The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King (84 page)

53
. For his sexual proclivity, see
Eulogium,
iii, p. 410. He claimed to have fathered all the French queen’s children.

54
. Wylie, iii, p. 93.

55
.
PROME,
1406 March, part 2, item 9.

56
. The confirmation ‘by the king’ was dated at Gloucester, but it would appear that by this date he had already set out for Eltham. He was at Cirencester on the 8th and Windsor on the 14th, and back at Westminster on the 18th. See
Syllabus,
p. 559;
Signet Letters,
p. 147.

17: Golden Care

  
1
. Wylie, iii, pp. 146–52.

  
2
.
Issues,
pp. 307–8. The payment of £13 6s 8d to Simon Flete on 17 January 1408 was followed up by a final payment on completion of the work on 16 March: it is this latter entry which specifies that Henry himself invented this cannon.

  
3
. Wylie, iv, p. 230.

  
4
. Wylie, iv, pp. 230–32.

  
5
. It is worth noting that the document which famously misled generations of historians into believing that English ships were equipped with iron and brass cannon
as early as 1338 dates not from that year but from 12 Henry IV (1410–11). See Tout, ‘Firearms in England’, p. 669.

  
6
. Wylie, iv, p. 157.

  
7
.
EHD,
p. 201.

  
8
. According to
Signet Letters,
p. 148, he was at Leicester on 16 March. The same day he was at Nottingham, twenty-five miles to the north, where he gave royal assent to the election of the abbot of Selby (according to
Syllabus,
ii, p. 560). Covering this distance in one day would mean that he was either fit enough to ride long-distance, carried in a litter, or travelled by carriage between Leicester and Nottingham.

  
9
. These were York, Bishopthorpe, Cawood, Selby and Wheelhall. Rothwellhaigh, Pontefract and Newstead Priory are not on rivers: these he must have travelled to by road. See Wylie, iv, p. 297.

10
.
Signet Letters,
p. 148. Kirby, p. 224, placed this letter in the following year. He corrected this view when editing the letter for
Signet Letters.
For Birdsnest Lodge see
HKW,
ii, p. 901.

11
. McNiven, ‘Henry IV’s health’, p. 761. The date is based on the assumption that the collapse postdates the proclamation that Henry would be at Nottingham on 12 August to oversee a tournament (
Syllabus,
p. 561).

12
. For Usk’s relationship with the archbishop see
Adam Usk,
pp. 247–9.

13
.
Adam Usk,
p. 243.

14
. The Black Prince is usually said to have died of dysentery (Richard Barber,
The Black Prince
(Stroud, 2003), p. 214, and in
ODNB,
under ‘Edward of Woodstock’). There are very few sources for his symptoms. One of the two referenced by Barber (Thompson (ed.),
Chronicon Angliae,
pp. 88–9) does suggest that he had ‘bloody flux’ or dysentery at the end of his life, but it was not necessarily the underlying illness. Indeed, it was probably not. Lethal cases of dysentery killed the medieval sufferer within weeks (Henry V being an example). The same chronicler who states that the Black Prince had dysentery also states that four thousand people died of the disease in a single year in Gascony in 1411 (
CM,
p. 380). In marked contrast, the Black Prince had a wasting disease which left him increasingly debilitated for about eight years. With regard to the possible connectedness of the prince’s disease and Henry’s it should be noted that both the prince and Henry retained their mental composure to the end of their lives. The Black Prince’s infection was probably picked up on campaign in Castile. Henry was of course in regular contact with representatives from Iberia – his half-sister was the queen of Castile, his eldest sister was the queen of neighbouring Portugal, and his wife maintained contact with her homeland of Navarre – so it is quite possible that he had caught the disease from an ambassador. Neither man had children after the onset of their illnesses, but neither man seems to have foreshortened his wife’s life, so neither man is likely to have suffered a highly contagious or sexually transmitted disease.

15
. For the pain of his sickness, see
EHD,
p. 207.

16
. Wylie, iv, p. 231.

17
. Wylie, iv, p. 233.

18
.
Royal Wills,
p. 203. The spelling has been modernised.

19
.
LK,
pp. 217–19.

20
. He witnessed three royal charters in 1408. Biggs, ‘Witness Lists’, p. 421.

21
. Wylie, iv, p. 349.

22
.
Royal Wills,
pp. 203–7. There were others, unnamed, also at the making of the will.

23
.
Signet Letters,
p. 150. The signet letter from Henry was sent on 22 February; the council sent the letter in his name as if he witnessed it being sealed with his privy seal in person at Westminster on 26 March at Westminster. See
RHL,
ii, p. 240.

24
. The privy seal writ predates the patent letter by five days. See
Signet Letters,
p. 150.

25
. He appropriated revenues from four nearby churches in order to endow the church, for which he later came in for criticism, especially from Wylie, who compared this religious foundation with Eton and King’s College at Cambridge, both founded by Henry VI. See Wylie, iii, p. 243.

26
.
Signet Letters,
p. 152.

27
.
Signet Letters,
p. 152. The spelling has been modernised and the grammar slightly changed for the sake of readability.

28
. Williams (ed.),
Correspondence of Bekyngton,
ii, p. 368.

29
. Wylie, iii, p. 252.

30
. Williams (ed.),
Bekyngton,
ii, p. 366.

31
.
Brut,
ii, p. 369.

32
. Allmand, pp. 41–2.

33
. For example,
Badby,
pp. 151–2;
ODNB,
under ‘Thomas of Lancaster’.

34
. It was Henry V who brought Richard II’s body back from King’s Langley to be buried at Westminster, and the story goes that he had always been fond of Richard, who had knighted him in Ireland in 1399. Likewise they may have had different views about Hotspur, many of whose servants and followers came to be employed by the prince. See Kirby, p. 227.

35
. Allmand, p. 397;
PROME,
1423 October, item 35. Henry Beaufort seems to have taken against her too. See
PROME,
1426 February, introduction.

36
. Allmand, pp. 49–50;
PROME,
1411 November, introduction, quoting A. H. Thomas & I. D. Thornley (eds),
The Great Chronicle of London
(1938), p. 90.

37
. That this was intentional is made likely by the fact that it had been Edward III’s entail which had brought John of Gaunt’s children closer to the throne than his older siblings’.

38
. Such a view is outlined in
EC,
p. 37, where it is dated to 1412–13, and A. H. Thomas & I. D. Thornley (eds),
The Great Chronicle of London
(1938), p. 90, where it is dated to 1411. Such an opinion is likely to have been held for some while before this.

39
. It should be noted that Thomas of Lancaster and Henry Beaufort were unfriendly towards one another at this time. In 1411, when Thomas obtained dispensation to marry John Beaufort’s widow, Henry Beaufort attempted to stop him. See Kirby, p. 234; Allmand, p. 53;
CB,
pp. 64–5.

40
.
CB,
p. 48.

41
. Wylie, iv, pp. 298–9. It is perhaps significant that he is not known to have stayed with Henry Beaufort in this year, although he had stayed with him in previous years.

42
.
CB,
p. 44.

43
.
CB,
p. 49; Wylie, iii, p. 284. Kirby, p. 225, gives 19 December.

44
. The king travelled eleven miles per day, slow by normal standards but a rare example of sustained road travel at this time in his life. See Appendix Five.

45
. For a view supporting the sustained friendship between Henry and Archbishop Arundel at this time, see
Badby,
pp. 149–50, 188. An alternative reading is suggested in Allmand, p. 42. This is that Arundel was dismissed because he ‘may not have been high in the royal favour’. Two reasons are given by Allmand for this tentative suggestion: that he had not always been a firm supporter of the king and that Henry did not appreciate the archbishop’s restrictions on his financial practices. The first of these is difficult to see, given Arundel’s pro-royal role in parliaments throughout the reign, especially that of 1407. The second is speculation. What is not in doubt is that the close bonds between Henry and Arundel in 1407 grew – if anything – closer in 1408 and 1409, when Arundel was chancellor and leader of the council. Henry wrote notes in his own hand in these two years thanking him for his work, and often stayed at the archbishop’s own houses. (Henry is known to have stayed at Lambeth, for example, in January, February, March, April and May 1410: see
Badby,
p. 188; Wylie, iv, p. 299). In March 1409 he granted Arundel the royal castle of Queenborough, and later that year the royal manor of Sheen (
Badby,
p. 156). The archbishop was with him in his sicknesses in 1408 and 1409, and witnessed his will on 21 January 1409. It is also striking that Arundel witnessed almost every charter on C 53/178 (10–12 Henry IV) even after he was no longer chancellor. The only exception is no. 9, sealed on 12 November 1409 (no. 10, dated 17 February 1410 having no witnesses). Other strong evidence for the reading given in the text here – that Arundel resigned against the king’s will – is Henry IV’s emphatic support for Arundel in his argument with Oxford University in 1411 and the fact that Henry brought back Arundel as chancellor when he reasserted his own authority at the end of 1411. It is far more likely that in December 1409 Arundel was no longer able to tolerate the assertiveness of the young prince, who sacked him as chancellor on the day after Henry IV died.

46
. Henry is not known to have visited Southwark Palace in 1409 or 1410 (unlike 1408). In later years, Henry Beaufort was questioned in parliament over his loyalty to Henry, and at the end of the reign he was widely thought to have tried to persuade the king to abdicate. For obvious reasons, it would be quite understandable if Henry had always been a little cautious of his father’s other son called Henry.

47
. It would appear that the king’s half-brother was trying to undermine the king’s friend in ecclesiastical as well as political matters. See
Badby,
pp. 153–4.

48
. For Thomas Beaufort as the member of the prince’s party ‘most acceptable to the king’, see
Badby,
p. 202.

49
.
CM,
pp. 377–9;
PROME,
1410 January, introduction and appendix.

50
. For a full discussion of this scheme see
Badby,
pp. 192–5.

51
.
CM,
p. 379.

52
.
Badby,
p. 207.

53
.
Royal Wills,
pp. 208–11.

54
. According to Kirby, p. 230, only these three attended a meeting on 8 February 1410.

55
. Kirby, p. 241. The existence of this measure is known only from its annulment. That councillors swore to abide by the Thirty-One Articles again, and that this was struck from the record is not impossible. Some such measure would explain
how the prince and the council was able to overrule the king in his assent to the fifteenth article of the commons petition of 23 April.

56
.
Signet Letters,
p. 154.

57
. C 53/178. Of the seven which fall in 1410 (nos 2–8), only two were granted by the king in person, and both of these were during the first session of parliament. The remainder were granted on the strength of a privy seal writ.

18: In That Jerusalem

  
1
. Given-Wilson,
Royal Household,
p. 137. The importance to Henry can be gauged from his statement in 1407, when he declared that those currently serving him should be paid their annuities as a priority, over and above recipients of grants in earlier years.

  
2
.
PC,
ii, p. 7. These were in addition to the prince and the three officers (treasurer, chancellor and keeper of the privy seal).

  
3
.
PC,
ii, pp. 8–12.

  
4
. Wylie, iii, p. 431.

  
5
.
Signet Letters,
p. 154.

  
6
. Kirby, p. 236.

  
7
. On 29 November 1410 Henry appointed ambassadors to negotiate with representatives of Castile and France. The same day he separately licensed the prince to grant safe-conducts to the ambassadors of the duke of Burgundy, even though he himself was happy to issue safe-conducts to the French negotiators. In addition, he directed the instructions to the French embassy to be sealed with the great seal and the privy seal (both controlled by members of the council) but not the signet, his personal seal. Although the split with the council was some way off, the difference in policy towards France was perhaps clear to Henry long before the dispute became open. See Nicols,
Privy Council,
ii, pp. 5–6;
Syllabus,
ii, p. 566.

  
8
. Allmand, p. 48.

  
9
. Wylie, iv, p. 36; Allmand, p. 48.