Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester: A Biography

by Kenneth Hotham Vickers

The Parliament which met at Leicester on February 18,[646] has been handed down to posterity as the ‘Parliament of Battes,’ because, as all weapons had to be discarded by the members and their retainers, they came armed with staves and ‘battes,’ which did not come under the category of weapons.[647] No allusion was made to the quarrel in the Chancellor’s opening speech, although it was the most important matter before the assembly, and indeed it seemed at first as though there would be little progress made in the work of the session. For ten days nothing was done; the Speaker was not even chosen; and during that time Leicester must have been the scene of much diplomacy and intrigue, of which we have no record. At length on the 28th the Commons took the initiative by sending up a petition to the Lords, asking them to take steps to heal the divisions which had occurred in their body,[648] a request which was answered by a promise, made by the peers on March 4, to deal honestly between Gloucester and the Bishop.[649] The consent of the two parties to this mediation had now to be secured, and at the urgent request of Bedford the Duke consented, three days later, to submit all his grievances to a Commission, composed of Archbishop Chichele, the Dukes of Exeter and Norfolk; the Bishops of Durham, Worcester, and Bath; Humphrey, Earl of Stafford; Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and William Alnwick, Keeper of the Privy Seal and Bishop-elect of Norwich, though it was provided that any matter touching the King was to be referred to the Council.[650] Beaufort gave a similar consent.[651] This Commission could not have been more fairly chosen. The Archbishop, if slightly inclined to resent the ambitions of his brother of Winchester, was eminently impartial and well versed in the art of pacification; the two Dukes each represented one of the rivals, for whilst Exeter was the brother of the Bishop, Norfolk was the friend of Gloucester;[652] Lord Cromwell was inclined to the Beaufort faction,[653] but the bishops were mostly impartial, though probably the Bishop of Bath was another of Beaufort’s followers.[654]

It was with his usual easy confidence that Gloucester proceeded to draw up his indictment of the Chancellor. He complained that Beaufort had instructed Wydeville to refuse him entrance to the Tower, though he was Protector of the realm, and had afterwards shielded this man from the consequences of this action. Nay, more, Beaufort had plotted to undermine the Protector’s power by attempting to remove the King from Eltham, thinking to secure thereby a hold over the government of the kingdom. At the same time he had hindered Gloucester from going to frustrate these plans by barricading the Southwark end of London Bridge, and posting armed men in the houses of the district, thus trying to kill the Protector and disturb the King’s peace. Further, Gloucester accused his adversary of maligning him to Bedford in his letter of October 31 by saying that he was harassing the Kings subjects. Not content with the recent misdemeanours of the Chancellor, his accuser made an excursion into past history, and brought up an old story that an attempt had been made on the life of Henry V., when Prince of Wales, by a man who confessed himself Beaufort’s agent, and together with this was joined the incompatible, but more likely story, that Beaufort had advised the same Henry to assume the crown whilst his father was lying dangerously ill.[655]

1426] INDICTMENT OF BEAUFORT

The tenor of these accusations at once establishes the motive of the quarrel. From them it is evident that Gloucester looked on the whole matter as a personal question, and did not realise that there was a possible constitutional aspect of the case. There was nothing which betrayed the statesman in this indictment, which merely complained of insults to his dignity, attacks on his position, and concluded with impertinent statements as to the past career of his rival. Throughout it showed considerable ingenuity, but at the same time it betrayed an inability to understand the constitutional pose which the better politician of the two had assumed. In Beaufort’s answer the refutation of the very first accusation shows the different methods of the two men. Though his policy was one of mere self-seeking, the Bishop of Winchester knew how to use the language of the new constitutional theories which had developed under the two preceding Lancastrian kings. He asserted that in the Tower incident he was fully justified in the advice he had given Wydeville not to admit the Protector within its walls. He declared that before the Hainault expedition it had been decided in Council, in the presence of Gloucester, to garrison and provision the Tower, but that this had never been done; that during the absence of the Protector certain seditious risings, levelled, it would seem, mainly against foreigners, had disturbed the peace of the capital, and that Wydeville had been placed in command of the Tower to strengthen the hands of the Executive. Such being the case, Gloucester on his return had ingratiated himself with the citizens by sympathising with them for having a castle fortified against them in this manner, and had done his utmost to stultify the action of the Council in this matter. Moreover, a question of privilege had been raised by the refusal of Humphrey to deliver up a certain Friar Randolph who had been committed to the Tower on a charge of treason, and whom the Protector had removed from the Lieutenant’s custody, declaring that his command was a sufficient warrant of discharge for the custodian of the prisoner, ‘in the which thing above seyd yt was thought to my lorde of Winchestre that my seyde lorde off gloucestre toke upon himsylff fferrer thanne his auctorite stretched unto, and causid him fforto doute and drede, leest the Toure hadde be stronge he wolde have proceded fferther.’[656]

The arguments thus used by the Bishop in reply to this charge are specious to a degree, and appealed to principles of ministerial control, an attitude which has stood him in good stead with the historians of a democratic age. Nevertheless, this favourable appearance was but skin-deep. The Chancellor had had practically complete control of the kingdom whilst Gloucester had been abroad, and now he was disgusted to find that his precedence was no longer recognised. If the title of Protector was anything beyond a name, its holder was entitled to enter a royal castle at his will, and no plea of expediency could be pleaded by a Chancellor who took upon himself to deny such a right. The truth which lies beneath the fair exterior of the reply to this first charge is on careful examination quite evident. Beaufort feared that, in spite of the strict limitations put upon his power, Gloucester would prove to be stronger than had been expected, and his instructions to Wydeville were dictated by no fears for the safety of the kingdom, but fears for the permanency of his own ascendency in the councils of the nation. The stories about the Londoners and the traitor friar were in all probability true, but those who would sympathise with Beaufort as leader of the constitutional party against the encroachments of the Protector can here find no arguments to support their theory, for he had worked in opposition to his own chief, and had persuaded an officer to disobey his superior. Only so far as all who oppose governments are called constitutionalists can this term be applied to the Bishop of Winchester and his party. On the other hand, it seems hard to understand why Gloucester should deliberately give a handle to his opponent by removing Friar Randolph from custody. This action, if not exactly illegal at this time, was undoubtedly unwise, though it may be that some unexplained reason—possibly the Protector’s known affection for the unhappy Queen Joan, whose confessor and alleged accomplice Randolph was[657]—impelled him to take it.

1426] BEAUFORT’S ANSWER

The answer to the second and third counts, which accused Beaufort of attempting to secure the King’s person for his own ends, and of preventing Gloucester from going to visit his nephew at Eltham, give us a further insight into the events of the famous Tuesday on which the retainers of the Chancellor came to blows with the Londoners. If we are to accept Beaufort’s version of the matter—and it is to some extent corroborated by the terms of Humphrey’s accusation—the trouble between the two princes had been brewing for some time. The Chancellor declared that as early as the time when the last Parliament was sitting he had been warned that Gloucester was contemplating a personal attack on him, and that certain of the London citizens of the baser sort had announced their intention of throwing him ‘in Temyse, to have tauht him to swymme with wengis.’ Furthermore, on the Sunday which preceded the call to arms, a deputation from the Council had waited upon the Protector to know whether it was true that he bore the Chancellor ill-will, and if so, the reason of his so doing; and Gloucester had acknowledged the truth of the report. With an assumed air of innocence Beaufort recounted how the city had stood to arms all through the Monday night, and had assumed a threatening attitude towards him, although, as we know, both he and his men were ignorant of this till they attempted to cross the bridge on the following morning. On the Tuesday, it appears, the Protector had also wished to cross the river with a company of three hundred horse provided by the civic authorities, to go to Eltham to see the King, and the Chancellor had prevented this by force of arms, defending this action by saying that his rival wished to remove the King from his present abode without securing the consent of the Council—an act which he declared to be illegal and high-handed to the last degree.[658]

Thus both parties accused the other of the same intent with regard to the King, but as Beaufort on his side pointed out, and it was equally true from the point of view of his rival, no useful end was to be attained by securing the King’s person.[659] There was no obvious felonious intent in the Protector wishing to visit the child for whom he was acting, and no objection was taken by the Council to his removal to London on November 5. Beaufort’s assumed constitutional fears as to the danger attending his removal from Eltham are discounted by his declaration that the possession of the young King’s person was for him a useless burden. The truth seems to be that Gloucester, established in London, and with the citizens espousing his cause, was in so strong a position that Beaufort felt he must do something to counteract it. He therefore collected troops, and failing to effect an entrance into the city, was determined that at least Humphrey should not cross to his side of the river. The fundamental reason for the quarrel was the rivalry of two ambitious men, each desirous of governing the kingdom, but of the two Beaufort was undoubtedly the aggressor. It was he that had appealed to force to aid his cause, and though he declared that he considered the kingdom in great danger from Duke Humphrey, it never occurred to him to summon Bedford from France to restore order till he himself had been worsted in his attempt at armed interference. Humphrey cannot be accused of provoking the appeal to arms. His modest escort of three hundred men was no large force in view of the existence of an enemy on his road, also it was quite uncharacteristic of him to appeal to such means. In spite of his stormy political career, in no case do we find him making any appeal to force of arms. He was by nature a political schemer, but he had seen too much of war on a grand scale, and the disasters which militant parties bring on themselves as well as on their country, to make use of such methods. Beaufort, on the contrary, was turbulent where his opponent was factious; he dabbled in the pomp and the language of war, and was far more ready to bring the country to the venture of a ‘field’ than the party opposed to him. It was Beaufort, not Gloucester, who was responsible for the first blood spilt in that great struggle for the control of the incapable Henry vi.’s policy, the last stages of which neither were to live to see.

Beaufort’s answer to the accusation of plotting against Henry IV. and Henry V. was a denial, and an offer to stand his trial on this count;[660] but the rights of the case are of no importance here, for this was only a diplomatic move on the part of the Protector to blacken the other’s character. The Bishop’s justification of his remarks in his letter to Bedford, however, have considerable interest. He stated that in it was to be found proof of his desire for a good government of the kingdom, and of his anxiety to escape provoking a civil war, arguments which came ill from one who had tried force and had failed; but his chief point was that Gloucester had encouraged rather than restrained the seditious action of some of the London artisans, who had resisted some wage regulations made by the mayor and aldermen with the consent of the Council.[661]

This last reply was a skilful move intended to discredit Gloucester’s case by proving the disreputable character of his supporters, but we can hardly believe that the civic authorities would so loyally have supported any one who had encouraged a disregard of their decrees. Nothing speaks more strongly for the fact that the Protector, rather than the Chancellor, stood for the cause of good government than the undivided support which the long-headed, peace-loving burgesses of London gave to the former. In point of fact, both Gloucester and Beaufort were ambitious men, and neither was over-burdened with principles. Yet we must not forget that the Protectorate was in the hands of Gloucester, and that the Bishop, as Chancellor, was attacking a power which was legal, though to him obnoxious. He had inspired the limitations of the Protector’s power at the beginning of the reign; he had secured that the absent brother should be supreme; and he resented the discovery that, after all, Gloucester was not a mere subject for his Chancellor’s diplomacy, and that he was supported by a strong party in the nation. Beaufort’s action here was a bid for power, not a protest against bad government; and, while in no way praising the Protector for an enlightened policy, it would be unfair to brand his government of the nation as corrupt and merely turned to his own advantage, because an ambitious man strove to occupy the position which he held. Throughout the struggle there was no question of principle, whether moral or constitutional; it was merely a fight as to who should govern England.