The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King (59 page)

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A week after his burning skin experience at Green Hammerton, he was back on the road, heading north. Good news spurred him on. In Wales, Glendower’s brother-in-law, John Hanmer, had been captured. The earl of Northumberland’s castles of Langley Prudhoe and Cockermouth had capitulated without a fight. Warkworth Castle initially defied Henry, even though he appeared in person before the walls, but submitted after one of his great cannon had blasted it seven times. These cannon were far advanced on the guns of the fourteenth century. They could weigh up to two tons and were specially designed to shoot very large balls of stone at high velocity into castle walls.
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Such weapons gave Henry a great advantage in tackling the strongholds of those who chose to rebel. They proved decisive again a few days later at Berwick, one of only two castles still
holding out for the rebel earl. First, small cannon were used to demolish part of the walls of Berwick Castle; then a single stone from a larger cannon brought down a large portion of the Constable Tower, entirely removing a staircase and killing a man who was climbing it at the time.
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With such firepower ranged against them, the garrison despaired. By 12 July Berwick Castle was in Henry’s hands. Any men of high rank who had remained loyal to Northumberland were beheaded within the walls. Mercy was shown only to the common soldiers.

Henry did not waste time celebrating. As soon as Berwick had fallen he led his army along the coast road to Alnwick, twenty-seven miles to the south. He was there within two days. As soon as he appeared, the earl of Northumberland’s grandson capitulated, and marched out of the castle to surrender. Within two months of hearing of the earl of Northumberland’s plot, Henry had subdued every last fortress which had been held against him. In every respect it had been a ruthlessly efficient operation, despite his illness.

Nevertheless, two days’ rest was all Henry allowed himself at Newcastle. On 18 July he set out for the Lancastrian heartlands, to deal with the legal and bureaucratic fall-out from the rebellion. Enquiries had to be made, fines exacted and executions carried out. Many pardons had to be granted too, to those who did not deserve to die. Lands belonging to the discredited lords had to be taken into the king’s hands. Some of Mowbray’s estates went to Henry’s brother-in-law, Sir John Cornwaille. Lord Bardolph’s properties were largely given to his son John as a reward for his good service. Other lands were distributed around the royal family to help them with the shortfalls in their income following the restrictions imposed by parliament.

At the same time Henry attempted to relaunch his campaign against Glendower. This was never going to be easy: the opportune moment had passed. Had he been able to advance with two armies and ten thousand men in the immediate aftermath of the victories at Grosmont and Usk, he might have completely undermined Glendower’s position. Instead, the Yorkshire uprising had given Glendower the chance to regroup and reorganise. It had also allowed him to enlist the help of his French allies. Worst of all, it had depleted Henry’s reserves. Treasury clerks were ordered to raise advances to pay the troops for the forthcoming campaign on 20 July, while Henry was still at Durham. The money granted in 1404 had already been spent – on repaying old debts, the defence of the coasts, the defence of the Welsh castles, the aborted Welsh campaign, and financing his campaign against the earl of Northumberland. Henry was once again facing the problem of fighting a war with an empty treasury.

In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that Henry’s fifth Welsh
campaign was very much like its four precursors: short and inconclusive. The principal difference was that a French force under the command of the lord of Hugueville had landed in Milford Haven in early August. Joining forces with Glendower, they had burned the towns of Haverfordwest, Tenby and Carmarthen. They then proceeded eastwards, and were within ten miles of Worcester when Henry arrived in the city. Seeing the enemy so near at hand, Henry led what forces were at his disposal out to meet them on Woodbury Hill. It was a courageous move; for eight days there was a stand-off, as the more numerous Franco-Welsh army hesitated to attack the English, and Henry did not dare risk leading his men against the Franco-Welsh without reinforcements. On the eighth day the assailants gave way, running short of supplies, and they retreated, leaving Henry free to ride to Hereford and assemble a larger force.

Henry’s 1405 campaign eventually set out from Hereford on 10 September. His purpose was, as always, to be seen by the people at the head of an army. This time he also had the specific war aim of relieving Coity Castle, in Glamorgan, which was then being besieged by the Welsh. This was quickly accomplished; the garrison was supplied with victuals and reinforced. On his return, however, Henry’s luck ran out, as it had so often in Wales, and he lost men and part of his baggage train in flash floods. Forty or fifty carts had to be abandoned to the swollen rivers and the impassable roads. By the end of the month, when Henry’s bedraggled army staggered back into Hereford, his frustration must have been immense. Having had such grand plans of crushing Glendower in May, all he had managed four months later was to relieve one castle. Despondent, he returned to Kenilworth.

The remainder of 1405 was a relatively inactive time for Henry. Perhaps his skin disease was still a problem, preventing him from travelling easily. In terms of bureaucratic business, of course, he was anything but inactive. He continued to receive petitions and sent out hundreds of letters.
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But there were no more military activities that year. After a month at Kenilworth Castle with his family, he slowly returned to London, staying at the Tower until about 22 November, when he shifted to the Palace of Westminster, ready to attend the betrothal of his eleven-year-old daughter Philippa to the king of Denmark.
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He was still at Westminster on 7 December, when the council agreed to free the duke of York and restore all his estates to him (after almost a year in prison), but shortly afterwards he departed for Hertford. From there he wrote to the council on the 11th stating that they needed to fund the fleet which had been assembled to take him to Gascony, and promising that he or some other suitable person would go there soon. But as he well knew,
the money to undertake such an expedition was not available. Ten days later he returned to London and issued writs for a new parliament. Immediately he departed to spend Christmas at Eltham, and to spend a few days with his queen, his sons, and his friends Thomas Langley and the earl of Westmorland before preparing to face his next battle with the commons.

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The ‘Long Parliament’ which met on 1 March 1406 at Westminster was, as its name suggests, the longest single parliament of the middle ages. For historians it is also one of the most important and problematic. Usually it is portrayed as a classic
Rex vs commons
contest, in which both sides badly bruised the other, and Henry came off worst, his royal power subjected to the supervision of a council and his income drastically diminished. Recently it has been suggested that parliament was not trying to limit Henry’s authority but to safeguard it at a time when he was very ill, and perhaps likely to die.
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What is not in doubt is that Henry’s power as a king was severely curtailed. So extreme were the limitations placed upon him that we have to ask what caused them: were they implemented for his benefit or in spite of him?

The argument that the restrictions on royal authority were done to benefit Henry and safeguard his regime stems from the fact that more than half of the representatives of the counties in the commons were Lancastrian supporters. If parliament was functioning as ‘a Lancastrian forum’, so the argument goes, how come it was so determined to diminish the power of a Lancastrian king? Given that during the course of the parliament Henry wrote to the council saying he was not well enough to attend, there seems to be a good case for seeing parliament’s attempts to regulate royal authority as a means of coping with a head of state who was seriously ill and absent for much of the time. This is all the more so as measures were taken during the parliament to clarify the succession, further suggesting an expectation that the king would die. But significant problems remain. Even though more than half of the county members were Lancastrian retainers, these men were hugely outnumbered by the members of the boroughs, over whom the king had much less control.
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Nor can we ignore the complete lack of evidence connecting the most severe limitations on royal authority and the king’s physical incapacity.
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Had he been mentally unwell, we could understand why severe checks were placed upon his actions, but there is no evidence of any mental instability – quite the opposite – though he does seem to have experienced some form of depression.

The first session of the parliament began on 1 March with the customary speech from the chancellor, Thomas Langley. Langley gave the reasons for summoning the parliament as the need to counter the Welsh rebels, and to provide for the defence of Gascony, Calais, Ireland and the Scottish marches. No reference was made to the king’s health. The following day, the twenty-eight-year-old Lancastrian retainer Sir John Tiptoft was elected Speaker. Routine business followed for several days. On 23 March the criticisms of the king’s government started, with demands from the Speaker for ordinances for the defence of the seas, Wales and Gascony. The first of these was set in motion straightaway, but the criticisms seem to have intensified. On 3 April the commons reiterated their demands for the expulsion of various foreigners in the queen’s household. They were also forced to apologise for ‘speaking of the royal person of our lord the king other than they should have’, on which account the king was angry. Henry excused them, and accepted their apology, but the damage was done. He adjourned parliament the same day.

On the political front, Henry now experienced an amazing piece of luck. On 22 March the eleven-year-old James Stewart, son and heir of the king of Scotland, had been captured in a boat off the coast of Norfolk. Two weeks later, the boy’s father, King Robert III, died. That meant the new king of Scotland was in Henry’s custody at the Tower (along with Glendower’s son). Not surprisingly, Scottish politics fell into disarray.

On the personal front, however, Henry’s luck dissolved, for his health collapsed. After the end of the first session, he took the royal barge down the river to Eltham, where he celebrated Easter (11 April).
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Two days later he made a grant to his physician, Louis Recoches.
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He stayed at Eltham as long as possible before leaving for the Garter festivities, only embarking at Greenwich on the 22nd.
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His bargemen transported him as far as Kingston upon Thames, where he stayed the night, being conveyed the rest of the way to Windsor the next day, St George’s Day itself.
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At Windsor his health rapidly deteriorated. On 28 April, two days after parliament was meant to have resumed sitting, he wrote to the council from a lodge in the park, saying that a sudden illness had attacked his leg, and his doctors had advised him not to travel by horse, in order ‘to avoid the grave peril’. He added that he hoped to be at Staines by the evening and to travel by water to London, arriving in three or four days. Later that same day he wrote saying that his leg was now so bad that he could not travel at all. He directed parliament to discuss the safety of Gascony and to make arrangements for conducting his daughter Philippa to Denmark, as he had agreed she should be married there in early May.
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It is unlikely that Henry reached London until 4 May. When he did
arrive, he stayed at the hostel of Thomas Langley, at Dowgate (at the bottom of what is known today as Dowgate Hill), and not at Westminster. From Dowgate he could easily travel the short distance to Westminster by boat, and at the same time keep his distance from the parliament. There is no doubt that this was due to his continuing illness. In his letter to the council he describes the ailment as ‘une grande accesse’, which relates to a sudden illness in general, a fit or an ague (intermittent fever), correlating with his inability to ride a horse, and reminding us of his burning skin complaint of the previous summer.
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Given Henry’s long stay at Kenilworth after the Welsh campaign of 1405, and his continued presence near the river after his return to London, it is likely that his skin problem had never entirely gone away.
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The references to his ‘uncurable’ skin disease in the chronicles (albeit misinterpreted as leprosy) further support the idea that this was an ongoing illness. So too does the reference to ‘his physicians’ (in the plural). The royal household ordinances made provision for just one physician and one surgeon.
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All this paints a picture of Henry quietly fighting both his own body as well as his enemies.

Henry attended the second session of parliament on at least nine occasions.
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The rest of the time he stayed at Thomas Langley’s house. He communicated with his council through letters sealed with his privy seal, and did little in person. On the days when he attended parliament he seems to have stayed a short while and then returned to Dowgate. The pattern is so unlike his usual behaviour that we can only conclude that his illness had become his preoccupation. Indeed, his physical illness and the increased stress of running the government in such circumstances together seem to have led to a sudden crisis of confidence. On 22 May he appeared in parliament and directed that a bill he had drawn up should be read out on his behalf. In it he asked to be relieved of certain aspects of government ‘because he alone would not be able fully to devote his attentions to the same as much as he would like’.
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His bill went on to name his council, hoping that thereby ‘he might be further relieved in his royal person of the aforesaid concerns’. Most significantly, the council was given the power to endorse or refuse bills issued by the king’s officers, acting almost as a collective regent. On 7 June, Henry attended parliament to hear the magnates and prelates acknowledge his son Henry as the heir apparent, with his male heirs succeeding after him. In the context of his illness and the fact that the prince had already been recognised as heir apparent (in the first parliament of his reign), the reason would appear to have been Henry’s own anticipation that he might not live to see his fortieth birthday.