1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (33 page)

Despite this increased level of delegation, Henry did not lessen the burden on himself. He commissioned several men to enquire into those rights in his manor of Sheen formerly enjoyed by his tenants there, which they had lost as a result of his new initiatives.
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And he personally dictated a letter to the sheriff of Hampshire firmly ordering him to proclaim throughout the county that people should bake bread and brew ale to provide for the king’s army due to assemble at Southampton.
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Although this was the same day as he appointed a committee to oversee provisions for the army, it still fell to the king to issue this letter. And one small detail it contains explains just why it had become so important for the king to start delegating to the newly constituted committees. The people of Hampshire were ordered to bake and brew until the feast of St Peter ad Vincula (1 August).
That was a full month after Henry hoped to sail. Clearly he anticipated yet further delays.

Tuesday 28th

Chancellor Beaufort was quick to act on his commission to array the clergy. The king dictated – or Beaufort drafted in the king’s name – a letter to be sent to all the archbishops and bishops. By the end of the day, the chancery clerks had written out the necessary copies to be sent to the twenty-one prelates of England and Wales, requiring them

to assemble with all speed the able and fencible clergy of the diocese … compelling them to be arrayed and equipped according to their estate and means, sparing none, and keeping them in array so as to be ready to resist the malice of the enemies of the realm and Church of England and of the Catholic faith when need be … and to certify in chancery under his seal by 16 July their array and equipment and the number arrayed.
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Nor were they to restrict their array to the parish clergy. The order expressly stated that the regular clergy were to be included, thereby requiring even those canons and friars who lived in near-monastic institutions to be arrayed. Even those who had exemptions from serving were required to be arrayed. During the king’s forthcoming expedition the clergy were to assist in ‘the defence of the realm and the church and of the faith, for which all Christians are bound to fight if need be to the death’. Quite what the motley crew of canons, precentors, rectors, vicars, priests, friars and hermits looked like when they were arrayed, together with their households, is anybody’s guess, but they assembled in large numbers. And between them they provided a large number of archers. A total of 6,759 eventually gathered in just six dioceses, so probably twice as many archers were arrayed by the clergy as sailed to France with Henry. Those Sunday archery training sessions, compulsory since the reign of Edward III, were now paying off.

The stream of orders preparing for the campaign continued. John Rothenhale, controller of the household, who had been delegated to
find provisions for the expedition, issued a bill straightaway for Sir John Phelip and six other men ‘to take coals, wood, bowls, pots, vessels, and all other things necessary for the scullery of the royal household, as well as carpenters, labourers, carts and horses as needed’.
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He issued a similar order to Alexander Smetheley, yeoman usher of the king’s hall, to procure sufficient ‘timber, carts, horses, litters, saddles, carpenters and labourers’ for his office on the expedition.
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Other orders of Rothenhale included a commission to David Andever to take sea fish in the south and west of England for the royal household, and a commission to Richard Scalle to gather enough bacon for the king’s voyage.
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Amidst all this organisation and determination, one small, rare chink of personal affection is visible. Today Henry gave an order for Blanche Chalons to receive £20 yearly from the duties levelled on cloth in East Anglia.
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Blanche was the daughter of Hugh Waterton, one of the most trusted of all Lancastrian retainers. Hugh had first served John of Gaunt and then had become treasurer to Henry’s father in 1377. He had remained in the future king’s service for the rest of his life, becoming his chamberlain in 1396 and travelling with him on his crusade to Prussia and his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In 1393 his daughter Blanche had married Robert Chalons esquire, who had also travelled on the crusade to Prussia. Thus she was by inheritance and by marriage intimately connected with Henry’s family. But most of all, she had looked after Henry and his brothers and sisters in the 1390s, when they had been in Hugh Waterton’s guardianship.
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As Henry is increasingly revealed as a man who desired spiritual blessings and military victory above all else – to reassure him of the justice of his kingship – it is something of a reassurance to find that he had not forgotten those who had looked after him in his youth.

Wednesday 29th

Many of those observing the proceedings of the council of Constance must have wavered in their confidence that the prelates would be able to depose the three popes. Things had changed a lot since the last time three popes had been removed (at the council of Sutri, in 1046). There was a more formal election process, so to set aside the pope
necessitated the setting aside of the opinions of a majority of the cardinals. Whole kingdoms and ‘national’ interests were now represented by each pope, and so each man had his secular following as well as his cardinals and prelates. And yet the council had done enough to continue to inspire confidence. It had shown enough conviction in its dealings with John XXIII; and Gregory XII had maintained his willingness to resign his title, despite John XXIII’s machinations and subversions. So the council had managed to weather its difficulties – largely due to the leadership of the emperor, the courage of the radical intellectuals who were prepared to elevate the council above the power of any pope, and the compliance of Gregory XII.

Today was the day that all those who had kept their faith in the council were rewarded. Today was set for the deposition of Pope John XXIII. The sentence had been written, the agreement had been achieved. Now all it required was the performance of the act.

The man selected to read the sentence was the deep-voiced Martin Porée, bishop of Arras, the chief spokesman of John the Fearless. The pope himself was not present, being in custody at Radolfzell.
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When the emperor was seated, following Mass, the bishop of Ostia signalled for Porée to begin. First he declared that, in the case of a vacancy, the council prohibited anyone taking any steps to fill that vacancy without the assent of the council – a wise precaution. The second decree stipulated that none of the three current popes should ever be re-elected to the papacy. And then came the words of the deposition itself:

In the name of the Holy and Indivisible Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen. The sacrosanct general synod of Constance, lawfully assembled in the Holy Spirit, invoking the name of Christ and keeping God only before its eyes, has noted the articles formulated and presented in the case against the lord pope, John XXIII … The clandestine departure of the said pope from this city of Constance and the sacred general council at a suspicious hour of the night, in an unsuitable disguise, was and is unwarrantable – a notorious scandal to the church of God and the council, a disturbing obstacle to the peace and union of the Church, an act to prolong the schism and a violation of the vow sworn by the same pope John to God and the Church and this sacred council. Pope John was and is a notorious simoniac, a notorious waster of the property and rights of the Roman and other churches, and of other pious institutions, and an evil administrator … By his detestable and dishonourable life and character he has notoriously scandalised the church of God and Christian people … Therefore, for these and other crimes … he deserves to be unseated, removed and deposed from the papacy and all administration, spiritual and temporal, as unworthy, unprofitable and dangerous. And the said holy synod hereby unseats, removes and deposes him, declaring all and every Christian of whatever rank, dignity or condition released from obedience, fealty and obligation to him …
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That was emphatic. It could have been more so – earlier drafts of the sentence had included charges of adultery, incest, and murdering his predecessor.
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But in the formulation of the final decree it had been decided that the more scandalous charges would bring shame upon the whole Church, and so only those above were read out. They were enough. John XXIII was no longer pope, and no one would ever again address him as one.

About the time of the pope’s deposition, John Catterick packed his bags and began the journey back to England. Ostensibly he carried a commission from the council to collect papal revenues, but in reality his main purpose was to relay all that had happened back to the king. He may have carried a copy of the deposition with him; the chronicler Thomas Walsingham included an amended version of it in his
Chronica Maiora
. Walsingham also mentioned that when the news was proclaimed in London, the chest containing the papal revenues in St Paul’s Cathedral was unlocked and emptied.
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The English were only too keen to be rid of John XXIII. Another chronicler, Adam Usk, found out that the pope had originally been charged with crimes far worse than simony and wasting church property. ‘Extraordinary to relate,’ he began, ‘because he [Pope John] was recalcitrant, and because of his former perjuries, homicides, adultery, simony, heresy and other crimes, and because he had twice ignominiously fled in secret in disguise, he was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment’.
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Pope John XXIII, the man who had summoned the council, was destined to be locked up in Gottlieben, the castle of the bishop of Constance, where Hus and Jerome were lying in chains.
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Henry Fitzhugh, acting in his capacity as chamberlain of England, drew up a list of the king’s minstrels whose wages were due to be paid on the forthcoming expedition. There were fifteen in total, which sounds like a large number until one remembers that music in the royal household at this time was not simply a matter of sweet harmonies while relaxing with a goblet of wine. Medieval secular music was either ‘high music’ or ‘low music’. ‘Low music’ was indeed tuneful and created in order to delight the listener. ‘High music’ on the other hand was loud – horns, sackbuts, clarions and trumpets – not intended to delight so much as to warn, impress or command. With this in mind, it is worth noting that two of the names of these minstrels were ‘Tromper’ and a third man was Thomas Norreys,
tromper
. Three other men were surnamed Pyper, relating to their profession of playing the English bagpipes.
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Six of the fifteen at least were retained for making ‘high music’. These were the men who were to serve under John Greyndour in France – not to sweeten the sounds of the camp or soothe the king’s furrowed brow but to impress ambassadors and organise and inspire the troops in the face of the enemy.

Having already ordered the clergy to be arrayed in the various dioceses, it was now the turn of the county gentry to array the common men. As yet there was no formal militia in England – that would not develop until the sixteenth century. Nevertheless there was a long tradition of ordering the knights and esquires in each county to array men for the defence of the realm. Commissions were sent out today to the gentry in twenty counties.
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Henry, having experienced the turbulent years of his father’s reign, knew that he was opening himself up hugely to attack by taking an army abroad. Whether the threat was the Scots, the Lollards, pro-Richard II supporters, Glendower, or just French or Scottish piracy, he could not afford to leave the safety of the realm to chance. He needed the gentry to have men at their disposal.

The above commissions of array hint at the vulnerability of the kingdom while the king was away. But uppermost in the minds of many men who were planning to travel to France was their own vulnerability. In the medieval period, when fortunes were liable to alter greatly over the course of a year, men generally left the making of wills until they were seriously ill or otherwise anticipated their demise. War overseas forced them to contemplate their own destruction and the fate of
their immortal souls, and to make a will and arrangements for their estate before setting out.

The first such arrangements were those of Thomas, earl of Arundel, the treasurer. With estates spreading from Sussex to the Welsh border, it was necessary for him to grant his estates to trustees, with power for them to grant them back to him in the case of his survival, or, in the case of his death, to his wife, Beatrice, and their children. As a tenant in chief of the king, he needed Henry’s permission to be able to grant the estates in this way. But as one of the king’s closest friends there was no problem gaining such permission; the necessary letters were drawn up today.
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Thursday 30th: Corpus Christi

The feast of Corpus Christi, or the Body and Blood of Christ, was an unusual religious celebration in that it did not relate to a saint or an event in Christ’s life. In fact it was not even of ancient origin. A thirteenth-century nun, Juliana, had petitioned several bishops for the celebration of the Eucharist; after her death, one of the bishops became pope. When he heard a story of the Eucharist being seen to bleed, he sanctioned her proposal, and issued a papal bull in 1264 proclaiming that the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ should be celebrated throughout Christendom.