A History of England, Period I. Mediæval Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

Great peace congress at Arras. 1435.

From this time onwards the fortunes of England declined. Difficulties accumulated on all sides. The long war had caused such a drain on the finances, that the payment of the troops had already been lowered, and a dangerous mutiny had broken out at Calais. At the same time, Gloucester’s meddlesome and overbearing character perpetually kept the Government at home in disturbance. In 1428, an attack was made on the Bishop of Winchester. He had returned from Rome a Cardinal, and with the rank of Papal Legate for the purpose of collecting troops against the Hussites. His authority thus clashed with that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was ex officio Legate when no one else was specially appointed to that office. Displeased at being superseded, Chicheley joined with Gloucester, and suggested that Winchester, by becoming Legate without royal permission, had incurred the penalties of præmunire. Winchester was therefore excluded from the Council, and from the Chapter of the Garter, of which he was the Prelate, held in 1429. His place in the Council was restored to him in gratitude for his conduct in the following year, when he lent troops to Bedford after the relief of Orleans. Nevertheless, during his absence in 1431, he was asked to resign his bishopric, as being the officer of a foreign power, and Gloucester brought formal charges against him, and caused the writ of præmunire to be actually prepared. The execution of the writ was postponed till the King’s return, when Beaufort was allowed to clear himself, and a declaration vouching for his loyalty given him under the Great Seal. While thus attacking the Cardinal, Gloucester had been attempting to increase his popularity, already very great, by assuming the position of champion of the Church, and persecutor of heresy. In 1430, a man calling himself Jack Sharpe had been put to death at Oxford, and a clergyman of Essex had also been burnt. But there was evidently still existing a strong undercurrent of Lollardism; for the people came in crowds to the place of execution, and made offerings as though the victim of persecution had been a saint. But even worse for Bedford than these troubles at home was the loss of his wife, who died in November 1432, childless, thus breaking the strongest link which had hitherto bound England and Burgundy together. This misfortune was made worse by one of the few acts of indiscretion which can be alleged against Bedford. He married Jacquetta, daughter of the Count of Saint-Pol, of the House of Luxembourg, a marriage in itself politic enough, but which, contracted as it was without the permission of Burgundy, the lady’s feudal superior, caused a quarrel between the two Dukes. This was the second heavy blow which the alliance between England and Burgundy had received. Yet this alliance was absolutely necessary for the successful carrying on of the war. It began to be a question whether peace of some sort was not becoming necessary. Bedford even in the year 1431 received leave from the English Parliament to treat. Abroad the feeling in favour of peace was still stronger. Pope Eugenius IV. had set seriously to work to put an end to the warfare. The Emperor Sigismund, with Frederick of Austria and Louis of Orange, alarmed at the rising power of the Burgundian House, had made offers of assistance to the French King. The Bretons, headed by the Count of Richemont, were anxious to renew their natural alliance with France. Burgundy himself, in 1432, had gone so far as to make an armistice with the French; the presence at the French Court of La Tremouille, one of the murderers of the Duke’s father and the constant supporter of the war, seemed the only obstacle to reconciliation: if that reconciliation were made Bedford must of necessity make peace. Other difficulties were leading him in the same direction. The finances were in the greatest disorder; the garrison of Calais mutinied for pay. Bedford therefore, in 1433, returned to England to see what could be done. He made Lord Ralph Cromwell his treasurer, and intrusted him with the duty of examining and making a statement as to the condition of the finances. It became apparent that the yearly outgoing exceeded the income by £25,000. Bedford at once insisted on economy, and patriotically gave up a considerable portion of his own salaries. But the discovery of his failing resources, the necessity for his presence in England, where Lords and Commons united in intreating him to remain, the increase of the power of France, and the constant danger of reconciliation between Charles and Burgundy, induced him to be quite ready to make arrangements for a peace on honourable terms which should include the possession of Normandy. Such views did not suit Gloucester. He put himself prominently forward as the head of the war party, producing a great but impracticable plan for pressing the war with vigour. Bedford’s residence in England was short. During his absence all went wrong; St. Denis was lost, and the Earl of Arundel taken prisoner. He was forced to return to France, and to leave the parties in England (now clearly defined as peace and war parties) to carry on their quarrels. But the general feeling for the necessity of peace, and for the release from their long imprisonment of the captives taken at Agincourt, gained ground abroad. So much was this the case, that Burgundy found means to assemble on the 14th of July what may be fairly called a European congress, at Arras, to settle if possible the peace of Europe. Thither came ambassadors from the Council of Bâle, (at that time sitting,) the Legate of the Pope, and ministers from the Emperor, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, Poland, Denmark, the Parisian University, and the great commercial towns of the Hansa and of Flanders. Archbishop John of York at first represented England. The Duke of Bourbon, who had already entered into agreement with Burgundy, represented France. Even on their first appearance, the English ambassadors were displeased with the precedence given to the French. The rival demands were these:—France wished either for a peace with Burgundy, and the continuation of the war with England, or if there was a cessation of that war, that the peace should be unconditional, with the restoration of all prisoners and all conquests, the three Norman bishoprics alone being left to the English, and those only as fiefs of the French crown; the English demanded the retention of their present possessions and an armistice. The pretensions of the two nations were evidently incompatible; even Cardinal Beaufort, who had joined the congress, was afraid of the war party at home, and on the 6th of September the English embassy withdrew.

Bedford’s death. Consequent defection of Burgundy.

Obstinacy of the war party.

At this inopportune moment an event happened which settled the wavering mind of Burgundy, and induced him to make a full reconciliation with the French. This event was the death of the Duke of Bedford. There was no one to fill the place of that great man. It had been his personal influence more than anything else which had kept Burgundy true to England. On his death the Duke at once declared himself ready to receive the terms which France offered. These were humiliating enough. Charles apologized for the death of Duke John, declared that he held the act in abhorrence, that he had been brought to consent to it by the advice of wicked ministers, and would henceforward exclude all Armagnacs from his council. At the same time he granted to Burgundy, Macon and Auxerre, together with the basin of the Somme, or Ponthieu. At first, news of this treaty served only to arouse the warlike feeling of the English. The appearance of the Burgundian envoy in London was the signal for violent riots. It was determined to prosecute the war with vigour. A great loan was raised throughout the country, and the prosecution intrusted to the young Duke of York. It was not to be expected that this young prince, however great his ability, could do what Bedford had been unable to accomplish. United with Burgundy, England had scarcely held its position in France. Against France and Burgundy united, it was helpless.

Continued ill success. 1437.

Already before York’s arrival a great piece of Normandy, and even Harfleur, had been lost. In April the French King, with Burgundy, advanced on Paris, and was admitted by the townspeople. The war party grew only more obstinate. Gloucester revived his absurd claims upon Flanders in right of Jacqueline, and assumed the title of Count of Flanders. York and Talbot succeeded in driving back the Burgundians from Calais; but this was almost the only English success. In July 1437, York was recalled, and Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick,[91] appointed in his place. But it was too late for any one to check the advance of the French. That country was indeed exhausted and miserable to the last degree; but England was in little better plight. For several years the plague had been raging, and an unusually bad harvest added to the horrors of disease. Bread there was none, the people were reduced to live on pulse.

Danger from Scotland.

James’s death.

Moreover, the English forces were divided by the threatening aspect of affairs in Scotland. The young King had done his best to keep his promise of peace, but found it impossible to break off the long-standing connection with France. In 1428, his daughter Margaret had been betrothed to Charles VII.’s son, Louis of Anjou. This had excited the fears of the English, and in the following year, the Bishop of Winchester, under the plea of collecting help for his proposed crusade against the Hussites, had visited Edinburgh. A marriage treaty had even been proposed between the two countries, but it came to nothing, and a vigorous diplomatic struggle was still being carried on between the rival parties of France and England, when, in 1434, the folly of Sir Robert Ogle, who led a raid into the Scotch Lowlands, turned the scale in favour of the French. The marriage between Margaret and Louis of Anjou was at once carried out, and, in 1436, an army, with King James at its head, attacked Roxburgh. Fortunately for England, the Scotch King, bred at the Court of Henry V., and eager to introduce into his own kingdom the orderly constitution he had known in England, had excited the anger of his nobles. News of a conspiracy reached him, and he withdrew from his invasion only to fall a victim to that conspiracy in the following year. Weakened by these domestic confusions, Scotland was content to enter into a truce for ten years.