The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King (28 page)

While we may have some sympathy for Richard, his psychological problems had a disastrous effect on the political situation in England. Haxey’s plight was just the tip of a very big iceberg. The Nicopolis Crusade (in which Bayezid defeated and massacred a Franco-Hungarian army) had plunged all France into grief, so they cancelled the intended expedition against Milan. Richard’s response was to follow their lead and reverse his declaration of war. Even though he had justified his bellicosity towards Milan in terms of his moral responsibility to remove Gian Galeazzo from power, he now justified his change of mind by saying he had always sought peace. Such a mercurial ruler could hardly be an inspiration to his people. Wise men do not follow leaders whom they suspect might later reproach them for their loyalty.

Following the parliament, Richard summoned a meeting of the royal council. He had decided to change his mind on another issue: the pursuit of a single policy towards the Church of Rome. Richard had recently decided his priority was to be elected Holy Roman Emperor, and this required some diplomatic shifting.
¹⁴
Both the duke of Gloucester and the earl of Arundel refused to attend the council meeting, both claiming they were ill.
¹⁵
Richard was furious, and sought a means whereby he could stop his regal authority being treated with such disdain. He fixed on the fact that his uncle and the earl of Arundel had been Appellants. Richard now sought to be revenged on the Lords Appellant, to make them an example to anyone who would question his authority, as he had done with Haxey.

Henry, as a former Appellant, had every reason to be afraid. Even though he had been pardoned for any action against the king in 1388, he knew that it would not take much for Richard to reverse all the pardons he had granted and to sentence all five Lords Appellant to death. Besides, his alienation from Richard was growing more serious. In February 1397 Richard adopted his cousin, Edward, earl of Rutland, as his ‘brother’.
¹⁶
This was perhaps in emulation of Edward II’s adoption of Piers Gaveston as his brother.
¹⁷
The implications of Richard actually having a brother would have been enormous – a real brother would automatically have become heir to the throne – and it is surprising that historians have tended to overlook this formal adoption.
¹⁸
With Richard making Rutland’s father keeper of the realm in 1394 and 1396, the adoption was the clearest indicator yet that Richard wanted the succession to the throne to pass to the house of York, not the Lancastrians or the Mortimers.

Wisely, Henry disappeared off to the Lancastrian estates in the Midlands after the council meeting. He went to Leicester in March, then moved to
Tutbury at the end of the month, and returned to Leicester at the beginning of May.
¹⁹
These cannot have been happy days. Indeed, one of the reasons why he did not marry at this time may have been his preoccupation with his own fate. Even though Edward ‘the king’s brother’ was commissioned to negotiate a marriage between Henry and the daughter of the king of Navarre, and there were rumours of his marrying Lucia Visconti (which Henry himself may have started), he stayed single.
²⁰
No doubt at Leicester he reflected sadly on the tomb of his dead wife. In June he returned south to Hertford, to discuss the looming crisis with his father.
²¹
Within two weeks they were both summoned to Westminster. Richard wanted to know exactly where their loyalties lay. In this dispute between the king and the leaders of magnate opposition, would John and Henry defend the duke of Gloucester? Or would they remain dutifully quiet?

For John there was no question. He was loyal through and through, in both policy and instinct. He had not joined the Appellants in 1387, having been out of the country, and even though he had protested his loyalty on every occasion it had been called into doubt. Moreover, he hated the earl of Arundel. His only predicament concerned his son, Henry. If Richard revoked the pardons granted to the senior Appellants, then what was to stop him revoking the one granted to Henry too? What was there to stop Richard from accusing Henry of treason at a later date? If Henry did anything to incur Richard’s wrath, then he too would find himself on the wrong end of the executioner’s axe.
²²

Henry had even less choice. When Richard outlined his plans to him in the summer of 1397, he made it quite clear that he could either support the impeachment or be impeached along with the others. Eight lords would appeal the three senior Lords Appellant of treason. Henry did not join these Counter-Appellants, but was with the king at Westminster on 5 July and stayed for the next month in his household.
²³
Thus we may be sure that he had prior knowledge of the king’s actions on 10 July. That night Richard and a contingent of men-at-arms left Westminster and went to Pleshey Castle in Essex, where his uncle Duke Thomas was staying, and dragged him out of bed. Those at Pleshey, seeing the king there in the middle of the night, immediately knew that this was no ordinary arrest. The duchess, Lady Eleanor, wept copiously, and pleaded with the king to be merciful. Richard declared – whether to her or not is unclear – that he would show him as much mercy as the duke had shown Simon Burley nine years earlier.
²⁴
He took him to Tillingbourne, and handed him over the next day to Thomas Mowbray, constable of Calais, with orders to take the duke across the Channel.

It seemed that Richard had successfully carried out a coup against the
Appellants. Henry was utterly disempowered. When announcing to the Londoners that he had arrested the duke of Gloucester, and the earls of Arundel and Warwick, Richard could say that not only had he the approval of the eight Counter-Appellants but also John, Henry and the duke of York (even though these three did not join the appeal).
²⁵
Henry’s acquiescence to the arrests, and his subsequent elevation to a dukedom, have led a number of historians to think that in 1397 Henry was again in favour with the king. However, there was still no amicable grounding to their relationship. Henry’s loyalty to Richard at this time was simply life-preserving, not approving, as can be seen by his refusal to join the Counter-Appellants. Richard’s lack of action against him was, rather, a matter of expediency. Had Richard threatened Henry and Mowbray as well as the leading Appellants in July 1397, he would have forced John also into revolt, and with him the entire Lancastrian confederacy. As it was, Richard broke the opposition by dividing Thomas and Henry from the other Appellants.

Everyone was nervous. No one knew what was going to happen. Even with their accord with the king worked out, Henry and his father were in danger. With the duke of York, they raised a large body of men which they brought to Dale Abbey for five days while the king was at Nottingham.
²⁶
That this was with the king’s approval is shown by various payments in Henry’s accounts and by the king’s later explicit instructions.
²⁷
However, the raising of a Lancastrian army was a sure sign of uncertain times. On 28 August, Richard issued a letter patent specifically ordering John and Henry to bring an army to the next parliament ‘for the king’s protection’.
²⁸
John was to raise three hundred men-at-arms and six hundred archers; the duke of York one hundred men-at-arms and two hundred archers; and Henry was to assemble two hundred men-at-arms and four hundred archers. These forces, plus another two thousand of the king’s Cheshire archers, effectively destroyed any chance of men rallying to defend the accused lords.
²⁹

Then came the shocking news. The duke of Gloucester was dead. He had died, it was said, of natural causes in Calais.
³⁰
That sounded suspicious, coming so soon after his arrest. What were John and Henry to think? If Thomas was really dead, there was nothing they could do now to save him. If he was being kept alive – as, in fact, he was – the best they could do was to persuade Richard of his loyalty.
³¹

*

On St Lambert’s Day, 17 September 1397, parliament assembled in a great marquee which had been set up in the yard of Westminster Palace. The old hall was being refashioned and rebuilt, so it was not possible to gather
in the usual place. Outside there were many ranks of armed men. The two thousand Cheshire archers held their bows ready, arrows notched.

With the empty throne towering above them at one end, the members stood and waited. Then the king entered. The chancellor began to explain why parliament had been summoned. It was, he said, ‘to the honour and reverence of God and the salvation and correction of the realm’. If anyone there thought that it sounded like a crusade, they were not far wrong. ‘One king shall be king to them all’, declared the chancellor, ‘and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more.’
³²

The atmosphere was tense. There were many new faces, many men appointed by Richard. The rumours went around among the older hands that the king had arranged the return of as many pro-royalist members as possible.
³³
Rumours of the duke of Gloucester’s survival circulated too, as did speculation as to the earl of Arundel’s fate. More certain was the tension throughout the city. Thousands of archers and men-at-arms created an atmosphere of nervous hostility. The inns in the city had been overrun, with many of the Cheshire archers getting drunk and violent, and taking advantage of their favoured position as the king’s men.

The chancellor continued. ‘Our lord the king – considering how many high offences and misdeeds have been committed by the people of his kingdom against their allegiance and the estate of our lord the king and the law of his land in the past … and willing in his royal benignity to show and do grace to his said people, so that they should have greater courage and will to do good, and bear themselves the better towards the king in time to come – so he wills and agrees to make … a general pardon to his lieges … excepting fifty persons whom it would please the king to name, and all those who will be impeached in the present parliament.’

The king refused to name the fifty. Fear struck all those present.

It intensified the following day.

‘My lord king’, said Sir John Bussy, after the commons had re-elected him Speaker, ‘since we are bound by your command to tell your royal highness who undermined your power and transgressed against your regality, we tell you that Thomas, duke of Gloucester, and Richard, earl of Arundel, in the tenth year of your reign, with the assistance of Thomas Arundel, then chancellor of England and now archbishop of Canterbury, compelled you to concede a commission touching the government and state of your kingdom which was to the prejudice of your regality and majesty, whereby they did you great injury.’
³⁴

With that, the king demanded the commission of 1386 be read out. When everyone had heard it, the king declared in cold anger that it was
hereby revoked, repealed and perpetually annulled, and so was every single Act which had been passed as a consequence.

Next the king demanded that the pardons against those who had risen in revolt in 1387 be read out aloud. When they had been heard, these were all revoked also. So too was the special pardon granted to the earl of Arundel in 1394. The pro-royalist commons, through Bussy, demanded that Richard be informed that the archbishop of Canterbury had advised the granting of this pardon to his brother, the earl, and so he too should be declared a traitor. Immediately the archbishop rose to his feet and began to speak. But Richard silenced him, declaring he could answer tomorrow. He never had the chance. As Bussy had said to the king, the archbishop was too clever; he should not be allowed to speak.

What Henry thought of this can be seen in the charges he later brought against Richard. But for the moment he kept quiet. He had to. His own pardon had just been revoked, and although Richard was prepared to forgive him on the grounds that he had tried to restrain the others, this provided him with little reassurance. In this mood of terror, it would take barely a word against Richard to incur the penalty of death. When the chancellor went on to announce that the matters that were about to be discussed were criminal offences, and that the prelates need not be present, it was clear that someone was going to die. The bishops and abbots withdrew. Outside the Cheshire archers were nervous. Someone spread the word that the king was under attack. Shouts went up, bows were drawn. Some arrows may even have been let fly. Not until the king himself appeared did the Cheshire men settle down.

On the third day, Wednesday 19 September, the tension rose higher still. The clergy were ordered to put their authority into the hands of a lay representative. They chose Sir Thomas Percy. Satisfied, the king turned to the Speaker and stated that, although certain people had asked to know who were the fifty men to be impeached, he refused to say. Moreover, anyone even asking for such information was a traitor and would be sentenced to death. The guilty men would take flight, the king explained, and men who were not on the list might also flee.
³⁵
In fact there was no list of fifty names, or, if there was, it was never produced. The king was purposefully creating the maximum amount of fear. In Richard’s mind, the fear of his subjects equated to his own sense of power.

On Thursday the 20th the terrified archbishop of Canterbury returned to parliament, prepared to speak against the accusations of treason and defend his life. The last two days must have been an ordeal for him, no less than they had been for his brother, the earl, locked in the Tower. But when he appeared at his seat in the parliamentary marquee, the king
ordered him to leave. This was shocking: the king was acting as if he really was going to impeach the archbishop of Canterbury. Yet what had the archbishop done? He had acted as the spokesman for parliament in 1387. He had not ridden in arms against the king or de Vere or anyone else. He had been sent by parliament, along with the duke of Gloucester, to speak on their behalf when it had emerged that Richard was planning to waylay and murder the parliamentary embassy. He had dutifully served as chancellor for seven of the last ten years. How could this man be called a traitor?