Agincourt (54 page)

21 The figures also include Staffordshire, where there were similar problems and the same solution: Powell, “The Restoration of Law and Order,” p. 65.
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22 The six who served on the Agincourt campaign were John Burley, Richard Lacon, John Winsbury, Ralph Brereton, Robert and Roger Corbet. John Wele, constable of Oswestry, stayed behind to defend the Shropshire march: ibid., p. 72.
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23
Brut
, ii, pp. 595-6. On one occasion he summoned two brothers, William and John Mynors of Staffordshire, to appear before him to account for their crimes, then personally ordered his justices to pardon them: William later served on the Agincourt campaign and in the conquest of Normandy: Powell, p. 66.
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24 Quoted in Powell, p. 275.
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25
ODNB
.
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26
Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428-31
, ed. by Norman P. Tanner (Camden Fourth Series, vol. 20, London, 1977), pp. 10-22, 142.
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27 Anne Hudson,
The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History
(Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988), pp. 110-11, 115.
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28
St Albans
, p. 71; Saul,
Batsford Companion to Medieval England
, pp. 273-5; Heath,
Church and Realm 1272-1461
, pp. 258-9; Hudson,
The Premature Reformation
, pp. 114-15, 339-40. Oldcastle may have hoped to initiate a similar scheme in England, introducing a bill in 1410 to confiscate the lands of the richest bishops and abbots in order to provide the king with an extra twenty thousand pounds of annual income for the defence of the realm. It failed because Henry V, who, as prince of Wales, was then head of the royal council, leapt to the Church’s defence and strongly condemned the whole idea.
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29 Ibid., pp. 116-17; Powell, pp. 146-8;
GHQ
, pp. 4-5.
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30 For what follows on Oldcastle’s revolt, see W&W, i, pp. 258-80;
ELMA
, pp. 244-6; Heath,
Church and Realm 1272-1461
, pp. 274-9; Powell, pp. 149-66.
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31 Ibid., p. 150; W&W, i, p. 264 nn. 10, 11. John de Burgh, a carpenter, and Thomas Kentford were granted annuities of 10 marks each for detecting and revealing certain Lollards and their treasonable plots; Thomas Burton, “a royal spy,” was rewarded for similar information at about the same time.
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32 Oldcastle’s pardon was revoked in March 1415 in the build-up to the Agincourt campaign. He was eventually caught near Welshpool, condemned by his peers in Parliament and suffered the dual penalty of hanging as a traitor and burning as a heretic on 14 December 1417: Powell, p. 164.
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33
ELMA
, pp. 245-6; Powell, pp. 161-2, 165-6.
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34 Ibid., p. 166.
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35 The Valois kings of France were traditionally styled “très-Chrétien,” most Christian, to distinguish them from other kings, including those of England, whom they deemed less favoured by God: McKenna, “How God Became an Englishman,” p. 26.
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CHAPTER FOUR: THE DIPLOMATIC EFFORT

1
Bourgeois
, pp. 29-31; W&W, i, pp. 170-1.
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2
Bourgeois
, pp. 32-3.
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3 Vaughan, p. 100.
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4
Bourgeois
, p. 44; Vaughan, p. 101.
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5 McLeod, p. 94;
Bourgeois
, p. 46.
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6 Ibid., pp. 47-50.
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7 According to French legend, the oriflamme had miraculously appeared to the emperor of Constantinople in a dream as a flaming lance in the hand of Charlemagne, hence its sacred quality. Having been lost several times on the field of battle, it appears that it also had a miraculous habit of reincarnating itself.
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8 Vaughan, pp. 194-6, 197, 247-8;
Bourgeois
, p. 48; W&W, i, pp. 412-13 and n. 3.
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9 Oliver van Dixmude, quoted in Vaughan, pp. 146-7.
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10
Bourgeois
, p. 53. See below, p. 269.
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11 W&W, i, p. 397.
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12 Vaughan, pp. 198-204.
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13 Catherine’s mother was Constanza of Castile, John of Gaunt’s second wife.
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14 W&W, i, pp. 84-5, 90-7, 93 n. 3; Christopher Allmand (ed.),
Society at War
(Boydell Press, Woodbridge, new edn, 1998), pp. 129-30; Anthony Goodman, “England and Iberia in the Middle Ages,” in
England and her Neighbours 1066-1453: Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais
, ed. by M. Jones and M. G. A. Vale (Hambledon Press, London, 1989), pp. 86-8.
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15 Michael Jones, “The Material Rewards of Service in Late Medieval Brittany: Ducal Servants and Their Residences,” in Curry and Matthew (eds),
Concepts and Patterns of Service in the Later Middle Ages
, pp. 120-3; A. R. Bridbury,
England and the Salt Trade in the Later Middle Ages
(Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1955), p. 80.
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16
Foedera
, ix, pp. 80-7; W&W, i, pp. 102-4, 103 n. 6, 104 n. 4.
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17 Powell, pp. 203-6; Charles Lethbridge Kingsford,
Prejudice and Promise in XVth Century England
(Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1925), pp. 83-4, 85-7; Felipe Fernández-Armesto, “Naval Warfare After the Viking Age,
c
.1100-1500,” in Keen,
MW
, p. 235.
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18 In the Leicester Parliament of 1414, Henry introduced another exceptional measure, extending the definition of high treason to include breaking a truce or a safe-conduct, or aiding someone else who did so; the punishment, as for all treasons, was drawing, hanging and quartering. The justification for including this new category of offence was that truces and safe-conducts were granted and guaranteed by the king’s word or promise; breaches of them therefore impugned the king’s honour and injured his majesty in the same way that other treasonable offences did. The Statute of Truces was deeply unpopular and had to be amended in 1416 to make allowances for letters of marque, but it was highly effective in curtailing acts of piracy by English subjects:
Rotuli Parliamentorum
, iv, pp. 22-3; John G. Bellamy,
The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1970), pp. 128-9.
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19
Foedera
, ix, p. 84. See also below pp. 258-9.
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20
Foedera
, ix, pp. 35, 56-9; W&W, i, p. 152 and n. 2; Jean Juvénal des Ursins,
Histoire de Charles VI
, ed. by J. A. C. Buchon (Choix de Chroniques et Mémoires sur l’Histoire de France, iv, Paris, 1836), p. 478;
St-Denys
, v, p. 353.
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21 W&W, i, pp. 153-5;
Foedera
, ix, pp. 58-9.
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22
Foedera
, ix, pp. 91-101.
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23 Ibid., ix, pp. 102-4.
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24
St-Denys
, v, pp. 158, 228; Juvénal des Ursins,
Histoire de Charles VI
, pp. 487, 493. Juvénal des Ursins, an eyewitness of events in Paris, commented that “even the English princes were divided by the quarrel between Burgundy and Orléans, for the dukes of Clarence and of Gloucester, the king’s brothers, and with them the duke of York, favoured the Orléanists; while the king and the duke of Bedford, likewise his brother, were inclined to the Burgundians”: ibid., p. 497.
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25 Vaughan, p. 206.
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26
Foedera
, ix, pp. 136-8. Opening
negotiations
for other marriages did not breach Henry’s undertaking to the French, which only gave his promise not to
contract
a marriage. A nice distinction but a legal one.
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27 Ibid.; Hovyngham had negotiated the truces with Castile and Brittany.
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28 Vaughan, p. 207;
Foedera
, ix, p. 138. The power to receive the duke’s homage was given on 4 June 1414, the same day as the other instructions.
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29
POPC
, ii, p. 141.
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30
Foedera
, ix, pp. 131-2, 208-11.
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31 Shakespeare,
Henry V
, Act I, Scene 2, ll. 261-3.
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32
St Albans
, p. 83; Usk, p. 253. For the tennis balls story, see, for example,
Brut
, ii, pp. 374-5; Capgrave, pp. 129-30; Thomas Elmham, “Liber Metricus de Henrico Quinto,”
Memorials of Henry the Fifth, King of England
, ed. by Charles Augustus Cole (Longman and Co., London, 1858), p. 101.
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33 Monstrelet, iii, pp. 59-62;
Bourgeois
, pp. 58-61.
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34
Foedera
, ix, pp. 212-14.
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35
Letter-Books
, p. 135;
Memorials of London and London Life in the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth Centuries
, ed. by Henry Thomas Riley (Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1868), pp. 603-5.
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36 W&W, i, p. 94-9.
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37 See above, pp. 66, 68.
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CHAPTER FIVE: SCOTS AND PLOTS

1
ELMA
, pp. 305-6; E. W. M. Balfour-Melville,
James I, King of Scots, 1406-37
(Methuen, London, 1936), p. 22.
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2 Ibid., pp. 25-6.
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3 Ibid., pp. 26, 31-3.
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4 Ibid., pp. 34-5; Patricia J. Bradley, “Henry V’s Scottish Policy—a Study in Realpolitik,” in
Documenting the Past: Essays in Medieval History Presented to George Peddy Cuttino
, ed. by J. S. Hamilton and Patricia J. Bradley (Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 179-80.
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5 W&W, i, pp. 34-6; Powell, pp. 136-7.
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6 This had not prevented it being breached, spectacularly, on two recent occasions. In 1378 two men, who had refused to hand over to John of Gaunt a prisoner captured eleven years earlier at the battle of Najera, escaped from the Tower and fled to sanctuary at Westminster; they were pursued by the constable of the Tower and fifty armed men, who forced their way in, slew one of the men and the sacristan and abducted the other. Nine years later, in 1387, Sir Robert Tresilian, the chief justice, was accused of treason by the Appellants (of whom the future Henry IV was one) and claimed sanctuary at Westminster; he too was abducted by force, tried and executed: Heath,
Church and Realm 1272-1461
, pp. 209-11.
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7 Ibid., p. 211.
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8 W&W, i, p. 36; Powell, p. 138. Although this phrase is now commonly rendered “hanged, drawn and quartered,” this is not the order in which the process took place. The convicted person was drawn on hurdles to the place of execution, hanged and then quartered; sometimes the traitor was cut down from the gallows while still alive, disembowelled (his entrails being burnt before him), beheaded and then quartered. In either case, the body parts were displayed in prominent public places to deter other traitors.
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9 Devon, pp. 325, 326-8, 332;
St Albans
, p. 77;
Brut
, ii, p. 373. It was said that Richard had been kind to Henry, when, as a child, he had been a hostage at the royal court (not that this had prevented the future Henry IV from returning at the head of an army to usurp the throne). Lancastrian propagandists even said that Richard had predicted that the young Henry would fulfill Merlin’s prophecy that a prince should be born in Wales, whose praise would one day ring round the world.
St Albans
, p. 77, suggests that Henry venerated Richard as if he were his own father, but as this is said in the context of the reburial, it may be applicable only to that act. It does not seem to me to warrant the claims of later chroniclers and historians that the two had been like father and son.
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10 Balfour-Melville,
James I, King of Scots, 1406-37
, p. 55; Bradley, “Henry V’s Scottish Policy—a Study in Realpolitik,” pp. 180-1.
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11 Ibid., pp. 178, 181.
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12 G. L. Harriss, “The King and his Magnates,” in
HVPK
, pp. 31-51. Percy was to be partially reimbursed by Murdoch himself: Balfour-Melville,
James I, King of Scots, 1406-37
, p. 65.
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13
St Albans
, p. 86; W&W, i, pp. 517, 520 (where Talbot is wrongly called Henry); Balfour-Melville,
James I, King of Scots, 1406-37
, pp. 62-3; Bradley, “Henry V’s Scottish Policy—a Study in Realpolitik,” pp. 182-3; T. B. Pugh, “The Southampton Plot of 1415,” in
Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages: a Tribute to Charles Ross
, ed. by Ralph A. Griffiths and James Sherbourne (Alan Sutton, Gloucester and St Martin’s Press, New York, 1986), p. 66;
CPR
, p. 339.
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14 Balfour-Melville,
James I, King of Scots, 1406-37
, p. 63;
CCR
, p. 278; Bradley, “Henry V’s Scottish Policy—a Study in Realpolitik,” pp. 183-4.
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