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Henry The Fifth
From a drawing by G. P. Harding after an original Picture in Kensington Palace.
HENRY OF MONMOUTH:
OR,
MEMOIRS
OF THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF
HENRY THE FIFTH,
AS
PRINCE OF WALES AND KING OF ENGLAND.
BY J. ENDELL TYLER, B.D.
RECTOR OF ST. GILES IN THE FIELDS.
"Go, call up Cheshire and Lancashire,
And Derby hills, that are so free;
But neither married man, nor widow's son;
No widow's curse shall go with me."
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
1838.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
TO HER MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY THE QUEEN.
Madam,
The gracious intimation of your Royal pleasure that these Memoirs of your renowned Predecessor should be dedicated to your Majesty, while it increases my solicitude, suggests at the same time new and cheering anticipations. I cannot but hope that, appearing in the world under the auspices of your great name, the religious and moral purposes which this work is designed to serve will be more widely and effectually realised.
Under a lively sense of the literary defects which render these volumes unworthy of so august a patronage, to one point I may revert with feelings of satisfaction and encouragement. I have gone only where Truth seemed to lead me on the way: and this, in your Majesty's judgment, I am assured will compensate for many imperfections.
That your Majesty may ever abundantly enjoy the riches of HIS favour who is the Spirit of Truth, and having long worn your diadem here in honour and peace, in the midst of an affectionate and happy people, may resign it in exchange for an eternal crown in heaven, is the prayer of one who rejoices in the privilege of numbering himself,
Madam,
Among your Majesty's
Most faithful and devoted
Subjects and servants.
J. Endell Tyler.
24, Bedford Square,
May 24, 1838.
PREFACE.
Memoirs such as these of Henry of Monmouth might doubtless be made more attractive and entertaining were their Author to supply the deficiencies of authentic records by the inventions of his fancy, and adorn the result of careful inquiry into matters of fact by the descriptive imagery and colourings of fiction. To a writer, also, who could at once handle the pen of the biographer and of the poet, few names would offer a more ample field for the excursive range of historical romance than the life of Henry of Monmouth. From the day of his first compulsory visit to Ireland, abounding as that time does with deeply interesting incidents, to his last hour in the now-ruined castle of Vincennes;—or rather, from his mother's espousals to the interment of his earthly remains within the sacred precincts of Westminster, every period teems with animating suggestions. So far, however, from possessing such adventitious recommendations, the point on which (rather perhaps than any other) an apology might be expected for this work, is, that it has freely tested by the standard of truth those delineations of Henry's character which have contributed to immortalize our great historical dramatist. The Author, indeed, is willing to confess that he would gladly have withdrawn from the task of assaying the substantial accuracy and soundness of Shakspeare's historical and biographical views, could he have done so safely and without a compromise of principle. He would have avoided such an inquiry, not only in deference to the acknowledged rule which does not suffer a poet to be fettered by the rigid shackles of unbending facts; but from a disinclination also to interfere, even in appearance, with the full and free enjoyment of those exquisite scenes of humour, wit, and nature, in which Henry is the hero, and his "riotous, reckless companions" are subordinate in dramatical excellence only to himself. The Author may also not unwillingly grant, that (with the majority of those who give a tone to the "form and pressure" of the age) Shakspeare has done more to invest the character of Henry with a never-dying interest beyond the lot of ordinary monarchs, than the bare records of historical verity could ever have effected. Still he feels that he had no alternative. He must either have ascertained the historical worth of those scenic representations, or have suffered to remain in their full force the deep and prevalent impressions, as to Henry's principles and conduct, which owe, if not their origin, yet, at least, much of their universality and vividness, to Shakspeare. The poet is dear, and our early associations are dear; and pleasures often tasted without satiety are dear: but to every rightly balanced mind Truth will be dearer than all.
It must nevertheless be here intimated, that these volumes are neither exclusively, nor yet especially, designed for the antiquarian student. The Author has indeed sought for genuine information at every fountain-head accessible to him; but he has prepared the result of his researches for the use (he would trust, for the improvement as well as the gratification,) of the general reader. And whilst he has not consciously omitted any essential reference, he has guarded against interrupting the course of his narrative by an unnecessary accumulation of authorities. He is, however, compelled to confess that he rises from this very limited sphere of inquiry under an impression, which grew stronger and deeper as his work advanced, that, before a history of our country can be produced worthy of a place among the records of mankind, the still hidden treasures of the metropolis and of our universities, together with the stores which are known to exist in foreign libraries, must be studied with far more of devoted care and zealous perseverance than have hitherto been bestowed upon them. That the honest and able student, however unwearied in zeal and industry, may be supplied with the indispensable means of verifying what tradition has delivered down, enucleating difficulties, rectifying mistakes, reconciling apparent inconsistencies, clearing up doubts, and removing that mass of confusion and error under which the truth often now lies buried,—our national history must be made a subject of national interest. It is a maxim of our law, and the constant practice of our courts of justice, never to admit evidence unless it be the best which under the circumstances can be obtained. Were this principle of jurisprudence recognised and adopted in historical criticism, the student would carefully ascend to the first witnesses of every period, on whom modern writers (however eloquent or sagacious) must depend for their information. How lamentably devoid of authority and credit is the work of the most popular and celebrated of our modern English historians in consequence of his unhappy neglect of this fundamental principle, will be made palpably evident by the instances which could not be left unnoticed even within the narrow range of these Memoirs. And the Author is generally persuaded that, without a far more comprehensive and intimate acquaintance with original documents than our writers have possessed, or apparently have thought it their duty to cultivate, error will continue to be propagated as heretofore; and our annals will abound with surmises and misrepresentations, instead of being the guardian depositories of historical verity. Only by the acknowledgment and application of the principle here advocated will England be supplied with those monuments of our race, those "POSSESSIONS FOR EVER," as the Prince of Historians[1] once named them, which may instruct the world in the philosophy of moral cause and effect, exhibit honestly and clearly the natural workings of the human heart, and diffuse through the mass of our fellow-creatures a practical assurance that piety, justice, and charity form the only sure groundwork of a people's glory and happiness; while religious and moral depravity in a nation, no less than in an individual, leads, (tardily it may be and remotely, but by ultimate and inevitable consequence,) to failure and degradation.
In those portions of his work which have a more immediate bearing upon religious principles and conduct, the Author has not adopted the most exciting mode of discussing the various subjects which have naturally fallen under his review. Party spirit, though it seldom fails to engender a more absorbing interest for the time, and often clothes a subject with an importance not its own, will find in these pages no response to its sentiments, under whatever character it may give utterance to them. In these departments of his inquiry, to himself far the most interesting, (and many such there are, especially in the second volume,) the Author trusts that he has been guided by the Apostolical maxim of "Speaking the Truth in Love." He has not willingly advanced a single sentiment which should unnecessarily cause pain to any individual or to any class of men; he has not been tempted by morbid delicacy or fear to suppress or disguise his view of the very Truth.
The reader will readily perceive that, with reference to the foreign and domestic policy of our country,—the advances of civilization,—the manners of private life, as well in the higher as in the more humble grades of society,—the state of literature,—the progress of the English constitution,—the condition and discipline of the army, which Henry greatly improved,—and the rise and progress of the royal navy, of which he was virtually the founder, many topics are either purposely avoided, or only incidentally and cursorily noticed. To one point especially (a subject in itself most animating and uplifting, and intimately interwoven with the period embraced by these Memoirs,) he would have rejoiced to devote a far greater portion of his book, had it been compatible with the immediate design of his undertaking;—the promise and the dawn of the Reformation.
However the value of his labours may be ultimately appreciated, the Author confidently trusts that their publication can do no disservice to the cause of truth, of sound morality, and of pure religion. He would hope, indeed, that in one point at least the power of an example of pernicious tendency might be weakened by the issue of his investigation. If the results of these inquiries be acquiesced in as sound and just, no young man can be encouraged by Henry's example (as it is feared many, especially in the higher classes, have been encouraged,) in early habits of moral delinquency, with the intention of extricating himself in time from the dominion of his passions, and of becoming, like Henry, in after-life a pattern of religion and virtue, "the mirror of every grace and excellence." The divine, the moralist, and the historian know that authenticated instances of such sudden moral revolutions in character are very rare,—exceptions to the general rule; and among those exceptions we cannot be justified in numbering Henry of Monmouth.
He was bold and merciful and kind, but he was no libertine, in his youth; he was brave and generous and just, but he was no persecutor, in his manhood. On the throne he upheld the royal authority with mingled energy and mildness, and he approved himself to his subjects as a wise and beneficent King; in his private individual capacity he was a bountiful and considerate, though strict and firm master, a warm and sincere friend, a faithful and loving husband. He passed through life under the habitual sense of an overruling Providence; and, in his premature death, he left us the example of a Christian's patient and pious resignation to the Divine Will. As long as he lived, he was an object of the most ardent and enthusiastic admiration, confidence, and love; and, whilst the English monarchy shall remain among the unforgotten things on earth, his memory will be honoured, and his name will be enrolled among the Noble and the Good.
TABLE OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS,
IN THEIR CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER.
[*] Those years, months, or days, respectively, to which an asterisk is attached, are not considered to have been so fully ascertained as the other dates.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
CHAPTER I.
1387-1398.
CHAPTER II.
1398-1399.
CHAPTER III.
1398-1399.
CHAPTER IV.
1399-1400.
CHAPTER V.
1400-1401.
CHAPTER VI.
1403.
CHAPTER VII.
1402-1403.
CHAPTER VIII.
1403.
CHAPTER IX.
1403-1404.
CHAPTER X.
1405-1406.
CHAPTER XI.
1407-1409.
CHAPTER XII.
1409-1412.
CHAPTER XIII.
1412-1413.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
APPENDIX.
No. 1. [Owyn Glyndowr]
2. [Lydgate]
3. [Occleve]
MEMOIRS
OF
HENRY OF MONMOUTH.
CHAPTER I.
henry of monmouth's parents. — time and place of his birth. — john of gaunt and blanche of lancaster. — henry bolinbroke. — monmouth castle. — henry's infancy and childhood. — his education. — residence in oxford. — bolinbroke's banishment.
1387-1398.
Henry the Fifth was the son of Henry of Bolinbroke and Mary daughter of Humfrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford. No direct and positive evidence has yet been discovered to fix with unerring accuracy the day or the place of his birth. If however we assume the statement of the chroniclers[2] to be true, that he was born at Monmouth on the ninth day of August in the year 1387,[3] history supplies many ascertained facts not only consistent with that hypothesis, but in confirmation of it; whilst none are found to throw upon it the faintest shade of improbability. At first sight it might perhaps appear strange that the exact time of the birth as well of Henry of Monmouth, as of his father, two successive kings of England, should even yet remain the subject of conjecture, tradition, and inference; whilst the day and place of the birth of Henry VI. is matter of historical record. A single reflection, however, on the circumstances of their respective births, renders the absence of all precise testimony in the one case natural; whilst it would have been altogether unintelligible in the other. When Henry of Bolinbroke and Henry of Monmouth were born, their fathers were subjects, and nothing of national interest was at the time associated with their appearance in the world; at Henry of Windsor's birth he was the acknowledged heir to the throne both of England and of France.
To what extent Henry of Monmouth's future character and conduct were, under Providence, affected by the circumstances of his family and its several members, it would perhaps be less philosophical than presumptuous to define. But, that those circumstances were peculiarly calculated to influence him in his principles and views and actions, will be acknowledged by every one who becomes acquainted with them, and who is at the same time in the least degree conversant with the growth and workings of the human mind. It must, therefore, fall within the province of the inquiry instituted in these pages, to take a brief review of the domestic history of Henry's family through the years of his childhood and early youth.
John, surnamed "of Gaunt," from Ghent or Gand in Flanders, the place of his birth, was the fourth son of King Edward the Third. At a very early age he married Blanche, daughter and heiress of Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Lancaster, great-grandson of Henry the Third.[4] The time of his marriage with Blanche,[5] though recorded with sufficient precision, is indeed comparatively of little consequence; whilst the date of their son Henry's birth, from the influence which the age of a father may have on the destinies of his child, becomes matter of much importance to those who take any interest in the history of their grandson, Henry of Monmouth. On this point it has been already intimated that no conclusive evidence is directly upon record. The principal facts, however, which enable us to draw an inference of high probability, are associated with so pleasing and so exemplary a custom, though now indeed fallen into great desuetude among us, that to review them compensates for any disappointment which might be felt from the want of absolute certainty in the issue of our research. It was Henry of Bolinbroke's custom[6] every year on the Feast of the Lord's Supper, that is, on the Thursday before Easter, to clothe as many poor persons as equalled the number of years which he had completed on the preceding birthday; and by examining the accounts still preserved in the archives of the Duchy of Lancaster, the details of which would be altogether uninteresting in this place, we are led to infer that Henry Bolinbroke was born on the 4th of April 1366. Blanche, his mother, survived the birth of Bolinbroke probably not more than three years. Whether this lady found in John of Gaunt a faithful and loving husband, or whether his libertinism caused her to pass her short life in disappointment and sorrow, no authentic document enables us to pronounce. It is, however, impossible to close our eyes against the painful fact, that Catherine Swynford, who was the partner of his guilt during the life of his second wife, Constance, had been an inmate of his family, as the confidential attendant on his wife Blanche, and the governess of her daughters, Philippa and Elizabeth of Lancaster. That he afterwards, by a life of abandoned profligacy, disgraced the religion which he professed, is, unhappily, put beyond conjecture or vague rumour. Though we cannot infer from any expenses about her funeral and her memory, that Blanche was the sole object of his affections, (the most lavish costliness at the tomb of the departed too often being only in proportion to the unkindness shown to the living,) yet it may be worth observing, that in 1372 we find an entry in the account, of 20l. paid to two chaplains (together with the expenses of the altar) to say masses for her soul. He was then already[7] married to his second wife, Constance, daughter of Peter the Cruel, King of Castile. By this lady, whom he often calls "the Queen," he appears to have had only one child, married, it is said, to Henry III. King of Castile.[8] Constance, the mother, is represented to have been one of the most amiable and exemplary persons of the age, "above other women innocent and devout;" and from her husband she deserved treatment far different from what it was her unhappy lot to experience. But however severe were her sufferings, she probably concealed them within her own breast: and she neither left her husband nor abandoned her duties in disgust. It is indeed possible, though in the highest degree improbable, that whilst his unprincipled conduct was too notorious to be concealed from others, she was not herself made fully acquainted with his infidelity towards her. At all events we may indulge in the belief that she proved to her husband's only legitimate son, Henry of Bolinbroke, a kind and watchful mother.
At that period of our history, persons married at a much earlier age than is usually the case among us now; and the espousals of young people often preceded for some years the period of quitting their parents' home, and living together, as man and wife. In the year 1381 Henry, at that time only fifteen years of age, was espoused[9] to his future wife, Mary Bohun, daughter of the Earl of Hereford, who had then not reached her twelfth year. These espousals were in those days accompanied by the religious service of matrimony, and the bride assumed the title of her espoused husband.[10]
We shall probably not be in error, if we fix the period of the Countess of Derby leaving her mother's for her husband's roof somewhere in the year 1386, when he was twenty, and she sixteen years old; and we are not without reason for believing that they made Monmouth Castle their home.
Some modern writers affirm that this was the favourite residence of John of Gaunt's family: but it is very questionable whether from having themselves experienced the beauty and loveliness of the spot, they have not been unconsciously tempted to venture this assertion without historical evidence. Monmouth is indeed situated in one of the fairest and loveliest valleys within the four seas of Britain. Near its centre, on a rising ground between the river Monnow (from which the town derives its name) and the Wye and not far from their confluence, the ruins of the Castle are still visible. The poet Gray looked over it from the side of the Kymin Hill, when he described the scene before him as "the delight of his eyes, and the very seat of pleasure." With his testimony, unbiassed as it was by local attachment, it would be unwise to mingle the feelings of affection entertained by one whose earliest associations, "redolent of joy and youth," can scarcely rescue his judgment from the suspicion of partiality. At that time John of Gaunt's estates and princely mansions studded, at various distances, the whole land of England from its northern border to the southern coast. And whether he allowed Henry of Bolinbroke to select for himself from the ample pages of his rent-roll the spot to which he would take his bride, or whether he assigned it of his own choice to his son as the fairest of his possessions; or whether any other cause determined the place of Henry the Fifth's birth, we have no reasonable ground for doubting that he was born in the Castle of Monmouth, on the 9th of August 1387.
Of Monmouth Castle, the dwindling ruins are now very scanty, and in point of architecture present nothing worthy of an antiquary's research. They are washed by the streams of the Monnow, and are embosomed in gardens and orchards, clothing the knoll on which they stand; the aspect of the southern walls, and the rocky character of the soil admirably adapting them for the growth of the vine, and the ripening of its fruits. In the memory of some old inhabitants, who were not gathered to their fathers when the Author could first take an interest in such things, and who often amused his childhood with tales of former days, the remains of the Hall of Justice were still traceable within the narrowed pile; and the crumbling bench on which the Justices of the Circuit once sate, was often usurped by the boys in their mock trials of judge and jury. Somewhat more than half a century ago, a gentleman whose garden reached to one of the last remaining towers, had reason to be thankful for a marked interposition in his behalf of the protecting hand of Providence. He was enjoying himself on a summer's evening in an alcove built under the shelter and shade of the castle, when a gust of wind blew out the candle by his side, just at the time when he felt disposed to replenish and rekindle his pipe. He went consequently with the lantern in his hand towards his house, intending to renew his evening's recreation; but he had scarcely reached the door when the wall fell, burying his retreat, and the entire slope, with its shrubs and flowers and fruits, under one mass of ruin.
From this castle, tradition says, that being a sickly child, Henry was taken to Courtfield, at the distance of six or seven miles from Monmouth, to be nursed there. That tradition is doubtless very ancient; and the cradle itself in which Henry is said to have been rocked, was shown there till within these few years, when it was sold, and taken from the house. It has since changed hands, if it be any longer in existence. The local traditions, indeed, in the neighbourhood of Courtfield and Goodrich are almost universally mingled with the very natural mistake that, when Henry of Monmouth was born, his father was king; and so far a shade of improbability may be supposed to invest them all alike; yet the variety of them in that one district, and the total absence of any stories relative to the same event on every other side of Monmouth, should seem to countenance a belief that some real foundation existed for the broad and general features of these traditionary tales. Thus, though the account acquiesced in by some writers, that the Marchioness of Salisbury was Henry of Monmouth's nurse at Courtfield, may have originated in an officious anxiety to supply an infant prince with a nurse suitable to his royal birth; still, probably, that appendage would not have been annexed to a story utterly without foundation, and consequently throws no incredibility on the fact that the eldest son of the young Earl of Derby was nursed at Courtfield. Thus, too, though the recorded salutation of the ferryman of Goodrich congratulates his Majesty on the birth of a noble prince, as the King was hastening from his court and palace of Windsor to his castle of Monmouth; yet the unstationary habits of Bolingbroke, his love of journeyings and travels, and his restlessness at home, render it very probable that he was absent from Monmouth even when the hour of perilous anxiety was approaching; and thus on his return homeward (perhaps too from Richard's court at Windsor) the first tidings of the safety of his Countess and the birth of the young lord may have saluted him as he crossed the Wye at Goodrich Ferry. So again in the little village of Cruse, lying between the church and the castle of Goodrich, the cottagers still tell, from father to son, as they have told for centuries over their winter's hearth, how the herald, hurrying from Monmouth to Goodrich fast as whip and spur could urge his steed onward, with the tidings of the Prince of Wales' birth, fell headlong, (the horse dropping under him in the short, steep, and rugged lane leading to the ravine, beyond which the castle stands,) and was killed on the spot. No doubt the idea of its being the news of a prince's birth, that was thus posted on, has added, in the imagination of the villagers, to the horse's fleetness and the breathless impetuosity of the messenger; but it is very probable that the news of the young lord's birth, heir to the dukedom of Lancaster, should have been hastened from the castle of Monmouth to Goodrich; and there is no solid reason for discrediting the story.
Still, beyond tradition, there is no evidence at all to fix the young lord either at Courtfield, or indeed at Monmouth, for any period subsequently to his birth. On the contrary, several items of expense in the "Wardrobe account of Henry, Earl of Derby," would induce us to infer either that the tradition is unfounded, or that at the utmost the infant lord was nursed at Courtfield only for a few months. In that account[11] we find an entry of a charge for a "long gown" for the young lord Henry; and also the payment of 2l. to a midwife for her attendance on the Countess during her confinement at the birth of the young lord Thomas, the gift of the Earl, "at London." By this document it is proved that Henry's younger brother, the future Duke of Clarence, was born before October 1388, and that some time in the preceding year Henry was himself still in the long robes of an infant; and that the family had removed from Monmouth to London. In the Wardrobe expenses of the Countess for the same year, we find several items of sums defrayed for the clothes of the young lords Henry and Thomas together, but no allusion whatever to the brothers being separate: one entry,[12] fixing Thomas and his nurse at Kenilworth soon after his birth, leaves no ground for supposing that his elder brother was either at Monmouth or at Courtfield. It may be matter of disappointment and of surprise that Henry's name does not occur in connexion with the place of his birth in any single contemporary document now known. The fact, however, is so. But whilst the place of Henry's nursing is thus left in uncertainty, the name of his nurse—in itself a matter not of the slightest importance—is made known to us not only in the Wardrobe account of his mother, but also by a gratifying circumstance, which bears direct testimony to his own kind and grateful, and considerate and liberal mind. Her name was Johanna Waring; on whom, very shortly after he ascended the throne, he settled an annuity of 20l. "in consideration of good service done to him in former days."[13]
Very few incidents are recorded which can throw light upon Henry's childhood, and for those few we are indebted chiefly to the dry details of account-books. In these many particular items of expense occur relative as well to Henry as to his brothers; which, probably, would differ very little from those of other young noblemen of England at that period of her history. The records of the Duchy of Lancaster provide us with a very scanty supply of such particulars as convey any interesting information on the circumstances and occupations and amusements of Henry of Monmouth. From these records, however, we learn that he was attacked by some complaint, probably both sudden and dangerous, in the spring of 1395; for among the receiver's accounts is found the charge of "6s. 8d. for Thomas Pye, and a horse hired at London, March 18th, to carry him to Leicester with all speed, on account of the illness of the young lord Henry." In the year 1397, when he was just ten years old, a few entries occur, somewhat interesting, as intimations of his boyish pursuits. Such are the charge of "8d. paid by the hands of Adam Garston for harpstrings purchased for the harp of the young lord Henry," and "12d. to Stephen Furbour for a new scabbard of a sword for young lord Henry," and "1s. 6d. for three-fourths of an ounce of tissue of black silk bought at London of Margaret Stranson for a sword of young lord Henry." Whilst we cannot but be sometimes amused by the minuteness with which the expenditure of the smallest sum in so large an establishment as John of Gaunt's is detailed, these little incidents prepare us for the statement given of Henry's early youth by the chroniclers,—that he was fond both of minstrelsy and of military exercises.
The same dry pages, however, assure us that his more severe studies were not neglected. In the accounts for the year ending February 1396, we find a charge of "4s. for seven books of Grammar contained in one volume, and bought at London for the young Lord Henry." The receiver-general's record informs us of the name of the lord Humfrey's tutor;[14] but who was appointed to instruct the young lord Henry does not appear; nor can we tell how soon he was put under the guidance of Henry Beaufort. If, as we have reason to believe, he had that celebrated man as his instructor, or at least the superintendent of his studies, in Oxford so early as 1399, we may not, perhaps, be mistaken in conjecturing, that even this volume of Grammar was first learned under the direction of the future Cardinal.
Scanty as are the materials from which we must weave our opinion with regard to the first years of Henry of Monmouth, they are sufficient to suggest many reflections upon the advantages as well as the unfavourable circumstances which attended him: We must first, however, revert to a few more particulars relative to his family and its chief members.
His father, who was then about twenty-four years of age, certainly left England[15] between the 6th of May 1390 and the 30th of April 1391, and proceeded to Barbary. During his absence his Countess was delivered of Humfrey, his fourth son. Between the summers of 1392 and 1393 he undertook a journey to Prussia, and to the Holy Sepulchre.
The next year visited Henry with one of the most severe losses which can befall a youth of his age. His mother,[16] then only twenty-four years old, having given birth to four sons and two daughters, was taken away from the anxious cares and comforts of her earthly career, in the very prime of life.[17] Nor was this the only bereavement which befell the family at this time. Constance, the second wife of John of Gaunt, a lady to whose religious and moral worth the strongest and warmest testimony is borne by the chroniclers of the time; and who might (had it so pleased the Disposer of all things) have watched over the education of her husband's grandchildren, was also this same year removed from them to her rest: they were both buried at Leicester, then one of the chief residences of the family.
The mind cannot contemplate the case of either of these ladies without feelings of pity rather than of envy. They were both nobly born, and nobly married; and yet the elder was joined to a man, who, to say the very least, shared his love for her with another; and the younger, though requiring, every year of her married state, all the attention and comfort and support of an affectionate husband, yet was more than once left to experience a temporary widowhood. And if we withdraw our thoughts from those of whom this family was then deprived, there is little to lessen our estimate of their loss, when we think of those whom they left behind. Henry's maternal grandmother, indeed, the Countess of Hereford, survived her daughter many years; and we are not without an intimation that she at least interested herself in her grandson's welfare. In his will, dated 1415, he bequeaths to Thomas, Bishop of Durham, "the missal and portiphorium[18] which we had of the gift of our dear grandmother, the Countess of Hereford."[19] We may fairly infer from this circumstance that Henry had at least one near relation both able and willing to guide him in the right way. How far opportunities were afforded her of exercising her maternal feelings towards him, cannot now be ascertained; and with the exception of this noble lady, there is no other to whom we can turn with entire satisfaction, when we contemplate the salutary effects either of precept or example in the case of Henry of Monmouth.
His father indeed was a gallant young knight, often distinguishing himself at justs and tournaments;[20] of an active, ardent and enterprising spirit; nor is any imputation against his moral character found recorded. But we have no ground for believing, that he devoted much of his time and thoughts to the education of his children.
Henry Beaufort, the natural son of John of Gaunt, a person of commanding talent, and of considerable attainments for that age, whilst there is no reason to believe him to have been that abandoned worldling whose eyes finally closed in black despair without a hope of Heaven, yet was not the individual to whose training a Christian parent would willingly intrust the education of his child. And in John of Gaunt[21] himself, little perhaps can be discovered either in principle, or judgment, or conduct, which his grandson could imitate with religious and moral profit. Thus we find Henry of Monmouth in his childhood labouring under many disadvantages. Still our knowledge of the domestic arrangements and private circumstances of his family is confessedly very limited; and it would be unwise to conclude that there were no mitigating causes in operation, nor any advantages to put as a counterpoise into the opposite scale. He may have been under the guidance and tuition of a good Christian and well-informed man; he may have been surrounded by companions whose acquaintance would be a blessing. But this is all conjecture; and probably the question is now beyond the reach of any satisfactory solution.
With regard to the next step also in young Henry's progress towards manhood, we equally depend upon tradition for the views which we may be induced to take: still it is a tradition in which we shall probably acquiesce without great danger of error. He is said to have been sent to Oxford, and to have studied in "The Queen's College" under the tuition of Henry Beaufort, his paternal uncle, then Chancellor of the University. No document is known to exist among the archives of the College or of the University, which can throw any light on this point; except that the fact has been established of Henry Beaufort having been admitted a member of Queen's College, and of his having been chancellor of the university only for the year 1398.
This extraordinary man was consecrated Bishop of Lincoln, July 14, 1398, as appears by the Episcopal Register of that See; after which he did not reside in Oxford. If therefore Henry of Monmouth studied under him in that university, it must have been through the spring and summer of that year, the eleventh of his age. And on this we may rely as the most probable fact. Certainly in the old buildings of Queen's College, a chamber used to be pointed out by successive generations as Henry the Fifth's. It stood over the gateway opposite to St. Edmund's Hall. A portrait of him in painted glass, commemorative of the circumstance, was seen in the window, with an inscription (as it should seem of comparatively recent date) in Latin:
To record the fact for ever.
The Emperor of Britain,
The Triumphant Lord of France,
The Conqueror of his enemies and of himself,
Henry V.
Of this little chamber,
Once the great Inhabitant.[22]
It may be observed that in the tender age of Henry involved in this supposition, there is nothing in the least calculated to throw a shade of improbability on this uniform tradition. Many in those days became members of the university at the time of life when they would now be sent to school.[23] And possibly we shall be most right in supposing that Henry (though perhaps without himself being enrolled among the regular academics) lived with his uncle, then chancellor, and studied under his superintendence. There is nothing on record (hitherto discovered) in the slightest degree inconsistent with this view; whereas if we were inclined to adopt the representation of some (on what authority it does not appear) that Henry was sent to Oxford soon after his father ascended the throne, many and serious difficulties would present themselves. In the first place his uncle, who was legitimated only the year before, was prematurely made Bishop of Lincoln by the Pope, through the interest of John of Gaunt, in the year 1398, and never resided in Oxford afterwards. How old he was at his consecration, has not yet been satisfactorily established; conjecture would lead us to regard him as a few years only (perhaps ten or twelve) older than his nephew. Otterbourne tells us that he was made Bishop[24] when yet a boy.
In the next place we can scarcely discover six months in Henry's life after his uncle's consecration, through which we can with equal probability suppose him to have passed his time in Oxford. It is next to certain that before the following October term, he had been removed into King Richard's palace, carefully watched (as we shall see hereafter); whilst in the spring of the following year, 1399, he was unquestionably obliged to accompany that monarch in his expedition to Ireland. Shortly after his return, in the autumn of that year, on his father's accession to the throne, he was created Prince of Wales; and through the following spring the probability is strong that his father was too anxiously engaged in negotiating a marriage between him and a daughter of the French King, and too deeply interested in providing for him an adequate establishment in the metropolis, to take any measures for improving and cultivating his mind in the university. Independently of which we may be fully assured that had he become a student of the University of Oxford as Prince of Wales, it would not have been left to chance, to deliver his name down to after-ages: the archives of the University would have furnished direct and contemporary evidence of so remarkable a fact; and the College would have with pride enrolled him at the time among its members: as the boy of the Earl of Derby, or the Duke of Hereford, living with his uncle, there is nothing[25] in the omission of his name inconsistent with our hypothesis. At all events, whatever evidence exists of Henry having resided under any circumstances in Oxford, fixes him there under the tuition of the future Cardinal; and that well-known personage is proved not to have resided there subsequently to his appointment to the see[26] of Lincoln, in the summer of 1398.[27]
What were Henry's studies in Oxford, whether, like Ingulphus some centuries before, he drank to his fill of "Aristotle's[28] Philosophy and Cicero's Rhetoric," or whether his mind was chiefly directed to the scholastic theology so prevalent in his day, it were fruitless to inquire. His uncle (as we have already intimated) seems to have been a person of some learning, an excellent man of business, and in the command of a ready eloquence. In establishing his positions before the parliament, we find him not only quoting from the Bible, (often, it must be acknowledged, without any strict propriety of application,) but also citing facts from ancient Grecian history. We may, however, safely conclude that the Chancellor of Oxford confined himself to the general superintendence of his nephew's education, intrusting the details to others more competent to instruct him in the various branches of literature. It is very probable that to some arrangement of that kind Henry was indebted for his acquaintance with such excellent men as his friends John Carpenter of Oriel, and Thomas Rodman, or Rodburn, of Merton.[29]
But whatever course of study was chalked out for him, and through however long or short a period before the summer of 1398, or under what guides soever he pursued it, it is impossible to read his letters, and reflect on what is authentically recorded of him, without being involuntarily impressed by an assurance that he had imbibed a very considerable knowledge of Holy Scripture, even beyond the young men of his day. His conduct also in after-life would prepare us for the testimony borne to him by chroniclers, that "he held in great veneration such as surpassed in learning and virtue." Still, whilst we regret that history throws no fuller light on the early days of Henry of Monmouth, we cannot but hope that in the hidden treasures of manuscripts hereafter to be again brought into the light of day, much may be yet ascertained on satisfactory evidence; and we must leave the subject to those more favoured times.[30]
But whilst doubts may still be thought to hang over the exact time and the duration of Henry's academical pursuits, it is matter of historical certainty, that an event took place in the autumn of 1398, which turned the whole stream of his life into an entirely new channel, and led him by a very brief course to the inheritance of the throne of England. His father, hitherto known as the Earl of Derby, was created Duke of Hereford by King Richard II. Very shortly after his creation, he stated openly in parliament[31] that the Duke of Norfolk, whilst they were riding together between Brentford and London, had assured him of the King's intention to get rid of them both, and also of the Duke of Lancaster with other noblemen, of whose designs against his throne or person he was apprehensive. The Duke of Norfolk denied the charge, and a trial of battle was appointed to decide the merits of the question. The King, doubting probably the effect on himself of the issue of that wager of battle, postponed the day from time to time. At length he fixed finally upon the 16th of September, and summoned the two noblemen to redeem their pledges at Coventry. Very splendid preparations had been made for the struggle; and the whole kingdom shewed the most anxious interest in the result. On the day appointed, the Lord High Constable and the Lord High Marshal of England, with a very great company, and splendidly arrayed, first entered the lists. About the hour of prime the Duke of Hereford appeared at the barriers on a white courser, barbed with blue and green velvet, sumptuously embroidered with swans and antelopes[32] of goldsmith's work,[33] and armed at all points. The King himself soon after entered with great pomp, attended by the peers of the realm, and above ten thousand men in arms to prevent any tumult. The Duke of Norfolk then came on a steed "barbed with crimson velvet embroidered with mulberry-trees and lions of silver." At the proclamation of the herald, Hereford sprang upon his horse, and advanced six or seven paces to meet his adversary. The king upon this suddenly threw down his warder, and commanded the spears to be taken from the combatants, and that they should resume their chairs of state. He then ordered proclamation to be made that the Duke of Hereford had honourably[34] fulfilled his duty; and yet, without assigning any reason, he immediately sentenced him to be banished for ten years: at the same time he condemned the Duke of Norfolk to perpetual exile, adding also the confiscation of his property, except only one thousand pounds by the year. This act of tyranny towards Bolinbroke,[35] contrary, as the chroniclers say, to the known laws and customs of the realm, as well as to the principles of common justice, led by direct consequence to the subversion of Richard's throne, and probably to his premature death.
Whilst however the people sympathized with the Duke of Hereford, and reproached the King for his rashness, as impolitic as it was iniquitous, they seemed to view in the sentence of the Duke of Norfolk, the visitation of divine justice avenging on his head the cruel murder of the Duke of Gloucester. It was remarked (says Walsingham) that the sentence was passed on him by Richard on the very same day of the year on which, only one twelvemonth before, he had caused that unhappy prince to be suffocated in Calais.
CHAPTER II.
henry taken into the care of richard. — death of john of gaunt. — henry knighted by richard in ireland. — his person and manners. — news of bolinbroke's landing and hostile measures reaches ireland.—indecision and delay of richard. — he shuts up henry and the young duke of gloucester in trym castle. — reflections on the fate of these two cousins — of bolinbroke — richard — and the widowed duchess of gloucester.
1398-1399.
The first years of Henry of Monmouth fall, in part at least, as we have seen, within the province of conjecture rather than of authentic history: and the facts for reasonable conjecture to work upon are much more scanty with regard to this royal child, than we find to be the case with many persons far less renowned, and still further removed from our day. But from the date of his father's banishment, very few months in any one year elapse without supplying some clue, which enables us to trace him step by step through the whole career of his eventful life, to the very last day and hour of his mortal existence.
His father's exile dates from October 13, 1398, when Henry had just concluded his eleventh year. Whether up to that time he had been living chiefly in his father's house, or with his grandfather John of Gaunt, or with his maternal grandmother, or with his uncle Henry Beaufort either at Oxford or elsewhere, we have no positive evidence. John of Gaunt did not die till the 3rd of the following February, and he would, doubtless, have taken his grandson under his especial care, at all events on his father's banishment, probably assigning Henry Beaufort to be his tutor and governor. But when Richard sentenced Henry of Bolinbroke, he was too sensible of his own injustice, and too much alive, in this instance at least, to his own danger, to suffer Henry of Monmouth to remain at large. One of the most ancient, and most widely adopted principles of tyranny, pronounces the man "to be a fool, who when he makes away with a father, leaves the son in power to avenge his parent's wrongs." Accordingly Richard took immediate possession of the persons both of the son of the murdered Duke of Gloucester, and of Henry of Monmouth, of whose relatives, as the chroniclers say, he had reason to be especially afraid.
John of Gaunt, we may conclude, now disabled as he was, by those infirmities[36] which hastened him to the grave[37] more rapidly than the mere progress of calm decay, could exert no effectual means either of sheltering his son from the unjust tyrant who sentenced him to ten years banishment from his native land, or of rescuing his grandson from the close custody of the same oppressor. Still the very name of that renowned duke must have put some restraint upon his royal nephew. The lion had yet life, and might put forth one dying effort, if the oppression were carried past his endurance; and it might have been thought well to let him linger and slumber on, till nature should have struggled with him finally. We find, consequently, that though before Bolinbroke's departure from England Richard had remitted four years of his banishment, as a sort of peace-offering perhaps to John of Gaunt, no sooner was that formidable person dead, than Richard, throwing off all semblance of moderation, exiled Bolinbroke for life, and seized and confiscated his property.[38]
Though Richard behaved towards Bolinbroke with such reckless injustice, he does not appear to have been forgetful of his wants during his exile. Within two months of the date of his banishment the Pell Rolls record payment (14 November 1398) "of a thousand marks to the Duke of Hereford, of the King's gift, for the aid and support of himself, and the supply of his wants, on his retirement from England to parts beyond the seas assigned for his sojourn." And on the 20th of the following June payment is recorded of "1586l. 13s. 4d. part of the 2000l. which the king had granted to him, to be advanced annually at the usual times." But this was a poor compensation for the honours and princely possessions of the Dukedom of Lancaster, and the comforts of his home. No wonder if he were often found, as historians tell, in deep depression of spirits, whilst he thought of "his four brave boys, and two lovely daughters," now doubly orphans.
The plan of this work does not admit of any detailed enumeration of the exactions, nor of any minute inquiry into the violence and reckless tyranny of Richard. It cannot be doubted that a long series of oppressive measures at this time alienated the affections of many of his subjects, and exposed his person and his throne to the attacks of proud and powerful, as well as injured and insulted enemies. His conduct appears to evince little short of infatuation. He was determined to act the part of a tyrant with a high hand, and he defied the consequences of his rashness. He had stopped his ears to sounds which must have warned him of dangers setting thick around him from every side; and he had wilfully closed his eyes, and refused to look towards the precipice whither he was every day hastening.[39] He rushed on, despising the danger, till he fell once, and for ever. The murder of the Duke of Gloucester, involving on the part of the king one of the most base and cold-hearted pieces of treachery ever recorded of any ruthless tyrant, had filled the whole realm with indignation; and chroniclers do not hesitate to affirm that Richard would have been then deposed and destroyed, had it not been for the interposition of John of Gaunt; and now the eldest son of that very man, who alone had sheltered him from his people's vengeance, Richard banishes for ever without cause, confiscating his princely estates, and pursuing him with bitter and insulting vengeance even in his exile.
If his own reason had not warned him beforehand against such self-destroying acts of iniquity and violence, yet the signs of the popular feeling which followed them, would have recalled any but an infatuated man to a sense of the danger into which he was plunging. When Henry of Bolinbroke left London for his exile, forty thousand persons are said to have been in the streets lamenting his fate; and the mayor, accompanied by a large body of the higher class of citizens, attended him on his way as far as Dartford; and some never left him till they saw him embark at Dover.[40] But to all these clear and strong indications of the tone and temper of his subjects, Richard was obstinately blind and deaf. If he heard and saw them, he hardened himself against the only practical influence which they were calculated to produce. Setting the approaching political storm, and every moral peril, at defiance, he quitted England just as though he were leaving behind him contented and devoted subjects.
Having assigned Wallingford Castle for the residence of his Queen Isabel, he departed for Ireland about the 18th of May; but did not set sail from Milford Haven till the 29th; he reached Waterford on the last day of the month. Though Richard[41] was prompted solely by reasons of policy and by a regard to his own safety to take with him to Ireland Henry of Monmouth, (together with Humphrey, son of the murdered Duke of Gloucester,) we should do him great injustice were we to suppose that he treated him as an enemy.[42] On the contrary, we have reason to believe that he behaved towards him with great kindness and respect.[43]
About midsummer the king advanced towards the country and strong-holds of Macmore, his most formidable antagonist. On the opening of that campaign he conferred upon young Henry the order of knighthood;[44] and wishing to signalize this mark of the royal favour with unusual celebrity, he conferred on that day the same distinction (expressly in honour of Henry) upon ten others his companions in arms. The particulars of this transaction, and the details of the entire campaign against the Wild Irish, as they were called, are recorded in a metrical history by a Frenchman named Creton, who was an eye-witness of the whole affair. This gentleman had accepted the invitation of a countryman of his own, a knight, to accompany him to England. On their arrival in London they found the king himself in the very act of starting for Ireland, and thither they went in his company as amateurs.
This writer thus describes[45] the courteous act and pledge of friendship bestowed by Richard on his youthful companion and prisoner, recording, with some interesting circumstances, the very words of knightly and royal admonition with which the distinguished honour was conferred. "Early on a summer's morning, the vigil of St. John, the King marched directly to Macmore[46],] who would neither submit, nor obey him in any way, but affirmed that he was himself the rightful king of Ireland, and that he would never cease from war and the defence of his country till death. Then the King prepared to go into the depths of the deserts in search of him. For his abode is in the woods, where he is accustomed to dwell at all seasons; and he had with him, according to report, 3000 hardy men. Wilder people I never saw; they did not appear to be much dismayed at the English. The whole host were assembled at the entrance of the deep woods; and every one put himself right well in his array: for it was thought for the time that we should have battle; but I know that the Irish did not show themselves on this occasion. Orders were then given by the King that every thing around should be set fire to. Many a village and house were then consumed. While this was going on, the King, who bears leopards in his arms, caused a space to be cleared on all sides, and pennon and standards to be quickly hoisted. Afterwards, out of true and entire affection, he sent for the son of the Duke of Lancaster, a fair young and handsome bachelor,[47] and knighted him, saying, 'My fair cousin, henceforth be gallant and bold, for, unless you conquer, you will have little name for valour.' And for his greater honour and satisfaction, to the end that it might be better imprinted on his memory, he made eight or ten other knights; but indeed I do not know what their names were, for I took little heed about the matter, seeing that melancholy, uneasiness and care had formed, and altogether chosen my heart for their abode, and anxiety had dispossessed me of joy."
The English suffered much from hunger and fatigue during this expedition in search of the archrebel, and after many fruitless attempts to reduce him, reached Dublin, where all their sufferings were forgotten in the plenty and pleasures of that "good city."
The day on which Richard conferred upon Henry so distinguished a mark of his regard and friendship, offering the first occasion on which any reference is made to his personal appearance and bodily constitution, the present may, perhaps, be deemed an appropriate place for recording what we may have been able to glean in that department of biographical memoir with which few, probably, are inclined to dispense.
M. Creton, in his account of this memorable knighthood, represents Henry as "a handsome young bachelor," then in his twelfth year; and very little further, of a specific character, is recorded by his immediate contemporaries. The chroniclers next in succession describe him as a man of "a spare make, tall, and well-proportioned," "exceeding," says Stow, "the ordinary stature of men;" beautiful of visage, his bones small: nevertheless he was of marvellous strength, pliant and passing swift of limb; and so trained was he to feats of agility by discipline and exercise, that with one or two of his lords he could, on foot, readily give chase to a deer without hounds, bow, or sling, and catch the fleetest of the herd. By the period of his early youth he must have outgrown the weakness and sickliness of his childhood, or he could never have endured the fatigues of body and mind to which he was exposed through his almost incessant campaigns from his fourteenth to his twentieth year. These hardships, nevertheless, may have been all the while sowing the seeds of that fatal disease which at the last carried him so prematurely from the labours, and vexations, and honours of this world.[48]
With regard to his habits of social intercourse, his powers of conversation, the disposition and bent of his mind when he mingled with others, whether in the seasons of public business, or the more private hours of retirement and relaxation, (whilst the never-ending tales of his dissipation among his unthrifty reckless playmates are reserved for a separate inquiry,) a few words only will suffice in this place. In addition to the testimony of later authors, the records of contemporaneous antiquity, sometimes by direct allusion to him, sometimes incidentally and as it were undesignedly, lead us to infer that he was a distinguished example of affability and courteousness; still not usually a man of many words; clear in his own conception of the subject of conversation or debate, and ready in conveying it to others, yet peculiarly modest and unassuming in maintaining his opinion, listening with so natural an ease and deference, and kindness to the sentiments and remarks and arguments of others, as to draw into a close and warm personal attachment to himself those who had the happiness to be on terms of familiarity with him. Certainly the unanimous voice of Parliament ascribed to him, when engaged in the deeper and graver discussions involving the interests and welfare of the state, qualities corresponding in every particular with these representations of individual chroniclers. The glowing, living language of Shakspeare seems only to have recommended by becoming and graceful ornament, what had its existence really and substantially in truth.
Hear him but reason in divinity,
And, all-admiring, with an inward wish
You would desire the King were made a prelate:
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
You would say, it hath been all-in-all his study:
List his discourse in war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle render'd you in music:
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still,
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,
To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences.
Soon after Richard reached Dublin, the Duke of Albemarle, Constable of England, arrived with a large fleet, and with forces all ready for a campaign: but he came too late for any good purpose, and better had it been for Richard had he never come at all. His advice was the king's ruin. Richard with his army passed full six weeks in Dublin, in the free enjoyment of ease and pleasure, altogether ignorant of the terrible reverse which awaited him. In consequence of the uninterrupted prevalence of adverse winds, his self-indulgence was undisturbed by the news which the first change of weather was destined to bring. Through the whole of this momentous crisis the weather was so boisterous that no vessel dared to brave the tempest. On the return of a quiet sea, a barge arrived at Dublin upon a Saturday, laden with the appalling tidings that Henry, Duke of Lancaster, had returned from exile and was carrying all before him; supported by Richard's most powerful subjects, now in open rebellion against his authority; and encouraged by the Archbishop, who in the Pope's name preached plenary absolution and a place in paradise to all who would assist the duke to recover his just rights from his unjust sovereign. The King grew pale at this news, and instantly resolved to return to England on the Monday following. But the Duke of Albemarle advised that unhappy monarch, fatally for his interests, to remain in Ireland till his whole navy could be gathered; and in the mean time[49] to send over the Earl of Salisbury. That nobleman departed forthwith, (Richard solemnly promising to put to sea in six days,) and landed at Conway, "the strongest and fairest town in Wales."
Either before the Earl of Salisbury's departure, or as is the more probable, towards the last of those eighteen days through which afterwards, to the ruin of his cause, Richard wasted his time (the only time left him) in Ireland, he sent for Henry of Monmouth, and upbraided him with his father's treason. Otterbourne minutely records the conversation which is said then to have passed between them. "Henry, my child," said the King, "see what your father has done to me. He has actually invaded my land as an enemy, and, as if in regular warfare, has taken captive and put to death my liege subjects without mercy and pity. Indeed, child, for you individually I am very sorry, because for this unhappy proceeding of your father you must perhaps be deprived of your inheritance." 'To whom Henry, though a boy, replied in no boyish manner,' "In truth, my gracious king and lord, I am sincerely grieved by these tidings; and, as I conceive, you are fully assured of my innocence in this proceeding of my father."—"I know," replied the King, "that the crime which your father has perpetrated does not attach at all to you; and therefore I hold you excused of it altogether."
Soon after this interview the unfortunate Richard set off from Dublin to return to his kingdom, which was now passing rapidly into other hands: but his two youthful captives, Henry of Monmouth, and Humfrey, son of the late Duke of Gloucester, he caused to be shut up in the safe keeping of the castle of Trym.[50] From that day, which must have been somewhere about the 20th of August, till the following October,[51] when he was created Prince of Wales in a full assembly of the nobles and commons of England, we have no direct mention made of Henry of Monmouth. That much of the intervening time was a season of doubt and anxiety and distress to him, we have every reason to believe. Though he had been previously detained as a hostage, yet he had been treated with great kindness; and Richard, probably inspiring him with feelings of confidence and attachment towards himself, had led him to forget his father's enemy and oppressor in his own personal benefactor and friend. Richard had now left him and his cousin (a youth doubly related to him) as prisoners in a solitary castle far from their friends, and in the custody of men at whose hands they could not anticipate what treatment they might receive. How long they remained in this state of close and, as they might well deem it, perilous confinement, we do not learn. Probably the Duke of Lancaster, on hearing of Richard's departure from Dublin, sent off immediately to release the two captive youths; or at the latest, as soon as he had the unhappy king within his power. On the one hand it may be argued that had Henry of Monmouth joined his father before the cavalcade reached London, so remarkable a circumstance would have been noticed by the French author, who accompanied them the whole way. On the other hand we learn from the Pell Rolls that a ship was sent from Chester to conduct him to London, though the payment of a debt does not fix the date at which it was incurred.[52] We may be assured no time was lost by the Duke, by those whom he employed, or by his son; at all events that Henry was restored to his father at Chester (a circumstance which would be implied had Richard there been consigned to the custody of young Humphrey), is not at all in evidence. The far more reasonable inference from what is recorded is, that Humphrey, his young fellow-prisoner and companion, and near relative and friend, was snatched from him by sudden death at the very time when Providence seemed to have opened to him a joyous return to liberty and to his widowed mother. There is no reason to doubt that the news of Richard's captivity, and the Duke of Lancaster's success, reached the two friends whilst prisoners in Trym Castle; nor that they were both released, and embarked together for England. Where they were when the hand of death separated them is not certainly known. The general tradition is, that poor Humphrey had no sooner left the Irish coast than he was seized by a fever, or by the plague, which carried him off before the ship could reach England. But whether he landed or not, whether he had joined the Duke or not before the fatal malady attacked him, there is no doubt that his death followed hard upon his release. His mother, the widowed duchess of his murdered father, who had moreover never been allowed the solace of her child's company, now bereft of husband and son, could bear up against her affliction no longer. On hearing of her desolate state, excessive grief overwhelmed her; and she fell sick and died.[53]
It is impossible to contemplate these two youthful relatives setting out from the prison doors full of joy, and happy auguries, and mutual congratulations, in health and spirits, panting for their dearest friends,—one going to a princedom, and a throne, and a brilliant career of victories, the other to disease and death,—without being impressed with the wonderful acts of an inscrutable Providence, with the ignorance and weakness of man, and with the resistless will of the merciful Ruler of man's destinies. Even had young Humphrey foreseen his dissolution, then so nigh at hand, as the gates of Trym Castle opened for their release, he might well have addressed his companion in words once used by the prince of Grecian philosophers at the close of his defence before the court who condemned him. "And now we are going, I indeed to death, you to life; to which of the two is the better fate assigned is known only to God!"[54]
Since this page was first written, the Author has been led to examine the Pell Rolls;[55] and he is induced to confess that, independently of the full confirmation afforded by those original documents to numberless facts referred to in these Memoirs, many an interesting train of thought is suggested by the inspection of them. The bare and dry entries of one single roll at the period now under consideration, bring with them to his mind associations of a truly affecting, serious, and solemn character. The very last roll of Richard II. by the merest details of expenditure records the payment of sums made by that unhappy monarch to Bolinbroke, then in exile, expatriated by his unjust and wanton decree; to Humphrey, the orphan son of the late murdered Duke of Gloucester; to Henry of Monmouth his cousin, both then in Richard's safe keeping; and to Eleanor, the widowed mother of Humphrey, and maternal aunt of Henry. Can any event paint in deeper and stronger colouring the vicissitudes and reverses of mortality, "the changes and chances" of our life on earth? Before the scribe had filled the next half-year's roll, (now lying with it side by side, and speaking like a monitor from the grave to high and low, rich and poor, prince and peasant alike,)—of those five persons, Richard had lost both his crown and his life; Bolinbroke had mounted the throne from which Richard had fallen; Henry of Monmouth had been created Prince of Wales, and was hailed as heir apparent to that throne; his cousin Humphrey, once the companion of his imprisonment, and the sharer of his anticipations of good or ill, had been carried off from this world by death at the very time of his release; and the broken-hearted Eleanor, (the root and the branch of her happiness now gone for ever,) unable to bear up against her sorrows, had sunk under their weight into her grave![56]
CHAPTER III.
proceedings of bolinbroke from his interview with archbishop arundel, in paris, to his making king richard his prisoner. — conduct of richard from the news of bolinbroke's landing. — treachery of northumberland. — richard taken by bolinbroke to london.
1398-1399.
Whether Henry of Monmouth met his father and the cavalcade at Chester, or joined them on their road to London, or followed them thither; whether he witnessed on the way the humiliation and melancholy of his friend, and the triumphant exaltation of his father, or not; every step taken by either of those two chieftains through the eventful weeks which intervened between King Richard making the youth a knight in the wilds of Ireland, and King Henry creating him Prince of Wales in the face of the nation at Westminster, bears immediately upon his destinies. And the whole complicated tissue of circumstances then in progress is so inseparably connected with him both individually and as the future monarch of England, that a brief review of the proceedings as well of the falling as of the rising antagonist seems indispensable in this place.
Henry Bolinbroke (having now, by the death of John of Gaunt,[57] succeeded to the dukedom of Lancaster,) found himself, during his exile, far from being the only victim of Richard's rash despotism; nor the only one determined to try, if necessary, and when occasion should offer, by strength of hand to recover their lost country, together with their property and their homes. Indeed, others proved to have been far more forward in that bold measure than himself. Whilst he was in Paris[58], he received by the hands of Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, an invitation to return, and set up his standard in their native land. Arundel,[59] himself one of Richard's victims, had been banished two years before the Duke, by a sentence which confiscated[60] all his property. He made his way, we are told, to Valenciennes in the disguise of a pilgrim, and, proceeding to Paris, obtained an interview with Henry; whom he found at first less sanguine perhaps, and less ready for so desperate an undertaking, than he expected. The Duke for some time remained, apparently, absorbed in deep thought, as he leaned on a window overlooking a garden; and at length replied that he would consult his friends. Their advice, seconding the appeal of the Archbishop, prevailed upon Henry to prepare for the hazardous enterprise; in which success might indeed be rewarded with the crown of England, over and above the recovery of his own vast possessions, but in which defeat must lead inevitably to ruin. He left Paris for Brittany; and sailing from one of its ports with three ships, having in his company only fifteen lances or knights, he made for the English coast.[61] About the 4th of July he came to shore at the spot where of old time had stood the decayed town of Ravenspur. Landing boldly though with such a handful of men, he was soon joined by the Percies, and other powerful leaders; and so eagerly did the people flock to him as their deliverer from a headstrong reckless despot, that in a short time he numbered as his followers sixty thousand men, who had staked their property, their liberty, and their lives, on the same die. The most probable account of his proceedings up to his return to Chester, immediately before the unfortunate Richard fell into his hands, is the following, for which we are chiefly indebted to the translator of the "Metrical History."[62]
The Duke of Lancaster's first measures, upon his landing, are not very accurately recorded by historians, nor do the accounts impress us with an opinion that they had arisen out of any digested plan of operation. But a comparison of the desultory information which is furnished relative to them, with what may fairly be supposed to be most advisable on his part, will, perhaps, show that they were the result of good calculation. The following is offered as the outline of the scheme. To secure to Henry a chance of success, it was in the first instance necessary, not only that the most powerful nobles remaining at home should join him, but that means should be devised for detaining the King in Ireland. It would be expedient to try the disposition of the people on the eastern coast, and that he should select a spot for his descent, from which he could immediately put himself in communication with his friends: Yorkshire afforded the greatest facility. The wind which took Albemarle over into Ireland must have been advantageous to Lancaster; and the tempestuous weather which succeeded must have been equally in his favour. He landed at Ravenspur, and marched to Doncaster, where the Percies and others came down to him. Knaresborough and Pontefract were his own by inheritance. Having thus gained a footing, he marched toward the south; and his opponents withdrew from before him.[63] The council, consisting of the Regent, Scroop, Bussy, Green, and Bagot, could interpose no obstacle, and were driven by fear to Bristol. The Duke of York made some show of resistance. Perhaps the others intended to make for Milford, and thence to Ireland, or to await the King's arrival. Henry advanced to Leicester and Kenilworth, both his own castles; and went through Evesham to Gloucester and Berkeley. At Berkeley he came to an agreement with the Duke of York, secured many of Richard's adherents, passed on to Bristol, took the castle, slew three out of four of the unfortunate ministers, and gained possession of a place entirely disaffected to the King. From Bristol he directed his course back to Gloucester, thence bearing westward to Ross and Hereford. Here he was joined by the Bishop and Lord Mortimer;[64] and, passing through Leominster and Ludlow, he moved onward,[65] increasing his forces as he advanced towards Shrewsbury and Chester. In the mean time the plans of Albemarle (if we acknowledge the reality of his alleged treason) were equally successful. At all events Richard's course was most favourable for Henry. Had he gone from Dublin to Chester, he might have anticipated his enemy, and infused a spirit into his loyal subjects. But he came southward whilst Henry was going northward; and, about the time that Richard came on shore at Milford, Henry must have been at Chester, surrounded by his friends, at the head of an immense force, master of London, Bristol, and Chester, and of all the fortresses that had been his own, or had belonged to Richard, within a triangle, the apex of which is to be found in Bristol, the base extending from the mouth of the Humber to that of the Dee.
If in like manner we trace the steps of the misguided and infatuated Richard, treacherous at once and betrayed, from the hour when the news of Bolinbroke's hostile and successful measures reached him in Dublin to the day when he fell powerless into the hands of his enemy, we shall find much to reprehend; much to pity; little, perhaps nothing, which can excite the faintest shadow of respect. When the Earl of Salisbury left Ireland, Richard solemnly promised him that he would himself put to sea in six days; and the Earl, whose conduct is marked by devoted zeal and fidelity in the cause of his unfortunate master, acted upon that pledge. But whether misled by the treacherous suggestions of Albemarle, or following his own self-will or imbecility of judgment, Richard allowed eighteen days to pass away before he embarked, every hour of which was pregnant with most momentous consequences to himself and his throne. He landed at length at Milford Haven, and then had with him thirty-two thousand men; but in one night desertions reduced this body to six thousand. It is said that, on the morrow after his return, looking from his window on the field where his forces were encamped overnight, he was panic-struck by the smallness of the number that remained. After deliberation, he resolved on starting in the night for Conway, disguised in the garb of a poor priest of the Friars-Minor, and taking with him only thirteen or fourteen friends. He so planned his journey as to reach Conway at break of day, where he found the Earl of Salisbury no less dejected than himself. That faithful adherent had taken effectual means, on his first arrival in Wales, to collect an army of Cambrians and Cheshiremen in sufficient strength, had the King joined them with his forces, to offer a formidable resistance to Bolinbroke. But, at the end of fourteen days, despairing of the King's arrival, they had disbanded themselves, and were scattered over the country, or returned to their own homes. On his clandestine departure also from Milford, the wreck of his army, who till then had remained true, were entirely dispersed: and his great treasure was plundered by the Welshmen, who are said to have been indignant at the treachery of those who were left in charge of it. Among many others, Sir Thomas Percy himself escaped naked and wounded to the Duke of Lancaster.
The page of history which records the proceedings of the two hostile parties, from the day of Richard's reaching Conway to the hour of his falling into the hands of Henry, presents in every line transactions stained with so much of falsehood and baseness, such revolting treachery and deceit, such wilful deliberate perjury, that we would gladly pass it over unread, or throw upon it the most cursory glance compatible with a bare knowledge of the facts. But whilst the desperate wickedness of the human heart is made to stand out through these transactions in most frightful colours, and whilst we shudder at the wanton prostitution of the most solemn ordinances of the Gospel, there so painfully exemplified, the same page suggests to us topics of gratitude and of admonition,—gratitude that we live in an age when these shameless violations of moral and religious bonds would not be tolerated; and admonition that the principles of integrity and righteousness can alone exalt a people, or be consistent with sound policy. The truth of history here stamps the king, the nobleman, the prelate, and the more humble instruments of the deeds then done, with the indelible stain of dishonour and falsehood, and a reckless violation of law human and divine.
The King, believing his case to be desperate, implored his friends to advise him what course to adopt. At their suggestion he sent off the Dukes of Exeter and Surrey to remonstrate with Bolinbroke, and to ascertain his real designs. Meanwhile he retired with his little party of adherents, not more than sixteen in all, first to Beaumaris; then to Caernarvon, where he stayed four or five days, living on the most scanty supply of the coarsest food, and having nothing better to lie upon than a bed of straw. Though this was a very secure place for him to await the issue of the present course of events, yet, unable to endure such privations any longer, he returned to Conway. Henry, meanwhile, having reduced Holt Castle,[66] and possessed himself of an immense treasure deposited there by Richard, was bent on securing the person of that unhappy King. He consequently detained the two Dukes in Chester Castle; and then, at the suggestion, it is said, of Arundel, sent off the Earl of Northumberland with an injunction not to return till either by truce or force he should bring back the King with him. The Duke, attended by one thousand archers and four hundred lances, advanced to Flint Castle, which forthwith surrendered to him. From Flint he proceeded along a toilsome road over mountains and rocks to Ruddlan, the gates of which were thrown open to him; when he promised the aged castellan the enjoyment of his post there for life. Richard knew nothing of these proceedings, and wondered at the absence of his two noble messengers, who had started for Chester eight days before. Northumberland, meanwhile, having left his men concealed in ambush "under the rough and lofty cliffs of a rock," proceeded with five or six only towards Conway. When he reached the arm[67] of the sea which washes the walls of that fortress, he sent over a herald, who immediately obtained permission for his approach. Northumberland, having reached the royal presence, proposed that the King should proceed with Bolinbroke amicably to London, and there hold a parliament, and suffer certain individuals named to be put on their trial. "I will swear," continued he, "on the body of our Lord, consecrated by a priest's hand, that Duke Henry shall faithfully observe all that I have said; for he solemnly pledged it to me on the sacrament when we parted." Northumberland then withdrew from the royal presence, when Richard thus immediately addressed his few counsellors: "Fair sirs, we will grant it to him, for I see no other way. But I swear to you that, whatever assurance I may give him, he shall be surely put to a bitter death; and, doubt it not, no parliament shall be held at Westminster. As soon as I have spoken with Henry, I will summon the men of Wales, and make head against him; and, if he and his friends be discomfited, they shall die: some of them I will flay alive." Richard had declared, before he left Ireland, that if he could but once get Henry into his power, he "would put him to death in such a manner as that it should be spoken of long enough, even in Turkey." Northumberland was then called in; and Richard assured him that, if he would swear upon the Host, he would himself keep the agreement. "Sire," said the Earl, "let the body of our Lord be consecrated. I will swear that there is no deceit in this affair; and that the Duke will observe the whole as you have heard me relate it here." Each of them heard mass with all outward devotion, and the Earl took the oath. Never was a contract made more solemnly, nor with a more fixed purpose on both sides not to abide by its engagements: it is indeed a dark and painful page of history. Upon this pledge of faith, mutually given, the King readily agreed to start, sending the Earl on to prepare dinner at Ruddlan. No sooner had he reached the top of the rock than he beheld the Earl and his men below; and, being now made aware of the treachery by which he had fallen, he sank into despair, and had recourse only to unmanly lamentations. His company did not amount to more than five-and-twenty, and retreat was impossible. His remonstrance with the Earl as he charged him with perjury and treason availed nothing, and he was compelled to proceed. They dined at Ruddlan, and in the afternoon advanced to Flint Castle.[68] Northumberland lost no time in apprising the Duke of the success of his enterprise. The messenger arrived at Chester by break of day; and the Duke set off with his army, consisting, it is said, of not less than one hundred thousand men. After mass, Richard beheld the Duke's army approaching along the sea-shore. "It was marvellously great, and showed such joy that the sound and noise of their instruments, horns, buisines, and trumpets, were heard even as far as the castle." The Duke sent forward the Archbishop, with two or three more, who approached the King with profound reverence. In this interview, the first which the King had with Arundel since he banished him the realm and confiscated his property, they conversed long together, and alone. Whether any allusion was then made to the necessity of the King abdicating the throne, must remain matter of conjecture. The Archbishop (as the Earl of Salisbury reported) then comforted the King in a very gentle manner, bidding him not to be alarmed, for no harm should happen to his person.
The Duke did not enter the castle till Richard had dined, for he was fasting. At the table he protracted the repast as long as possible, dreading what would follow. Dinner ended, he came down to meet the Duke, who, as soon as he perceived him, bowed very low. The King took off his bonnet, and first addressed Bolinbroke. The French writer pledges himself to the words, for, as he says, he heard them distinctly, and understood them well. "Fair cousin of Lancaster, you be right welcome." Then Duke Henry replied, bowing very low to the ground, "My lord, I am come sooner than you sent for me; the reason whereof I will tell you. The common report of your people is, that you have for the space of twenty years and more governed them very badly and very rigorously; and they are not well contented therewith: but, if it please our Lord, I will help you to govern them better." King Richard answered, "Fair cousin, since it pleaseth you, it pleaseth me well."
Upon this Henry, when the time of departure was come, knowing that Richard was particularly fond of fine horses, is said to have called out with a stern and savage voice, "Bring out the King's horses;" and then they brought him two little horses not worth forty francs: the King mounted one, and the Earl of Salisbury the other. If this statement of the French author be accurate, Henry compelled his king to endure a studied mortification, as uncalled for as it was galling. Starting from Flint about two o'clock, they proceeded to Chester,[69] where the Duke was received with much reverence, whilst the unhappy monarch was exposed to the insults of the populace. He was immediately lodged in the castle with his few friends, and committed to the safe keeping[70] of his enemies. In Chester they remained three days,[71] and then set out on the direct road for London. Their route lay through Nantwich, Newcastle-under-Line, Stafford, Lichfield, Daventry, Dunstable, and St. Alban's. Nothing worthy of notice occurred during the journey, excepting that at Lichfield the captive monarch endeavoured to escape at night, letting himself down into a garden from the window of a tower in which they kept him. He was however discovered, and from that time was watched most narrowly.
When they arrived within five or six miles of London, they were met by various companies of the citizens, who carried Richard first to Westminster, and next day to the Tower. Henry did not accompany him, but turned aside to enter the city by the chief gate. Proceeding along Cheapside to St. Paul's amidst the shouts of the people, he advanced in full armour to the high altar; and, having offered his devotions there, he turned to the tomb of his father and mother, at the sight of which he was deeply affected. He lodged the first five or six days in the Bishop's house; and, having passed another fortnight in the hospital of St. John without Smithfield, he went to Hertford, where he stayed three weeks. From that place he returned to meet the parliament, which was to assemble in Westminster Hall on Wednesday the first day of October.
CHAPTER IV.
richard resigns the crown. — bolinbroke elected king. — henry of monmouth created prince of wales. — plot to murder the king. — death of richard. — friendship between him and henry. — proposals for a marriage between henry and isabella, richard's widow. — henry applies for an establishment. — hostile movement of the scots. — tradition, that young henry marched against them, doubted.
1399-1400.
When the Parliament assembled in Westminster Hall on Wednesday, October 1st, a deed of resignation of the crown, signed by the unhappy Richard, and witnessed by various noblemen, was publicly read. Whether, whilst a prisoner in the Tower, his own reflections on the present desperate state of his affairs had persuaded him to sever himself from the cares and dangers of a throne; whether he was prevailed upon to take this view of his interests and his duty by the honest and kind representations of his friends; or whether any degree of violence by threat and intimidation, and alarming suggestions of future evils had been applied, it would be fruitless to inquire. The instrument indeed itself is couched in terms expressive of most voluntary and unqualified self-abasement, containing, among others, such expressions as these: "I do entirely, of my own accord, renounce and totally resign all kingly dignity and majesty; purely, voluntarily, simply, and absolutely." On the other hand, if we believe Hardyng,[72] the Earl of Northumberland asserted in his hearing, that Richard was forced to resign under fear of death. Probably from his first interview with the Archbishop in Flint Castle, to the hour before he consented to execute the deed, his mind had been gradually and incessantly worked upon by various agents, and different means, short of actual violence, for the purpose of inducing him to make, ostensibly at least, a voluntary resignation. He seems more than once to have received both from Arundel and from Bolinbroke himself an assurance of personal safety; and he is said to have expressed a hope that "his cousin would be a kind lord to him."
The accounts which have reached us of the proceedings, from the hour when Richard entered the Tower, to the day of his death, are by no means uniform and consistent. The discrepancies however of the various traditions neither involve any questions of great moment, nor deeply affect the characters of those who were engaged in the transactions. Of one point indeed we must make an exception, the cause and circumstances of Richard's death; which, whether we look to Henry of Monmouth's previous attachment to him, and the respect which he industriously and cordially showed to the royal remains immediately upon his becoming king himself; or whether we reflect on the vast consequence, affecting Bolinbroke's character, involved in the solution of that much-agitated question, may seem not only to justify, but to call for, a distinct examination in these pages. The broad facts, meanwhile, relative to the deposition of Richard and the accession of Henry, are clear and indisputable; whilst some minor details, which have excited discussions carried on in the spirit rather of angry contention than of the simple love of truth, and which do not bear immediately upon the objects of this work, may well be omitted altogether.
After Richard had signed the deed of resignation, the steps were few and easy which brought Henry of Bolinbroke to the throne. The Parliament, either by acquiescence in his demand of the crown, or in answer to the questions put by the Archbishop, elected Henry IV. to be king, and denounced all as traitors who should gainsay his election or dispute his right.[73] He was crowned on the Feast of St. Edward, Monday, October 13, when his eldest son, Henry of Monmouth, bore the principal sword of state; who, on the Wednesday following, by assent of all the Estates of Parliament, was created Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of Chester, and declared also to be heir to the throne.[74] On this occasion his father caused him to be brought into his presence as he sate upon the throne; and placing a gold coronet, adorned with pearls, on his head, and a ring on his finger, and delivering into his hand a golden rod, kissed him and blessed him. Upon which the Duke of York conducted him to the place assigned to him in right of his principality. The Estates swore "the same faith, loyalty, aid, assistance, and fealty" to the Prince, as they had sworn to his father. Much interest seems to have been excited by this creation of Henry of Monmouth as Prince of Wales. On the 3rd of November the "Commons pray that they may be entered on the record at the election of the Prince." Their petition can scarcely be interpreted as betraying a jealousy of the King's[75] right to create a Prince of Wales independently of themselves; we must suppose it to have originated in a desire to be recorded as parties to an act so popular and national. At all events, in the then transition-state of the royal authority, it was wise to combine the suffrages of all: and the prayer of the Commons was granted. Another petition, presented on the same day, acquaints us with the lively interest taken from the very first by the nation at large in the safety and welfare of their young Prince. They pray the King, "for-as-much as the Prince is of tender age, that he may not pass forth from this realm: for we, the Commons, are informed that the Scots are coming with a mighty hand; and they of Ireland are purposed to elect a king among them, and disdain to hold of you." This lively interest evinced thus early, and in so remarkable a manner, by the Commons, in the safety and well-being of Henry of Monmouth, seems never to have slackened at any single period of his life, but to have grown still warmer and wider to the very close of his career on earth. After the date of his creation as Prince of Wales, history records but few facts relating to him, either in his private or in his public capacity, till we find him personally engaged in suppressing the Welsh rebellion; a point of time, however, far less removed from the commencement of his princedom than seems to have been generally assumed. In the same month, (November 1399,) a negociation was set on foot, with the view of bringing about a marriage between the Prince and one of the daughters of the King of France. Since, however, he apparently took no part whatever in the affair, the whole being a state-device to avoid the restoration to France of Isabella's valuable paraphernalia; and since the proposals of the treaty were for the marriage of a daughter of France with the Prince, OR any other of the King's children; we need not dwell on a proceeding which reflects no great credit on his father, or his father's counsellors.[76] Not that the vague offers of the negociation stamp the negociators with any especial disgrace. We cannot read many pages of history without being apprised, sometimes by painful instances, sometimes by circumstances rather ludicrous than grave, that marriages were regarded as subjects of fair and honourable negociation; but requiring no greater delicacy than nations would observe in bargaining for a line of territory, or individuals in the purchase and sale of an estate. The negociation, however, though the Bishop of Durham and the Earl of Worcester, both able diplomatists, were employed on the part of England, was eventually broken off; and Isabella was reluctantly and tardily restored to France.
About the close of the present year, or the commencement of the following (1400), the Prince makes a direct appeal to the council,[77] that they would forthwith fulfil the expressed desire of his royal father with reference to his princely state and condition in all points. He requires them first of all to determine upon his place of residence, and the sources of his income; and then to take especial care that the King's officers, each in his own department and post of duty, should fully and perfectly put into execution whatever orders the council might give. "You are requested (says the memorial) to consider how my lord the Prince is utterly destitute of every kind of appointment relative to his household." The enumeration of his wants specified in detail is somewhat curious: "that is to say, his chapels,[78] chambers, halls, wardrobe, pantry, buttery, kitchen, scullery, saucery, almonry, anointry, and generally all things requisite for his establishment."
It has been already intimated in the Preface, that an examination would be instituted in the course of this work into the correspondence of Shakspeare's representations of Henry's character and conduct with the real facts of history, and we will not here anticipate that inquiry. Only it may be necessary to observe, as we pass on, that the period of his life when the poet first describes him to be revelling in the deepest and foulest sinks of riot and profligacy, as nearly as possible corresponds with the date of this petition to the council to supply him with a home.
It was in the very first week of the year 1400 that Henry IV. discovered the treasonable plot, laid by the Lords Salisbury, Huntingdon, and others, to assassinate him during some solemn justs intended to be held at Oxford, professedly in honour of his accession. The King was then at Windsor; and, immediately on receiving information of the conspiracy, he returned secretly, but with all speed, to London.[79] The defeat of these treasonable designs, and the execution of the conspirators, are matter of general history; and, as the name of the Prince does not occur even incidentally in any accounts of the transaction, we need not dwell upon it. Probably he was then living with his father under the superintendence of Henry Beaufort, now Bishop of Winchester, from whom indeed up to this time he seems to have been much less separated than from his parent. We have already seen that, whether for the benefit of the "young bachelor," or, with an eye to his own security, unwilling to leave so able an enemy behind, King Richard, when he took the boy Henry with him to Ireland, caused his uncle and tutor (Henry Beaufort) to accompany him also.[80] The probability also has been shown to approach demonstration that his residence in Oxford could not have taken place at this time; but that it preceded his father's banishment, rather than followed his accession to the throne. Be this as it may, history (as far as it appears) makes no direct mention of the young Prince Henry through the spring of 1400.
Soon, however, after the conspiracy against his father's life had been detected and frustrated, an event took place, already alluded to, which must have filled the warm and affectionate heart of Henry with feelings of sorrow and distress,—the premature death of Richard. That Henry had formed a sincere attachment for Richard, and long cherished his memory with gratitude for personal kindness, is unquestionable; and doubtless it must have been a source of anxiety and vexation to him that his father was accused in direct terms of having procured the death of the deposed monarch. He probably was convinced that the charge was an ungrounded calumny; yet, with his generous indignation roused by the charge of so foul a crime, he must have mingled feelings of increased regret at the miserable termination of his friend's life.
The name of Henry of Monmouth has never been associated with Richard's except under circumstances which reflect credit on his own character. The bitterest enemies of his house, who scrupled not to charge Henry IV. with the wilful murder of his prisoner, have never sought to implicate his son in the same guilt in the most remote degree, or even by the gentlest whisper of insinuation. Whether Richard died in consequence of any foul act at the hand of an enemy, or by the fatal workings of a harassed mind and broken heart, or by self-imposed abstinence from food, (for to every one of these, as well as to other causes, has his death been severally attributed,) is a question probably now beyond the reach of successful inquiry. The whole subject has been examined by many able and, doubtless, unprejudiced persons; but their verdicts are far from being in accordance with each other. The general (though, as it should now seem, the mistaken) opinion appears to be, that after Richard had been removed from the Tower to Leeds Castle, and thence to other places of safe custody, and had finally been lodged in Pontefract,[81] the partisans of Henry IV. hastened his death. The Archbishop of York directly charged the King with the foul crime of murder, which he as positively and indignantly denied.[82] The minutes of the Privy Council have not been sufficiently noticed by former writers on this event; and the reflections of the Editor,[83] in his Preface, are so sensible and so immediately to the point, that we may be contented in these pages to do little more than record his sentiments.[84]
"Shortly after the attempt of the Earls of Kent, Salisbury, and Huntingdon to restore Richard to the throne, a great council was held for the consideration of many important matters. The first point was 'that if Richard the late king be alive, as some suppose he is, it be ordained that he be well and securely guarded for the salvation of the state of the King and of his kingdom.' On which subject the council resolved, that it was necessary to speak to the King, that, in case Richard the late king be still living, he be placed in security agreeably to the law of the realm; but if he be dead, then that he be openly showed to the people, that they may have knowledge thereof." These minutes (observes Sir Harris Nicolas) appear to exonerate Henry[85] from the generally received charge of having sent Sir Piers Exton to Pontefract for the purpose of murdering his prisoner. Had such been the fact, it is impossible to believe that one of Henry's ministers would have gone through the farce of submitting the above question to the council; or that the council would, with still greater absurdity, have deliberated on the subject, and gravely expressed the opinion which they offered to the King. A corpse, which was said to be that of Richard, was publicly exhibited at St. Paul's by Henry's direction, and he has been accused of substituting the body of some other person; but these minutes prove that the idea of such an exposure came from the council, and, at the moment when it was suggested, they actually did not know whether Richard was dead or alive, because they provided for either contingency. It is also demonstrated by them that, so far from any violence or ill-treatment being meditated in case he were living, the council merely recommended that he should be placed in such security as might be approved by the peers of the realm.[86] It must be observed that this new piece of evidence, coupled with the fact that a corpse said to be the body of Richard was exhibited shortly after the meeting of the council, strongly supports the belief that he died about the 14th of February 1400, and that Henry and his council were innocent of having by unfair means produced or accelerated his decease."
Such we may hope to have been the case: at all events, the purpose of this work does not admit of any fuller investigation of the points at issue. If Henry were accessory to Richard's death, (to use an expression quoted as that unhappy king's own words,)[87] "it would be a reproach to him for ever, so long as the world shall endure, or the deep ocean be able to cast up tide or wave." It is, however, satisfactory to find in these authentic documents evidence which seems to justify us in adopting no other alternative than to return for Bolinbroke a verdict of "Not guilty." The corpse[88] of Richard was carried through the city of London to St. Paul's with much of religious ceremony and solemn pomp, Henry himself as King bearing the pall, "followed by all those of his blood in fair array." After it had been inspected by multitudes, (Froissart[89] says by more than twenty thousand,) it was buried at Langley, where Richard had built a Dominican convent. Henry V, soon after his accession, removed the corpse to Westminster Abbey, and, laid it by the side of Ann, Richard's former queen, in the tomb which he had prepared for her and himself.[90]
Henry IV. had no sooner gained the throne of England, than he was made to feel that he could retain possession of it only by unremitting watchfulness, and by a vigorous overthrow of each successive design of his enemies as it arose. In addition as well to the hostility of France (whose monarch and people were grievously incensed by the deposition of Richard), as to the restless warfare of the Scots, he was compelled to provide against the more secret and more dangerous machinations of his own subjects.[91] After the discovery and defeat of the plot laid by the malcontent lords in the beginning of January (1400), he first employed himself in making preparations to repress the threatened aggressions of his northern neighbours. His council had received news as early as the 9th of February of the intention of the Scots to invade England; indeed, as far back as the preceding November, the petition of the Commons informs us that they considered war with Scotland inevitable. On this campaign Henry IV. resolved to enter in his own person, and he left London for the North in the June following. Our later historians seem not to have entertained any doubts as to the accuracy of some early chroniclers, when they state that Henry of Monmouth was sent on towards Scotland as his father's representative, in command of the advanced guard, in the opening of the summer[92] of 1400. Elmham states the general fact that Henry was sent on with the first troops, but in the manuscript there is a "Quære" in the margin in the same hand-writing. And the querist seems to have had sufficient reasons for expressing his doubts as to the accuracy of such a statement. The renown of the Prince as a youthful warrior will easily account for any premature date assigned to his earliest campaign; whilst the age of his father, who was seen at the head of the invading army in Scotland, might perhaps have contributed to a mistake. The King himself, at that time personally little known among his subjects, was not more than thirty-four years old.[93] Be this as it may, we have great reason to believe that Henry IV, when he proceeded northward, left the Prince of Wales at home. In the first place, we must remember that, among their primary and most solemn acts after the King's coronation, the Commons, anticipating the certainty of this expedition into Scotland, preferred to him a petition, praying that the Prince by reason of his tender age might not go thither, "nor elsewhere forth of the realm." The letter too of Lord Grey of Ruthyn, to which we must hereafter refer, announcing the turbulent state of Wales, and the necessity of suppressing its disorders with a stronger hand, can best be explained on the supposition that the King was absent at the date of that letter,[94] about Midsummer 1400, and that the Prince was at home. Lord Grey addresses his letter to the Prince, and not to the King; though the King, as well as the Prince, had commissioned him to put down the rising disturbances in his neighbourhood.[95] Some, perhaps, may think this intelligible on the ground that Lord Grey wrote to Henry as Prince of Wales, and therefore more immediately intrusted with the preservation of its peace. But his suggestion to the Prince to take the advice of the King's council,—"with advice of our liege lord his council,"—is scarcely consistent with the idea of the King himself being at hand to give the necessary directions and a "more plainer commission."
Be this however as it may: whether Henry of Monmouth's noviciate in arms was passed on the Scotch borders, (for in Ireland, as the companion of Richard, he had been merely a spectator,) or whether, as the evidence seems to preponderate, we consider the chroniclers to have antedated his first campaign, he was not allowed to remain long without being personally engaged in a struggle of far greater magnitude in itself, and of vastly more importance to the whole realm of England, than any one could possibly infer from the brief and cursory references made to it by the historians who are the most generally consulted by our countrymen. The rebellion of Owyn Glyndowr[96] is despatched by Hume in less than two octavo pages, though it once certainly struck a panic into the very heart of England, and through the whole of Henry IV.'s reign, more or less, involved a considerable portion of the kingdom in great alarm; carrying devastation far and wide through some of its fairest provinces; and at one period of the struggle, by the succour of Henry's foreign and domestic enemies, with whom the Welsh made common cause, threatening to wrest the sceptre itself from the hands of that monarch. The part which his son Henry of Monmouth was destined to take personally in resisting the progress of this rebellion, and the evidence which the indisputable facts recorded of that protracted contest bear to his character, (facts, most of which are comparatively little known, and many of which are altogether new in history,) seem to require at our hands a somewhat fuller investigation into the origin, progress, and circumstances of this rebellion, than has hitherto been undertaken by our chroniclers.
CHAPTER V.
the welsh rebellion. — owyn glyndowr. — his former life. — dispute with lord grey of ruthyn. — that lord's letter to prince henry. — hotspur. — his testimony to henry's presence in wales, — to his mercy and his prowess. — henry's despatch to the privy council.
1400-1401.
Previously to the accession of Henry IV, Wales had enjoyed, for nearly seventy years, a season of comparative security and rest. During the desperate struggles in the reign of Henry III, in which its inhabitants, chiefly under their Prince Llewellin, fought so resolutely for their freedom, many districts of the Principality, especially the border-lands, had been rendered all but deserts. From this melancholy devastation they had scarcely recovered, when Queen Isabella, wife of Edward II, headed the rebel army against her own husband, who had taken refuge in Glamorganshire; and carried with her the most dreadful of all national scourges,—a sanguinary civil war. The whole country of South Wales, we are told, was so miserably ravaged by these intestine horrors, and the dearth consequent upon them was so excessive, that horses and dogs became at last the ordinary food of the miserable survivors. From the accession of Edward III, and throughout his long reign, Wales seems to have enjoyed undisturbed tranquillity and repose. Its oppressors were improving their fortunes, rapidly and largely, in France, reaping a far more abundant harvest in her rich domains than this impoverished land could have offered to their expectations. Through the whole reign also of Richard II, we hear of no serious calamity having befallen these ancient possessors of Britain. A friendly intercourse seems at that time to have been formed between the Principality and the kingdom at large; and a devoted attachment to the person of the King appears to have sprung up generally among the Welsh, and to have grown into maturity. We may thus consider the natives of Wales to have enjoyed a longer period of rest and peace than had fallen to their lot for centuries before, when the deposition of Richard, who had taken refuge among their strongholds, and in defence of whom they would have risked their property and their lives, prepared them to follow any chieftain who would head his countrymen against the present dynasty, and direct them in their struggle to throw off the English, or rather, perhaps, the Lancastrian yoke.
The French writer to whom we have so often referred, M. Creton, in describing the creation of Henry of Monmouth as Prince of Wales, employs these remarkable words: "Then arose Duke Henry. His eldest son, who humbly knelt before him, he made Prince of Wales, and gave him the land; but I think he must conquer it if he will have it: for in my opinion the Welsh would on no account allow him to be their lord, for the sorrow, evil, and disgrace which the English, together with his father, had brought upon King Richard." How correctly this foreigner had formed an estimate of the feelings and principles of the Welsh, will best appear from that portion of Henry's life on which we are now entering. His prediction was fully verified by the event. Henry of Monmouth was compelled to conquer Wales for himself; and in a struggle, too, which lasted through an entire third part of his eventful career.
In accounting for the origin of the civil war in Wales, historians generally dwell on the injustice and insults committed by Lord Grey of Ruthyn on Owyn Glyndowr, and the consequent determination of that resolute chief to take vengeance for the wrongs by which he had been goaded. Probably the far more correct view is to consider the Welsh at large as altogether ready for revolt, and the conduct of Lord Grey as having only instigated Owyn to put himself at their head; at all events to accept the office of leader, to which, as we are told, his countrymen[97] elected him. The train was already laid in the unshaken fidelity of the Welsh to their deposed monarch, whom they believed to be still alive[98] and in the deadly hatred against all who had assisted Henry of Lancaster in his act of usurpation; the spark was supplied by the resentment of a personal injury. His countrymen were ripe for rebellion, and Owyn was equally ready to direct their counsels, and to head them in the field of battle.
Owyn Glyndowr was no upstart adventurer. He was of an ancient family, or rather, we must say, of princely extraction, being descended from Llewellin ap Jorwarth Droyndon, Prince of Wales. We have reason to conclude that he succeeded to large hereditary property. The exact time of his birth is not known: most writers have placed it between 1349 and 1354; but it was probably later by five years than the latter of those two dates.[99] This extraordinary man, whose unwearied zeal and indomitable bravery, had they taken a different direction, would have merited, humanly speaking, a better fate, was invested by the superstitions of the times with a supernatural character. His vaunt to Hotspur is not so much the offspring of Shakspeare's imagination, as an echo to the popular opinions generally entertained of him:[100]
At my birth
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds
Were strangely clamorous in the frighted fields.
These signs have marked me extraordinary,
And all the courses of my life do show
I am not in the roll of common men.
1 Henry IV. iii. 1.
Whether Owyn had persuaded himself to believe the fabulous stories told of his birth; or whether for purposes of policy he merely countenanced, in the midst of an ignorant and superstitious people, what others had invented and spread; there is no doubt that even in his lifetime he was supposed, not only within the borders of his father-land, but even through England itself, to have intercourse with the spirits of the invisible world, and through their agency to possess, among other vague and indefinite powers, a supernatural influence over the elements, and to have the winds and storms at his bidding. Absurd as were the fables told concerning him, they exercised great influence on his enemies as well as his friends; and few, perhaps, dreaded the powers of his spell more than the King himself. Still, independently of any aid from superstition, Glyndowr combined in his own person many qualities fitting him for the prominent station which he acquired, and which he so long maintained among his countrymen; and as the enemy of Henry IV. he was one of a very numerous and powerful body, formed from among the first persons of the whole realm. He received his education in London, and studied in one of the Inns of Court. He became afterwards an esquire of the body to King Richard; and he was one of the few faithful subjects who remained in his suite till he was taken prisoner in Flint Castle. After his master's fall he was for a short time esquire to the Earl of Arundel, whose castle, situated in the immediate neighbourhood of Glyndowrdy, was called Castel Dinas Bran. Its ruins, with the hill on the crown of which it was built, still form a most striking object near Llangollen, on the right of the magnificent road leading from Shrewsbury to Bangor.
A few months only had elapsed after the deposition of Richard when those occurrences took place which are said to have driven Glyndowr into open revolt. He was residing on his estate, which lay contiguous to the lands of Lord Grey of Ruthyn. That nobleman claimed and seized some part of Owyn's property. Against this act of oppression Owyn petitioned the Parliament, which sate early in 1400, praying for redress. The Bishop of St. Asaph is said to have cautioned the Parliament not to treat the Welshman with neglect, lest his countrymen should espouse his cause and have recourse to arms. This advice was disregarded, and Owyn's petition was dismissed in the most uncourteous manner.[101]
Another act of injustice and treachery on the part of Lord Grey drove Owyn to take the desperate step either of raising the standard of rebellion, or of joining his countrymen who had already raised it. Lord Grey withheld the letter of summons for the Welsh chief to attend the King in his expedition against Scotland, till it was too late for him to join the rendezvous. Owyn excused himself on the shortness of the notice; but Lord Grey reported him as disobedient. Aware that he had incurred the King's displeasure, and could expect no mercy, since his deadly foe had possession of the royal ear, Owyn put himself boldly at the head of his rebellious countrymen, who almost unanimously renounced their allegiance to the crown of England, and subsequently acknowledged Owyn as their sovereign lord.
The Monk of Evesham, and the MS. Chronicle which used to be regarded as the compilation of one of Henry V.'s chaplains, both preserved in the British Museum, speak of the Welsh as having first risen in arms, and as having afterwards elected Owyn for their chief. It is, however, remarkable that no mention is made of Owyn Glyndowr in the King's proclamations, or any public document till the spring of 1401. Probably at first the proceedings, in which he took afterwards so pre-eminent a part, resembled riotous outrages, breaking forth in entire defiance of the law, but conducted neither on any preconcerted plan, nor under the direction of any one leader.
Lord Grey's ancestors had received Ruthyn with a view to the protection of the frontier; and on the first indication of the rebellious spirit breaking out in acts of disorder and violence, both the King and the Prince wrote separately to Lord Grey, reminding him of his duty to disperse the rioters, and put down the insurgents. These mandates were despatched probably in the beginning of June 1400, some days before the King departed for the borders of Scotland. Lord Grey, in the letter[102] to which we have above referred, supposing that the King had already started on that expedition, returned an answer only to the Prince, acknowledging the receipt of his and his father's commands; but pleading the impossibility of executing them with effect, unless the Prince, with the advice of the King's council, would forward to him a commission with more ample powers, authorizing him to lay hands on the insurgents in whatever part of the country they might chance to be found; ordaining also that no lord's land should be respected as a sanctuary to shield them from the law; and that all the King's officers should be enjoined through the whole territory to aid and assist in quelling the insurrection.[103]
This nobleman had evidently taken a very alarming view of the state of the country; and the first documents which we inspect manifest the uncurbed fury and deadly hatred with which the Welsh rushed into this rebellion. Indeed, the general character of Owyn's campaigns breathes more "of savage warfare than of chivalry." Lord Grey's letter is dated June 23, and must have been written in the year 1400; for, long before the corresponding month in the following year had come round, the Prince had himself been personally engaged in the district which the Earl was more especially appointed to guard.
It does not appear what steps were taken in consequence of this communication of Lord Grey; except that the King, on the 19th of September, issued his first proclamation against the rebels. Probably on his return from Scotland, the King went himself immediately towards Wales; for the Monk of Evesham states expressly that he came from Worcester to Evesham on the 19th of October, and returned the next day for London. In the course, however, of a very few months at the latest, a commission to suppress the rebellion, and restore peace in the northern counties of the Principality, was entrusted to an individual whose character, and fortunes, and death, deeply involved as they are in an eventful period of the history of our native land, could not but have recommended the part he then took in Wales to our especial notice under any circumstances whatsoever; whilst his name excites in us feelings of tenfold greater interest when it offers itself in conjunction with the name of Henry of Monmouth.
Henry Percy, eldest son of the Earl of Northumberland, known more familiarly as Hotspur,—a name which historians and poets have preferred as characteristic of his decision, and zeal, and the impetuosity of his disposition,—very shortly after Henry IV.'s accession had been appointed not only Warden of the East Marches of Scotland and Governor of Berwick, but also Chief Justice of North Wales and Chester, and Constable of the Castles of Chester, Flint, Conway, and Caernarvon. In this latter capacity, with the utmost promptitude and decision, Hotspur exerted himself to the very best of his power, at great personal labour and expense, to crush the rebellion in its infancy.[104]
The letters of this renowned and ill-fated nobleman, the originals of which are preserved among the records of the Privy Council, seem to have escaped the notice of our historians.[105] They throw, however, much light on the affairs of Wales and on Glyndowr's rebellion at this early stage, and to the Biographer of Henry of Monmouth are truly valuable. The first of these original papers, all of which are beautifully corroborative of Hotspur's character as we have received it, both from the notices of the historian and the delineations of the poet, is dated Denbigh, April 10, 1401. It is addressed to the King's council under feelings of annoyance that they could have deemed it necessary to admonish him to exert himself in putting down the insurgents, and restoring peace to the turbulent districts over which his commission gave him authority. His character, he presumes, ought to have been a pledge to them of his conduct. In this letter there is not a shade of anything but devoted loyalty.
The reference which Hotspur makes in this first letter to "those of the council of his most honoured and redoubted Prince being in these parts," is perhaps the very earliest intimation we have of Henry of Monmouth being himself personally engaged in suppressing the rebellion in his principality, with the exception, at least, of the inference to be fairly drawn from the acts of the Privy Council in the preceding month. The King at his house, "Coldharbour," (the same which he afterwards assigned to the Prince,) had assented to a proclamation against the Welsh on the 13th of March; and on the 21st of March the council had agreed to seal an instrument with the great seal, authorizing the Prince himself to discharge any constables of the castles who should neglect their duty, and not execute their office in person. It is, however, to the second letter of Hotspur, dated Caernarvon, May 3rd, 1401, that any one who takes a lively interest in ascertaining the real character of Henry of Monmouth will find his mind irresistibly drawn; he will meditate upon it again and again, and with increasing interest as he becomes more familiar with the circumstances under which it was written; and comparing it with the prejudices almost universally adopted without suspicion and without inquiry, will contemplate it with mingled feelings of surprise and satisfaction. The name of Harry Hotspur, when set side by side with the name of Harry of Monmouth, has been too long associated in the minds of all who delight in English literature, with feelings of unkindness and jealous rivalry. At the risk of anticipating what may hereafter be established more at large, we cannot introduce this document to the reader without saying that we hail the preservation of this one, among the very few letters of Percy now known to be in existence, with satisfaction and thankfulness. It is as though history were destined of set purpose to correct the fascinating misrepresentations of the poet, and to vindicate a character which has been too long misunderstood. In the fictions of our dramatic poet Hotspur is the very first to bear to Bolinbroke testimony of the reckless, dissolute habits of Henry of Monmouth.[106] Hotspur is the very first whom the truth of history declares to have given direct and voluntary evidence to the military talents of this same Prince, and the kindness of his heart,—to his prowess at once and his mercy; the combination of which two noble qualities characterizes his whole life, and of which, blended in delightful harmony, his campaigns in Wales supply this, by no means solitary, example. Hotspur informs the council that North Wales, where he was holding his sessions, was obedient to the law in all points, excepting the rebels in Conway, and in Rees Castle which was in the mountains. "And these," continues Percy, "will be well chastised, if it so please God, by the force and governance which my redoubted lord the Prince has sent against them, as well of his council as of his retinue, to besiege these rebels in the said castles; which siege, if it can be continued till the said rebels be taken, will bring great ease and profit to the governance of the same country in time to come." "Also," he proceeds, "the commons of the said country of North Wales, that is, the counties of Caernarvon and Merioneth, who have been before me at present, have humbly offered their thanks to my lord the Prince for the great exertions of his kindness and goodwill in procuring their pardon at the hands of our sovereign lord the King."[107] The pardon itself, dated Westminster, 10th of March 1401, bears testimony to these exertions of Prince Henry in behalf of the rebels: "Of our especial grace, and at the prayer of our dearest first-born son, Henry Prince of Wales, we have pardoned all treasons, rebellions, &c."[108] Henry of Monmouth, when one of the first noblemen and most renowned warriors of the age bears this testimony to his character for valour and for kind-heartedness, had not quite completed his fourteenth year.
This communication of Henry Percy, as remarkable as it is interesting, appears to fix to the year 1401 the date of the following, the very first letter known to exist from Henry of Monmouth. It is dated Shrewsbury, May 15, and is addressed to the Lords of the Council, whom he thanks for the kind attention paid by them to all his wants during his absence in Wales. The epistle breathes the spirit of a gallant young warrior full of promptitude and intrepidity.[109] It may be surmised, perhaps, that the letter was written by the Prince's secretary; and that the sentiments and turn of thought here exhibited may, after all, be no fair test of his own mind. But this is mere conjecture and assumption, requiring the testimony of facts to confirm it: and, against it, we must observe, that there is a simplicity, a raciness and an individuality of character pervading Henry's letters which seem to stamp them for his own. Especially do they stand out in broad contrast, when put side by side with the equally characteristic despatches of Hotspur.
LETTER OF PRINCE HENRY TO THE COUNCIL.
"Very dear and entirely well-beloved, we greet you much from our whole heart, thanking you very sincerely for the kind attention you have given to our wants during our absence; and we pray of you very earnestly the continuance of your good and friendly services, as our trust is in you. As to news from these parts, if you wish to hear of what has taken place, we were lately informed that Owyn Glyndowr [Oweyn de Glyndourdy] had assembled his forces, and those of other rebels, his adherents, in great numbers, purposing to commit inroads; and, in case of any resistance to his plans on the part of the English, to come to battle with them: and so he boasted to his own people. Wherefore we took our men, and went to a place of the said Owyn, well built, which was his chief mansion, called Saghern, where we thought we should have found him, if he wished to fight, as he said. And, on our arrival there, we found no person. So we caused the whole place to be set on fire, and many other houses around it, belonging to his tenants. And then we went straight to his other place of Glyndourdy, to seek for him there. There we burnt a fine lodge in his park, and the whole country round. And we remained there all that night. And certain of our people sallied forth, and took a gentleman of high degree of that country, who was one of the said Owyn's chieftains. This person offered five hundred pounds for his ransom to save his life, and to pay that sum within two weeks. Nevertheless that was not accepted, and he was put to death; and several of his companions, who were taken the same day, met with the same fate. We then proceeded to the commote of Edirnyon in Merionethshire, and there laid waste a fine and populous country; thence we went to Powys, and, there being in Wales a want of provender for horses, we made our people carry oats with them, and we tarried there for —-- days.[110] And to give you fuller information of this expedition, and all other news from these parts at present, we send to you our well-beloved esquire, John de Waterton, to whom you will be pleased to give entire faith and credence in what he shall report to you on our part with respect to the above-mentioned affair. And may our Lord have you always in his holy keeping.—Given under our signet, at Shrewsbury, the 15th day of May."
Two days only after the date of this epistle, Hotspur despatched another letter from Denbigh, which seems to convey the first intimation of his dissatisfaction with the King's government; a feeling which rapidly grew stronger, and led probably to the subsequent outbreaking of his violence and rebellion. Hotspur presses upon the council the perilous state of the Welsh Marches, at the same time declaring that he could not endure the expense and labour then imposed upon him more than one month longer; within four days at furthest from the expiration of which time he must absolutely resign his command.
In less than ten days after this despatch of Percy, the King's proclamation mentions Owyn Glyndowr by name, as a rebel determined to invade and ravage England. The King, announcing his own intention to proceed the next day towards Worcester to crush the rebellion himself, commands the sheriffs of various counties to join him with their forces, wheresoever he might be. At this period the rebels entered upon the campaign with surprising vigour. Many simultaneous assaults appear to have been made against the English in different parts of the borders. On the 28th of May a proclamation declares Glyndowr to be in the Marches of Caermarthen; and, only ten days before (May 18th), a commission was issued to attack the Welsh, who were besieging William Beauchamp and his wife in the Castle of Abergavenny; whilst, at the same time, the people of Salop were excused a subsidy, in consideration of the vast losses they had sustained by the inroads of the Welsh.
CHAPTER VI.
glyndowr joined by welsh students of oxford. — takes lord grey prisoner. — hotspur's further despatches. — he quits wales. — reflections on the eventful life and premature death of isabella, richard's widow. — glyndowr disposed to come to terms. — the king's expeditions towards wales abortive. — marriage proposed between henry and katharine of norway. — the king marries joan of navarre.
1401.
When Owyn Glyndowr raised the standard of rebellion in his native land, and assuming to himself the name and state and powers of an independent sovereign, under the title of "Prince of Wales," declared war against Henry of Bolinbroke and his son, he was fully impressed with the formidable power of his antagonists, and with the fate that might await him should he fail in his attempt to rescue Wales from the yoke of England. Embarked in a most perilous enterprise, a cause of life or death, he vigorously entered on the task of securing every promising means of success. His countrymen, whom he now called his subjects, soon flocked to his standard from all quarters. Not only did those who were already in the Principality take up arms; but numbers also who had left their homes, and were resident in distant parts of the kingdom, returned forthwith as at the command of their prince and liege lord. The Welsh scholars,[111] who were pursuing their studies in the University of Oxford, were summoned by Owyn, and the names of some who obeyed the mandate are recorded. Owyn at the same time negociated for assistance from France, with what success we shall see hereafter; and sent also his emissaries to Scotland and "the distant isles." On those of his countrymen who espoused the cause of the King, and refused to join his standard, he afterwards poured the full fury of his vengeance; and in the uncurbed madness of his rage, forgetful of the future welfare of his native land, and of his own interests should he be established as its prince, unmindful also of the respect which even enemies pay to the sacred edifices of the common faith, he reduced to ashes not only the houses of his opponents, but Episcopal palaces, monasteries, and cathedrals within the Principality.
Owyn Glyndowr was in a short time so well supported by an army, undisciplined no doubt, and in all respects ill appointed, but yet devoted to him and their common cause, that he was emboldened to try his strength with Lord Grey in the field. A battle, fought (as it should seem) in the very neighbourhood of Glyndowrdy,[112] terminated in favour of Owyn, who took the Earl prisoner, and carried him into the fastnesses of Snowdon. The precise date of this conflict is not known; probably it was at the opening of spring: the circumstances also of his capture are very differently represented. It is generally asserted that a marriage with one of Owyn's daughters was the condition of regaining his liberty proposed to the Earl; that the marriage was solemnized; and that Owyn then, instead of keeping his word and releasing him, demanded of him a most exorbitant ransom. It is, moreover, affirmed, that the Earl remained Glyndowr's prisoner to the day of his death. Now, that Lord Grey fell into the Welsh chieftain's hands as a prisoner, is beyond question; so it is that he paid a heavy ransom: but that he died in confinement is certainly not true, for he accompanied Henry V. to France, and also served him by sea. The report of his marriage with Owyn's daughter, might have originated in some confusion of Lord Grey with Sir Edmund Mortimer; who unquestionably did take one of the Welsh chieftain's daughters for his wife.[113] It is scarcely probable that both Owyn's prisoners should have married his daughters; and still less probable that he should have exacted so large a ransom from his son-in-law as to exhaust his means, and prevent him from acting as a baron of the realm was then expected to act. Dugdale's Baronage gives the Earl two wives, without naming the daughter of Glyndowr. Hardyng, in his Chronicle presented to Henry VI, thus describes the affair:
Soone after was the same Lord Gray in feelde
Fightyng taken, and holden prisoner
By Owayne, so that hym in prison helde
Till his ransom was made, and fynaunce clear,
Ten thousand marks, and fully payed were;
For whiche he was so poor then all his life,
That no power he had to war, nor stryfe.
Another letter from Henry Percy to the council, dated June 4, 1401, is very interesting in several points of view. It proves that the negociations "carried in and out," mentioned in a letter written by the chamberlain of Caernarvon to the King's council, had been successful, and that the Scots had sent aid to the Welsh chieftain: it proves also that Hotspur himself was at this time (though bitterly dissatisfied) carrying on the war for the King in the very heart of Wales, and amidst its mountain-recesses and strongholds; and that Owyn was at that time assailed on all sides by the English forces, a circumstance which might probably have led to his "good intention to return to his allegiance," at the close of the present year. Henry Percy declares to the council that he can support the expenses of the campaign no longer. He informs them of an engagement in which, assisted by Sir Hugh Browe and the Earl of Arundel, the only Lords Marchers who had joined him in the expedition, he had a few days before routed the Welsh at Cader Idris. News, he adds, had just reached him of a victory gained by Lord Powis[114] over Owyn; also that an English vessel had been retaken from the Scots, and a Scotch vessel of war had been captured at Milford. Another letter, dated 3rd July, (probably the same year, 1401,) reiterates his complaints of non-payment of his forces, and of the government having underrated his services; it expresses his hope also that, since he had written to the King himself with a statement of his destitute condition, should any evil happen to castle, town, or march, the blame would not be cast on him, whose means were so utterly crippled, but would fall on the heads of those who refused the supplies. Henry IV. had certainly not neglected this rebellion in Wales, though evidently the measures adopted against the insurgents were not so vigorous at the commencement as the urgency of the case required. His exchequer was exhausted, and he had other business in hand to drain off the supplies as fast as they could possibly be collected. He was, therefore, contented for the present to keep the rebels in check, without attempting to crush them by pouring in an overwhelming force from different points at once.
Towards the middle of this summer, the King marched in person to Worcester. He had directed the sheriffs to forward their contingents thither; but, when he arrived at that city, he changed his purpose and soon returned to London. Among the considerations which led to this change in his plans, we may probably reckon the following. In the first place, he found his son the Prince, Lord Powis, and Henry Percy, in vigorous operation against the rebels; his arrival at Worcester having been only three or four days after the date of Percy's last letter. In the next place, the council had urged him not to go in person against the rebels: besides, almost all the inhabitants of North Wales had returned to their allegiance, and had been pardoned. He was, moreover, naturally anxious to summon a parliament, with a view of replenishing his exhausted treasury, and enabling himself to enter upon the campaign with means more calculated to insure success.
In a letter to his council, dated Worcester, 8th June 1401, the King refers to two points of advice suggested by them. "Inasmuch as you have advised us," he says, "to write to our much beloved son, the Prince, and to others, who may have in their possession any jewels which ought to be delivered with our cousin the Queen, (Isabella,) know ye, that we will send to our said son, that, if he has any of such jewels, he will send them with all possible speed to you at our city of London, where, if God will, we intend to be in our own person before the Queen's departure; and we will cause to be delivered to her there the rest of the said jewels, which we and others our children have in our keeping." In answer to their advice that he would not go in person against the rebels, because they were not in sufficient strength, and of too little reputation to warrant that step, he said that he found they had risen in great numbers, and called for his personal exertions. He forwarded to them at the same time a copy of the letter which he had just received from Owyn himself. Not from this correspondence only, but from other undisputed documents, and from the loud complaints of French writers,[115] we are compelled to infer something extremely unsatisfactory in the conduct of Henry IV. with regard to the valuable paraphernalia of Isabella, the maiden-widow of Richard. To avoid restoring these treasures, which fell into his hands on the capture of that unfortunate monarch, Henry proposed, in November 1399, a marriage between one of his sons and one of the daughters of the French monarch. In January 1400 a truce was signed between the two kingdoms, and the same negociators (the Bishop of Durham and the Earl of Worcester) were directed to treat with the French ambassadors on the terms of the restitution of Isabella; and so far did they immediately proceed, that horses were ordered for her journey to Dover. But legal doubts as to her dower (she not being twelve years of age) postponed her departure till the next year. She had arrived at Boulogne certainly on the 1st of August 1401; and was afterwards delivered up to her friends by the Earl of Worcester, with the solemn assurance of her spotless purity.
It is impossible to glance at this lady's brief and melancholy career without feelings of painful interest:—espoused when yet a child to the reigning monarch of England; whilst yet a child, crowned Queen of England; whilst yet a child, become a virgin-widow; when she was not yet seventeen years old, married again to Charles, Earl of Angouleme; and three years afterwards, before she reached the twentieth anniversary of her birthday, dying in childbed.[116]
By the above letter of the King, which led to this digression, we are informed that the Prince was neither with his father, nor in London; for the King promised to write to him to send the jewels to London. He was probably at that time on the borders of North Wales; or engaged in reducing the Castles of Conway and Rhees, and in bringing that district into subjection. Indeed, that the Prince was still personally exerting himself in suppressing the Welsh towards the north of the Principality, seems to be put beyond all question by the records of the Privy Council, which state that "certain members of the Prince's council brought with them to the King's council the indenture between the said Prince and Henry Percy the son (Chief Justice) on one part, and those who seized the Castle[117] of Conway on the other part, made at the time of the restitution of the same castle." [118]
Owyn appears to have left his own country, in which the spirit of rebellion had received a considerable though temporary check; and to have been at this period exciting and heading the rebels in South Wales, especially about Caermarthen and Gower.
Hotspur himself left Wales probably about the July or August of this year, 1401; for on the 1st of September he was appointed one of the commissioners to treat with the Scots for peace; and he was present at the solemn espousals which were celebrated by proxy at Eltham, April 3, 1402, between Henry IV. and Joan of Navarre. We must, therefore, refer to a subsequent date the information quoted by Sir Henry Ellis from an original paper in the British Museum, "that Jankin Tyby of the north countri bringthe lettres owte of the northe country to Owein, as thei demed from Henr. son Percy." Soon after the departure of Percy, a proclamation, dated 18th September 1401, notifies the rapid progress of disaffection and rebellion among the Welsh: whether it was secretly encouraged by him at this early date, or not, is matter only of conjecture. His growing discontent, visibly shown in his own letters, this vague rumour that Jankin Tyby might be the confidential messenger for his treasonable purposes, and his subsequent conduct, combine to render the suspicion by no means improbable. The proclamation states that a great part of the inhabitants of Wales had gone over to Owyn, and commands all ablebodied men to meet the King at Worcester on the 1st, or, at the furthest, the 2nd of October. Perhaps this, like his former visit to Worcester, was little more than a demonstration of his force.[119] Historians generally say that he made the first of his expeditions into Wales in the July of the following year; the Minutes of Council prove at all events that he was there in the present autumn, but how long or with what results does not appear. The council met in November 1401, to deliberate, among other subjects, upon the affairs of Wales, "from which country (as the Minute expressly states) our sovereign lord the King hath but lately returned,[120] having appointed the Earl of Worcester to be Lieutenant of South Wales, and Captain of Cardigan."[121]
The record of this council is remarkably interesting on more than one point. It throws great light on the state of Owyn's mind, and his attachment to the Percies; on the confidence still reposed by the King's government in Percy, and on the condition of Prince Henry himself. The several chastisements which Owyn and his party had received from the Prince, from Percy, from Lord Powis and others, had perhaps at this time made him very doubtful of the issue of the struggle, and inclined him to negociate for his own pardon, and the peace of the country. The Minute of Council says, "To know the King's will about treating with Glyndowr to return to his allegiance, seeing his good intention at present thereto." His readiness to treat is accompanied, as we find in the same record, with a declaration that he was not himself the cause of the destruction going on in his native land, nor of the daily captures, and the murders there; and that he would most gladly return to peace. As to his inheritance, he protests that he had only received a part, and not his own full right. And even now he would willingly come to the borders, and speak and treat with any lords, provided the commons would not raise a rumour and clamour that he was purposed to destroy "all who spoke the English language." He seems to have been apprehensive, should he venture to approach the marches to negociate a peace, that the violence and rage of the people at large would endanger his personal safety. No wonder, for his footsteps were to be traced everywhere by the blood of men, and the ashes of their habitations and sacred edifices. At the same time, he expressed his earnest desire to carry on the treaty of peace through the Earl of Northumberland, for whom he professes to entertain great regard and esteem, in preference to any other English nobleman.
Whether any steps were taken in consequence of this present opening for peace, or not, we are not told. But we have reason to suppose that Wales was in comparative tranquillity through the following winter[122] and spring. The rebel chief, however, again very shortly carried the sword and flame with increased horrors through his devoted native land. We read of no battle or skirmish till the campaign of the next year.
The questions relating to Prince Henry, which were submitted to this council, inform us incidentally of the important fact, that though he was now intrusted with the command of the forces against the Welsh, and was assisted in his office (just as was the King) by a council, yet it was deemed right to appoint him an especial governor, or tutor (maistre). He was now in his fifteenth year. These Minutes also make it evident that the soldiers employed in his service looked for their pay to him, and not to the King's exchequer. We shall have frequent occasion to observe the great personal inconveniences to which this practice subjected the Prince, and how injurious it was to the service generally. But the evil was unavoidable; for at that time the royal exchequer was quite drained.
"As to the article touching the governance of the Prince, as well for him to have a tutor or guardian, as to provide money for the support of his vast expenses in the garrisons of his castles in Wales, and the wages of his men-at-arms and archers, whom he keeps from day to day for resisting the malice of the rebels of the King, it appears to the council, if it please the King, that the Isle of Anglesey ought to be restored to the prince, and that Henry Percy[123] should agree, and have compensation from the issues of the lands which belonged to the Earl of March; and that all other possessions which ought to belong to the Prince should be restored, and an amicable arrangement be made with those in whose hands they are. And as for a governor for the Prince, may it please the King to choose one of these,—the Earl of Worcester, Lord Lovel, Mr. Thomas Erpyngham, or the Lord Say; and, for the Prince's expenses, that 1000l. be assigned from the rents of the Earl of March, which were due about last Michaelmas." We have reason to believe that the Earl of Worcester, Thomas Percy, was appointed Henry of Monmouth's tutor and preceptor. He remained in attendance upon him till, with the guilt of aggravated treachery, he abruptly left his prince and pupil to join his nephew Hotspur before the battle of Shrewsbury.
We are not informed how long Prince Henry remained at this period in Wales, after Percy had left it. Probably (as it has been already intimated) there was an armistice virtually, though not by any formal agreement, through that winter and the spring of 1402. The next undoubted information as to the Prince fixes him in London in the beginning of the following May, when being in the Tower, in the presence of his father, and with his consent, he declares himself willing to contract a marriage with Katharine, sister of Eric, King of Norway;[124] and on the 26th of the same month, being then in his castle of Tutbury, in the diocese of Lincoln, he confirms this contract, and authorises the notary public to affix his seal to the agreement. The pages of authentic history remind us, that too many marriage-contracts in every rank of life, and in every age of the world, have been the result, not of mutual affection between the affianced bride and bridegroom, but of pecuniary and political considerations. Perhaps when kings negociate and princes approve, their exalted station renders the transaction more notorious, and the stipulated conditions may be more unreservedly confessed. But it may well be doubted whether the same motives do not equally operate in every grade of life; whilst those objects which should be primary and indispensable, are regarded as secondary and contingent. Happiness springing from mutual affection, may doubtless grow and ripen, despite of such arrangements, in the families of the noble, the wealthy, the middle classes, and the poor; but the chances are manifold more, that coldness, and dissatisfaction, and mutual carelessness of each other's comforts will be the permanent result. We must however bear in mind, when estimating the moral worth of an individual, that negociations of this kind in the palaces of kings imply nothing of that cold-heartedness by which many are led into connexions from which their affections revolt. The individual's character seems altogether protected from reprobation by the usage of the world, and the necessity of the case. State-considerations impose on princes restraints, compelling them to acquiesce in measures which excite in us other feelings than indignation or contempt. We regret the circumstance, but we do not condemn the parties. Henry IV. of England, and Eric of Norway, fancied they saw political advantages likely to arise from the nuptials of Henry's son with Eric's sister; and the document we have just quoted tells us that the boy Henry, then not fifteen, and still under tutors and governors, gave his consent to the proposed alliance.
The more rare however the occurrence, the more general is the admiration with which an union in the palaces of monarchy is contemplated when mutual respect and attachment precede the marriage, and conjugal love and domestic happiness attend it. And here we are irresistibly tempted to contemplate with satisfaction and delight the unsuccessful issue of this negociation, whilst Henry was yet a boy; and to anticipate what must be repeated in its place, that, to whatever combination of circumstances, and course of events and state-considerations, the marriage of Henry of Monmouth with Katharine of France may possibly be referred, he proved himself to have formed for her a most sincere and heartfelt attachment before their union; and, whenever his duty did not separate them, to have lived with her in the possession of great conjugal felicity. Even the dry details of the Exchequer issues bear most gratifying, though curious, testimony to their domestic habits, and their enjoyment of each other's society.
Whilst the King was thus negociating a marriage for his son, he was himself engaged by solemn espousals to marry, as his second wife, Joan of Navarre, Duchess of Brittany. As well in the most exalted, as in the most humble family in the realm, such an event as this can never take place without involving consequences of deepest moment and most lively interest to all parties,—to the husband, to his wife, and to their respective children. If he has been happy in his choice, a man cannot provide a more substantial blessing for his offspring than by joining himself by the most sacred of all ties to a woman who will cheerfully and lovingly perform the part of a conscientious and affectionate mother towards them. If the choice is unhappy; if there be a want of sound religious and moral principle, a neglect, or carelessness and impatience in the discharge of domestic duties; if a discontented, suspicious, cold, and unkind spirit accompany the new bride, domestic comfort must take flight, and all the proverbial evils of such a state must be realized. The marriage of Henry of Monmouth's father with Joan of Navarre does not enable us to view the bright side of this alternative. Of the new Queen we hear little for many years;[125] but, at the end of those years of comparative silence, we find Henry V. compelled to remove from his mother-in-law all her attendants, and to commit her to the custody of Lord John Pelham in the castle of Pevensey. [126] She was charged with having entertained malicious and treasonable designs against the life of the King, her son-in-law. The Chronicle of London, (1419,) throwing[127] an air of mystery and superstition over the whole affair, asserts that Queen Joanna excited her confessor, one friar Randolf,[128] a master in divinity, to destroy the King; "but, as God would, his falseness was at last espied:" "wherefore," as the Chronicle adds, "the Queen forfeited her lands."[129] Of this marriage of Henry IV. with Joan of Navarre very little notice beyond the bare fact has been taken by our English historians. Many particulars, however, are found in the histories of Brittany. It appears that the Duchess, who was the widow of Philip de Mont Forte, Duke of Brittany, by whom she had sons and daughters, was solemnly contracted to Henry by her proxy, Anthony Rys, at Eltham, on the 3rd of April 1402, in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Earl of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland and his son Hotspur, the Earl of Worcester, Thomas Langley, Keeper of the Privy Seal, and others. Having appointed guardians for her son, the young Duke of Brittany, she left Nantes on the 26th December, embarked on board one of the ships sent by Henry, at Camaret, on the 13th January, and sailed the next day, intending to land at Southampton. After a stormy passage of five days, the squadron was forced into a port in Cornwall. She was married on the 7th, and was crowned at Westminster on the 25th, of February following.[130] By Henry she had no child.
CHAPTER VII.
glyndowr's vigorous measures. — slaughter of herefordshire men. — mortimer taken prisoner. — he joins glyndowr. — henry implores succours, — pawns his plate to support his men. — the king's testimony to his son's conduct. — the king, at burton-on-trent, hears of the rebellion of the percies.
1402-1403.
If Owyn Glyndowr, as we have supposed, allowed Wales to remain undisturbed by battles and violence through the winter[131] and spring, it was only to employ the time in preparing for a more vigorous campaign. The first battle of which we have any historical certainty, was fought June 12, 1402, near Melienydd, (Dugdale says, "upon the mountain called Brynglas, near Knighton in Melenyth,") in Radnorshire. The whole array of Herefordshire was routed on that field. More than one thousand Englishmen were slain, on whom the Welsh were guilty of savage, unheard-of indignities. The women especially gave vent to their rage and fury by actions too disgraceful to be credible were they not recorded as uncontradicted facts. For the honour of the sex, we wish to regard them as having happened only once; whilst we would bury the disgusting details in oblivion.[132] Owyn was victorious, and took many of high degree prisoners; among whom was Sir Edmund Mortimer, the uncle of the Earl of March. Perhaps the most authentic statement of this victory as to its leading features, though without any details, is found in a letter from the King to his council, dated Berkhampstead, June 25.
"The rebels have taken my beloved cousin,[133] Esmon Mortymer, and many other knights and esquires. We are resolved, consequently, to go in our own person with God's permission. You will therefore command all in our retinue and pay to meet us at Lichfield, where we intend to be at the latest on the 7th of July." The proclamation for an array "to meet the King at Lichfield, and proceed with him towards Wales to check the insolence and malice of Owyn Glyndowr and other rebels," was issued the same day. On the 5th of July,[134] the King, being at Westminster, appointed Hugh de Waterton governor of his children, John and Philippa, till his return from Wales. An order of council at Westminster, on the last day of July, the King himself being present, seems to leave us no alternative in deciding that Henry made two expeditions to Wales this summer; the first at the commencement of July, the second towards the end of August. This appears to have escaped the observation of historians. Walsingham speaks only of one, and that before the Feast of the Assumption, August 25; in which he represents the King and his army to have been well-nigh destroyed by storms of rain, snow, and hail, so terrible as to have excited the belief that they were raised by the machination of the devil, and of course at Owyn's bidding. This order of council is directed to many sheriffs, commanding them to proclaim an array through their several counties to meet the King at Shrewsbury,[135] on the 27th of August at the latest, to proceed with him into Wales.[136] The order declares the necessity of this second array to have originated in the impossibility, through the shortness of the time, of the King's chastising the rebels, who lurked in mountains and woods; and states his determination to be there again shortly, and to remain fifteen days for the final overthrow and destruction of his enemies. How lamentably he was mistaken in his calculation of their resistance, and his own powers of subjugating them, the sequel proved to him too clearly. The rebellion from first to last was protracted through almost as many years as the days he had numbered for its utter extinction. The order on the sheriff of Derby commands him to go with his contingent to Chester, "to our dearest son the Prince," on the 27th of August, and to advance in his retinue to Wales. On this occasion,[137] it is said that Henry invaded Wales in three points at once, himself commanding one division of his army, the second being headed by the Prince, the third by Lord Arundel. The details of these measures, under the personal superintendence of the King, are not found in history. Probably Walsingham's account of their total failure must be admitted as nearest the truth. That no material injury befel Owyn from them, and that neither were his means crippled, nor his resolution daunted, is testified by the inroads which, not long after, he made into England with redoubled impetuosity.
The following winter, we may safely conclude, was spent by the Welsh chieftain in negociations both with the malcontent lords of England, and with the courts of France and Scotland; in recruiting his forces and improving his means of warfare;[138] for, before the next midsummer, (as we know on the best authority,) he was prepared to engage in an expedition into England, with a power too formidable for the Prince and his retinue to resist without further reinforcement. During this winter also a most important accession accrued to the power and influence of Owyn by the defection from the royal cause of his prisoner Sir Edmund Mortimer, who became devotedly attached to him. King Henry had, we are told, refused to allow a ransom to be paid for Mortimer, though urged to it by Henry Percy, who had married Mortimer's sister. The consequence of this ungracious refusal[139] was, that he joined Glyndowr, whose daughter, as the Monk of Evesham informs us, he married with the greatest solemnity about the end of November.[140] In a fortnight after this marriage, Mortimer announced to his tenants his junction with Owyn, and called upon them to forward his views. The letter, written in French, is preserved in the British Museum.
LETTER FROM EDMUND MORTIMER TO HIS TENANTS.
"Very dear and well-beloved, I greet you much, and make known to you that Oweyn Glyndor has raised a quarrel, of which the object is, if King Richard be alive, to restore him to his crown; and if not, that my honoured nephew, who is the right heir to the said crown, shall be King of England, and that the said Owen will assert his right in Wales. And I, seeing and considering that the said quarrel is good and reasonable, have consented to join in it, and to aid and maintain it, and, by the grace of God, to a good end. Amen! I ardently hope, and from my heart, that you will support and enable me to bring this struggle of mine to a successful issue. I have moreover to inform you that the lordships of Mellenyth, Werthrenon, Raydre, the commot of Udor, Arwystly, Keveilloc, and Kereynon, are lately come into our possession. Wherefore I moreover entreat you that you will forbear making inroad into my said lands, or to do any damage to my said tenantry, and that you furnish them with provisions at a certain reasonable price, as you would wish that I should treat you; and upon this point be pleased to send me an answer. Very dear and well-beloved, God give you grace to prosper in your beginnings, and to arrive at a happy issue.—Written at Mellenyth, the 13th day of December.
"Edmund Mortimer."
"To my very dear and well-beloved M. John Greyndor, Howell Vaughan, and all the gentles and commons of Radnor and Prestremde." [141]
Of the Prince himself, between the end of August 1402, and the following spring, little is recorded. In March 1403 he was made Lieutenant of Wales by the King, and with the consent of his council, with full powers of inquiring into offences, of pardoning offenders, of arraying the King's lieges, and of doing all other things which he should find necessary. This appointment, implying personal interference, would lead us to infer, either that he tarried through the winter in the midst of the Principality, or near its borders, or that he returned to it early in the spring.[142] To this year also we shall probably be correct in referring the following letter of Prince Henry to the council, dated Shrewsbury, 30th May; but which Sir Harris Nicolas considers to have been written the year before. That it could not have been written by the Prince at Shrewsbury on the 30th of May 1402, seems demonstrable from the circumstance of his having been personally present in the Tower of London on the 8th of May, and of his having executed a deed in the Castle of Tutbury on the 26th of May 1402. Whilst the probability of its having been written in the end of May 1403, is much strengthened by the ordinance of the King, dated June 16, 1403, in which he mentions the reports which he had received from the Prince's council then in Wales of Owyn Glyndowr's intention to invade England; and also by the order made July 10, 1403, by the King, that the council would send 1000l. to the Prince, to enable him to keep his people together,—the very object chiefly desired in this despatch. The letter is in French.
LETTER FROM PRINCE HENRY TO THE COUNCIL.
"From the Prince.
"Very dear and entirely well-beloved, we greet you well. And forasmuch as our soldiers desire to know from us whether they will be paid for the three months of the present quarter, and tell us that they will not remain here without being promptly paid their wages according to their agreements, we beseech you very sincerely that you will order payment for the said months, or supply us otherwise, and take measures in time for the safeguard of these marches. For the rebels are trying to find out every day whether we shall be paid, and they well know that without payment we shall not be able to continue here: and they propose to levy all the power of Northwales and Southwales to make inroads, and to destroy the march and the counties adjoining to it; and we have not the power here of resisting them, so as to hinder them from the full execution of their malicious designs. And when our men are withdrawn from us, we must at all events ourselves retire into England, or be disgraced for ever. For every one must know that without troops we can do no more than another man of inferior rank. And at present we have very great expenses, and we have raised the largest sum in our power to meet them from our little stock of jewels. Our two castles of Harlech and Lampadern are besieged, and have been so for a long time, and we must relieve them and victual them within these ten days; and, besides that, protect the march around us with the third of our forces against the invasion of the rebels. Nevertheless, if this campaign could be continued, the rebels never were so likely to be destroyed as at present. And now, since we have fully shown the state of these districts, please to take such measures as shall seem best to you for the safety of these same parts, and of this portion of the realm of England; which may God protect, and give you grace to determine upon the best for the time. And our Lord have you in his keeping.—Given under our signet at Shrewsbury, the 30th day of May. And be well assured that we have fully shown to you the peril of whatever may happen hereafter, if remedy be not sent in time.
On this letter it is impossible not to remark that, so far from having an abundant supply of money to squander on his supposed vices and follies, Henry was compelled to pawn his own little stock of plate and jewels to raise money for the indispensable expenses of the war.
The first direct mention made of the Prince after this is found in the ordinance above referred to, dated June 16, 1403, which informs us that he certainly was then in Wales, and strongly implies that he had been there for some time previously. The King says, "I heard from many persons of my son the Prince's council, now in Wales, that Owyn Glyndowr is on the point of making an incursion into England with a great power, for the purpose of obtaining supplies. I therefore command the sheriffs of Gloucester, Salop, Worcester, and Hereford, to make proclamation for all knights, and gentlemen of one hundred shillings' annual income, to go and put themselves under the governance of the Prince." Another letter from Henry to his council, dated Higham Ferrers, July 10, 1403,[143] is deeply interesting, not only as bearing testimony to the persevering bravery of his son Henry, but as affording an example of the uncertainty of human calculations, and the deceitfulness of human engagements and friendships. He informs the council that he had received letters from his son, and information by his messengers, acquainting him with the gallant and good bearing of his very dear and well-beloved son, which gave him very great pleasure. He then commissions them to pay 1000l. [144] to the Prince for the purpose of enabling him to keep his soldiers together. "We are now," he adds, "on our way to succour our beloved and loyal cousins, the Earl of Northumberland and Henry his son, in the conflict which they have honourably undertaken for us and our realm; and, as soon as that campaign shall have ended honourably, with the aid of God, we will hasten towards Wales."[145]
This letter had not been written more than five days when King Henry became acquainted with the rebellion of those, his "beloved and faithful lieges," to assist whom against his northern foes he was then actually on his road. His proclamation for all sheriffs to raise their counties, and hasten to him wherever he might be, is dated Burton-on-Trent, July 16, 1403. On the morrow he sent off a despatch to his council, informing them that Henry Percy, calling him only Henry of Lancaster, was in open rebellion against him, and was spreading far and wide through Cheshire the false rumours that Richard was still alive. He then assures them, "for their consolation," that he was powerful enough to encounter all his enemies; at the same time expressing his pleasure that they should all come to him wherever he might be, except only the Treasurer, whom he wished to stay, for the purpose of collecting as large sums as possible to meet the exigence of the occasion. The Chancellor, on Wednesday, June 18th, met the bearer of these tidings before he reached London, opened the letters, and forwarded them to the council with an apology.[146]
CHAPTER VIII.
the rebellion of the percies, — its origin. — letters of hotspur, and the earl of northumberland. — tripartite indenture between the percies, owyn, and mortimer. — doubts as to its authenticity. — hotspur hastens from the north. — the king's decisive conduct. — he forms a junction with the prince. — "sorry battle of shrewsbury." — great inaccuracy of david hume. — hardyng's duplicity. — manifesto of the percies probably a forgery. — glyndowr's absence from the battle involves neither breach of faith nor neglect of duty. — circumstances preceding the battle. — of the battle itself. — its immediate consequences.
1403.
In analysing the motives which drove the Percies, father and son, into rebellion, we are recommended by some writers to search only into those antecedent probabilities, those general causes of mutual dissatisfaction, which must have operated on parties situated as they were with regard to Henry IV. The same authors would dissuade us from seeking for any immediate and proximate causes, because "chroniclers have not discovered or detailed the beginning incidents." But we shall scarcely be able to do justice to our subject if we strictly follow this prescribed rule of inquiry. The general causes enumerated by Hume, and expatiated upon in modern times, we may take for granted. Undoubtedly ingratitude on the one side, and discontent on the other, were not only to be expected, but, as we know, actually prevailed. "The sovereign naturally became jealous of that power which had advanced him to the throne, and the subject was not easily satisfied in the returns which he thought so great a favour had merited." But we are by no means left to conjecture abstractedly on the "beginning incidents," as the proximate causes of the open revolt of the family of Percy have been called: Hotspur's own letters, as well as those of his father Northumberland, the existence of which seems not to have been known to our historians, prepare us for much of what actually took place. We have already observed the indications of wounded pride, and indignation, and utter discontent, which Hotspur's despatches from Wales evince. Another communication, dated Swyneshed, in Lincolnshire, July 3, is more characteristic of his temper of mind than the preceding, and makes his subsequent conduct still more easily understood.[147] Sir Harris Nicolas has so clearly analysed this letter, that we may well content ourselves with the substance of it as we find it in his valuable preface.
"Hotspur commenced by reminding the council of his repeated applications for payment of the money due to him as Warden of the East March; and then alluded to the other sums owing to his father and himself, and to the promise made by the treasurer, when he was last in London, that, if it were agreeable to the council, 2,000 marks should be paid him before the February then last past. He said he had heard that at the last parliament, when the necessities of the realm were explained by the lords of the great council to the barons and commons, the war allowance was demanded for all the marches, Calais, Guienne and Scotland, the sea, and Ireland; that the proposition for the Scotch marches was limited to 37,000l.; and that, as the payment for the marches in time of truce, due to his father and to him, did not exceed 5,000l. per annum, it excited his astonishment that it could not be paid in good faith; that it appeared to him either that the council attached too little consideration to the said marches, where the most formidable enemies which they had would be found, or that they were not satisfied with his and his father's services therein; but, if they made proper inquiry, he hoped that the greatest neglect they would discover in the marches was the neglect of payment, without which they would find no one who could render such service. On this subject he had, he said, written to the King, entreating him that, if any injury occurred to town, castle, or march, in his charge, from default of payment, he might not be blamed; but that the censure should rest on those who would not pay him, agreeably to his Majesty's honourable command and desire. He begged the council not to be displeased that he wrote ignorantly in his rude and feeble manner on this subject, because he was compelled to do so by the necessities not merely of himself, but of his soldiers, who were in such distress, that, without providing a remedy, he neither could nor dared to go to the marches; and he concluded by requesting the council to take such measures as they might think proper."
Two letters from the Earl of Northumberland, the one to the council in May, the other to the King, dated 26th June 1403, breathe the same spirit with those of his son Hotspur, and would have led us to anticipate the same subsequent conduct; at least they ought to have prepared the King and council for the resentments of two such men, overflowing with bitter indignation at the neglect and injustice with which they considered themselves to have been treated.
"The last of these letters (we quote throughout the words of the same Editor) is extremely curious. Northumberland commenced by acknowledging the receipt of a letter from the King, wherein Henry has expressed his expectation that the Earl would be at Ormeston Castle on the day appointed, and in sufficient force, without creating any additional expense to his Majesty; but that, on consideration, the King, reflecting that this could not be the case without expenses being incurred by the Earl and his son Hotspur, had ordered some money to be speedily sent to them. Of that money the Earl said he knew not the amount, nor the day of payment; that his honour, as well as the state of the kingdom, was in question; and that the day on which he was to be at Ormeston was so near, that, if payment was not soon ordered, it was very probable that the fair renown of the chivalry of the realm would not be maintained at that place, to the utter dishonour and grief of him and of his son, who were the King's loyal subjects; which they believed could not be his wish, nor had they deserved it. 'If,' the Earl sarcastically observed, 'we had both been paid the 60,000l. since your coronation, as I have heard you were informed by those who do not wish to tell you the truth, then we could better support such a charge; but to this day there is clearly due to us, as can be fully proved, 20,000l. and more.' He then entreated the King to order his council and treasurer to pay him and his son a large sum conformably to the grant made in the last parliament, and to their indentures, so that no injury might arise to the realm by the non-payment of what was due to them.' To this letter he signed himself 'Your Matathias, who supplicates you to take his state and labour to heart in this affair.'"
There is so much sound reasoning also and good sense in the review of these proceedings, presented to us by the same pen, that we cannot do better than adopt it. The Author's subsequent researches have all tended to confirm that Editor's view:
"This letter preceded the rebellion of the Percies by less than four weeks; and that event may, it is presumed, be mainly attributed to the inattention shown to their requests of payment of the large sums which they had expended in the King's service. They were not only harassed by debts, and destitute of means to pay their followers, but their honour, as the Earl expressly told the King, was involved in the fulfilment of their engagements; a breach of which not only exposed them to the greatest difficulties, but, in the opinion of their chivalrous contemporaries, perhaps affected their reputation. That under these circumstances, and goaded by a sense of injury and injustice, the fiery Hotspur should throw off his allegiance, and revolt, is not surprising; but it is matter of astonishment that Henry should have hazarded such a result. To the house of Percy he was chiefly indebted for the crown; and it is scarcely credible that at the moment of their defection it could have been his policy to offend them. The country was at war with France and Scotland, Wales was then in open rebellion, and Henry was far from satisfied of the general loyalty of his subjects. Can it be believed that he desired to increase his enemies by adding the most powerful family in the kingdom to the number? Nor can Henry's constant efforts to prevent the people from becoming disaffected, be reconciled with the wish to excite discontent in two of the most influential and distinguished personages in the realm. It is shown in another part of this volume, (Minutes of Privy Council,) that the King had not the slightest suspicion of Hotspur's revolt until it took place; and it appears that, when he heard of it, he was actually on his route to join that chieftain, and, to use his own words to his council, 'to give aid and support to his very dear and loyal cousins, the Earl of Northumberland and his son Henry, in the expedition which they had honourably commenced for him and his realm against his enemies the Scotch.' Instead of refusing to pay to the Percies the money which they claimed, from the desire to lessen their power, or to inflict upon them any species of mortification, all which is known of the state of this country justifies the inference that Henry had the strongest motives for conciliating that family. The neglect of their repeated demands seems, therefore, to have arisen solely from his being unable[148] to comply with them; and the King's pecuniary embarrassments are shown by the documents in this work to have been of so pressing and so permanent a nature, that there is no difficulty in believing such to have been the case. It is deserving of observation, however, that the discontent which is visible in the letters of Hotspur and his father, is as much at the conduct of the council as at that of the King; and jealousy of their superior influence with Henry, and possibly a suspicion that they endeavoured to injure them in his estimation, as well as to impede their exertions in his service, by withholding the necessary resources, may have combined with other causes in producing their disaffection."[149]
Not Shakspeare only, in his highly-wrought scene at the Archdeacon of Bangor's house, but our historians also and their commentators, instruct us to refer to a point of time very little subsequent to the date of the last letter from the Earl of Northumberland the celebrated Tripartite Indenture of Division. Shakspeare has traced, with such exquisite designs and shades of colouring, the different characters of the contracting parties in their acts and sentiments, and has thrown such vividness and life and beauty into the whole procedure, that the imagination is led captive, superinducing an unwillingness to doubt the reality; and the mind reluctantly engages in an examination of the truth. But, consistently with the principles adopted in these Memoirs, the Author is compelled to sift the evidence on which the genuineness of the treaty depends. The document, if it could have been established as trustworthy, could not have failed to be interesting to every one as a fact in general history, whilst the English and Welsh antiquary must in an especial manner have been gratified by being made acquainted with its particular provisions. At all events, whatever opinion may be ultimately formed of its character as the vehicle of historical verity, it is in itself too important, and has been too widely recognised, to be passed over in these pages without notice.
Sir Henry Ellis, to whom we are indebted for having first called attention to the specific stipulations of this alleged treaty, with his accustomed perspicuity and succinctness thus introduces the subject to his reader:
"Sir Edmund Mortimer's letter is dated December 13 (1402), and the Tripartite Indenture of Partition was not fully agreed upon till toward the middle of the next year. The negociation for the partition of the kingdom seems to have originated with Mortimer and Glyndowr only. The battle of Shrewsbury was fought on July 21st, 1403. The manuscript chronicle, already named, compiled by one of the chaplains[150] to King Henry V, gives the particulars of the final treaty, signed at the house of the Archdeacon of Bangor, more amply than they can be found elsewhere. The expectation declared in this treaty that the contracting parties would turn out to be those spoken of by Merlin, who were to divide amongst them the Greater Britain, as it is called, corroborates the story told by Hall. The whole passage is here submitted to the reader's perusal: the words are evidently those of the treaty." The reader is then furnished with a copy of the Latin original: but, since no point of the general question as to its genuineness appears to be affected by the words employed, the following translation is substituted in its place.
TRIPARTITE INDENTURE OF DIVISION.
"This year, the Earl of Northumberland made a league and covenant and friendship with Owyn Glyndwr and Edmund Mortimer, son of the late Edmund Earl of March, in certain articles of the form and tenor following:—In the first place, that these Lords, Owyn, the Earl, and Edmund, shall henceforth be mutually joined, confederate, united, and bound by the bond of a true league and true friendship, and sure and good union. Again, that every of these Lords shall will and pursue, and also procure, the honour and welfare one of another; and shall, in good faith, hinder any losses and distresses which shall come to his knowledge, by any one whatsoever intended to be inflicted on either of them. Every one, also, of them shall act and do with another all and every those things which ought to be done by good, true, and faithful friends to good, true, and faithful friends, laying aside all deceit and fraud. Also, if ever any of the said Lords shall know and learn of any loss or damage intended against another by any persons whatsoever, he shall signify it to the others as speedily as possible, and assist them in that particular, that each may take such measures as may seem good against such malicious purposes; and they shall be anxious to prevent such injuries in good faith; also, they shall assist each other to the utmost of their power in the time of necessity. Also, if by God's appointment it should appear to the said Lords in process of time that they are the same persons of whom the Prophet speaks, between whom the government of the Greater Britain ought to be divided and parted, then they and every of them shall labour to their utmost to bring this effectually to be accomplished. Each of them, also, shall be content with that portion of the kingdom aforesaid limited as below, without further exaction or superiority; yea, each of them in such portion assigned to him shall enjoy equal liberty. Also, between the same Lords it is unanimously covenanted and agreed that the said Owyn and his heirs shall have the whole of Cambria or Wales, by the borders, limits, and boundaries underwritten divided from Leogoed which is commonly called England; namely, from the Severn sea, as the river Severn leads from the sea, going down to the north gate of the city of Worcester; and from that gate straight to the ash-trees, commonly called in the Cambrian or Welsh language Ouuene Margion, which grow on the high way from Bridgenorth to Kynvar; thence by the high way direct, which is usually called the old or ancient way to the head or source of the river Trent; thence to the head or source of the river Meuse; thence as that river leads to the sea, going down within the borders, limits, and boundaries above written. And the aforesaid Earl of Northumberland shall have for himself and his heirs the counties below written, namely, Northumberland, Westmoreland, Lancashire, York, Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Stafford, Leicester, Northampton, Warwick, and Norfolk. And the Lord Edmund shall have all the rest of the whole of England entirely to him and his heirs. Also, should any battle, riot, or discord fall out between two of the said Lords, (may it never be!) then the third of the said Lords, calling to himself good and faithful counsel, shall duly rectify such discord, riot, and battle; whose approval or sentence the discordant parties shall be held bound to obey. They shall also be faithful to defend the kingdom against all men; saving the oak on the part of the said Owyn given to the most illustrious Prince Charles, by the grace of God King of the French, in the league and covenant between them made. And that the same be, all and singular, well and faithfully observed, the said Lords, Owyn, the Earl, and Edmund, by the holy body of the Lord which they now stedfastly look upon, and by the holy Gospels of God by them now bodily touched, have sworn to observe the premises all and singular to their utmost, inviolably; and have caused their seals to be mutually affixed thereto."
The above learned Editor of this instrument (to whose labours in rescuing from oblivion so many original documents relative to these times we are repeatedly induced to acknowledge our obligations,) seems to have fallen into some serious mistakes here. Either influenced by the fascinating reminiscences of Shakspeare's representations, or following Hall with too implicit a confidence, he has altogether overlooked the date assigned in the manuscript itself to the execution of this partition deed, and the persons between whom the agreement is there said to have been made. So far from countenancing the assumption that "the indenture was finally agreed upon towards the middle of the year next after the date of Edmund Mortimer's letter announcing his junction with Owyn (December 14th, 1402)," the manuscript expressly states that the covenant was made on the 28th of February,[151] in the fourth year of Henry IV; and that the contracting parties were Henry Earl of Northumberland, Sir Edmund Mortimer, and Owyn Glyndowr. Hall, on whom there exists strong reason for believing that Shakspeare rested as his authority, asserts that the contracting parties were Glyndowr, the Lord Percy (by which title he throughout designates Hotspur), and the Earl of March. Hall's expressions would lead us to infer that the circumstance was not generally recognised or known by the chroniclers before his time, but was recorded by one only of those with whose writings he was acquainted. "A certain writer," he says, "writeth that this Earl of March, the Lord Percy, and Owyn Glyndowr were unwisely made believe by a Welsh prophesier that King Henry was the Moldwarp cursed of God's own mouth, and that they were the Dragon, the Lion, and the Wolf which should divide the realm between them, by the deviation, not divination, of that mawmet Merlin." Hall then proceeds to tell us that the tripartite indenture was sealed by the deputies of the three parties in the Archdeacon's house; and that, by the treaty, Wales was given to Owyn, all England from Severn and Trent southward and eastward, was assigned to the Earl of March, and the remnant to Lord Percy.
The strange confusion made either by Hall, or "the certain writer" from whom he draws his story, of Owyn's prisoner and son-in-law, Edmund Mortimer, with the Earl of March his nephew, then a minor in the King's safe custody, throws doubtless great suspicion on his narrative; nevertheless, such as it is, (allowing for that mistake,) his account seems far more probable than the statement given in the Sloane manuscript,—the only authority, it is presumed, now known to have reported the alleged words of the treaty. It is much more likely, that the project of dividing South Britain among the houses of Glyndowr, Mortimer, and Percy, should have been entertained before the battle of Shrewsbury, when the Earl of Worcester's malicious love of mischief might have suggested it, and Hotspur's headstrong impetuosity might have caught at the scheme, and their troops, not yet dispirited by defeat, might have been sanguine of success, than after that struggle, when the old Earl of Northumberland[152] was the only representative of the house of Percy who could have signed it. The cause of Owyn, Mortimer, and Northumberland had so sunk into its wane after Hotspur's death, that they could then scarcely have contemplated as a thing feasible the division of the fair realm of England and Wales among themselves. Of the authority of the manuscript from which the indenture is extracted, the Author (for reasons stated in the Appendix) is compelled to form a very low estimate. And if such a deed ever was signed, it is far less improbable that the manuscript (full, as it confessedly is elsewhere, of errors) should have inserted it incorrectly in point of chronological order, than that the contracting parties should have postponed their contemplated arrangement to a period when success must have appeared almost beyond hope. Independently, however, of the suspicion cast on the document by the date assigned to it in the manuscript, it seems to carry with it internal evidence against itself. The contract was made by Edmund Mortimer, the Earl of Northumberland, and Owyn, and among them the land was to be divided; but, so far from the report of such an intended distribution being corroborated by any other authority, there is much evidence to render it incredible. Edmund Mortimer's own genuine letter, for example, announcing his adhesion to Owyn, which preceded this agreement, makes no allusion to the Percies, or even to himself, as portionists. "The cause," he says, "which he espoused would guarantee to Owyn his rights in Wales, and, in case Richard were dead, would place the Earl of March on the throne." It is, indeed, scarcely conceivable that the nobles, the gentry, and the people at large would have suffered their land to be cut up into portions, destroying the integrity of the kingdom, and exposing it with increased facilities to foreign invasion, and interminable intestine warfare; whilst neither of the three who were to share the spoil had any pretensions of title to the crown. It is scarcely less inconceivable that three men, such as Mortimer, Glyndowr, and Northumberland, could have seriously devised so desperate a scheme.
On the whole, the Author is disposed to express his suspicion that the entire story of the tripartite league is the creature only of invention, originating in some inexplicable mistake, or fabricated for the purpose of exciting feelings of contempt or hostility against the rebels.
In examining the various accounts of the battle of Shrewsbury with a view of putting together ascertained facts in right order, and distinguishing between certainty,—strong probability,—mere surmise,—improbabilities,—and utter mistakes, we shall find it far more easy to point out the errors of others, than to adopt one general view which shall not in its turn be open to objections. Still, in any important course of events, it seems to be a dereliction of duty in an author to shrink from offering the most probable outline of facts which the careful comparison of different statements, and a patient weighing of opposite authorities, suggest. Before, however, we enter upon that task, it will be necessary to clear the way by examining some other questions of doubt and difficulty.
To Mr. Hume's inaccuracies, arising from the want of patient labour in searching for truth at the fountain-head, we have been led to refer above. His readiness to rest satisfied with whatever first offered itself, provided it suited his present purpose, without either scrutinizing its internal evidence, or verifying it by reference to earlier and better authority, is forced upon our notice in his account of the battle of Shrewsbury. Just one half of the entire space which he spares to record the whole affair, he devotes to a minute detail of the manifesto which Hotspur is said to have sent to the King on the night before the battle, in the name of his father, his uncle, and himself. This document, at least in the terms quoted by Mr. Hume, is proved as well by its own internal self-contradictions, as by historical facts, to be a forgery of a much later date.
The first charge which the manifesto is made to bring against Henry is, that, after his landing at Ravenspurg, he swore on the Gospel that he only sought his own rightful inheritance, that he would never disturb Richard in his possession of the throne, and that never would he aim at being King. And yet another item charges him with having sworn on the same day, and at the same place, and on the same Gospel, an oath (the very terms of which imply that he was to be King) that he never would exact tenths or fifteenths without consent of the three estates, except in cases of extreme emergence. Again, "It complained of his cruel policy (says Mr. Hume, without adding a single remark,) in allowing the young Earl of March, whom he ought to regard as his sovereign, to remain a captive in the hands of his enemies, and in even refusing to all his friends permission to treat of his ransom;" whilst it is beyond all question that the person whom this pretended manifesto confounds with the Earl of March, "taken in pitched battle," was Sir Edmund Mortimer. The Earl of March was himself then a boy, and was in close custody in Henry's castle of Windsor. The manifesto, as Hume quotes it, is evidently full of historical blunders; its author had followed those historians who had confounded Edmund Mortimer with the Earl of March; and yet Mr. Hume adopts it on the authority of Hall, and gives it so prominent a place in his work.
But even as the manifesto is found in its original form in Hardyng, (though the blunders copied by Hume from Hall[153] do not appear there in all their extravagance and absurdity,) something attaches to it exceedingly suspicious as to its character and circumstances. Independently of the internal evidence of the document itself, which will repay a careful scrutiny, the very fact of Hardyng having withheld even the most distant allusion to such a manifesto in the copy of his work which he presented to Henry VI, the grandson of the King whose character the manifesto was designed to blast, at a time so much nearer the event, when the reality or the falsehood of his statement might have been more easily ascertained, contrasts very strikingly with the forced and unnatural manner in which, many years after, he abruptly thrusts the manifesto in Latin prose into the midst of his English poem. He then[154] desired to please Edward IV, to whom any adverse reflection on Bolinbroke would be acceptable.
The document, however, itself savours strongly of forgery. In the first place, it purports to be signed and sealed by Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, (though the Earl at that time was in Northumberland,) Henry Percy, his first-born son, and Thomas Earl of Worcester, styling themselves Procurators and Protectors of the kingdom. Should this apparent contradiction be thought to be reconciled with the truth by what Hardyng mentions, that the document was made by good advice of the Archbishop of York, and divers other holy men and lords; it must be answered that it could not have been drawn up for the purpose of being used whenever an opportunity might offer, for, in the name of the three, it challenges the King, and declares that they will prove the allegations "on this day," "on this instant day," twice repeated. Evidently the writer of the document had his mind upon the fatal day of Shrewsbury.
Again, one of their principal charges seems to have emanated from a person totally ignorant of some facts which must have been known to the Percies, and which are established by documents still in our hands. The words of the clause to which we refer run thus: "We aver and intend to prove, that whereas Edmund Mortimer, brother of the Earl of March, was taken by Owyn Glyndowr in mortal battle, in the open field, and has UP TO THIS TIME[155] been cruelly kept in prison and bands of iron, in your cause, you have publicly declared him to have been guilefully taken, [ex dolo,—willingly, as Hall quotes it, to yield himself prisoner to the said Owyn,] and you would not suffer him to be ransomed, neither by his own means nor by us his relatives and friends. We have, therefore, negociated with Owyn, as well for his ransom from our own proper goods, as also for peace between you and Owyn. Wherefore have you regarded us as traitors, and moreover have craftily and secretly planned and imagined our death and utter destruction."
This clause of the manifesto declares the King to have publicly proclaimed that Edmund Mortimer, who was taken in pitched battle, had fraudulently given himself up to Owyn. The King's own letter to the council[156] is totally irreconcileable with his making such a declaration. He announces to them the news which he had just received of Mortimer's capture, as a calamity which had made him resolve to proceed in person against the rebels. "Tidings have reached us from Wales, that the rebels have taken our very dear and much beloved Edmund Mortimer." Again, the clause avers that the King had suffered the same person, Edmund Mortimer, to be kept cruelly in prison and iron chains up to that time, and would not suffer him to be ransomed. In contradiction to this charge, we are assured by the early chroniclers[157] that Owyn treated Mortimer with all the humanity and respect in his power; and that because he possessed not the means of paying a ransom, he had, as early as St. Andrew's day, (30th of November 1402, less than six months after his capture, and nearly eight months before the alleged delivery of the manifesto,) been married to the daughter of Owyn with great solemnity; and, "thus turning wholly to the Welsh people, he pledged himself thereafter to fight for them to the utmost of his power against the English."
Another expression in this clause, incompatible with the truth, but quite consistent with the mistakes which from very early times prevailed as to the circumstances preceding the battle of Shrewsbury, charges the King with having pronounced the three Percies to be traitors, and with having secretly planned and imagined their ruin and death; and this is said to have been signed and sealed by Northumberland, then remaining in the north. Whereas the truth, established beyond controversy, though little known, is, that, up to the very day when the King announced to the council Hotspur's rebellion,—barely four days before the battle,—he had entertained no idea of their disloyalty. Even in his last preceding despatch he informed the council that he was on his way "to afford aid and comfort to his very dear and faithful cousins, the Earl of Northumberland and his son Henry, and to join them in their expedition against the Scots."[158]
These considerations, among others, throw so many and such weighty suspicions on the manifesto, that it can scarcely be regarded as deserving of credit. Nor must the Author here disguise his conviction, that the whole is a forgery, guiltily made for the purpose of blackening the memory of Henry IV, and of casting odium on the dynasty of the house of Lancaster.
Another important mistake into which tradition seems to have betrayed some very pains-taking persons is that which charges Owyn Glyndowr with a breach of faith, and a selfish conduct, on the occasion of the battle of Shrewsbury, utterly unworthy of any man of the slightest pretensions to integrity and honour. He is said by Leland to have promised Percy to be present at that struggle: he is reported by Pennant to have remained, as if spell-bound, with twelve thousand men at Oswestry. The History of Shrewsbury tells us of the still existing remains of an oak at Shelton, into the top-most branches of which he climbed to see the turn of the battle, resolving to proceed or retire as that should be; having come with his forces to that spot time enough to join the conflict. The question involving Owyn Glyndowr's good faith and valour, or zeal and activity, is one of much interest, and deserves to be patiently investigated; whilst an attentive examination of authentic documents, and a careful comparison of dates, are essential to the establishment of the truth. The result of the inquiry may be new, and yet not on that account the less to be relied upon.
That Owyn gladly promised to co-operate with the Percies, there is every reason to regard as time; that he undertook to be with them at Shrewsbury on that day of battle cannot, it should seem, be true. Probably he never heard of any expectation of such an engagement, and the first news which reached him relating to it may have been tidings of Percy's death, and the discomfiture of his troops. The Welsh historians unsparingly charge him with having deceived his northern friends on that day: and some assert that he remained at Oswestry, only seventeen miles off; others that he came to the very banks of the Severn, and tarried there in safety, consulting only his own interest, whilst a vigorous effort on his part might have turned the victory that day against the King. This is, perhaps, within the verge of possibility; but is in the highest degree improbable. That the reports have originated in an entire ignorance of Owyn's probable position at the time, and of the sudden, unforeseen, and unexpected character of the struggle to which Bolinbroke's instantaneous decision forced the Percies, will evidently appear, if, instead of relying on vague tradition, we follow in search of the reality where facts only, or fair inferences from ascertained facts, may conduct us.
It appears, then, to be satisfactorily demonstrable by original documents, interpreted independently of preconceived theory, that, four days only before King Henry's proclamation against the Percies was issued at Burton upon Trent, Owyn Glyndowr was in the extreme divisions of Caermarthenshire, most actively and anxiously engaged in reducing the English castles which still held out against him, and by no means free from formidable antagonists in the field, being fully occupied at that juncture, and likely to be detained there for some time. It must be also remembered that the King published his proclamation as soon as ever he had himself heard of Hotspur's movements from the north, and that even his knowledge of the hostile intentions of the Percies preceded the very battle itself only by the brief space of five days. This circumstance has never (it is presumed) been noticed by any of our historians; and the examination of the whole question involves so new and important a view of the affairs of the Principality at that period, and bears so immediately on the charge made against the great rebel chieftain for dastardly cowardice or gross breach of faith, that it seems to claim in these volumes a fuller and more minute investigation than might otherwise have been desirable or generally interesting. The documents furnishing the facts on which we ground our opinion, are chiefly original letters preserved in the British Museum, and made accessible to the general reader by having been published by Sir Henry Ellis.[159] That excellent Editor, however, has unquestionably referred them to an earlier date than can be truly assigned to them.[160] Independently of the material fact which they are intended to establish, they carry with them much intrinsic interest of their own; and although the detail of the evidence in the body of the work might seem to impede unnecessarily the progress of the narrative, the dissertation in its detached form is recommended to the reader's careful perusal. Should he close his examination of those documents under the same impression which the Author confesses they have made on himself, he will acquiesce in the conclusion above stated, and consider this position as admitting no reasonable doubt,—That, a few days only before the fatal battle of Shrewsbury, Owyn Glyndowr was in the very extremity of South Wales, engaged in attempts to reduce the enemy's garrisons, and crush his power in those quarters; with a prospect also before him of much similar employment in a service of great danger to himself. And when we recollect that probably Henry Percy as little expected the King to meet him at Shrewsbury, as the King a week before had thought to find him or his father in any other part of the kingdom than in Northumberland, whither he was himself on his march to join them; when we recollect the nature and extent of the country which lies between Pembrokeshire and Salop; and reflect also on the undisciplined state of Owyn's "eight thousand and eight score spears, such as they were;" instead of being surprised at his absence from Shrewsbury on the 21st of July, and charging him with having deserted his friends and sworn allies on that sad field, we are driven to believe that his presence there would have savoured more of the marvellous than many of his most celebrated achievements. The simple truth breaks the spell of the poet's picture, and forces us to unveil its fallacy, though it has been pronounced by the historian of Shrewsbury to "form one of the brightest ornaments of the pages of Marmion." To whatever cause we ascribe the decline of Owyn's power, we cannot trace its origin to a judicial visitation as the consequence of his failure in that hour of need. The poet's imagination, creative of poetical justice, wrought upon the tale as it was told; but that tale was not built on truth. The lines, however, deserve to have been the vehicle of a less ill-founded tradition.
"E'en from the day when chained by fate,
By wizard's dream or potent spell,
Lingering from sad Salopia's field,
Reft of his aid, the Percy fell;—
E'en from that day misfortune still,
As if for violated faith,
Pursued him with unwearied step,
Vindictive still for Hotspur's death."[161]
Those who feel an interest in tracing the localities of this battle with a greater minuteness of detail in its circumstances than is requisite for the purpose of these Memoirs, will do well to consult the "Historian of Shrewsbury." The following is offered as the probable outline of the circumstances of the engagement, together with those which preceded and followed it.
The Earl of Northumberland and his son Hotspur were engaged in collecting and organizing troops in the north, for the professed purpose of invading Scotland as soon as the King should join them with his forces. Taking from these troops "eight score horse," Hotspur[162] marched southward from Berwick at their head, and came through Lancashire and Cheshire, spreading his rebellious principles on every side, and adding to his army, especially from among the gentry. He proclaimed everywhere that their favourite Richard, though deposed by the tyranny of Bolinbroke, was still alive; and many gathered round his standard, resolved to avenge the wrongs of their liege lord. The King, with a considerable force, the amount of which is not precisely known, was on his march towards the north, with the intention of joining the forces raised by the Percies, and of advancing with them into Scotland, and, "that expedition well ended," of returning to quell the rebels in Wales. He was at Burton on Trent when news was brought to him of Hotspur's proceedings, which decided him[163] instantly to grapple with this unlooked-for rebellion. Hotspur was believed to be on his road to join Glyndowr, and the King resolved to intercept him.
So far from inferring, as some authors have done, from the smallness of the numbers on either side, that the country considered it more a personal quarrel between two great families than as a national concern, we might rather feel surprise at the magnitude of the body of men which met in the field of Shrewsbury.[164] It must be remembered that the King did not "go down" from the seat of government with 14,000 men; but that the army with which he hastened to crush the rising rebellion consisted only of the troops at the head of whom he was marching towards the north, of the body then under the Prince of Wales on the borders, and of those who could be gathered together on the exigence of the moment by the royal proclamation. It must be borne also in mind that (according to all probability) barely four days elapsed between the first intimation which reached the King's ears of the rebellion of the Percies, and the desperate conflict which crushed them. As we have already seen, the King, only on the 10th of July, (scarcely eleven days before that decisive struggle,) believed himself to be on his road northward to join "his beloved and loyal" Northumberland and Hotspur against the Scots.
The Prince of Wales, who, as we infer, first apprised the King of this rising peril, was on the Welsh borders, near Shrewsbury; and he formed a junction with his father,—but where, and on what day, is not known. Very probably the first intimation that Henry of Monmouth himself had of the hostile designs of the Percies, was the sudden departure of the Earl of Worcester, his guardian, who unexpectedly left the Prince's retinue, and, taking his own dependents with him, joined Hotspur.
At all events, delay would have added every hour to the imminent peril of the royal cause, and probably Hotspur's impetuosity seconded the King's manifest policy of hastening an immediate engagement; and thus the "sorry battle of Shrewsbury" was fought by the united forces of the King and the Prince on the one side, and the forces of Hotspur and his uncle the Earl of Worcester on the other, unassisted by Glyndowr.
That the opposed parties engaged in "Heyteley Field,"[165] near that town, is placed beyond question. With regard to their relative position immediately before the battle, there is no inconsiderable doubt. Some say that the King's army reached the town and took possession of the castle on the Friday, only three hours before Hotspur arrived: others, following Walsingham, represent Hotspur as having arrived first, and being in the very act of assaulting the town, when the sudden, unexpected appearance of the royal banner advancing made him desist from that attempt, and face the King's forces. Be this as it may, on Saturday the 21st of July, the two hostile armies were drawn up in array against each other in Hateley Field, ready to rush to the struggle on which the fate of England was destined much to depend. Whether any manifesto were sent from Hotspur, or not, it is certain that the King made an effort to prevent the desperate conflict, and the unnecessary shedding of so much Christian blood. He despatched the Abbot of Shrewsbury and the Clerk of the Privy Seal to Hotspur's lines, with offers of pardon even then, would they return to their allegiance. Hotspur was much moved by this act of grace, and sent his uncle, the Earl of Worcester, to negociate. This man has been called the origin of all the mischief; and he is said so to have addressed the King, and so to have misinterpreted his mild and considerate conversation, "who condescended, in his desire of reconciliation, even below the royal dignity," that both parties were incensed the more, and resolved instantly to try their strength. The onset was made by the archers of Hotspur, whose tremendous volleys caused dreadful carnage among the King's troops. "They fell," says Walsingham, "as the leaves fall on the ground after a frosty night at the approach of winter. There was no room for the arrows to reach the ground, every one struck a mortal man." The King's bowmen also did their duty. A rumour, spreading through the host, that the King had fallen, shook the steadiness and confidence of his partisans, and many took to flight; the royal presence, however, in every part of the engagement soon rallied his men. Hotspur and Douglas seemed anxious to fight neither with small nor great, but with the King only;[166] though they mowed down his ranks, making alleys, as in a field of corn, in their eagerness to reach him. He was, we are told, unhorsed again and again; but returned to the charge with increased impetuosity. His standard-bearer was killed at his side, and the standard thrown down. At length the Earl of Dunbar forced him away from the post which he had taken. Henry of Monmouth, though he was then no novice in martial deeds, yet had never before been engaged on any pitched-battle field; and here he did his duty valiantly. He was wounded in the face by an arrow; but, so far from allowing himself to be removed on that account to a place of safety, he urged his friends to lead him into the very hottest of the conflict. Elmham records his address: whether they are the very words he uttered, or such only as he was likely to have used, they certainly suit his character: "My lords, far be from me such disgrace, as that, like a poltroon, I should stain my noviciate in arms by flight. If the Prince flies, who will wait to end the battle? Believe it, to be carried back before victory would be to me a perpetual death! Lead me, I implore you, to the very face of the foe. I may not say to my friends, 'Go ye on first to the fight.' Be it mine to say, 'Follow me, my friends.'" The next time we hear of Henry of Monmouth is as an agent of mercy. The personal conflict between him and Hotspur, into the description of which Shakspeare has infused so full a share of his powers of song, has no more substantial origin than the poet's own imagination. Percy fell by an unknown hand, and his death decided the contest. The cry, "Henry Percy is dead!" which the royalists raised, was the signal for utter confusion and flight.[167] The number of the slain on either side is differently reported. When the two armies met, the King's was superior in numbers, but Hotspur's far more abounded in gentle blood. The greater part of the gentlemen of Cheshire fell on that day. On the King's part,[168] except the Earl of Stafford and Sir Walter Blount, few names of note are reckoned among the slain.
The Earl of Worcester, Lord Douglas, and Sir Richard Vernon, fell into the hands of the King; they were kept prisoners till the next Monday, when Worcester and Vernon were beheaded. The Earl's head was sent up to London on the 25th (the following Wednesday), by the bearer of the royal mandate, commanding it to be placed upon London bridge.
Thus ended the "sad and sorry field of Shrewsbury."[169] The battle appeared to be the archetype of that cruel conflict which in the middle of the century almost annihilated the ancient nobility of England. Fabyan says, "it was more to be noted vengeable, for there the father was slain of the son, and the son of the father."
CHAPTER IX.
the prince commissioned to receive the rebels into allegiance. — the king summons northumberland. — hotspur's corpse disinterred. — the reason. — glyndowr's french auxiliaries. — he styles himself "prince of wales." — devastation of the border counties. — henry's letters to the king, and to the council. — testimony of him by the county of hereford. — his famous letter from hereford. — battle of grossmont.
1403-1404.
No sooner had the King gained the field of Shrewsbury than he took the most prompt measures to extinguish what remained of the rebellion of the Percies. On the very next day he issued a commission to the Earl of Westmoreland, William Gascoigne, and others, for levying forces to act against the Earl of Northumberland. That nobleman, as we have seen, remained in the north, probably in consequence of a sudden attack of illness, when Hotspur made his ill-fated descent into the south: but the King had good reason to believe that he was still in arms against the crown; and although he despatched that commission of array to the Earl of Westmoreland within only a few hours of the battle, yet he resolved to march forthwith in person,[170] and crush the rebellion by one decisive blow. On Monday the 23rd, the Earl of Worcester was beheaded; and on the same day all his silver vessels, forfeited to the King, were given to the Prince.[171] On the Tuesday the King must have started for the north; for we find two ordinances dated at Stafford, a distance of thirty miles from Shrewsbury, on Wednesday the 25th. Whilst one of these royal mandates savours of severity, the other not only is the message of mercy and forgiveness, but recommends itself to us from the consideration of the person to whom the exercise of the royal clemency was intrusted with unlimited discretion. Henry of Monmouth, perhaps, left Shrewsbury after the battle, and proceeded with his father on his journey northward; but we conclude Stafford to have been, at all events, the furthest point from the Principality to which he accompanied him. Whether the measure of mercy originated with the King or the Prince, certainly both the King believed that his son would gladly execute the commission, and the Prince felt happy in being made the royal representative in the exercise of a monarch's best and holiest prerogative. An ordinance was made by the King at Stafford, investing the Prince of Wales with full powers to pardon the rebels who were in the company of Henry Percy. The Prince probably remained in or near Shrewsbury for the discharge of the duties assigned to him by this commission. The King, having despatched messengers throughout the whole realm announcing Henry Percy's death and the defeat of the rebels, and commanding all ports to be watched that none of the vanquished might escape, proceeded northward. On the 4th of August we find him at Pontefract, from which place he issued an order to the Sheriff[172] of York, which certainly indicates anything rather than a thirst of vengeance on his enemies. It appears that many persons, reckless of justice and confident of impunity, had laid violent hands on the goods of the rebels; and different families had thus been subjected to most grievous spoliation. The King's ordinance conveys a peremptory order to the Sheriff of Yorkshire to interpose his authority, and prevent such acts of violence and wrong, even upon the King's enemies. On the 6th, we find him still at Pontefract, and again on the 14th. Official documents, without supplying any matter which needs detain us here, account for him through the intervening days. Walsingham also relates that the King proceeded to York, and summoned the whole county of Northumberland to appear before him. The Earl, who had started with a strong body a few days after the battle, either in ignorance of his son's failure, or to meet the King for the purpose of treating with him for peace, had been resisted by the Earl of Westmoreland, and compelled to retire to Warkworth. On receiving the King's summons, leaving the commonalty behind, he approached the royal presence with a small retinue, and, in the humble guise of a suppliant, besought forgiveness.[173] The King granted him full pardon, on the 11th of August;[174] and then began his return towards Wales. We find him, from the 14th to the 16th,[175] at Pontefract; on the 17th, at Doncaster. On the 18th, at Worksop; on the 26th, at Woodstock; and on the 8th of September, at Worcester.[176]
After these acts of grace and pardon to Lord Douglas, Northumberland, and all others who were joined to Sir Henry Percy, we should not expect to find a charge substantiated of wanton and brutal cruelty and vengeance on the part of the King against the corpse of that gallant knight. Such a charge, however, is brought in the most severe terms which language can supply in the manifesto said to have been made by the Archbishop of York. The fact of Hotspur's exhumation may be granted, and yet the King's memory may remain free from such a charge.[177] That the body was buried, and afterwards disinterred and exposed to public view, seems not to admit of a doubt. As it appears from the Chronicle of London, "Persons reported that Percy was yet alive. He was therefore taken up out of the grave, and bound upright between two mill-stones, that all men might see that he was dead." "The cause of Hotspur's exhumation is therefore satisfactorily explained; and, since it must have been very desirable to remove all doubt as to the fact of his death, the charge of needless barbarity which has been brought against the King for disinterring him is without foundation."[178]
The King now adopted prompt and vigorous measures for the suppression of the rebellion in Wales; and with that view issued from Worcester an ordinance to several persons by name, to keep their castles in good repair, well provided also with men and arms. Among others, the Bishop of St. David's is strictly charged as to his castle of Laghadyn; Nevill de Furnivale, for Goodrich; Edward Charleton of Powis, for Caerleon and Usk; John Chandos, for Snowdon. On the 10th of September, the King, still at Worcester, created his son, John of Lancaster, Constable of England. On the 14th he was at Hereford,[179] when he gave a warrant to William Beauchamp, (to whom was intrusted the care of Abergavenny and Ewias Harold,) to receive into their allegiance the Welsh rebels of those lordships. A similar warrant for the rebels of Brecknock, Builth, Haye, with others, is given, on the 15th, to Sir John Oldcastle, John ap Herry, and John Fairford, clerk, dated Devennock. The King was then on his route towards Caermarthen,[180] where he stayed only a short time; and left the Earl of Somerset, Sir Thomas Beaufort, the Bishop of Bath, and Lord Grey to keep the castle and town for one month. He shortly afterwards commissioned Prince Henry to negociate with those persons for their pardon who had been excepted from the act of oblivion after the battle of Shrewsbury.[181]
The Welsh, though driven probably from Caermarthenshire[182] in the early part of this autumn, seem to have carried on their hostilities in other districts with much vigour into the very middle of winter.[183] On the 8th of November, the King, being then at Cirencester, issued strict orders for the payment of 100l. to Lord Berkeley, for the succour of the garrison of Llanpadarn Castle, then straitly besieged by the rebels, and in great danger of falling into their hands. Lord Berkeley was appointed Admiral of the Fleet to the westward of the Thames, on the 5th of November 1403.
On the 22d of November the King issued a proclamation for all rebels to apply for an amnesty before the Feast of the Epiphany next ensuing, or in default thereof to expect nothing but the strict course of the law.
It is matter of doubt whether Prince Henry remained in Wales and the borders through the winter, or returned to his charge in the spring. On the opening of the campaign, however, in 1404, we find the Welsh chieftain aided by a power which must have made his rebellion far more formidable than it had hitherto been. A truce between England and France had been concluded just before the battle of Shrewsbury, but it was of very short duration. Early in the spring, the French appeared off the shores of Wales in armed vessels, and in conjunction with Glyndowr's forces, laid siege to several castles along the coast. As early as April 23rd, a sum of 300l. is assigned by the council for equipping with men and arms, provisions and stores, five vessels in the port of Bristol, to relieve the castles of Aberystwith and Cardigan, and to compel the French to raise the siege of Caernarvon and Harlech.[184] Not only were the castles on the coast brought into increased jeopardy by this accession of a continental force to Owyn's army of native rebels, but the inhabitants of the interior, already miserably plundered, and in numberless cases utterly ruined, by the ravages of the Welsh, now began to give themselves up to despair. A letter from the King's loyal subjects of Shropshire (which we must refer to this spring), praying for immediate succour against the confederate forces of Wales and France, furnishes a most deplorable view of the state of those districts. One-third part of that county, they say, had been already destroyed, whilst the inhabitants were compelled to leave their homes, in order to obtain their living in other more favoured parts of the realm. The petition prays for the protection of men-at-arms and archers, till the Prince[185] himself should come.
Soon after the French had carried on these hostile movements, their King made a solemn league with Owyn Glyndowr, as an independent sovereign, acknowledging him to be Prince of Wales. Owyn dated his princedom from the year 1400, and assumed the full title and authority of a monarch.[186] In this year he commissioned Griffin Young his chancellor, and John Hangmer, both "his beloved relatives," to treat with the King of France, in consideration of the affection and sincere love which that illustrious monarch had shown towards him and his subjects.[187] This commission is dated "Doleguelli, 10th May, A. D. 1404, and in the fourth year of our principality." In conformity with its tenour, a league was made and sworn to between the ambassadors of "our illustrious and most dread lord, Owyn, Prince of Wales," and those of the King of France. That sovereign signed the commission on the 14th of June; and the league was sealed in the chancellor's house at Paris, on the 14th July. Its provisions are chiefly directed against "Henry of Lancaster."
The reinforcements which Owyn Glyndowr received from France at the opening of the campaign in the spring of 1404, enabled him not only to lay siege to the castles in North and West Wales (as it was called), but to make desperate inroads into England, as well about Shropshire as in Herefordshire. A letter addressed to the council, June 10th, by the sheriff, the receiver, and other gentlemen of the latter county, conveys a most desponding representation of the state of those parts; especially through the district of Archenfield. The bearer of this letter was the Archdeacon of Hereford, Dean of Windsor, the same person who wrote in such "haste and dread" to the King the year before. Some parts of this letter deserve to be transcribed, they afford so lively a description of the frightful calamities of a civil war. "The Welsh rebels in great numbers have entered Irchonfeld,[188] which is a division of the county of Hereford, and there they have burnt houses, killed the inhabitants, taken prisoners, and ravaged the country, to the great dishonour of our King, and the insupportable damage of the county. We have often advertised the King that such mischiefs would befal us. We have also now certain information that within the next eight days the rebels are resolved to make an attack in the March of Wales, to its utter ruin if speedy succour be not sent. True it is, indeed, that we have no power to shelter us, except that of Lord Richard of York and his men, far too little to defend us. We implore you to consider this very perilous and pitiable case, and to pray our sovereign lord that he will come in his royal person, or send some person with sufficient power to rescue us from the invasion of the aforesaid rebels; otherwise we shall be utterly destroyed,—which God forbid! Whoever comes will, as we are led to believe from the report of our spies, have to engage in battle, or will have a very severe struggle, with the rebels. And, for God's sake, remember that honourable and valiant man the Lord Abergavenny,[189] who is on the very point of destruction if he be not rescued. Written in haste at Hereford, June 10th."
The King had in some measure anticipated this strong memorial, by signing, on the very day preceding its date,[190] a commission of array to the sheriffs of Hereford, Worcester, Gloucester, and Warwick to raise their counties and proceed forthwith to join Richard of York, and to advance in one body with him for the rescue of William Beauchamp, who was then straitly besieged in his castle of Abergavenny, and entirely destitute. Though no mention is here made of the Prince, nor any allusion to him, we have the best evidence that he was personally engaged during this summer in endeavouring to resist the violence and excesses of the rebels. He was crippled by want of means; he was forced to pawn his few jewels for the present support of himself and his retinue; and, when the money raised on them was exhausted, he was compelled to assure the council in the most direct terms, of his utter inability to remain on his post, if they did not forthwith provide him with adequate supplies. He seems to have acted both with vigour and discretion; and the council placed throughout the fullest confidence in his judgment and integrity.
Three documents at this point of time deserve especial attention. The first is a letter, in French, from the Prince, addressed to his father, and dated Worcester, 25th of June 1404; the second is another letter of the same date, written by the Prince to the council; the third contains the resolutions adopted by them in consequence of this communication.
It is very true that letters afford no infallible proof of the writer's real sentiments and feelings; and it has been said, that expressions of piety or affection in epistles of past ages are not to be interpreted as indices of the mind and state of him who utters them, any more than the ordinary close of a note in the present day proves that it came from a humble-minded and gratefully obliged person. Nevertheless, with these general suggestions before us, and not impugned, there does seem to pervade the following letter from Henry to his father, somewhat more than words of course, or matter-of-form expressions, indicative (unless the writer be a hypocrite,—and hypocrisy has never been laid to Henry of Monmouth's charge[191]) of filial dutifulness and affection, as well as of a pious and devout trust in Providence. At all events, it is incumbent on those who forbid our inference in favour of any one from such testimony to show some act, or to quote some words, or direct us to some implied sentiments in the individual, whose letters we are discussing, which would give presumptive evidence against our decision in his favour. But history has assigned no act, no sentiment, no word of an irreligious or immoral tendency, to Henry of Monmouth up to the date of this letter. It is not here implied, or conceded, that history possesses facts of another character subsequently to this date; that point must be the subject of our further inquiry. When this letter was written, as far as we can ascertain, fame had not begun to breathe a whisper against the religious and moral character of the Prince of Wales.
LETTER FROM PRINCE HENRY TO THE KING HIS FATHER.
"My very dread and sovereign lord and father.—In the most humble and obedient manner that I know or am able, I commend myself to your high Majesty, desiring every day your gracious blessing, and sincerely thanking your noble Highness for your honourable letters, which you were lately pleased to send to me, written at your Castle of Pontefract, the 21st day of this present month of June [1404]; by which letters I have been made acquainted with the great prosperity of your high and royal estate, which is to me the greatest joy that can fall to my lot in this world. And I have taken the very highest pleasure and entire delight at the news, of which you were pleased to certify me; first, of the speedy arrival of my very dear cousin, the Earl of Westmoreland, and William Clifford, to your Highness; and secondly, the arrival of the despatches from your adversary of Scotland, and other great men of his kingdom, by virtue of your safe conduct, for the good of both the kingdoms, which God of his mercy grant; and that you may accomplish all your honourable designs, to his pleasure, to your honour, and the welfare of your kingdom, as I have firm reliance in Him who is omnipotent, that you will do. My most dread and sovereign lord and father, at your high command in other your gracious letters, I have removed with my small household to the city of Worcester; and at my request there is come to me, with a truly good heart, my very dear and beloved cousin, the Earl of Warwick, with a fine retinue at his own very heavy expenses; so he well deserves thanks from you for his goodwill at all times.
"And whether the news from the Welsh be true, and what measures I purpose to adopt on my arrival, as you desire to be informed, may it please your Highness to know that the Welsh have made a descent on Herefordshire, burning and destroying also the county, with very great force, and with a supply of provisions for fifteen days. And true it is that they have burnt and made very great havoc on the borders of the said county. But, since my arrival in these parts, I have heard of no further damage from them, God be thanked! But I am informed for certain that they are assembled with all their power, and keep themselves together for some important object, and, as it is said, to burn the said county. For this reason I have sent for my beloved cousins, my Lord Richard of York and the Earl Marshal, and others the most considerable persons of the counties of that march, to be with me at Worcester on the Tuesday next after the date of this letter, to inform me plainly of the government of their districts; and how many men they will be able to bring, if need be; and to give me their advice as to what may seem to them best to be done for the safeguard of the aforesaid parts. And, agreeably to their advice, I will do all I possibly can to resist the rebels and save the English country, to the utmost of my little power, as God shall give me grace: ever trusting in your high Majesty to remember my poor estate; and that I have not the means of continuing here without the adoption of some other measures for my maintenance; and that the expenses are insupportable to me. And may you thus make an ordinance for me with speed, that I may do good service, to your honour and the preservation of my humble state. My dread sovereign lord and father, may the allpowerful Lord of heaven and earth grant you a blessed and long life in all good prosperity, to your satisfaction! Written at Worcester the 26th day of June.
"Your humble and obedient Son, Henry."
The second letter, written at the same time and place, but addressed to the council, is nearly word for word identical with this till towards its close, when it gives the following strong view of the straits and difficulties to which the Prince and the government were then driven by want of money;[192] and the personal sacrifice which he was himself compelled to make. "We implore you to make some ordinance for us in time, assured that we have nothing from which we can support ourselves here, except that we have pawned our little plate and jewels, and raised money from them, and with that we shall be able to remain only a short time. And after that, unless you make provision for us, we shall be compelled to depart with disgrace and mischief: and the country will be utterly destroyed; which God forbid! And now, since we have shown you the perils and mischiefs [which must ensue], for God's sake make your ordinance in time, for the salvation of the honour of our sovereign lord the King our father, of ourselves, and of the whole realm. And may our Lord protect you, and give you grace to do right!"
The Prince, finding his difficulties increasing, wrote another letter, dated June 30, to the council, urging them to prompt measures; and stating in very positive terms the utter impossibility of his remaining in those parts without supplies. What immediate notice was taken of these pressing communications, does not appear; that the council enabled him to remain on the borders, and to protect the country effectually from the rebels, is proved by their proceedings at Lichfield on the 29th and 30th of the August following. The minutes of those two councils are full of interest. By the first we are informed that the French, under the French Earl of March, had equipped a fleet of sixty vessels in the port of Harfleur, full of soldiers, for the purpose of an immediate invasion of Wales. To meet this rising mischief, the council advise that, since the King could not soon raise an army proportionate to his high estate and dignity, to proceed forthwith into Wales, he should remain at Tutbury until the meeting of parliament at Coventry in the October following; and in the mean time proclamations should be made, directing all able-bodied men to be ready to attend the King. Orders were also given to the officers of the customs in Bristol to supply wine, corn, and other provisions for the soldiers in the town of Caermarthen, in part payment of their wages. The minutes then record, that, with regard to the county of Hereford, the sheriff and the other gentlemen had requested the lords of the council to pray the King that he would be pleased to thank the Prince for the good protection of the said county since the Nativity of St. John (June 24th), and likewise, that for the well-being of that county, and also of the county of Gloucester, the Prince might be assigned to guard the marches of the said counties, and to make inroads into Overwent and Netherwent, Glamorgan and Morgannoc; and "to carry this into effect, they must provide the wages of five hundred men-at-arms and two thousand archers for three weeks, and through another three weeks three hundred men-at-arms and two thousand archers." In another council, probably at the end of August, the lords recommend that the sum of 3000 marks, due to the King as a fine from the inhabitants of Cheshire, to be paid in three years, should be assigned to the Prince for the safeguard of the castle of Denbigh, and towards the expenses of his other castles in North Wales.[193] They recommend also that the people of Shropshire be allowed to make a truce with Wales until the last day of November; and with regard to Herefordshire, that the Prince remain on its borders to the last day of September, and have the same number of men-at-arms and archers (or more) as he had had since the 29th of June; that he have on his own account 1000 marks, and that on the first day of October he be ready with five hundred men-at-arms and two thousand archers to make an incursion into Wales, and stay there twenty-one days, for the just chastisement of the rebels. And since for these charges the Prince should be paid before his departure, measures had been taken to raise money of several persons by way of loan. Sir John Oldcastle and John ap Herry were to keep the castles of Brecknock and the Haye till Michaelmas. The King also issued his mandate, 13th November 1404, to the sheriffs of Worcester, Gloucester, and other counties, to provide a contingent each of twenty men-at-arms and two hundred archers to join the army of his sons; premising that he had, by the advice of his parliament, sent his two sons, the Prince and the Lord Thomas, to raise the siege of Coitey,[194] in which Alexander Berkroller, lord of that place, was then besieged: we may therefore safely conclude that, through the first part of the winter at least, young Henry was most fully occupied in the Principality.[195]
Of the Prince's proceedings in consequence of these instructions we hear nothing before the beginning of the next March: but through the winter[196] (as it should seem) the Welsh chieftain and his French auxiliaries were most busily engaged, especially towards the northern parts. Indeed, it may be surmised, not without probable reason, that the King's troops under the Prince in Monmouthshire, Glamorganshire, and its adjacent districts, and perhaps the forces of Thomas Beaufort, or the Duke of York, in Caermarthen, had driven Owyn and his partisans northward, by the vigorous efforts which they made through the autumn and the early part of the winter. To this season also we are induced to refer those despatches from Conway and Chester,[197] which give the most alarming accounts to the King of the insolence and activity of his enemies, and the imminent peril of his friends, his castles, and the whole country. One letter speaks of six ships coming out of France "with wyn and spicery full laden." Another reports that the constable of Harlech had been seized by the Welsh and carried to Owyn Glyndowr; and that the castle was in great danger of falling into his hands, being garrisoned only by five Englishmen and about sixteen Welshmen. A third apprises the King that the deputy-constable of Caernarvon had sent a woman to inform the writer, William Venables, the constable of Chester, (by word of mouth, because no man dared to come, and no man or woman could carry letters safely,) of Owyn Glyndowr's purpose, in conjunction with the French, "to assault the town and castle of Caernarvon with engines, sows,[198] and ladders of very great length;" whilst in the town and castle there were not more than twenty-eight fighting men,—eleven of the more able of those who were there at the former siege being dead, some of their wounds, others of the plague. In the fourth, the constable of Conway informs the same parties that the people of Caernarvonshire purposed to go into Anglesey to bring out of it all the men and cattle into the mountains, "lest Englishmen should be refreshed therewith." The writer adds, "I durst lay my head that, if there were two hundred men in Caernarvon and two hundred in Conway, from February until May, the commons of Caernarvonshire would come to peace, and pay their dues as well as ever. But should there be a delay till the summer, it will not be so lightly (likely), for then the rebels will be able to lie without (in the open air), as they cannot now do. Also I have myself heard many of the commons and gentlemen of Merionethshire and Caernarvonshire swear that all men of the aforesaid shires, except four or five gentlemen and a few vagabonds (vacaboundis), would fain come to peace, provided Englishmen were left in the country to help in protecting them from misdoers; especially must they come into the country whilst the weather is cold." In the fifth letter, we learn that Owyn had agreed with all the men in the castle of Harlech, except seven, to have deliverance of the castle on an early fixed day for a stated sum of gold. A letter, dated Oswestry, February 7th, from the Earl of Arundel and Surrey, conveys the very same sentiments with those of the constable of Conway as to the probability of the immediate termination of the rebellion, either by peace or victory, should any vigorous measures be adopted. He was appointed to take charge of Oswestry, with thirty men-at-arms and one hundred and fifty archers, for eight weeks. He complains that the grand ordinance resolved upon by the late parliament at Coventry[199] had not been put into execution; and states that the rebels were never at any time so high or proud, from an assurance that it, like the others, would become a dead letter.[200]
The letter from Henry to his father in the preceding June, and the testimony of the gentlemen of Hereford, who prayed that thanks might be presented to the Prince for his watchful and efficient protection of their county, inform us that the rebels towards the south marches had been kept in check since the Prince's arrival; but they were ready to renew their violence at the very opening of spring. Two letters, one from the King to his council, the other from the Prince to the King, require to be translated literally, and copied into these pages. The former, which is now published for the first time in "The Acts of the Privy Council," proves the hearty good-will entertained by the King towards his son, and the lively paternal interest he took up to that time in his honourable career. It assures us also of the great importance attached by the King to the victory then gained over the rebels. The latter, though published by Rymer and Ellis, and others, and though often commented upon before, yet appears to throw so much light upon the character of Prince Henry as a Christian at once and a warrior, especially in that union of valour and mercy in him to which Hotspur first bore testimony four years before, that any treatise on the life and character of Henry of Monmouth would be altogether defective were this letter to be omitted. The King's letter to his council bears date Berkhemstead, March 13, 1405.
"From the King.
"Very dear and faithful! We greet you well. And since we know that you are much pleased and rejoiced whenever you can hear good news relating to the preservation of our honour and estate, and especially of the common good and honour of the whole realm, we forward to you for your consolation the copy of a letter sent to us by our very dear son, the Prince, touching his government in the marches of Wales; by which you will yourselves become acquainted with the news for which we return thanks to Almighty God. We beg you will convey these tidings to our very dear and faithful friends the Mayor and good people of our city of London, in order that they may derive consolation from them together with us, and praise our Creator for them. May He always have you in his holy keeping.—Given under our signet at our Castle of Berkhemstead, the 13th day of March."
The following letter, the copy of which the King then forwarded, was written by the Prince at Hereford, on the 11th of March, at night.
LETTER FROM PRINCE HENRY TO THE KING HIS FATHER.
"My most redoubted and most sovereign lord and father, in the most humble manner that in my heart I can devise, I commend myself to your royal Majesty, humbly requesting your gracious blessing. My most redoubted and most sovereign lord and father, I sincerely pray that God will graciously show his miraculous aid toward you in all places: praised be He in all his works! For on Wednesday, the eleventh day of this present month of March, your rebels of the parts of Glamorgan, Morgannoc, Usk, Netherwent, and Overwent, were assembled to the number of eight thousand men according to their own account; and they went on the said Wednesday in the morning, and burnt part of your town of Grosmont within your lordship of Monmouth. And I immediately[201] sent off my very dear cousin the Lord Talbot, and the small body of my own household, and with them joined your faithful and gallant knights William Neuport and John Greindre; who were but a very small force in all. But very true it is that VICTORY IS NOT IN A MULTITUDE OF PEOPLE, BUT IN THE POWER OF GOD; and this was well proved there. And there, by the aid of the blessed Trinity, your people gained the field, and slew of them by fair account on the field, by the time of their return from the pursuit, some say eight hundred, and some say a thousand, being questioned on pain of death. Nevertheless, whether on such an account it were one or the other I would not contend.