The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King (35 page)

Putting these sources together, there is no doubt that some sort of oath was sworn by Henry concerning both his claim to the throne and his liberty to tax the people. The same oath (or different versions) may have been sworn more than once, at Bridlington and Knaresborough as well as Doncaster. But we can be confident of just two of the terms, and these only in outline. Clearly he promised not to take the throne by force. Secondly, whatever he swore to do or not to do with regard to Richard, it involved the complete disempowerment of the king. From now on, Henry had ‘sovereign’ power: literally, authority
above
that of the king.
³⁰
Beyond these two points it is possible only to see a correlation between later events and the testimony of the Dieulacres chronicle: that Henry would not ‘seize’
the throne but would stand aside for anyone ‘more worthy of the crown’. This is what happened. When Richard resigned, Henry did not seize the throne, he claimed it as the ‘nearest male relative and
worthiest
blood-descendant of Henry III’.
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That he did all he possibly could to influence the decision to make his claim appear ‘the worthiest’ suggests that the Dieulacres chronicler was exactly right: he had sworn to lay aside his claim if there was someone ‘more worthy’ to be king. Worthiness, of course, was an ill-defined concept, relating to character and experience as well as birth. At the time of swearing the oath, however, that ambiguity was left unexplored. It suited both the Percy family and Henry to carry on as before, without exploring their differences too closely until Richard’s authority was overthrown.

Whatever fractures there were in Henry’s army at the time of the oath, they remained hidden. Indeed, just swearing the oath reinforced Henry’s position. It confirmed him as the leader of the revolution. Rarely have historians ever felt the need to say why it was Henry who led the opposition to Richard in 1399. But as earlier chapters have shown, there was much more to Henry than a disaffected duke. Contemporaries would have recognised his double royal inheritance, his seniority in the male line of the royal family, the prophecies that the line of Lancaster would inherit the throne, and his experience as a battle leader and a crusader. The crowds which turned out on the day of his departure from London must have confirmed in many people’s minds that Henry was the natural leader of opposition even before he went into exile. That he had been wrongly disinherited by Richard the following March simply reinforced this position. No one else could easily have assumed it.

The other important point about this oath, or series of oaths, was that it gave Henry a platform on which to present himself, to state clearly what he stood for. Henceforth he was not simply reclaiming his patrimony; he was championing the restitution of lands for all the disinherited. He stood for a non-taxing or low-taxing government. He stood for the reform of the royal household, and the disbandment of the bands of Cheshire archers, Richard’s enforcers. And most of all he stood for an end to tyranny. If Richard was permitted to reign any longer, it would be in name alone. Royal authority would be vested in the person of Henry of Lancaster.

*

Henry moved further south, arriving at his own castle of Leicester about 20 July. His army was growing larger every day, but in order to use it effectively he had to move quickly. Given enough time, the men would lose interest and return home, especially as it was very difficult to feed so many
of them. He wisely capitalised on rumours of the forces attending him by sending out persuasive letters to lords, abbots and mayors, telling the Londoners in particular that they could only expect Richard’s rule to grow worse.
³²
But his real strategic options were limited to marching on the capital and seat of government at London and Westminster or against the regent and council. He decided on the latter, to make straight for the regent, his uncle.

Duke Edmund was still with his army at Ware, in Hertfordshire. Initially he set out north-west, to Bedford, but then on 13 or 14 July, while Henry was at Pontefract, he had turned south-west to take the road through Oxford to Gloucester. It is probable that his plan – seeing as he had not mustered a large enough army to crush the forces which he now heard were gathering to Henry’s banner – was to meet with Richard on his return from Ireland. He had no will to fight Henry. Not only was he a very reluctant military commander, he was also an invalid, suffering from an extreme arthritic condition which had left five of his lower dorsal vertebrae fused together.
³³
He arrived in Oxford on the 16th and spent four days discussing the situation with the rest of the council. Edmund by now wanted to disassociate himself from them. He despatched them to Bristol, perhaps to await the king’s return. Edmund himself headed to Berkeley Castle.

Had Edmund wanted to maintain a united front against Henry, he should have remained with the other members of the council. But he did not. Moreover, his choice of Berkeley was significant. To the English royal family, Berkeley Castle was synonymous with the captivity and reputed murder of Edward II, the king with whom Richard most identified. Now Duke Edmund chose to await his nephew’s arrival in that same castle, along with Lord Berkeley and other men who refused to join the royal council at Bristol. There was no strategic advantage to this; rather it was a sign of Duke Edmund’s willingness to acknowledge the wrong which had been done to Henry. From the 24th he waited at Berkeley. Henry rapidly advanced through Coventry, Warwick, Evesham and Gloucester. Edmund did nothing.

On Sunday 27 July, in the church which stands just outside the walls of Berkeley Castle, Henry met his aged uncle. Standing among the silent tombs of the Berkeley family, they came to an agreement. What Henry said we cannot know for certain, but the result of the meeting was that Edmund agreed to let Henry proceed against Richard. This had been in his mind from the moment he divided his forces and those of the rest of the council at Oxford. In fact, he may have been considering his position even before this, when at Bedford he realised that most of the country was prepared to join Henry. According to one chronicler, he had already
declared that he believed Henry’s attempt to reclaim his inheritance was just and right. According to another, his army was breaking up. On top of these problems, it would have been obvious by mid-July that defending the king would have led to civil war.
³⁴
Edmund was not prepared to go that far to defend his tyrannical nephew.

After the meeting at Berkeley, Henry despatched his uncle to take custody of Richard’s young queen. He himself marched towards Bristol. His half-brother, John Beaufort, marquis of Dorset, who had travelled westwards with the duke, came to him and begged forgiveness. The earl of Northumberland and his son Hotspur both wanted John put to death immediately but Henry stayed their hand. Pulling a letter out of his blue velvet pouch, he said to them, ‘Harm him not, I beseech you; for he is my brother and has always been my friend. Look at the letter which I received from him in France.’ Then Henry embraced his half-brother. If he was going to win this fight against Richard, he needed to make sure no potential ally shunned him out of fear of retribution.
³⁵

The following day Henry’s army encircled Bristol Castle. Those inside could see the standards and heraldic banners of the duke of Lancaster and the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland and knew that there was no escape. There were four thousand English archers in the army.
³⁶
But when Henry demanded that the castle be surrendered, the castellan, Peter Courtenay, refused. The earl of Northumberland proclaimed outside the walls that anyone who wished to surrender now would be allowed to go free; anyone who did not would be beheaded. A few men let themselves down on ropes from the castle ramparts. Moments later, others began to make their escape from windows, and soon the entire garrison was in flight, leaving the castle by any means they could. The gates were flung open. Courtenay gave himself up. Henry’s men entered and arrested William Scrope, earl of Wiltshire, John Bussy and Henry Green and the few friends who had remained with them. On the 29th they were all brought before Henry. They could expect no mercy: they all had witnessed and thus approved of the deeds whereby Richard had confiscated Henry’s inheritance and banished him for life. In addition, Scrope had accepted Henry’s castle and honour of Pickering, and Bussy, who had once been close to Henry, had proved himself personally untrustworthy. All three men were executed as traitors, their severed heads displayed at York, London and Bristol.

*

Just as Richard’s accession in 1377 had been compared to the coming of Christ, now Henry was himself compared to the Saviour. His arrival was
described as ‘miraculous’. Crowds shouted ‘blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, our king of England!’.
³⁷
Poets compared him to the Emperor Augustus. Chaucer in particular wrote about how he had come ‘to mend all harm’.
³⁸
The poet Gower – who was an ardent Lancastrian even before Henry landed – recorded how, on his landing at Ravenspur, Henry had knelt and kissed the ground.
³⁹
Prophecies were searched out in old chronicles and reinterpreted to show that it was God’s will that Henry should put an end to Richard’s rule. He was universally regarded as the champion of the Church and the people, a rescuer of good government and a promise of better times to come.

Yet Henry’s position was far from safe. He had not faced the king, and thus the kingdom had not yet had to choose between the good government he promised and the legitimate government represented by Richard. The crucial question was this: when the king returned, would the army surrounding Henry march in defiance of the royal standard? To do so would be treason – there was no doubt on that score. So it was now, at the very end of July 1399, that the battle lines were drawn. The king had landed in the far south-west of Wales, at Milford Haven, and was marching to Carmarthen. Which path would the kingdom choose: tyranny in the name of loyalty? Or treason in the name of justice?

As it happened, the kingdom would not fight the battle implied in this choice. Extraordinarily, Richard abandoned his army at Carmarthen. He fled north with about two dozen men, including the dukes of Exeter and Surrey, the earl of Gloucester and three bishops (Carlisle, St David’s and Lincoln). That was all. He had no army. At the very point when he was required to show resolve and determination, he ran.

This decision proved fatal for Richard’s cause, and it is tempting to rank it among the greatest failures of royal judgement in the middle ages. But it is very likely that there was more to it than a complete failure of nerve. For a start, there was some logic to his destination: North Wales was not far from Chester, the administrative centre of his Cheshire archers and arguably the most loyal region in the realm. More significantly, by fleeing he narrowly escaped a plot to seize him in Carmarthen.
⁴⁰
The key agent in this plot was probably none other than Richard’s own adoptive brother, Edward, duke of Aumale, acting with the support of Thomas Percy, earl of Worcester.
⁴¹
What is not in doubt is that these two men rode to join Henry soon after Richard had fled. Men whom Richard had regarded as loyal were now deserting his cause and supporting Henry, regardless of their oaths of loyalty.

Richard’s attempts to raise a force in North Wales were in vain, his strategy hopeless. He rushed between the empty shadows of Edward I’s
great castles, desperately searching for the core of an army. Meanwhile Henry began to head north, through Ross-on-Wye, Hereford, Leominster and Ludlow. On 2 August, Henry appointed the earl of Northumberland as warden of the Marches of Scotland. What capacity he was acting in when he did this is not clear. He may have done so as hereditary steward of England, with a responsibility to maintain the safety of the realm in times of crisis.
⁴²
However, it is more likely that he made this appointment in the capacity of holding ‘sovereign’ power. By 31 July he was using a seal which had the motto ‘sovereign’ engraved on it.
⁴³
He may only have claimed to be ‘duke of Hereford, earl of Derby and Northampton and Lord of Brecon’ on this seal, but the motto suggests that sovereign power was now vested in him (as it probably had been since swearing the oath at Doncaster).

The stress and strain were already beginning to tell on Richard. He was waiting for the net to close in, and fearing it, knowing there was nothing he could do. At Conway Castle, pale and barely himself, he implored his half-brother, the duke of Exeter, to advise him. They agreed that Richard would send two negotiators to Henry. Richard sent Exeter and his nephew, the duke of Surrey. Then he departed for Beaumaris Castle. Feeling too vulnerable there, he went on to the great fortress of Carnarvon. He was on the run. There was no furniture in these castles; they were little more than empty shells. The handful of men still with Richard slept on straw, anticipating a cold and bloody end. After a few days Richard returned to Conway, and waited for news.

The dukes of Exeter and Surrey met Henry at Chester. He had marched up the Welsh border to Shrewsbury, where he was when the citizens of Chester saw fit to surrender their town to him before he took it by force. The two dukes met him in the castle. He greeted them cordially, and asked Exeter the reason for his visit. Exeter told Henry that the king was prepared to forgive him this outrage against his royal authority, and to restore his lands and titles to him, if he would do his duty, disband his army and submit to the king. Henry of course did not believe a word. He had every reason to distrust Richard. Rather than reply to the duke, he detained him. Surrey was arrested and locked up in the castle. Exeter was taken to witness the removal of the king’s enormous treasure of £40,000, which had been hidden in Holt Castle.