Henry IV (12 page)

²²
Somerville,
Duchy of Lancaster
, i.131–2; DL 28/1/2, fo. 1r.

²³
Froissart,
Chroniques
, xii.297; Gaunt certainly made Henry keeper of the duchy and palatinate of Lancaster: Somerville,
Duchy of Lancaster
, i.120;
JGR II
, xlvii;
CIPM 1384–92
, no. 128.

²⁴
He received £1,902 in wages: DL 28/3/3, m. 2. Henry had been at Monmouth in mid-September for the birth of his first son;
Knighton
, 348–51; E 403/534, 22 April; DL 28/1/2, fo. 29.

²⁵
Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys 1380–1422
, ed. M. Bellaguet (6 vols, Paris, 1839–52), i.458–60, said that the invasion was finally called off around the middle of October.

²⁶
PROME
, vii.31–54; Saul,
Richard II
, 157–64; J. Palmer, ‘The Parliament of 1385 and the Constitutional Crisis of 1386’,
Speculum
46 (1971), 477–89.

²⁷
Knighton
, 354–62.

²⁸
For example, the Commissioners cut down significantly the flow of cash to the royal household and diverted resources towards a naval campaign against the French commanded by the king's old enemy, the earl of Arundel. For their financial policy, see
RHKA
, 105–6, 118–20.

²⁹
Arundel sold off some 4,000 tuns of wine in England at rock-bottom prices: A. Bell, ‘Medieval Chroniclers as War Correspondents during the Hundred Years War: The Earl of Arundel's Naval Campaign of 1387’,
Fourteenth Century England VI
, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Woodbridge, 2010), 171–84.

³⁰
The Dieulacres chronicler, a royalist sympathizer, described it as the main reason why the duke ‘and many others’ took up arms against de Vere: M. Clarke and V. Galbraith, ‘The Deposition of Richard II’,
BJRL
(1930), 125–81 (at p. 167). See also
Westminster Chronicle
, 188;
SAC I
, 823, 829; Froissart,
Chroniques
, xiv.46–7; A. Goodman,
The Loyal Conspiracy
(London, 1971), 25; and Saul,
Richard II
, 183, 471.

³¹
Westminster Chronicle
, 210–12;
Knighton
, 414–15.

³²
Saint-Denys
, i.496–8, describes their welcome to Paris.

³³
Richard had appointed de Vere as Justice of Chester on 8 September and North Wales on 10 October, which allowed him to make military arrays there:
CPR 1385–9
, 357; A. Tuck, ‘Edmund of Langley, First Duke of York’,
ODNB
, 17.762–5. Cf.
CPR 1385–9
, 217.

³⁴
Arundel's servants at Holt Castle (Clwyd) kept him informed of de Vere's activities: A. Tuck,
Richard II and the English Nobility
(London, 1973), 118; P. Morgan,
War and Society in Late Medieval Cheshire 1277–1403
(Chetham Society, Manchester, 1987), 188.

³⁵
Westminster Chronicle
, 218–20;
PROME
, vii.408. Arundel Castle Ms FA. 13, fo. 20, suggests that on 1 December 1387 the earl of Arundel was at his castle of Arundel, in the company of Thomas Rushook, bishop of Chichester, who confirmed the statutes of the earl's college at Arundel. Yet just a few months later Rushook would be accused in parliament of treason by the Appellants.

³⁶
SAC I
, 828.

³⁷
‘racione affinitatis’
:
Historia Mirabilis Parliamenti 1386, Per Thomam Fovent
, ed. M. McKisack (Camden Miscellany 14, London, 1926), 18. Mowbray's marriage to Arundel's daughter in July 1384 certainly marked a turning-point in his relations with the court, for before this he had been one of Richard's favourites. After serving as second in command to Arundel on their naval expedition in 1387, he and his father-in-law were snubbed by the king and de Vere despite their success. If de Vere had supplanted Mowbray in Richard's affections, Mowbray may have seen the Appeal as a way of getting rid of the detested favourite:
SAC I
, 814–15.

³⁸
Sir Ralph Radcliffe, dismissed from the shrievalty of Lancashire by Gaunt, was another disaffected retainer who joined de Vere, as did several who had never looked kindly on Gaunt's ascendancy, such as Gilbert Halsall, Robert Clifton and John Radcliffe of Chaderton: Walker,
Lancastrian Affinity
, 165–70, 176n;
JGR II
, 1237;
Westminster Chronicle
, 222; J. L. Gillespie, ‘Thomas Mortimer and Thomas Molineux: Radcot Bridge and the Appeal of 1397’,
Albion
7 (1975), 161–73.

³⁹
Morgan,
War and Society
, 188; one of the charges later brought against the Appellees was that they planned to arrest Gaunt as soon as he arrived back in England:
Westminster Chronicle
, 261.

⁴⁰
‘equitationem contra Ducem Hibernie’
: DL/28/1/2, fo. 15v.

⁴¹
PROME
, vii.408. Also accused in 1397, along with Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick, was Sir Thomas Mortimer, illegitimate uncle of the earl of March and steward of the earl of Arundel, the ‘sixth Appellant’; he was probably the senior captain, apart from the five lords, in the Appellant army, but did not join in the Appeal of Treason, presumably because he was not a parliamentary peer like the others. He avoided capture in 1397 and died in Scotland in 1399.

⁴²
CR
, 59;
Usk
, 28–30.

⁴³
Westminster Chronicle
, liv.218–19 (based at this point on a source in Warwick's household);
PROME
, vii.355.

⁴⁴
Historia Mirabilis Parliamenti
, 21 (
indivisa trinitas
).

⁴⁵
M. Bennett, ‘Edward III's Entail and the Succession to the Throne, 1376–1471’,
EHR
113 (1998), 580–609. See pp. 96–9 for a fuller discussion of the succession.

⁴⁶
Westminster Chronicle
, 204–7.

Chapter 4

LORDS OF THE FIELD (1387–1389)

Although the addition of Henry and Mowbray broadened the opposition to the king, it also made it more brittle, for this was a coalition shot through with personal and political differences. Henry and Gloucester had still not resolved the division of the Bohun inheritance; Mowbray and Warwick entertained rival claims to the lordship of Gower (Glamorgan); Mowbray had plotted against Gaunt's life in 1385.
¹
However, the real fault-line was how far each was prepared to go to purge the court and reform the royal administration. Gloucester and Arundel pressed throughout the crisis for radical solutions, while Henry and Mowbray – usually portrayed as speaking with one voice, a point difficult to verify – advocated clemency and moderation.
²
Unlike Gloucester and Arundel, Warwick had no history of personal antagonism towards the king, but inclined to stronger measures than did Henry and Mowbray. For the moment, though, once the decision had been taken not to depose the king, the Appellants were united in their aim, which was to neutralize de Vere. The forces they assembled at Huntingdon consisted largely of their private retinues.
³
Although the size of their army is not known, it certainly numbered thousands rather than hundreds, and the largest retinues were probably those brought by Henry and Arundel, the wealthy Appellants.
⁴
Henry's recruiting agent in December 1387 was Sir William Bagot, a Warwickshire knight retained by Gaunt who also had ties to Henry as well as to Mowbray and Warwick.
⁵
With many of the Lancastrian retainers abroad with Gaunt,
Henry must have relied largely on his own followers, but he had been able to raise 250 men-at-arms and 300 archers at short notice a year earlier, and can hardly have come to Huntingdon with fewer.

The brief military campaign which led to the skirmish at Radcot Bridge, fifteen miles west of Oxford, began with the Appellant forces marching west through Northampton, Daventry and Banbury into north Oxfordshire. Meanwhile de Vere continued southwards from Cheshire through Evesham until he reached Chipping Campden, where he spent the night of 19 December. The Appellants now divided their forces. Gloucester, Warwick and Mowbray took up a position close to Moreton-in-Marsh; Arundel occupied Burford, to prevent de Vere's army crossing the Windrush should he slip past the first Appellant line, while Henry moved south to block the crossing of the Thames at Radcot Bridge.
⁶
As a result it was Henry who received much of the credit for the rout of the royalist forces, especially, though not exclusively, in the account of the Lancastrian chronicler Henry Knighton. Before de Vere's army even encountered the first Appellant line, his men began deserting, and in a brief engagement with Arundel's men at Burford Thomas Molyneux was killed by Sir Thomas Mortimer. With a second force blocking his retreat, de Vere now pressed on, but when he arrived at Radcot Bridge, eight miles south of Burford, he found some of Henry's forces barring his way, having broken the bridge in three places so that only a single horseman could cross at one time, and the remainder, including Henry himself, fast approaching. Meanwhile Gloucester was coming up from behind. With ‘wonderful daring’, therefore, he threw off his sword and gauntlets and plunged his horse into the Thames, his only remaining avenue
of escape.
⁷
Remarkably, he got clean away. That it was a foggy afternoon doubtless helped; when his discarded armour was found the next day, it was initially thought that he must have drowned. In fact, he disguised himself as a groom and managed to reach London for a final meeting with Richard II before crossing to the continent, never to set foot in England again.
⁸

Knighton's account is too favourable to Henry. A less partisan reading of the events of 19–20 December might be that, as the least militarily experienced of the Appellants, he had been posted as long stop in the unlikely event that de Vere managed to get as far as the Thames, and that even then he allowed the real prize to slip through his grasp. On the other hand, the Appellants themselves believed that the decisive action of the day had taken place at Radcot,
⁹
and in fact each of them had played his part in achieving their principal objective, the rout of de Vere's forces.
¹⁰
On the following day, 21 December, the victorious ‘lords of the field’ marched to Oxford, where on Christmas Day they held a masked ball to celebrate their victory.
¹¹
Two days later they reached London and drew up their forces in view of the city walls, while the mayor, Nicholas Exton, handed over the keys of the city to them and distributed ale, wine, bread and cheese to their retainers to discourage them from plundering the city.
¹²

Richard meanwhile had taken refuge in the Tower of London, but he soon abandoned hope of holding it against the Appellants and agreed to parley. At a meeting in his chamber on 28 December, he asked them to drop their Appeal; their response was to threaten him with deposition. Next he tried to persuade Henry and Mowbray to break ranks with their senior colleagues, taking Henry up on to the walls of the Tower for a private discussion and inviting him and Mowbray to remain behind when
the others left.
¹³
But Richard's position was too weak for negotiation, and he and his opponents knew it. To break his resolve, the Appellants (or at least Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick) deposed him for three days, from 29 to 31 December, but according to one account Gloucester and Henry both claimed the right to become king in Richard's stead, so they decided at a council meeting on 1 January 1388 to reinstate him.
¹⁴
The idea that Henry would have claimed the throne for himself while his father was still alive is fanciful. If he did favour deposition, he would surely have argued that Gaunt should become king, but the real point at issue between him and Gloucester was probably not who should replace Richard but whether he should be deposed at all.

Now began the cleansing of Richard's court. De Vere, de la Pole and Neville may have fled, and Tresilian was nowhere to be found, but Brembre was quickly seized and on 1 January 1388 orders were issued for the arrest of a further twelve persons, mostly knights of the king's chamber and clerks of his chapel, the inner sanctums of the royal household.
¹⁵
The next week also saw the expulsion from court of some fifteen bishops, lords and ladies regarded as undesirable influences and the replacement of various royal officers with the Appellants' nominees.
¹⁶
The process of gathering evidence was also set in motion. On 18 January, the earl of Arundel's brother Thomas, bishop of Ely, encouraged an assembly of Londoners at the Guildhall to come forward with any grievances they had against the accused, and on 1 February six of the king's justices were imprisoned in the Tower and replaced by the Appellants' nominees.
¹⁷
Two days later the Merciless Parliament opened with the five Appellants, dressed in identical gold robes and walking arm in arm, entering the White Chamber of Westminster
palace and genuflecting in unison before the king.
¹⁸
It was important to project an image of unity: it was also with arms linked that they had confronted Richard in the Tower on 28 December, and whenever charges were read out during the parliament the five Appellants stood together in a line facing the king.
¹⁹
They also advertised their solidarity by interchanging liveries, symbolic of political confederacy.
²⁰
Equally important, however, was to emphasize their underlying loyalty to the crown;
²¹
thus the first thing that they did after genuflecting was to declare that they had never countenanced the king's death either secretly or openly, following which Gloucester made a personal statement that, contrary to rumour, he had never intended to depose Richard or make himself king.
²²
Richard had little option other than to excuse his uncle, but whatever the truth of the matter the threat of deposition was not so much lifted as suspended, and it continued to hang over him throughout the session in order to ensure his compliance.