The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King (87 page)

Redating Richard’s declaration to the parliament of 1386 explains many things. Obviously it is clear why Gaunt (Richard’s heir, according to Edward III’s entail) and Richard did not fall out over this matter: Gaunt was not at the October 1386 parliament, being in Castile. Henry was present, and reacted by joining the Appellants the following year. In addition, he was both a blood relation and a close ally of the two men who went to the king from the 1386 parliament to threaten him with deposition, namely Thomas of Woodstock and Thomas Arundel. This gives a context to the declaration, for the accepted process of deposition was to force the king to abdicate in favour of an heir. Richard was hardly likely to acknowledge Henry as his heir if he had an alternative. Thus there were good reasons for Richard to declare publicly that his successor would be Roger Mortimer, a twelve-year-old boy. It was a swiping blow to Henry’s kinsmen and allies and a sharp reminder to parliament that his youthful successor’s ruling abilities might be no greater than his own.

Following the success of the Appellants in 1387, Richard was forced to accept the terms of Edward III’s entail. Evidence from the charter rolls’ witness lists for 1394 shows that Richard gave precedence to the heirs male of Edward III’s fourth and fifth sons (John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley) over the heir general of his third son (Lionel of Antwerp). However, in that same year Richard resisted John of Gaunt’s request to recognise Henry as heir presumptive by appointing him keeper of the realm. Instead he appointed his uncle, Edmund of Langley. That he continued to regard Edmund as his heir is shown by three pieces of evidence. The first is Edmund’s precedence over Henry in late 1397 and early 1398 (when they were both dukes and so precedence can be compared). The second is Richard’s will (April 1399), which does not name Edmund as his successor but indicates him by default, for it includes a phrase about who was to act if his successor refused the throne, and the men who were next in the
order of precedence after Edmund were all named in this capacity. The third is a petition submitted by Bagot in 1399 in which he described a discussion between him and Richard in 1398 in which Richard spoke of one day resigning in favour of Edward, duke of Aumale, Edmund’s son and heir. Crucially this discussion took place before the death of Roger Mortimer was known and before Henry’s own exile; it thus is further evidence of Richard’s propensity to favour the line of York over the lines of March and Lancaster.

As a result of all this there were three clear turning points in Richard’s view of the succession. The first was his declaration in favour of Roger Mortimer, expressed in the parliament of 1386. The second was his decision in December 1387 – at the persuasion of the Appellants – to acknowledge Gaunt as his heir, in line with Edward III’s entail. The third was his decision to subvert the entail and elevate Edmund of Langley over Henry in 1394. This remained his preferred order of succession thereafter, during which years he was probably planning to charge Henry with treason (for joining the Appellants) as soon as John of Gaunt died. When this happened, Richard very probably destroyed the original of Edward III’s entail. Either way, Henry was finally removed from the order of succession on 18 March 1399 by being branded a traitor and exiled for life.

The foregoing is the substance of the article in
History.
Unfortunately it was not until later, after this article had been published, that I realised that one very important piece of the jigsaw was missing. This only emerged in reconsidering Henry’s inheritance claim from Henry III. As the Crouchback legend was known at the time not to be correct (and thus a weak basis for establishing a dynasty), and as Henry’s claim from Henry III could not relate to his maternal descent (which would have implied the Mortimer family were the legal heirs), there had to be some other reason for the reference back to Henry III (who died in 1272). It is now known that in 1290 Edward I made a settlement which permitted females to inherit the throne, so Henry’s concentration on his status as the male heir seems to have been the key to understanding his claim all the way back to Henry III (as one contemporary source specifies).
¹
But Edward III’s settlement of 1376 would have supplanted that of 1290, and restored the male-only line of succession, so again we have to ask why Henry did not even mention it. Even if he did not have the original document, Richard II had himself observed its contents in the early 1390s. What should have been spelled out was the implication of Richard II’s recognition of the duke of York as his heir. If Richard
officially
settled the throne on Edmund and his family in 1399, Edward III’s entail would have been supplanted, and thus rendered void, even if Henry had had possession of the original.

Although no settlement by Richard exists today, this does not mean one never existed, especially as we should expect it to have been destroyed by Henry. (The originals of both Edward I’s settlement of 1290 and Edward III’s of 1376 have been lost, almost certainly destroyed by those who did not agree with them.) In Richard’s case we may be reasonably confident that he did draw up a settlement of the throne, for two reasons. One is the logical argument outlined above: Henry’s failure to use Edward III’s settlement suggests it had been rendered void by a later royal decree. The second reason is that Richard’s will of 16 April 1399 – through not naming a ‘successor’ but implying his identity – suggests that the succession was clarified by a separate document. The reason for a separate document in 1399 was not just to supplant the 1376 entail; there was a real risk that the ageing and arthritic duke of York might die while Richard was in Ireland, so there was a need for the succession beyond him to be clearly delineated. This was especially the case as the next in line after the duke was his eldest son Edward, who was with Richard in Ireland.

Given these circumstances, it is likely that Richard drew up a settlement of the throne in conjunction with his will in April 1399, in much the same way as Edward III had drawn up his entail in conjunction with
his
will in October 1376. Richard’s settlement apparently threw out the Lancastrian claim altogether (Henry had been declared a traitor by this time) and designated Edmund of York as the heir apparent, followed by Edward, duke of Aumale (Richard II’s adopted brother). Edward’s younger brother, Richard of Conisburgh, was probably named as well, as third in line and a potential keeper of the realm in case Edward became king while still in Ireland. Evidence that such a settlement was widely known in September 1399 and that it named all three of these men is to be found in the chronicle of Jean Creton, who noted that the assembly of 30 September 1399 was asked whether they would prefer any of these three – Edmund, Edward or Richard of Conisburgh – to be king instead of Henry. The gathering preferred Henry, of course, and in so doing they set aside the king’s right to appoint his successor. In line with this, when Henry himself made provision for the succession in the summer and autumn of 1406, it was done on both occasions in parliament. This, then, was the basis of the Lancastrian claim in 1399: that only males could inherit the throne and all attempts by previous kings to settle the inheritance without consulting parliament were without any basis in law and thus void.

APPENDIX THREE

Henry’s Children

Henry and Mary were married on or about 5 February 1381. For the early years of their marriage, they lived apart. Mary remained with her mother, the countess of Hereford, who was paid for her upkeep.
¹
Despite this, McFarlane declared that ‘they must have met occasionally, for on 16 April 1382 the countess of Derby gave birth to her first child, a son who not unnaturally failed to live; his father was sixteen, his mother thirteen’.
²
This statement is wrong: the child failed to live because he never existed. The source for McFarlane’s statement was Wylie’s
Reign of Henry IV,
but this was based on a misreading of the original Lancastrian account book in The National Archives (DL 28/1/1). Wylie noted this as:

Data uni armigero voc’ Westcombe de dna’ mea’ Princessa de Bokyngham portanti domino meo nova quod domina sua erat deliberata de puero Apr. 16th, 1382, by order of Duke of Lancaster (66/8).
³
[
Given to an esquire called Westcombe of my Lady the Princess of Buckingham for bringing to my lord news that his lady was delivered of a boy … £3 6s 8d
].

And the next entry reads:

Ap. 18th 1382 at Retheford [Rochford?] magistre pueri predicti (40/-) nurse pueri predicti (26/8).
⁴
[…
to the master of the aforesaid boy £2,
[
to the
]
nurse of the aforesaid boy £1 6s 8d
].

Given the entry relating to the master and nurse, which seems to be a payment made on Henry’s orders, Wylie has presumed that the earlier entry relates to a son of Henry’s by Mary, and that Henry is confirmed as the father by the following entry, in which Henry clearly paid for the nurse. This in turn misled McFarlane and many others less discerning. One recent compilation has given this boy a name, ‘Edward’, and states that he lived for only four days.
⁵

The original document reads as follows:

Et dat[a] uni armigero qui attulit d[omin]o suu[m] annidonu[m] de domina mea Princessa xiijs iiijd … Et dat[a] uni armigero voc[atur]
Westcombe d[omi]ni de Bokyngham portanti d[omi]no meo nova quod d[omi]na sua erat deliberat[a] de pu[er]o per mandat[um] d[omi]ni mei Lanc[astrie] xvj die Aprilis lxvjs viijd.
⁶
[
And given to an esquire who brought to the lord his New-Year gift from my lady the princess [of Wales] 13s 4d … And given to an esquire called Westcombe of Lord Buckingham for carrying to my lord news that his lady was delivered of a boy, by the order of my lord of Lancaster
[
dated
]
16 April £3 6s 8d
].

This shows that the messenger was not Henry’s own but in the service of his uncle Thomas of Woodstock, earl of Buckingham, and that the lady who had given birth to a son was not Henry’s wife but his (i.e. the messenger’s) mistress. This was Henry’s sister-in-law, Eleanor Bohun, countess of Buckingham. The boy was Humphrey, known as Humphrey Bohun, who became duke of Gloucester on Thomas’s death in 1397. Confirmation of this is to be found in Thomas’s Inquisitions Post Mortem, most of which refer to his son as being ‘15 and more’ (i.e. in his sixteenth year) in October–December 1397, and so born in the year October 1381–October 1382.
⁷
The reason for the payment being ordered by John of Gaunt (as duke of Lancaster) to be paid by Henry’s treasurer was that John was with Henry at the time the news arrived. It was also by John’s order (not Henry’s), on 18 April, that the payments were made to the master and nurse of the infant.

Henry’s first son was Henry of Monmouth, later Henry V, who was born in Monmouth Castle on 16 September 1386.
⁸
Until recently this date has been open to question, for other sources record his date of birth as 9 August 1387.
⁹
In Monmouth itself all the public commemorations of the birth of the town’s most famous son are proudly marked ‘1387’. However, Henry IV’s accounts as earl of Derby for 1387–8 clearly show that Thomas, his second son, was born before Christmas 1387, as Christmas livery was purchased for his nurse in that year.
¹⁰
If Thomas was born before Christmas 1387, his older brother cannot have been born later than the winter of 1386–7. Thus the date of 16 September 1386 must be preferred over 9 August 1387, not as a matter of likelihood but due to the impossibility of the later date applying to Henry. Tallying with this is the fact that Henry IV’s household was at Monmouth in September 1386 and was not there in August 1387.
¹¹
In 1403 Henry V made a Maundy payment to seventeen paupers, indicating that he was then in his seventeenth year (following his father’s example), and so born before Maundy Thursday 1387.
¹²
On the strength of this and evidence cited by Christopher Allmand, Henry V’s date of birth is as certain as that of any late medieval king, and the references to his birth in 1387 are incorrect.
¹³

Henry’s second son, Thomas, was born in the autumn of 1387, as stated above. It is possible that the date of 9 August 1387 wrongly assigned to Henry V is in fact the date of Thomas’s birth. It would appear that he was born in London, for Henry made a gift to the midwife who had assisted at the birth in London on 25 November 1387.
¹⁴
A London birth would also explain why Thomas is never given a topographical surname, except in relation to his family (Thomas of Lancaster).

Henry’s third son, John, was born on 20 June 1389.
¹⁵
His fourth son, Humphrey, was born in the autumn of 1390. Henry received news of Humphrey’s birth on or about 1 November 1390 at Königsberg, from an English sailor.
¹⁶
It appears likely therefore that he was born in mid-to-late September 1390.

Henry’s elder daughter, Blanche, was born in the spring of 1392 at Walmsford, near Peterborough.
¹⁷
Henry’s account for 1391–2 refers to payments for gowns for his sons and Blanche’s nurse in May 1392. No payments for her appear in relation to Christmas 1391, so she was not born before the end of that year.

It was in the summer of 1394 that Mary (Henry’s wife) died, giving birth to their youngest daughter, Philippa. Given that the child survived, Mary probably died after the actual birth rather than during it. Thus the date of her death is the nearest we can get to a reliable date of birth for Philippa. We currently cannot be more precise than a little before 6 July, the day Mary was buried at Leicester.
¹⁸
The
ODNB
gives 4 July as the date of her death.