The Demon's Brood (28 page)

a more complex Macbeth

Bruce McFarlane
¹

When Henry IV lay on his deathbed, his son picked up the crown from a nearby table. The dying man opened his eyes and asked, ‘Why do you think you have any right to it? I had none myself, as you know very well.' Enguerrand de Monstrelet, the chronicler who told the story fifty years later, accused Henry of coming to the throne by ‘strange, dishonourable means'.
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Many contemporaries shared Monstrelet's opinion.

When Henry told parliament in 1399 that he ‘challenged' the realm of England, he implied he was taking the crown by right of conquest as well as descent, which meant he was ready to fight off rival challenges.
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These duly came, in a series of risings driven by a wish to revenge his predecessor or inability to accept him as king. ‘Not since I was a youth can I recall such deep
forebodings by well-balanced men about the grave disorders and troubles they fear will soon afflict this kingdom', his own confessor wrote to him in 1401, an ex-Lollard who remembered the Peasants' Revolt.
⁴

‘Always in deep debt, always kept on the alert by the Scots and Welsh; wavering between two opposite lines of policy with regard to France; teased by the parliament, which interfered with his household and grudged him supplies; worried by the clergy and others to whom he had promised more than he could fulfil; continually alarmed by attempts on his life, disappointed in his second marriage, bereft by treason of the aid of those whom he had trusted in his youth, and dreading to be supplanted by his own son; ever in danger of becoming the sport of the court factions which he had failed to extinguish, he seems to us a man whose life was embittered by the knowledge that he had taken on himself a task for which he was unequal.' Stubbs's epitome will never be bettered.
⁵

Born at Bolingbroke Castle in the Lincolnshire Wolds in 1366, it seemed Henry would one day succeed his father Gaunt as England's richest magnate. In any case, he was enormously wealthy from his marriage in 1380 to the twelve-year-old Mary de Bohun, the younger of the Earl of Hereford's two heiresses. His uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, had married her elder sister, forcing Mary into a nunnery in an attempt to secure the entire Bohun inheritance, but Gaunt abducted her, the marriage being consummated when she was fourteen.

The other drama of his early years took place during the Peasants' Revolt, when he was caught in the Tower of London by a mob who wanted to lynch John of Gaunt's son – only a kind-hearted soldier's intervention saved the boy. Some suspected he had been deliberately left in the Tower by ruthless courtiers, to eliminate a potential rival of the young king.

Aged twenty-one, Henry led the Appellants to victory, routing de Vere's army at Radcot Bridge, but hedged his bets by trying to save the life of Richard's old tutor, Sir Simon Burley. He also blocked Gloucester's attempt to seize the throne. His father Lancaster possessed a better claim than Gloucester while, despite a mutual detestation of de Vere, their dispute over the Bohun inheritance gave him reason not to trust his uncle.

In autumn 1390, after sailing through the Baltic and landing near Gdansk, the Earl of Derby (as Henry was then styled) joined the Teutonic Knights on the Northern Crusade in Lithuania. Travelling down the River Memel, he helped to besiege Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. The Lithuanians' Grand Prince had converted to Christianity, but the Crusade continued, since many of his folk were still pagans who worshipped hares and snakes. Having wintered at Königsberg in East Prussia where he was entertained by the Knights' marshal, Henry went home, en route visiting the Grand Master's court at Marienburg.

In 1392 he returned to the Baltic. Finding there was peace between the Teutonic Knights and the Lithuanians, he went with a household fifty strong on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, 2,000 miles away. After visiting Prague and Vienna Henry sailed from Venice to the Knights of St John at Rhodes, from where he took ship to Palestine. At the Holy Sepulchre he swore an oath that one day he would go on Crusade, recover the Holy Land for Christendom and then die in the Holy City. On the way home, he visited Cyprus whose ruler, James I – titular King of Jerusalem – gave him a leopard that he took back to England.

Here, Henry kept on outwardly good terms with King Richard until the final upheaval, being made Duke of Hereford for deserting the Appellants and his part in the Earl of Arundel's destruction. Had he been allowed to inherit his father's patrimony, it is unlikely he would have rebelled.

The new king was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 13 October by Archbishop Arundel. It was St Edward's Day, to stress his sincerity in swearing the coronation oath to defend the Confessor's laws. When Arundel anointed his head, it was swarming with lice, which some saw as an evil omen. Parliament met the next day and some of the dukes Richard had created were reduced to their old rank of earl, but did not suffer financially. However, the estates of Scrope, Bussy and Green were confiscated as most people regarded them as criminals.

At the end of 1399 a band of plotters met at Westminster Abbey, whose abbot William de Colchester remained loyal to the ex-king. They planned to kill Henry with his sons during an Epiphany tournament at Windsor and restore Richard. Not knowing where he was, they found a clerk of the chapel royal called Maudelyn, who bore a resemblance, to impersonate him. On Twelfth Night (6 January), the Earls of Huntingdon, Kent and Salisbury with 500 men-at-arms rode through the night from Kingston-upon-Thames, storming the castle at dawn. Proclaiming Richard II king again, they rushed from room to room, but failed to find their enemy – Rutland had betrayed the plot to his father, the Duke of York, and Henry had escaped with his sons a few hours before. Fleeing to the West Country, the coup's leaders were lynched, their heads sent to London in fish-baskets ‘to gladden the king and the Londoners'.
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A Te Deum was sung at St Paul's by Arundel, who led a procession through the City in thanksgiving.

After the ‘Epiphany Plot' Henry's advisers told him, ‘As long as Richard of Bordeaux stays alive, neither you nor your kingdom will be safe.' The king said nothing, but left the room. ‘Then he visited his falconers and, taking a falcon on his glove, seemed interested only in feeding it.'
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His predecessor was dead by 17 February, starved to death at Pontefract Castle. The body was exhibited to the public at St Paul's Cathedral, on a black
cushion with all but its face wrapped in lead, before burial at King's Langley Priory – not in the tomb Richard had prepared at Westminster. Even so, rumours persisted that the ex-king was alive in Wales or in Scotland, where until 1419 a madman with a likeness to him claimed to be Richard.

In September 1400 Henry led an expedition to cow the Scots,
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provoked by an offensive letter from Robert III addressing him as Duke of Lancaster instead of king. Its aim was to forestall a Franco-Scottish invasion, but it failed when the Scots used scorched earth tactics. Just after the king returned, Owain Glyndwr of Glyndyfrdwy in Denbighshire, a descendant of the ancient princes, quarrelled with Lord Grey of Ruthin, who was a friend of the king, sacking Ruthin before being driven off into the hills. The English dismissed the incident as a local feud, although Henry took a small force into Wales in a display of English authority.

At Christmas, the king was visited by the Emperor of the East, Manuel II Paleologus, whose empire by now consisted of little more than Constantinople. Even that was threatened by the Turks, so Manuel had embarked on a tour of western courts to beg for aid. After entertaining the emperor at Eltham (which had become the king's favourite palace), Henry gave him £2,000 he could ill afford.

In 1401 the king took action against what Walsingham calls the ‘detestable ravings of the Lollards'
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. Henceforward, by the statute
de heretico comburendo
, heresy became punishable with burning at the stake, while it was illegal to read the Bible in English. But only in the next reign would persecution drive the Lollards underground.

One night in 1401 a calthrop with three razor-sharp prongs (for maiming war horses) was discovered under the royal mattress, where it had been hidden in the hope Henry would impale himself through the straw. Early the next year an Augustinian prior was executed for failing to reveal a plot to kill him. In May eight Franciscan friars were hanged for conspiring to murder the
king and raise men under the pretext that Richard II was still alive. Among their allies was a bastard of the Black Prince, Sir Roger Clarendon, who went to the gallows with them. During the friars' trial, when Henry insisted, ‘I did not usurp the crown, I was elected', one of them, Dr William Frisby, told him no election could be valid while the legitimate possessor was still alive and that if he had killed Richard, then he had forfeited any right to the kingdom.

Henry's title was questioned all over Europe. In 1402–3 he received letters from the Duke of Orléans, who accused him of being a usurper and no true king.
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He looked far from secure. Quite apart from plots by friars and abuse by Frenchmen, he was desperately short of money. In 1401, when he asked the Commons for subsidies, they impertinently asked what had happened to Richard's jewels.

In Stubbs's view, ‘There is scarcely one in the whole line of our kings of whose personality it is so difficult to get a definite idea.'
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This remains true today because of inadequate sources. But some of Stubbs's insights are convincing – ‘suspicious, coldblooded and politic, undecided in action, cautious and jealous in private and public relations and, if not personally cruel, willing to sanction and profit by the cruelty of others'.
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McFarlane adds, ‘Henry, in fact, was that comparatively rare combination, the man of action who was also an intellectual.'
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When young, he was an impressive little man, tough, elegant, urbane and handsome, with a forked beard. Describing the malady that afflicted him in mid-life, John Capgrave – the Augustinian prior of Lynn, who may have seen him there – says he lost the ‘beauty of his face', suggesting previous good looks.
¹⁴
The effigy on his tomb at Canterbury Cathedral shows a bloated countenance, indicating self-indulgence rather than disease. He had a friendly manner if a sardonic wit. In no way a xenophobe
like his uncle Gloucester, when in exile at Paris during 1398–9
he attended theological disputes in the university lecture halls and made an excellent impression on Charles VI, who wanted him to marry a Valois princess.

We know little about Mary Bohun, his first wife, apart from her bearing four sons who lived to manhood and two daughters. The sons were Henry, Prince of Wales, Thomas, Duke of Clarence, John, Duke of Bedford and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Mary died in 1394, giving birth to her second daughter. Her successor, whom Henry married in 1403, was Joan of Navarre, the widowed Duchess of Brittany – four years younger than himself, with nine children by her first husband, an amiable lady later accused of witchcraft. Sadly, it was ‘an alliance which gave him neither strength abroad nor comfort at home'.
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There was a merciless streak. On campaign in Wales, realizing that a Welsh gentleman was deliberately leading the army the wrong way, Henry had him hanged, drawn and quartered on the spot. Even so, he possessed a kindly side. In 1400 he awarded Matthew Flint, tooth-drawer of London and obviously good at his job, a perpetual allowance of 6d a day to draw the teeth, without payment, of anybody who could not afford an extraction.

He did not have favourites, but got on admirably with his four sons, entrusting them with responsibility from an early age. He was also on good terms with his three Beaufort half-brothers (Gaunt's children by Katherine Swynford, who had been legitimized by Richard II), furthering their careers, if introducing legislation that barred them from succeeding to the throne. He had trusted henchmen, servants of the duchy of Lancaster who became his ministers and household officials. If he listened to anybody, it was to Archbishop Arundel.

Henry loved hunting and hawking, while he was a tiltyard champion into middle age. Indoors, he was the most literate monarch since his namesake Henry II. Not only did the cupboards built for his library at Eltham hold the
Polychronicon
(Ralph Higden's universal history) and John Gower's
Confessio Amantis
, which was dedicated to him, but a book with a commentary in Greek if he needed help to construe it. He read and wrote English, French and Latin, unlike Edward III, who had been barely able to scrawl a few words. (On a state paper of 23 October 1403 he noted ‘
necessitas non habet legem
' – necessity knows no law.
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) He invited Christine de Pizan, one of the first women to write in defence of her sex, to live at his court, but she preferred to stay in Paris. He possessed a highly developed taste in music, owning the first known recorder in England, which he himself played, as well as a harp and a metal-stringed cither (half-lute, half-mandolin). He had some knowledge of polyphony, composing sacred music. He built little, however, apart from a massive gatehouse at Lancaster Castle.

In religion, Henry was deeply pious, with a cult of St Thomas of Canterbury perhaps instilled by Arundel – unusually for a Plantagenet king, he was buried in Thomas's cathedral. He also venerated another ‘St Thomas', his maternal ancestor, the Earl of Lancaster, who had been executed by Edward II, presenting St George's Chapel with a set of vestments that depicted the earl's ‘martyrdom'. When an invalid, he never tired of visiting shrines, in hope of a cure.