The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King (34 page)

Thomas of Arundel, the exiled archbishop of Canterbury, was staying in Utrecht on the day that John died. That night he had a vision of John apologising for his harsh treatment of him in 1397.
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Hearing of Henry’s disinheritance, he travelled to Paris to find his cousin. He arrived there at roughly the same time as the message from William Bagot stating ‘that Henry must help himself by force’. Thomas Arundel agreed with that advice, fully sympathising with Henry. They were in similar situations: Arundel’s ‘crimes’ amounted to representing the views of parliament to
the king in 1386 and taking an active part in the trials of Richard’s friends in 1388. Like Henry he had been forbidden from trying to clear his name. He had lost his position as archbishop, had all his worldly possessions confiscated, and had been banished for life. He now was prepared to say openly to Henry that Bagot was right. Something had to be done.

With Thomas Arundel came another lord: his nephew, Thomas Fitzalan. He was the son and heir of Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, whom Richard had had beheaded during the Revenge Parliament. Henry and his father had, of course, been instrumental in bringing him to his fate, and it is fair to say that Henry had acted without dignity in turning on the earl, his kinsman. But there had been mitigating circumstances – namely, Richard’s tyranny – and that was what now brought these three men together. They had all lost their lands and honour due to Richard’s willingness to destroy anyone and everyone who challenged his authority. These three also were innocent of any blame in the public mind. Henry had never been charged with any crime. Nor had Thomas Fitzalan; instead he had been prevented from inheriting his ancestral title and had been imprisoned in Reigate Castle (from which he had escaped). And Thomas Arundel had been wrongfully removed from his see.

However much these three might have been in the right, they were all dissidents from the legitimate English regime as far as the French were concerned. Herein lies the first major difference between their situation and that in which Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabella had found themselves in 1326. The French royal family in 1399 had every intention of supporting the king of England, who was married to their own Princess Isabella. In 1326, Queen Isabella had been one of the dissidents from the rule of her husband Edward II, and the French royal family had done nothing to stop her taking an army against the king of England. After all, Edward II had been at war with them at the time. Richard, in contrast, promised peace between the English and the French. Henry showed some of the letters smuggled out of England to the duke of Berry, but the duke was horrified to read them, as they implored Henry to return and depose Richard. The duke urged him to do nothing of the sort, and told him that ‘brave souls do not allow themselves to be downhearted by reversals of fortune, but resign themselves to waiting for better times’.
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There was one notable exception to this collective French stance. Louis, duke of Orléans, entered into a secret pact with Henry. This at first seems very strange: Louis was the brother of the king of France. But Louis and Henry got on well in Paris. Perhaps Louis could sympathise with Henry’s plight, himself having little or no respite from the rule of an unstable king who was also a close kinsman. He and Henry had Milanese sympathies
in common too. They were both friends of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Louis being married to his daughter (she of the poisoned apple incident). However, it is far from clear that Louis fully appreciated in 1399 that Henry might put himself forward for the throne. Their formal ‘treaty and alliance’, which the two men sealed on 17 June 1399 stated only that they promised to love and help one another, and to defend each other against their enemies, with certain exceptions, including the kings of England and France.
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Thus the agreement did not imply that Henry expected Louis to help him attack Richard, even if he did make clear his plans to him, as he later claimed.
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Nor did the exception clauses imply that Henry would not attack Richard himself. Given Louis’ altercations with the duke of Burgundy over the regency, the ‘treaty and alliance’ probably had more to do with French politics than Henry’s plans (as Henry later pointed out).
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Thus it would appear less of an immediate strategic alliance for Henry’s benefit than a pact for mutual support at some date in the future when things had settled down.

If Louis knew that Henry was returning to England, he was one of very few. Henry had no option but to conceal his real plans from the French. On announcing his departure from Paris, he stated that he intended to go to Spain, and in this way obtained the king’s leave. Froissart’s story that he departed by way of Brittany, and sailed in Breton ships to Plymouth, is incorrect, and cannot have any more truth to it than an echo of a visit by Henry to Brittany earlier in 1399, if that.
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Rather he seems to have sailed in a small fleet gathering near Boulogne. Before leaving Paris, he first stopped at the abbey of Saint-Denis. There the abbot asked him to help the abbey to recover the Gloucestershire priory of Deerhurst, which had been taken into lay hands. Henry agreed ‘to do what he could’, and later, as king, was as good as his word.
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Then he set out for Boulogne, and his ships.

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Few writers who have described the events of 1399 mention the key attribute which was all-important to the success of Henry’s expedition, namely his personal courage. This is strange, for it contrasts so completely with Richard. The king may have had moral courage in abundance but there was nothing physically brave about him. The sheer audacity of Henry returning to England at this point is impressive, and it impressed contemporaries too. That he did so in the wake of Mortimer, risking not just his life but the danger of being labelled a traitor, is particularly striking. Yes, he had seen the crowds lining the streets as he left London to go into exile. Yes, he probably had assurances from the earls of Westmorland and
Northumberland that they would support him. But he had no guarantee that those crowds would risk their lives for him now. Nor could he be certain that the earls of Westmorland and Northumberland would raise an army larger than that of the duke of York, the guardian of the realm. And what if Richard returned from Ireland? No Englishman had marched against the king on English soil and won a full-scale battle for more than 130 years.
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Henry could not even be sure that he could disembark in safety. The first town he came to after landing – Kingston upon Hull – refused him admittance. Added to these problems, he was risking the king killing his eldest son, Henry. He might have been taking action to put an end to Richard’s systematic destruction of him, his family and his estate, but action in itself increased his vulnerability.

This point about his courage alerts us to its corollary, his resolution. When Henry went into exile, he was followed by a loyal band of men who had been with him for years. At least three men – Thomas Rempston, John Norbury and Thomas Erpingham – were old comrades-in-arms, having accompanied Henry on his crusade in 1390. But would those who had followed him into exile now follow him into revolution? The answer was not in doubt as long as Henry was fully resolved to go through with what he planned. For that, courage alone would not be enough. At Vilnius in 1391, Henry had shown courage, leading his men to capture the citadel. But then, six weeks later, he and the army had withdrawn to the comparative refinement of Königsberg. Determination to see the job through to the end was lacking then. No half-measures would be adequate now.

For this reason, if we want a picture of Henry as he was on the ship that brought him to England in July 1399, we should envisage him not as the frustrated and submissive heir of John of Gaunt, obediently following his father’s command to do nothing contrary to his oaths of loyalty. Nor should we see him as the brow-beaten character delicately treading on eggshells as Richard revenged himself on the senior Lords Appellant in 1397. Instead we should recall the terrifying determination of his grandfather, Edward III, in the campaign of 1346, which culminated in the battle of Crécy; and the resolve of his other grandfather, the duke of Lancaster, as he refused to give up the siege of Rennes before he had fulfilled his oath to place his standard on the battlements. Henry was of a similar disposition now: a man fully resolved to save England from its misfit king or die in the attempt.

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Henry landed ‘where the town of Ravenspur once stood’, now Spurn Head (at the mouth of the Humber), on or about 4 July 1399.
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Intelligence
that he was gathering men in Picardy had reached the duke of York at Westminster by 28 June, for on that day the duke sent out letters warning the sheriffs that Henry was likely to invade, and ordering them to muster at Ware, in Hertfordshire.
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According to Walsingham, Henry had spent some days sailing up and down the coast, searching for undefended landing places. On the south coast, a group of men under Sir John Pelham seized Pevensey Castle in Henry’s name, probably to divert attention away from the north until Henry had managed to make contact with his supporters there. Henry’s ships put in at Cromer too, to buy provisions, but also to create false news of his landing.
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He had to depend on such ruses; he had very few knights – Walsingham estimates no more than fifteen – and in total he had no more than three hundred companions.
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With so few soldiers, a single lord could have stopped and overpowered him immediately, had he known when and where Henry would come ashore.

As it was, Henry’s strategy was good. Edmund, duke of York, had no idea where he was intending to land, and the information he received from various places only confused him. He may have actually set off westwards at one stage, completely in the wrong direction. When Henry did land, it was on a beach between two and three days’ hard ride from London.
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This gave him time to meet up with the northern lords, at least some of whom had been primed by letters sent from France, and then to ride to the comparative safety of the Lancastrian heartlands.
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He probably went north first to Bridlington Priory, then to Pickering Castle, which opened its gates to him without resistance. At Knaresborough Castle he had more difficulty gaining access – the castle was held against him for a short while – but he prevailed, and left his own garrison there before marching on. He arrived at the great Lancastrian fortress palace of Pontefract Castle on 13 or 14 July.
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By this time, a large number of men had rallied to his cause. His loyal knight Robert Waterton had joined him very soon after landing, and it is possible that he met the earl of Northumberland and his son, Hotspur, at Bridlington.
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At Pontefract itself, ‘crowds of gentlemen, knights and esquires from Yorkshire and Lancashire flocked to join him with their retinues’, so many that, when he left Pontefract and marched south to Doncaster, it was said he had thirty thousand with him.
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Although this is an exaggeration, there is no doubt that thousands of men did muster under his banner.
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Another chronicler wrote, ‘so many retainers who had served his father flocked to join him, that within a short time he was in command of an almost invincible army’.
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It was almost certainly at Doncaster, on 15 or 16 July, that Henry was forced to face the key question about the revolution. Now it was clear that
he had the support of the country, what exactly did he hope to achieve? The Percys – the earl of Northumberland and his son Hotspur – demanded an answer. They were in a particularly ambiguous situation. Being of Lancastrian descent, they had felt directly threatened by Richard’s plans to reverse the pardons granted in the 1320s to the Lancastrians, for they, like Henry, would have been rendered the descendants of a traitor. Richard also threatened their political domination of the north of England.
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Hence they were keen to put an end to Richard’s prejudicial form of government. On the other hand, Hotspur’s wife was Elizabeth Mortimer, aunt of the eight-year-old Edmund Mortimer, the Mortimer claimant to the throne. With Henry’s army gathered around him at Doncaster, and growing larger every day, both the earl and his son must have begun to realise that soon they would be in no position to restrain Henry from taking the throne himself. Thus they came up with the idea of asking him to swear an oath.

No one knows exactly what Henry swore at Doncaster, or even if he swore his oath only there and not elsewhere. One source states he swore ‘on the relics of Bridlington that he would never try to seize the throne, and that if anyone could be found who was more worthy of the crown than he was, he would willingly stand down for him; the duchy of Lancaster was all that he wished for’.
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Another source states that he swore an oath at Knaresborough never to levy lay or clerical taxation in his lifetime.
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The Percy manifesto recorded by Hardyng strongly supports the idea that Henry swore an oath of some sort in the house of the White Friars at Doncaster but it is highly dubious with regard to the wording.
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It claims on the one hand that Henry personally held and kissed the holy gospels and swore that Richard would remain king for the duration of his life under the direction of the lords spiritual and temporal. On the other it states that Henry promised to reform the royal household and not to levy taxes upon the people without the assent of parliament, thus according him quasi-regal status.
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