Only one other complaint do we find of Gloucester’s behaviour, and that is by the unknown continuator of the Croyland chronicle, who complains that, when interviewing the Protector on several occasions with regard to a lawsuit with the men of Spalding, the Abbot of that monastery was harshly and unjustly treated by him.[1083] That this means anything more than that the Abbot failed to substantiate his case we may well doubt; at all events, even were all these charges true, they are but a mild indictment of a man who lived in the first half of the fifteenth century amidst so many temptations to excess, a man, too, against whom any accusations would have been welcomed by the faction in power during the last few years of his life.
Before concluding this estimate of his public character as Protector and heir to the throne, let us remember that, when issuing an edict forbidding certain lords to come to Parliament with too extensive retinues, he named Huntingdon among the number, a man who supported him, and consequently found himself neglected and estranged from the King in the days when Humphrey made his famous protest against the administration of the Bishop of Winchester. Personal motives, therefore, did not always overrule his sense of justice; it cannot be for nothing that Gloucester earned the title of the ‘Good Duke,’[1084] and it is impossible to believe that he would have been so popular with the people, if he had been guilty of frequent acts of oppression. Taken with the facts of his career, it is more likely that this popularity sprang not from a mere charm of manner, but from the fact that he alone of the great men of his time tried to curb the licence of the nobles and the depredations of the lawless. He was not the inspirer of disturbances, nor the author of the Wars of the Roses. By his very existence he was what Sandford calls ‘a grand prop of the Red Rose tree,’[1085] and this—strange paradox—by reason of his alliance with the leader of the White Rose cause. Gloucester was not the first Yorkist—his instincts and his interests alike prevented this; he was not the subverter of the Lancastrian dynasty. On the contrary, it was his death that created the Yorkist party, and paved the way for the downfall of his nephew.
TRIBUTE OF GLOUCESTER’S SERVANTS
Humphrey was no traitor to his King, nor enemy of his father’s House, quite the reverse. He had done services to his country, which are forgotten amid the factious surroundings of his career. Biassed though they may be, there is much to be said for the truth of the statements made in the lament put into the mouths of his followers, when they had buried their master. ‘Now,’ they cried, ‘the right hand of the King has gone, the right arm of his strength has withered, he has lost him, who in the day of his necessity was both wall and rampart to him. Who but his uncle put down internal risings against the throne when they occurred, or went forth to fight, when enemies from without threatened him? He at last has laid aside his arms, and has retired to that region where there is peace and rest, and sorrow is no more. Who but the Duke of Gloucester, during the King’s infancy, drove the Duke of Burgundy from Picardy? Who but that Duke, during the same King’s boyhood, brought the enemies of the Cross of Christ to destruction? Who but he, in the King’s full age, gave peace to the people in every quarter? Who but he, in a word, throughout the King’s nonage, was his faithful foster-father and foster-mother alike? And now he is said to be a traitor, he who in the past had so many opportunities to do that which he is accused of doing in the present. Nay, that accusation is a lie most false, devised by those greedy devourers, who kill virtue when it is exalted, and who seek occasion to suffocate the innocent, that they may increase their plunder! Wherefore shall we his servants, who moved in the same surroundings as he, who were cognisant of all his secrets, who knew all his actions, shall we then allow a prince so illustrious, a duke so tireless in doing his duty, a soldier so trusty and prudent, one too guiltless of any crime, to be thus torn by dogs, thus stung by scorpions? Be this thought far from us and from those who favour justice and piety, for the great Duke himself both loved, nurtured, and enforced justice, and it is a pious work to champion one who can no longer defend himself.’[1086]
Such is the one estimate of Gloucester’s services to the body politic, but we must not look merely on one side of the picture. Humphrey claimed to guide the ship of state, and in many cases his policy was right, and his actions were just, but he lacked that touch of greatness which might have lifted him above the wrangles of party politics. His statesmanship was at fault. He had no power of gauging a man’s worth, or weighing a policy in the balance. He rushed blindly into a compromising war at Hainault, a position from which there was no retreat, and he cut but a sorry figure when he abandoned the whole enterprise. He could not sustain a definite line of action, and drive steadily to the end he had in view. He complicated his policy with too many endeavours, and brought none of them to good effect. He could not keep an unswerving course, as Protector, or disassociate himself from the tricks of party warfare; in opposition he could not maintain a steady attack, but contented himself with fitful outbursts of impotent wrath.
WAR POLICY
Yet, apart from this, his policy had a consistency which his actions lacked. When the second stage of the Hundred Years’ War was about to begin, he adopted an attitude which he maintained throughout his life. He then voted against the Burgundian alliance; at St. Omer he showed his dislike of such an alliance in the scant courtesy with which he treated the Count of Charolais; he defied the same Count when Duke of Burgundy with an animosity both personal and political; he encouraged the defiance which England flung at this same Duke after the congress of Arras; he resisted the release of Orleans partly because it was a Burgundian suggestion. Again, in 1415, he favoured an Armagnac alliance, and we find him voicing the same principle when it was a question of a marriage for Henry VI. with a daughter of the Armagnac or Angevin House. In the matter of the war, too, he was consistent to the extent of folly. His active life had begun in the French wars; he had accompanied his brother Henry V. on his expeditions to France. Henceforth he accepted the war as part of his political creed, and would not move one hair’s-breadth therefrom. At a time when no useful advantage could be gained by the prolongation of hostilities, he opposed the wise, pacific movement of Cardinal Beaufort, and did much to defame his political character with posterity by this dogged persistence of principle. Yet he could not devise a scheme for carrying on the war, and though he offered to undertake the command, he did not persist in his suggestion.
There is a possible view of Gloucester’s war policy, which may explain, if not justify, his attitude. In a political poem of the period, well known as the ‘Libel of English Policy,’ the principle, that command of the narrow seas was necessary for the safety of English commerce, is insisted on at some length.[1087] This command, it is to be presumed, was only to be maintained by a secure hold on both sides of the Channel, and the continuance of the war was considered necessary for this purpose. Calais, however, even in those days, was a sufficient guarantee for the openness of the Channel; but the supposition that trade considerations had their influence on Gloucester’s war policy is strengthened by his well-known connection with trade interests in the country. His popularity with the Londoners must have taken its origin from this side of the Duke’s policy, and from certain discussions at the Parliament at Leicester in 1426 it seems likely that the riotous tendencies in London, that led to the garrisoning of the Tower in 1425, had some connection with a movement against foreign traders in the capital.[1088] Gloucester, it will be remembered, had supported the Londoners in their objections to the garrison, and we may perhaps deduce from this a tendency to, what we may call, an ‘All British Policy,’ a trace of the modern Jingo politician. Humphrey had other connections besides this with the trading interests in the country. He had some intercourse with the weavers of York,[1089] and his wife was interested at one time in a petition from one of the glovers of that city.[1090] We also find a letter addressed to Gloucester during the reign of Henry VI. from an English merchant at Amiens, asking for his protection in matters commercial.[1091] The Duke had realised the strength of that new power which was arising in England, the power of the middle classes, the traders, and herein he foreshadowed the subsequent commercial policy of the first Yorkist King.