The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King (10 page)

These entries give us our first real insight into the character of the young Henry of Lancaster. He was close to his father, dutiful and physically resilient. Within a few years he was winning fame in the jousts and earning widespread respect as he travelled around the country in his father’s
ostentatious cavalcade. One writer later described him as the ‘strongest’ of the earls of Derby, setting him even above his famous grandfather.
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That strength is clearly evidenced in his jousting. But perhaps even more importantly, it is good evidence of a high degree of self-confidence. You cannot charge headlong at an opponent in armour on a warhorse – nearly half a ton of man, beast and metal, with a closing speed of more than forty miles an hour – and not falter unless you are a very confident, determined individual.

John impressed upon Henry the importance of looking like a prince as well as being one. Henry’s tailors were directed to make short and long gowns, mantles, tunics, paltocks, tabards, kirtles and hoods. His clerks bought scarlet, blue, white and black cloth, of wool, silk, damask, satin, cotton and linen for the purpose. Red damask appears in his accounts alongside golden gowns and ermine furs. Long black gowns furred with ermine must have been particularly elegant. So too must have been the long blue damask tabard which was made for Henry for the occasion of the king’s wedding in January 1382, the cloth being given to him by his stepmother, the duchess of Lancaster. Some historians have described Henry at this time as showing ‘a certain extravagance in his living’.
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But Henry was now second in line to the throne: his clothing was no more than what was appropriate for the king’s cousin and the heir of the only duke in the realm. The dazzling clothes – the spangles worn at the jousts, the short gown of golden damask, the satin paltock decorated with golden leopards, and the white and gold silk paltock – were made for special occasions, and normally from cloth given to him by his father or stepmother. Compared to some of the lavish clothes brought by Edward III as a young man, or John of Gaunt, this is relatively modest.
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Most of the time Henry was more likely to be wearing a long gown of wool than damask or silk. Considering what he might have spent as the eldest son of the richest man in the country after the king, a £20 bill for clothes at the end of the year (including the wages of tailors for his clothes at the royal wedding) plus a furriers’ accounts of £16 16s 8d are not extravagant.

Much the same can be said for Henry’s payments to goldsmiths. We may notice many rings made for him, but plain gold rings were not very costly. Nor were they all for his own wearing: rings were commonly given out as presents. On 29 December 1381 Henry ordered twenty-nine gold rings; he gave them all away on 1 January. There are references to occasional refinements, such as gilt silver rings for a falcon’s hood and buckles and pendants of gilt silver; but we also read of mending and cleaning garters, and making new brooches out of old ones. There are only a few references to precious stones, unlike most aristocratic accounts. There are
no expensive drinking cups of gold and silver, no enamelware. The entire account of goldsmiths’ work amounts to £26 3s. If we add the few pounds paid for leatherwork and shoes, it is clear that Henry spent less than £70 in total on his appearance in 1381–2, less than a quarter of his income. By comparison, Edward III’s gifts to Henry’s mother at her wedding had cost nearly £390: fifteen times as much as Henry’s entire annual goldsmiths’ account.
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At first the above seems to point to a contradiction. Henry was drawing attention to himself as a jousting prodigy, and dressing in gilded silver spangles and roses, and yet was relatively modest in his usual dress. But there is no real contradiction; Henry was simply being conventional. When expected to dress the part of the second in line to the throne at a royal wedding, he did so. On ordinary days he preferred an elegant long gown. When lifting a lance and fighting in the lists, he wore appropriately decorated costumes, but this did not mean he had to be lavish all the time.

This conventionality is noticeable in his alms payments. Each day he gave a penny to a pauper: a modest sum for a medieval lord. He gave slightly larger amounts – normally fourpence – having heard a mass on a special occasion. He donated extra sums in particular places or when visiting particular shrines. He gave a donation at Hertford marking the anniversary of the death of his grandfather, Duke Henry. Of course, when saying that Henry was conventional in his alms-giving – and thus presumably in his religious outlook – we must remember that to be ‘conventional’ in a deeply religious age meant to be profoundly religious oneself. In later years Henry’s religious sincerity took him beyond the conventional and caused him to be exceedingly conservative. But at the age of fifteen his religious behaviour was more in keeping with his time.

There is just one unconventional religious donation in these 1381–2 accounts. On 3 April 1382 (Maundy Thursday) John of Gaunt made provision for thirteen poor men to receive alms from Henry. This was traditional: similar amounts had been doled out by members of the royal family since at least the reign of King John. But on that day Henry added two more recipients ‘because he was fifteen years old’, at a cost of an extra two shillings.
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Henry was marking his birthday, that seems clear; but the real question is, why did he do it in this way? This is the first recorded instance of any member of the royal family making a Maundy Thursday donation equivalent to their age. In later years it became a Lancastrian custom, being followed by Henry’s wife and his eldest son, and indeed it remains a royal custom to this day. In the late fifteenth century it was a politically charged act: Henry VII followed it, as did other Lancastrian supporters. Herein lies its interest: if it was a political statement from the
outset, why did Henry start to use it now, in 1382? One possibility is that by drawing attention to the religious date of his birth, Henry was countering Richard’s boast that he was born on the Epiphany. If so, it is the earliest evidence of the religious dimension to the rivalry developing between the two young men. It may also have had another, more subtle angle, for on that Maundy Thursday Henry took a linen cloth and personally performed the
pedilavium,
the royal washing of paupers’ feet. This can only be taken as a sign that he believed that great men – even kings – should be humble. Richard was more concerned with demonstrating his sovereignty than his humility. Thus this payment is evidence of much more than Henry’s personal religious observance. It hints at two important divisions between him and his cousin: rivalry for spiritual favour and the expectation of royal humility. As later events were to show, these divisions were never resolved.

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Henry’s religiousness and his conventionality, his jousting prowess and his duty, all suggest that he was an earnest youth. The word which seems to sum him up best is ‘conscientious’. This is fully borne out by the evidence relating to his education. Whereas his grandfather King Edward III had laboured with difficulty to form the words ‘Pater Sancte’ on a letter to the pope, and Richard’s hand was neat but awkwardly slow, Henry was a fluent – if not an elegant – penman.
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His informal handwriting shows signs of regular use. His ability to write in three languages – French, Latin and English – was unusual, to say the least.
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If we then reflect on other details from his later life, such as the fact that he owned a book with a gloss or commentary in Greek, what begins to emerge is a picture of a man whose education was thorough and wide-ranging.
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Nor should we be surprised at this: the widely travelled poet Geoffrey Chaucer was a friend of the family, so too was the poet John Gower. When John of Gaunt set about the education of Henry’s eldest half-brother, John Beaufort, he did not just have him taught to be an excellent fighting knight, he also sent him to Cambridge.
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Henry’s father can thus be seen as an educational driving force. Henry took full advantage of his educational opportunities, and continued to build on them, showing a conscientiousness in later life consistent with that suggested by his youthful confidence, dutifulness and religious conventionality.

This brings us to an important point about Henry. He was probably the nearest to an intellectual among all the medieval kings of England. He was bookish, as were many young men and women of his class, including his wife’s family and his uncle Thomas. But Henry was not just interested in seeing books lavishly decorated, or patronising writers; he was
interested in reading too. Gower, in describing learned men who read ‘old books’, felt obliged to add that he knew that Henry was well learned in such texts.
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When exiled later in his life, Henry attended and commented on lectures at the University of Paris.
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Not long after becoming king he personally ordered a magnificent study to be built at Eltham Palace, with cupboards specially designed to house his books. On a visit to Bardney Abbey in 1406, he spent a considerable period of time in the abbey library, reading.
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We even have some idea what he read, for we have that list of the books stolen from his library after his death. It includes a copy of Gower’s work
Confessio Amantis
which was dedicated to him, two histories (including a copy of the popular
Polychronicon
of Ralph Higden), and several spiritual works. This list – which contains nothing which could be called ‘light reading’ – corresponds with a passage in John Capgrave’s later description of him, in which his prodigious memory and willingness to debate moral issues is demonstrated. In Capgrave’s words:

I have known in my time that men of great literary attainments who used to enjoy conversing with him have said that he was a man of very great ability, and of so tenacious a memory that he used to spend a great part of the day in solving and unravelling hard questions … Let future ages know that he was a studious investigator of all doubtful points of morals … and that he was always eager to pursue such matters.
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It is in this intellectual application that Henry most differs from his contemporaries and royal ancestors. His grandfathers were no less intelligent but they were not inclined to spend prolonged periods in philosophical debate, or reading in abbey libraries. Duke Henry had written a moral treatise,
The Book of Holy Medicines,
it is true, but by his own admission he was not given over to learning. His grandson
was,
or would have been if he had had more time. Moreover, viewed in the context of his determined jousting, his emerging piety and his lack of artistic patronage (on the scale of his father or cousin), for example, one may discern in Henry an intellectual rigour and an aptitude for ideas more than the visual appeal of things. He was, it seems, a man of reason: inclined to logic and justice more than extravagance, artistry and beautiful objects.

There is one further element of his education which needs to be mentioned, even though it does not feature in the 1381–2 accounts. This is Henry’s love of music. In one set of annals he is described as ‘a sparkling musician’.
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It was a passion he shared with his wife, Mary, who seems to have arranged choirs, sung and played the cither or harp.
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Henry did all these things too: in 1387 or 1388 he bought a cover for his cither in London,
and the same account records several payments for strings.
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In 1395 he paid for a
cithara
to be fetched from Leicester and brought to him at Kenilworth.
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The presence of royal minstrels at his wedding has already been mentioned; but he would have surrounded himself with musicians on a daily basis, eating his meals to the accompaniment of music and encouraging new forms of musical entertainment. He fostered the musical attributes of his sons: he bought a harp for his eldest son and had him taught to play it. He very probably wrote the two pieces of polyphony ascribed to ‘Roy Henry’ (King Henry) in the Old Hall manuscript, the earliest major collection of English sacred music.
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One particularly interesting piece of evidence is Henry’s purchase in 1388 of the first known ‘recorder’. This was obtained specifically for his own use, at a cost of 3s 4d.
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Flutes and pipes were ubiquitous, and thus it is the use of the term ‘recorder’ – or, to be specific, ‘a pipe called
recordo’ –
which is significant. For in its meaning ‘I remember’,
recordo
relates to a musical memory device, not necessarily as an instrument in itself but a means of being able to gauge pitch. In Mary’s accounts for this same year, we find an instrument with a similar purpose: ‘an iron to regulate singing’, presumably a tuning fork, at a cost of 10d.
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As later chapters will show, this love of music is revealed in practically all his later accounts, including those while he was overseas. Such an abundance of evidence for his musicianship leaves us in no doubt that he had an aural creative side to his character, and did not just patronise musicians but personally took part in making music too.

All these elements of his development seem to possess a common feature: a sense of order. Jousting was not just a matter of courage and confidence: it required training and structure. Reading and writing in three languages did not come easily to men whose usual occupations were hunting and falconry. The rules of harmony may be very different from those of war and justice, but there is a logical thread running through them all. In what is to come, therefore, we should not picture the young Henry lurking in the shadows like a worried youth but proudly entering the tournament lists, mindful of his duty, and conscientiously reading with his tutor, and singing in chapel or with his companions, guided above all by a logical and resolute mind. By the end of his teenage years he had developed into an exemplary knight: a steadfast champion of God, full of self-confidence, and certain of his place in the social order. Few who met him in his teenage years would not have admired him, or considered him worthy of his grandfather’s name.