, the Earl of Douglas. Henry further angered them by his abandonment of Edmund Mortimer, Hotspur’s brother-in-law. In the previous June, Mortimer, an important magnate in the Welsh marches, had been defeated at Pilleth near Knighton by Rhys Gethin, one of Glyn Dŵr’s right-hand men, with the loss of 1,100 men. He was taken prisoner and sent back to Owain’s lair in the mountains of Snowdonia. The King was far from displeased since it meant that the uncle of Richard II’s heir was safely out of the way. (Sir Edmund’s own claim to the throne was better than Henry’s.) He forebade any attempt to ransom him. When Hotspur proposed doing so, the king shouted ‘Traitor!’, hit him and half-drew his dagger. There was a reconciliation of a sort – for the time being.

In the autumn of 1402 Owain struck in South Wales, attacking Abergavenny, Caerleon, Usk, Newport and Cardiff. Adam of Usk laments how ‘like a second Assyrian, the rod of God’s anger, he did deeds of unheard-of cruelty with fire and sword’. King Henry responded by assembling an unusually large force – 100,000 men and more if Adam can be believed – divided into three armies. One was commanded by Prince Henry. Adam says that Glyn Dŵr and ‘his poor wretches’ hid in their caves and woods. But there was beating rain and hail, even snow. The English suspected that it was work of ‘that great magician, damned Glendower’. They believed that he was a necromancer, that he called up an evil spirit and that he had a magic stone, spat up by a raven, which enabled him and his Welshmen to become invisible. On the night of 7 September there was suddenly so much wind and rain that the king’s tent was blown down – had he not been sleeping in his armour he would have been killed.
⁴
The troops began to die from cold and exposure – ‘his host was well nigh lost’ records Friar Capgrave. By September Henry was back in London having failed for a third time to crush the Welsh. Apart from royal castles and those of the marcher lords, where tiny garrisons hung on grimly, Prince Owain was the effective ruler of Wales. Edmund Mortimer was so disgusted by the king’s failure to ransom him that he married Glyn Dŵr’s daughter, an alliance which had serious implications. In December he sent a letter to his tenants in Maelienydd announcing that he had joined Owain with ‘the object that if King Richard should be alive, he be restored to his crown and, if not, that my honoured nephew who is rightful heir to the said crown shall be King of England, and that the said Owain will have his rights in Wales’.

In March 1403 Prince Henry was appointed the King’s Lieutenant of the marches of Wales, making him, at sixteen, commander-in-chief in fact as well as name. On 15 May at Shrewsbury he dictated a report to the Royal Council. He had burnt Owain’s houses at Sycharth and Glyndyfrdwy though ‘we found not a soul’. Next day he had captured an important Welsh gentleman, one of Owain’s chieftains, who offered £500 for his life. ‘Howbeit this was not accepted but he had the death, as did divers of his companions.’ He had devastated Meirionydd, a fair and well-inhabited land, while there was so little fodder in Powys that he made his men carry oats for their horses. A fortnight later he sent a report from Shrewsbury saying he was so short of money that he had had to sell his jewels. He warned that the Welsh were about to launch a serious offensive while he had had to divert troops to relieve and revictual the castles of Harlech and Aberystwyth. Although stressing that the situation was very grave, he also insisted that ‘if the war could but be continued, the rebels were never so like to be destroyed as they are at this present’.

Early in July Owain struck again. Just how dangerous matters were is shown by the postscript added to a letter dated 8 July from the Archdeacon of Hereford, Richard Kingston, to the king:

And for God’s love, my liege lord, thinketh on yourself and your estate or by my troth all is lost, else but ye come yourself with haste all other will follow after. And all on Friday last Caermarthen town is taken and burnt and the castle yolden by Richard Wigmore and the castle Emlyn is yolden and slain of town of Caermarthen more than fifty persons. Written in right great haste on Sunday; and I cry you mercy and put me in your high grace that I write so shortly; for by my troth that I owe to you, it is needful.
⁵

However, four days later Glyn Dŵr was defeated seriously enough for him to postpone his invasion of England. This check saved the House of Lancaster from utter ruin. For the Welsh had planned to join forces with those of new, English, allies.

Henry IV’s enemies, open and secret, had united against him: the Percies; the men of Cheshire and Shropshire who had always supported Richard II; and Owain and Mortimer. The principal architect of this alliance was Hotspur, abetted by his uncle, the Earl of Worcester, Steward of the Royal Household. Hotspur’s first objective was Shrewsbury, where he hoped to capture Prince Henry and join forces with Owain. They would then proclaim that Richard II was still alive and still king, though once Henry IV had been defeated they would place the Earl of March on the throne.

The king first had definite news of the plot when he was at Nottingham on 12 July. Guessing that Hotspur and Worcester would make for Shrewsbury, he marched there at once, covering nearly sixty miles in three days. The prince must have been overjoyed to see him; many of his men had gone over to the enemy, including some from his own household. When Hotspur and Worcester arrived on 20 July they were thunderstruck at seeing the king’s banner flying from the walls.

Undaunted, Hotspur chose his ground skilfully, on a hillside known as Hayteley Field; his right flank was protected by the River Severn, his rear by steep ground, his front by dense crops and small ponds. The position, two miles north of the town, was near a hamlet called Berwick where he and his men spent the night. A legend says that on calling for his sword the following morning, Hotspur was told it had been left at Berwick. Badly shaken, he cried, ‘We have ploughed our last furrow for a wizard in mine own country foretold that I should die at Berwick!’ Yet Henry IV was uneasy too. He offered Worcester humiliatingly good terms, fearing the imminent arrival of the Welsh. ‘You are not the rightful heir,’ Worcester told him. ‘We cannot trust you.’

The battle did not begin until midday. The royal army numbered perhaps 5,000 men, its right wing being commanded by Prince Henry while the vanguard was led by the Earl of Stafford. The king ordered two of his knights to wear royal surcoats so as to resemble him and confuse the enemy. Hotspur had about the same number of troops, among them being a particularly lethal contingent of crack Cheshire archers who wore King Richard’s old badge of the White Hart. Henry IV sent his men uphill at his opponents on a dangerously narrow front. The Cheshire bowmen shot down into them at short range, wreaking murderous havoc – according to the chronicler Walsingham men fell on the king’s side as fast as leaves fall in autumn after a hoar frost. The Earl of Stafford was killed and some of the royal troops ran for their lives. Prince Henry was himself badly wounded in the face by an arrow. He nevertheless refused to leave the field. The royal standard bearer fell and the king’s banner went down. For a moment it looked as though the enemy must win. They had inflicted many casualties. Hotspur’s prisoner the Earl of Douglas – who had become his friend and ally – slew both the knights in royal surcoats. Suddenly Hotspur fell, killed ‘no man wist of whom’. His men fled, Worcester and Douglas being taken prisoner. At least 1,600 men were killed, many of the 3,000 wounded dying later. Next day, a Sunday, Worcester wept over his nephew’s body, before being beheaded on the Monday. Hotspur’s corpse was salted and placed in the pillory at Shrewsbury, propped up by two millstones – the head was then taken to York to be stuck up on Micklegate Bar, his quarters being displayed at other cities.

However, Owain was soon raiding again, concentrating on Hereford and Monmouth. The king simply did not have enough money to organize a proper offensive against the Welsh. In the autumn a French expedition arrived to help Owain and in November 1403 French ships attacked Kidwelly Castle from the sea. By the following January, the French were shipping cannon to the siege of Conwy. The Welsh captured Harlech and Aberystwyth in the spring of 1404. The former became Owain’s residence, the latter his administrative headquarters. His men went on to take Cardiff, Caerphilly, Usk, Caerleon and Newport. He summoned a Welsh parliament to Machynlleth. At the end of May ambassadors from ‘
Owynus, dei gratia, princeps Walliae
’ were received at Paris by Charles VI, who presented them with a golden helmet – worn only by sovereigns – for his ‘brother’. Next month the Welsh and the French signed a treaty of alliance against ‘Henry of Lancaster’.

Prince Henry was given the Duke of York (Rutland) as his lieutenant in South Wales and the Earl of Arundel as his lieutenant in the north. His Welsh foes were heroic but scarcely formidable; although their great gentlemen went armed like English men-at-arms, most were bowmen or spearmen, even knifemen. The women perpetrated barbaric atrocities on the English dead and wounded. (After their victory at Pilleth in 1402, in the words of Friar Capgrave, ‘full shamefully the Welshwomen cut off [English] men’s members and put them in their mouths that were dead’.)
⁵
Henry’s troops saw the ‘Welch doggis’ in the way their descendants would one day see Red Indians or Zulus.

Reporting to his father in June 1404 the prince says that the Welsh are preparing to attack Herefordshire and promises, ‘I will do all that in me lies to withstand the rebels and preserve the English land.’ The same day he wrote to the Council warning that if it cannot provide him with money; ‘We must depart with shame and mischief and the country will be undone, which God forbid.’ Winter postponed the threat. In the following March he reports how, hearing that 8,000 Welshmen were attacking Grosmont, he had sent Lord Talbot against them with a small force. ‘Yet it is known that victory is not in the multitude of the people but in the power of God and well was this shown.’ Talbot’s men had slain between 800 and 1,000. In May at Pwll Melyn near Usk the English killed a further 1,500 including Glyn Dŵr’s brother, Tudur, and took many prisoners, among them Owain’s son, Gruffydd; the latter was sent to the Tower of London – 300 prisoners of lesser birth were beheaded on the spot. A fortnight later Prince Henry’s men were again victorious, capturing the Welsh chancellor, Dr Gruffydd Yonge.

In February 1405 the governess of the Earl of March and his brother, Lady Despenser – whose husband had lost his life in the conspiracy of 1400 – suddenly fled from Windsor with the boys. She intended to join their uncle, Mortimer, and Owain, who were going to proclaim March as king. Henry IV pursued her in person, catching her at Cheltenham a week later. When questioned she accused her brother-in-law the Duke of York of plotting to kill Henry. York was sent to the Tower but nothing could be proved and he had to be released. The two March boys were guarded more closely than ever.

Hotspur’s father, Northumberland, old but still very dangerous, had contacted Glyn Dŵr and Mortimer. In February 1405 their envoys signed a triple indenture at Bangor to divide England among them. Northumberland would have England north of the Trent, the midland counties of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Warwickshire, and Norfolk; besides Wales, Owain was to have all lands west of the Severn and south of the Mersey; Mortimer would have southern England.

Northumberland’s allies in the North were the Earl Marshal (Lord Mowbray), Lord Bardolf, Lord Clifford and Archbishop Scrope of York. A manifesto was posted all over York, complaining of burdens on the clergy, ruin facing the nobility and unbearable taxes on gentry and commons. The archbishop and his friends gathered a small force at Shipton Moor outside York. The Earl of Westmorland held them at bay and then tricked Scrope and Mowbray with a false parley, arresting them on 29 May. Despite protests from Archbishop Arundel and Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne, King Henry beheaded not only Mowbray but Scrope as well. Told that he would lose his head, the latter commented ‘I shall die for the laws and good rule of England’. He was made to ride to his execution on a mare, his head facing the tail in token of ignominy. The
Brut
says that the king was immediately smitten by leprosy, while miracles began to be worked at the archbishop’s tomb. Only the papal schism saved the king from excommunication. Northumberland and Bardolf fled to Scotland before joining Owain.