Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester: A Biography

by Kenneth Hotham Vickers

On his return to England Gloucester rested from his labours, and together with his Duchess went down to his house at Greenwich. They both received New-Year’s gifts from the King. To Gloucester was given ‘a tabulet of gold with an image of oure Ladye hanging by three cheynes,’ whereon were six imitation diamonds, six sapphires, and one hundred and sixty-four pearls, whilst his wife’s present consisted of a ‘brouche maad in maner of a man garnished with a fayre great ball,’ set with five large pearls, one large diamond, and three ‘hangers’ adorned with rubies and pearls—by far the finest and costliest gifts among the numerous New-Year’s presents given on that occasion by the King.[895] The return of Gloucester did not herald more dissensions in the Council. He was for the time predominant in the country, and the death of the Queen-Mother on January 2, 1437, removed one who might have counteracted his influence with the King.[896] Indeed at one time Catherine had evinced a desire to marry Edmund Beaufort, Earl of Mortain, but Gloucester, fearing increased importance would accrue to the Beaufort party thereby, induced the Council to forbid it. At her death, however, it transpired that she had not been content to remain single, but had married a simple gentleman named Owen Tudor, and by him had had three sons and daughters. Owen was arrested by Gloucester on the strength of the Act which forbade such a marriage without permission under the penalty of forfeiture of life and possessions, but he succeeded in making his escape.[897]

1437-9] INACTIVITY OF GLOUCESTER

Throughout the year 1437 Gloucester’s name occasionally appears in official records as though his influence in the kingdom was considerable, and a special room was set apart at the end of Westminster Hall for himself and his council.[898] In Parliament, which met in January, the Speaker, in declaring the grant of a fifteenth and a tenth, added some words of strong commendation of his recent action with regard to Calais, and of his campaign in Flanders,[899] and the Commons took up the question of the payment of the soldiers at Calais, when the Duke complained that they were not being paid in accordance with the indentures under which he held the command of that town.[900]

The session passed without any signs of party strife, and we see little of Gloucester during the rest of the year. In August both he and his Duchess attended the funeral of yet another Queen of England, Joan, the unfortunate second wife of Henry IV.,[901] to whom in the past Humphrey had shown some courtesy in spite of her virtual imprisonment and disgrace at Langley. In November he seems to have been at Calais arranging some matter concerning his command there,[902] and he was probably not in England when on the thirteenth of the month the King assumed the government of the kingdom, and appointed his own Council to advise him. At the head of these Councillors stood Gloucester and Beaufort, and the former was to draw a salary of two thousand marks a year for life, other members of the Council receiving payment on a much lower scale.[903]

The next two years passed by without any signs of internal dissension among the King’s chief Councillors, and the name of the Duke of Gloucester is not met with frequently during this interval. In March he was appointed chief guardian of the Truce for nine years with Scotland,[904] but undoubtedly most of his time was spent in the collection and study of those rare manuscripts which about this time he began to give to the University of Oxford.[905] Never consistently pursuing any particular course of action for long, he had abandoned the stormy scenes of party politics, never more to enter the lists again save in a sudden outbreak of energy and anger, yet the one real passion of his life, interrupted though it had been by his political ambitions, still remained, and in his retirement he used the lull in the political tempest to ‘study in Bookys of antiquyte,’[906] and to encourage the advancement of the new learning as it found its way feebly and slowly to England.

In this retirement, however, Gloucester did not forget that a patron of letters needs a long purse, and he secured several additions to his already large possessions. His ferm of the lands of the young Duke of Norfolk, which he had held since 1432, expired about this time,[907] but he acquired the Hundred of Wootton and the Manors of Woodstock, Handborough, Stonesfield, and Wootton, all in the neighbourhood of Oxford; while in Norfolk he was given the Manor of Stanhoe, situated near Burnham; near Tunbridge he received the Manors of ‘Jevele,’ ‘Havendencourte,’ and Penshurst,[908] at the last of which he spent some portion of his time amongst his precious books.[909] From this period of peace Gloucester roused himself in 1440 to protest against a policy which he considered most injurious to the welfare of the kingdom, and to stir up the turmoil of party warfare once more by an attack on his old rival, Cardinal Beaufort.

1440] NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE

The opinions of the King’s advisers had changed since the days when, in blind fury after the defection of the Duke of Burgundy at Arras in 1435, they had determined on war to the death, and it was realised that peace with France was the only solution of the monetary difficulties of the King and the universal distress throughout the kingdom. As early as March 1438 plenipotentiaries to discuss the basis of a peace had been appointed,[910] and during June, July, and August of the following year an embassy under Cardinal Beaufort had treated with French envoys under the mediating supervision of the Duchess of Burgundy. The terms demanded by the English were ridiculously pretentious, and in spite of considerable modifications therein, negotiations were broken off; Henry VI. and his Council could not realise how desperate was the cause of England in France, and that terms, which would have been humiliating in the days of Henry V., were now almost generous.[911]

The failure of these negotiations has been unhesitatingly attributed to Gloucester, but his share in their rejection is by no means proved, and is chiefly suggested by the facts of his later conduct. Be this as it may, Beaufort had entirely changed his front, and though he clamoured with the rest for war in 1435, he now, four years later, was the most prominent advocate for peace. Gloucester, on the other hand, was the leader of the party which desired the war to continue, but it is unjust to jump to the conclusion that it was merely to oppose his old rival that he adopted this attitude. He, almost alone of those who stood at the head of the nation, could remember the fleeting glories of the reign of Henry V., and he naturally could not bring himself to agree to the surrender of that which he had helped to acquire. To the day of his death, Bedford had never favoured the withdrawal of the Lancastrian claim to the throne of France, and his brother, born and bred in the same school, shared his opinion. The Cardinal, though an older man, had had no share in the military exploits of his nephew’s reign, and had contented himself with posing as a soldier of Christ in the army which in the name of religion had fought for the restoration of Sigismund to his Bohemian throne. He was a politician and, when he liked a statesman, and his keen insight taught him to apprehend the situation free from all the prejudices of the men of his own generation. In his desire for peace he was undoubtedly justified, but this does not condemn the morality of those who opposed him.

Though he had failed in his first attempt to negotiate, Beaufort was not the man to despair, and his next step was to urge the release of the Duke of Orleans, who had been a captive in England ever since the battle of Agincourt, in the hopes that his mediation might help to bring about the much-desired peace. There was yet a deeper intention than lay on the face of this suggestion, for the Duke of Burgundy favoured the scheme, hoping that Orleans might join the league of Princes which he was trying to form with the object of limiting Charles VII.’s growing power and that of his bourgeois officials.[912]