The Percies had recently gained a victory for King Henry IV., whom they had so powerfully assisted in gaining his throne. They were about to turn their arms against him. Shakspeare attributes their discontent to the prohibition which the king put upon their setting ransoms upon their prisoners, a measure which deprived them of all the pecuniary advantage of the capture; but this interdiction had been frequent under the preceding reigns, particularly under Edward III., and King Henry IV. indemnified the Earl of Northumberland by granting vast domains to him. Another cause for anger had recently sprung up. During the lucky campaigns of Owen Glendwyr the latter had captured his old enemy, Lord Grey de Ruthyn, and Sir Edmund Mortimer, uncle of the young Earl of March, the legitimate heir to the throne. The relatives of Lord Grey had been authorized to redeem him; but the king had refused the same favor to the family of Sir Edmund. Hotspur Percy had married his sister, and, acutely wounded by this refusal, he began to set on foot a conspiracy to overthrow the king and place the crown upon the head of the little Earl of March. He was confirmed in this resolution by the Archbishop of York, Scrope, brother of the favorite of Richard II.; and the conspirators did not hesitate to call Owen Glendwyr to their aid. He gave his daughter in marriage to Mortimer, and promised to invade England with twelve thousand Welshmen. The Earl of Douglas was liberated without any ransom, on condition of recrossing the frontier with a Scottish army. It is even said that Hotspur wrote to the Duke of Orleans, from whom King Henry had recently received a warlike challenge on account of the insults offered to Queen Isabel.
So many movements had not escaped the vigilant eye of King Henry. Hotspur was marching forward, commanding the rebels in place of his father, who was ill; and supported by his uncle, the Earl of Worcester. Henry planted his army corps between the earls and Owen Glendwyr, with whom they were endeavoring to effect a junction. The Welshman had made no haste, and when, on arriving at Shrewsbury, Henry received the challenge of his enemies, it was conceived only in the name of the Percies. They reproached the king with his usurpation, the death of Richard, the captivity of the little Earl of March, his manœuvres in the election of Parliament, the levying of taxes which had not been voted by the Commons, &c. At the end appeared the real subject of the quarrel, the denial of the negotiations relating to Sir Edmund Mortimer. Henry IV. smiled bitterly and disdained to reply. "The sword shall decide," he said, "and I am assured that God will give me victory over perjured traitors." It was on the 20th of July, 1403; on the morrow the two armies found themselves face to face on Shrewsbury Plain.
The insurgents numbered about fourteen thousand men; the king had no more. Before fighting, he despatched the Abbot of Shrewsbury to his adversaries, with proposals for peace. Hotspur, less impetuous than Shakespeare has depicted him, hesitated: but the Earl of Worcester persuaded him to reject the royal overtures. "Banners to the front, then!" cried Henry, The combat began. "St. George!" was the cry around the king. "Hope! Percy!" responded the rebels. The archers were drawing on both sides, and the knights did not abandon to them, as at Homildon Hill, all the honor of the combat. Percy and Douglas, rivals in glory, had precipitated themselves together into the midst of the enemy with a small following; everything gave way before them; the Prince of Wales had been wounded in the face. They sought for the king; but, upon the advice of the Scottish refugee, the Earl of March, he had laid aside, for that day, all the royal insignia, and he fought valiantly, without having been recognized. At the moment when the two chiefs of the insurgents endeavored to retrace their steps, opening up a way through the crowd of the enemies, Percy was struck by an arrow in the head, and fell dead. Disorder immediately set in among his partisans. Douglas had been made a prisoner; the Earl of Worcester shortly afterwards suffered the same fate, as well as the Lord of Kinderton and Sir Richard Vernon. The traitors' punishment awaited the three Englishmen. Douglas was honorably treated. The field of battle was covered with dead and dying. The insurgents had fled; they went and carried to the old Earl of Northumberland the news of the defeat and death of his son. He was marching forward to join him, and he thereupon shut himself up in his castle at Warkworth. Being summoned to appear before the king at York, he was detained there in honorable captivity until the Parliament should have decided upon his fate. He had not taken part personally in the insurrection, and he declared that his son had acted without his approval. The Lords treated him with indulgence; he retired after having sworn fidelity to the king and the Prince of Wales. Eighteen months had not elapsed before he was again in arms against Henry.
The conspiracies had not ceased in this interval. A former chamberlain of King Richard, named Serle, had again spread the rumor that that monarch was living. He led about with him a poor idiot who resembled Richard, and a certain number of partisans had rallied round him. Three princes of the House of Bourbon had attacked the islands of Jersey and Guernsey, and burnt down the town of Plymouth; the French vessels had brought reinforcements to Owen Glendwyr, against whom the young Prince of Wales was at war; and a woman, Lady Le Despencer, had carried off the young Earl of March and his brother. She was already approaching the frontiers of Wales when she was seized, and the prisoners were brought back to Windsor. She exculpated herself by throwing the responsibility of the undertaking upon her brother, the Duke of York, formerly Earl of Rutland. He was arrested, and languished for several years in prison.
King Henry had always avoided asking large subsidies of the Parliament; he was not sufficiently assured of the affection of his people to ask any sacrifices of them. In 1404, however, he had come to an end of his resources, and in a Parliament which has preserved the name of unlearned, because the king had, it was said, dismissed from it all the lawyers, he made a proposal which was ardently sustained by the Commons: it forbade the king to alienate the property of the crown without the authorization of Parliament, but permitted him to take back all the gifts of land and the pensions granted by his predecessors; he was even allowed to seize a certain portion of the property of the clergy. The Church uttered a cry of terror and rage, which arrested the zeal of the king and the Commons. Henry hastened to renounce his project, assuring the Archbishop of Canterbury that it was his intention to leave the Church in a better position than he had found it in; but he accomplished his resolutions upon the lands and pensions given by Edward III. and Richard II. The disaffection of the barons was great, and the uneasiness of the clergy was not dispelled.
In 1405, two great councils were convoked by the king: in London and at St. Alban's. There the bad state of feeling was manifested; all the demands of the king were rejected, and more than one baron quitted St. Alban's to join the insurgents, who were again beginning to form in groups round the Earl of Northumberland. The Archbishop of York had this time taken up arms; he was made a prisoner, as well as the Earl of Nottingham, by Prince John, the second son of the king. In vain did the archbishop claim ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and the earl that of his peers; in vain did Chief Justice Gascoyne refuse to preside at their trial: the king had resolved to make an example. He found some more complaisant magistrates; the archbishop and the Earl of Nottingham were beheaded; a fine was imposed upon the city of York, temporarily deprived of its charters, and the king marched against Berwick, where the Earl of Northumberland had taken refuge. On the way he caused Lord Hastings and Lord Falconbridge to be tried, and they were beheaded. Berwick surrendered; but the old Percy had fled to Edinburgh, and the king did not penetrate into Scotland; he contented himself with ravaging Northumberland, taking possession of all the castles which belonged to the rebels. He then turned his arms in the direction of Wales, where Prince Henry had valiantly sustained the struggle for nearly two years. He had triumphed over the Welsh at Grosmont, in Monmouthshire, in the month of March, 1405; one of the sons of Owen Glendwyr had been made a prisoner, and the prince had only been arrested in the course of his successes by the arrival of a French reinforcement sent by the Duke of Orleans, in defiance of the truce which still reigned between the two nations. The young Prince Henry had been compelled to withdraw to Worcester; but the king soon drove the French into the mountains of Wales, whither he pursued them. The Welsh arrested his march; but the French were weary of their reverses, of the poverty of their allies, of the rough life which they led; they retreated into their vessels again. The king withdrew in his turn; Prince Henry continued the war with alternations of successes and reverses, always holding his ground with a skill and perseverance worthy of his adversary, and which finally wearied the population. Glendwyr found himself gradually abandoned, and an invasion attempted in 1409 by his son-in-law, Scudamore, in Shropshire, completed the ruin of his cause; the Welsh were repulsed, and the chiefs put to death. The independent character of Owen Glendwyr allowed him neither to submit not to despair; he no longer appeared in the regions occupied by the English, but he still maintained himself in the mountains, resuming his arms when his enemies pressed him closely in his haunts; his name, published several times in the amnesty acts, proves that he was neither dead nor subjugated, even after the battle of Agincourt. The period of his death and the place of his burial are unknown; the end of his life remains enveloped in mystery, as though he had really possessed the magic power which his friends and enemies attributed to him in his lifetime.
King Henry had not been under the necessity of prosecuting his campaigns in Scotland; he held in his hands the heir to the throne of that kingdom. The Duke of Rothsay, imprudent and bold, had entered into a contention with his uncle, the Duke of Albany. Being accused of rebellion and imprisoned in Falkland Castle, he had there died of hunger, it was said. The unhappy King Robert had become alarmed for the life of James, the only son who remained to him, and he had embarked him upon a ship which was to take him to France, but the vessel had fallen into the hands of some English cruisers, who brought the prince in triumph to King Henry. "I speak French as well as my brother Charles," the king had said laughingly, "and I am as well adapted as he to bring up a King of Scotland." The young Prince James therefore remained at the court of England, closely guarded, but educated with care, kindly treated, and at liberty to devote himself to his passion for poetry. The old king Robert had died of grief in 1406, and the Duke of Albany, who continued to govern Scotland, servilely submitted to the wishes of the King of England, who, at the least appearance of insubordination, threatened him with the release of his nephew. This state of affairs was destined to be prolonged for a considerable time.