1431

Minority Council

The Proceedings record twenty-eight council meetings in 1431 while King Henry was in France.

William Phelip. Duchy of Lancaster.

The Magnates

Duke of Gloucester. Duchess of York. Duke of York. Eleanor Moleyns. Lord Roos.

Pope Martin V

Cardinal Oddone Colonna became Pope Martin V in 1417. He died on 20 February  1431.

The Council and the Papacy

Pope Eugenius IV proved more co-operative than Pope Martin. The Bishops.

 Parliament

Parliament met early in 1431, presided over by the Duke of Gloucester .Authority to treat for peace.

Taxation

Tax grant. Knights’ fees. Alien merchants. Hanseatic League.

Crown Debts

Cardinal Beaufort. John Tiptoft. Calais Staplers. John Radcliffe. Thomas Stanley. The War in France.

Lollardy

A brief uprising in England in May 1431 has been dubbed ‘the Lollard spring.’

Jack Sharp’s rising

The Duke of Gloucester suppressed Jack Sharp’s ‘Lollard’ rising.

London

The London prisons at Newgate and Ludgate were completed. The postern gate entry to the Tower of London sank into the Thames.

Calais

The Treasurer of Calais requested the Council’s permission to destroy certain stores in Calais as too expensive to maintain.

The Duchy of Gascony

Sir John Radcliffe returned to Gascony. Bayonne was granted the right to mint money and claim ships’ wreckage.

Scotland 

The seven-year truce signed at the end of 1430 and promulgated in 1431 led to a temporary improvement in Anglo-Scottish relations, but not to the release of the Scottish hostages.

King Henry in France

The Duke of Bedford

The Council had decreed that the Duke of Bedford could not be Regent of France from April 1430 while King Henry was on French soil.

Cardinal Beaufort’s Army

Cardinal Beaufort returned to England to raise a second army to continue the campaign to clear the route between Rouen and Paris to take King Henry to be crowned in the French capital.

The Duke of Burgundy

The Duke of Burgundy complained that the war was falling too heavily on him and his territories, and that the English had failed to support him adequately.

Joan of Arc Burned

Joan of Arc was burned in Rouen as a heretic and a witch.

Campaigns, 1431

Louviers, the town on the Seine blocking the route to Paris, fell to the English in late October. The Earl of Warwick captured Poton de Xaintrailles.

The Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort

The Duke of Gloucester attempted to discredit Cardinal Beaufort before he and King Henry returned to England

King Henry’s Coronation in Paris  

King Henry remained in Rouen throughout most of 1431. He was taken to Paris and crowned as King Henri II in December. He returned to Rouen ten days later and sailed from Calais to Dover in February 1432.

Bibliography, 1431

 

Minority Council

The Proceedings record twenty-eight meetings in 1431 while King Henry was in France: one in January, one in February, six in March, five in April, two in May, one in June, two in July, one in August, one in October and eight in November in anticipation of King Henry’s return.

William Phelip

The petition of Sir William Phelip dated in the Proceedings to 14 February 1431 is an error. It belongs in 9 Henry V when Phelip was treasurer of Henry V’s household from October 1421 to November 1422. John Hotoft was in France with Henry VI in February 1431 as treasurer of the king’s household (1).

(1) PPC IV, p. 77 (William Phelip error. Noted by Curry, ‘Coronation Expedition,’ p. 32 n. 16).

Henry V’s Tomb

War in France, unrest in England, and an acute shortage of money did not stop work on the memorial to King Henry V. In January 1431 Roger Johnson, a master blacksmith of London, was ordered to impress as many ironworkers as he needed to complete work on tomb in Westminster Abbey.

(1) Foedera X, p. 490 (Henry V’s tomb).

The King’s Physician

‘Job de Pruce de Mediolano Aromatorio’ (from Prussia trained in Milan) petitioned the Council that he and his son, John Baptista, should be recognised as citizens of London.  Job de Pruce, an otherwise unknown physician in the king’s household, reminded the Council that when he had agreed to stay on as physician to the king after the death of another physician, Master James of Milan, he had been promised that he would be provided for. He was too old and feeble to accompany the king to France and he wished to leave royal service and open a shop in London, presumably to trade in aromatic herbs and medicines. His petition was granted (1).

(1) PPC IV, p. 90 (Job de Pruce).

Duchy of Lancaster

John Wodehouse, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster since 1413, died in January 1431 and Walter Shirington was appointed to replace him. ‘The duchy seal was delivered to him in Parliament on 16 February 1431’ (1)

In November, the Council agreed that the Chancellor and council of the Duchy of Lancaster should be permitted to appoint to duchy offices and to benefices worth less than £5 per annum or 2 pence a day (2).

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(1) Somerville, Duchy of Lancaster, p. 389 (Shirington appointed).

(2) PPC IV, p. 105 (Chancellor to appoint to duchy offices).

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The Magnates

Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester presided at the Feast of the Order of the Garter at Windsor in April.  Eleven purveyors to the royal household provided meat, poultry, and other victuals for the feast on St George’s Day, but not, of course, at Gloucester’s expense. The Council instructed the Exchequer to reimburse John Burdet, Gloucester’s treasurer, for the costs involved at the discretion of the Treasurer (1, 2).

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(1) Foedera X, p. 492 (supplies for Garter Feast).

(2) PPC IV, p, 89 (payment for supplies).

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Joan Holand, Duchess of York, was a much-married lady. She was the second wife and widow of Edmund of Langley, Duke of York. She married Sir Henry Bromflete as her fourth husband. In November 1431 Bromflete claimed £761 11s 6d as arrears of the annuity of £94 8s 10d settled on Joan after Edmund, Duke of York’s death. She was not Richard Duke of York’s grandmother (1).

Richard, Duke of York was in Rouen with King Henry’s coronation expedition. He was still a minor, but in August 1431 the Council agreed to grant him 600 marks from his estates for his ‘labours and expenses in the king’s service for a year without reward.’  York would have had personal expenses to maintain his status and his retinue as a royal duke (2).

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(1) PPC IV, p. 103 (Duchess Joan’s annuity claimed by Bromflete).

 (2) PPC IV, p. 91 (payment to the Duke of York).

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Eleanor Moleyns

William, Lord Moleyns was killed at the siege of Orleans in 1429. His wife, Anne and his daughter Eleanor, born in 1426, were with him in France. In October 1431 the Council awarded Eleanor’s wardship and marriage to Thomas Chaucer, chief butler of the royal household, because he had sent a military escort and women servants to care for and bring Eleanor home safely (1).

(1) PPC IV, pp. 98–99 (grant to Thomas Chaucer).

Thomas, Lord Roos

Lord Roos was killed in France in 1430. In 1431 the Council confirmed the grants he had made to the foresters and others on his estates. His heir was still a minor and confirmation of grants to a lord’s officers was standard practice in cases of unexpected death where the heir was a minor and his estates were in the king’s hands (1).

See Year 1430: Thomas, Lord Roos.

                (1) PPC IV, p. 88 (Roos estates).

 Pope Martin V

Cardinal Oddone Colonna became Pope Martin V in 1417. He died on 20 February 1431. His death aroused little interest in England.

“And at the feast of St Juliana the Virgin next following [23 February] Pope Martin V died in his fifty fifth year and was succeeded by Pope Eugenius V.”   Benet’s Chronicle, p.183

“And that yere in Lentyn deyde Pope (crossed out and “bioscope” written in a later hand) Martyn.”             Gregory’s Chronicle, p. 171

Pope Martin’s relations with the Minority Council were uneasy at best and hostile at worst. He never understood English politics or the strength of resistance in England to papal interference in ecclesiastical matters. He failed to coerce the Council into repealing the Statute of Provisors of 1351 which denied him the right to appoint his candidates to vacant bishoprics in England and Wales. When he provided his protégé, Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln to become Archbishop of York in 1424 the Council rejected the nomination.

See Year 1423 and 1424: The Council and the Papacy.

Martin attempted to coerce the Minority Council into repealing Provisors and he expected support from the English bishops, but he did not get it. In 1427 he went so far as accuse Henry Chichele, the inoffensive Archbishop of Canterbury, of disloyalty to Holy Church and he deprived Chichele of the status as legatus natus which Chichele held as primate of England.

See Year 1427: The Council and the Papacy.

Martin resisted the provision of Robert Neville as Bishop of Salisbury in 1426, and only agreed to accept Neville after a personal request from Henry Beaufort. Martin had just made Beaufort a cardinal and legate a latere, so he could hardly refuse.

He had obliged the Duke of Bedford, and served his own interests, by creating Henry Beaufort a Cardinal and appointed him a legate at latere to raise an army to fight  the heretic Hussites in Bohemia in Germany, and he even contributed to the cost of raising it.

See Year 1426: The Duke of Bedford and Henry Beaufort.

Martin was bitterly disappointed when a crisis in the war in France forced Beaufort to abandon Bohemia and commit the crusading army to fight the French. Martin stripped Beaufort of his legatine powers and forbade him to use the insignia of a papal legate.

See Year 1429: Cardinal Beaufort’s Army.

Martin was committed to the extermination of heresy in all its forms. He ordered Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, to disinter the body of John Wycliff, founder of the heretical sect of the Lollards, burn it, and throw the ashes into the River Swift. Fleming carried out the pope’s instructions in 1428.

See Year 1428: Propaganda against heretics.

It was up to Pope Martin to resolve the question of the legality of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester’s marriage to Jacqueline, Countess of Hainault.  He had issued a dispensation for Jacqueline’s first marriage to John, Duke of Brabant, but Jacqueline claimed the marriage was invalid, even though Brabant was still alive.

Gloucester had requested Martin to annual the marriage, but the Pope was a political as well as a spiritual leader and Martin was not prepared to risk offending Brabant’s overlord, the Duke of Burgundy, let alone the King of France just to accommodate Gloucester. He temporised and delayed until 1428 before pronouncing that the Brabant marriage was valid. By then it was safe to do so, Gloucester had abandoned Jacqueline, and the Duke of Burgundy was at war with her.

See Year 1424 and 1427:  The Duke of Gloucester and Jacqueline, Countess of Hainault.

Apart from the thorny question of Provisors, Martin had no interest in England, but towards the end of his life he made half-hearted attempts to reconcile England and France, or failing that, France and Burgundy, in the hope of furthering his crusading plans. In 1430 he appointed Cardinal Nicolo Albergati as his special envoy and peace mediator.

See Year 1430: A Peace Conference.

Martin V died on 20 February 1431 and was succeeded by Pope Eugenius IV.

The Council and the Pope

Pope Eugenius IV

Gabriele Condulmer, a Venetian cardinal, was elected by the College of Cardinals in Rome as Pope Eugenius IV in May 1431.

Brut Continuation G’s brief biography of Eugenius IV in Year 1431 is one of numerous indications that the chronicle was compiled long after the events it recounts:

“Aboute þis tyme pope Martyn died & after him , Eugeny þe Fourt was Pope, þat was pesably chosen in Rome by þe Cardinalles, and was very & vndoubted Pope; but shortly after he was put out & expulsed fro Rome in suche wise þat he was fayn to flee naked. In þis same tyme was þe Counsel of Basile, to which Counsel he was cited to come; And because he come nat, they deposed hym; but he forsed nat, ner sett þerby but gat þe Cite of Rome & Abode Pope stil xvij yere.”    Brut Continuation G, p. 502

Incessant military conflicts in Italy involving the papacy forced Eugenius to flee from Rome in 1434. The Council at Basel finally suspended him in 1438 and deposed him in 1439 but Eugenius continued to resist conciliar authority. He returned to Rome in 1443 and died in 1447.

See Year 1438: General Council of he Church.

See Year 1439: Church Union and Disunion.

Hardesinus della Porta

Ardicinus or Hardesinus della Porta, Cardinal of Ss. Cosmas and Damian of Novara in Italy, became Archdeacon of Northampton at the instigation of the new Pope Eugenius IV (1, 2).

Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln had died in January 1431 and the temporalities of the bishopric were in the king’s hands. The archdeaconry of Northampton was in the diocese of Lincoln (4).

The Council had awarded Hardesinus an annuity of 50 marks as the ‘Cardinal of Navarre’ in 1429 (3). He was not the Cardinal of Navarre as in the Proceedings III and Foedera X.

The collation of Hardesinus, still described as ‘Cardinal of Navarre,’ as archdeacon of Northampton was confirmed on 4 August 1431. In 1432 he would be given permission to hold ecclesiastical benefices in England up to a yearly value of 400 marks (5, 6).

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(1) Foedera X, p. 494 (Hardesinus Archdeacon of Northampton).

(2) Papal Letters VIII, p. 359 (Hardesinus Archdeacon of Northampton).

(3) CPR 1429-1436, p. 107 (archdeaconry in the king’s gift).

(4) PPC III, p 339 (50 marks, 1429)

(5) PPC IV p. 118 (benefices 1432).

(6) Foedera X, p. 509 (benefices 1432).

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The Bishops

The Bishops of London and Lincoln

On the same day, 4 August 1431, the temporalities of the bishopric of London were ratified to Robert Fitzhugh who had been Archdeacon of Northampton.

William Grey, translated from London to Lincoln, received the temporalities of Lincoln (1).

Pope Eugenius authorized the Bishops of Ely and Rochester to receive William Grey’s oath of fealty to the pope ‘recently translated thither from London in order to save him the labour and expense of coming in person to the Roman court’ (2).

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(1) Foedera X, p. 495 (William Grey Bishop of Lincoln; Robert Fitzhugh Bishop of London).

(2) Papal Letters VIII, pp. 333 and 357-358 (Grey translated to Lincoln).

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Bishop of Chichester

Pope Martin had nominated Simon Sydenham, Dean of Salisbury Cathedral to succeed John Rickingale as bishop of Chichester in 1429.

See Year 1429: The Bishops.

Sydenham was not the Council’s choice and true to their policy of employing delaying tactics in disputes with the pope, they withheld the temporalities of Chichester until January 1431 when ‘an ordinance made by the full council in Parliament’ restored them. but only after Sydenham renounced certain clauses in the papal bull that the Council deemed prejudicial to the king’s rights. Sydenham was consecrated in February 1431 (1, 2).

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(1) PPC IV, p. 76 (restitution and temporalities).

(2) CPR 1429-1436, p. 106 (temporalities).

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John Clitherowe, Bishop of Bangor, requested and received permission to visit Jerusalem in May 1431 (1).

(1) Foedera X, p 493 (permission to go to Jerusalem).

Parliament

Parliament had been summoned in November 1430; it convened at Westminster on 12 January 1431and sat until 20 March.

“Ande that same yere the xiij day of Janyver be-gan the Parlyment at Westmynster. . . . . . . .  And the xx day of the same monythe [March]  endyd the Parlyment above sayde”

                   Gregory’s Chronicle, p. 171

The Duke of Gloucester presided in the absence of King Henry who was in Rouen (1). The Chancellor, John Kemp, was too ill to attend Parliament so William Lyndwood, the Deputy Keeper of the Privy Seal delivered the opening speech, taking as his text a line from the first Book of Chronicles, ‘The throne of his kingdom shall be established.’ It was apposite as Henry was in France to be crowned king, and although Lyndwood made no direct appeal to the Commons for a tax grant, money was needed to sustain the king and the army in France (1).  The Commons obliged.

(1) PROME X, p. 444 (Parliament opening).

Authority to Treat for Peace

Henry V’s Treaty of Troyes of had laid down that no peace talks should be entered into with ‘the dauphin’ (Charles VII) without Parliamentary authority. For the first time since 1420 the Commons suggested that the prohibition might be interpreted more flexibly. Parliament would welcome any moves the king’s uncles might make for a truce with France, if ‘the dauphin’ was amendable, provided English interests were protected (1).

(1) PROME X, p. 453 (authority to treat for peace).

Taxation

On 20 March, the last day before it was dissolved, the Commons granted a fifteenth and a tenth to be levied in November 1431, plus an additional third of a fifteenth and a tenth, collectable by Easter 1432.

“And after All Saints [1 November] a parliament was held in England at London in which the king received a fifteenth from the laity and a tenth from the clergy.”  Benet’s Chronicle, p. 183

Twenty shillings on knights’ fees, or on every £20 of annual income from land, and a renewal of the trade subsides: tunnage and poundage until November 1432 and an extension of the wool subsidy to November 1434. Alien merchants would pay an additional six pence on all imported and exported merchandise worth over 20 shillings, over and above the twelve pence previously imposed on them (1).

(1) PROME X, pp 447-449 (tax grant).

The Hanseatic League

Parliament imposed an additional tax of six pence on the imports and exports of the merchants of the Hanseatic League in 1431. The Hanse merchants objected, as they had in 1423, to this as a breach of their customary privileges. The Council was reluctant to antagonise the Hanse and risk injuring trade with the Baltic by imposing the tax.

At a council meeting in May 1431, the Chancellor, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and four bishops, voted to suspend the additional tax temporarily although the German merchants were required to give security for payment at some future date, if required (1).

The question of whether Parliament had the right to impose taxes on Hanse merchants which contravened their special privileges was an old one. In 1423 they had refused to pay the impost on wine granted by Parliament in 1422 and the Council had hesitated to impose it until the judges found that it was lawful.

See Year 1423: The Hanseatic League

(1) PPC IV, pp. 86-87 (Hanse subsidy suspended).

The War in France

The need for money was acute. The generous grant made by the Parliament of 1429-1430 had been spent or committed.

The Exchequer had been instructed to send £10,000 to Rouen by Christmas 1430. On 1 March 1431 the Council ordered Thomas Gloucester and John Thornley, members of the king’s household, to transport £4,000 to John Hotoft, treasurer of the household and treasurer for war (1). Ihe Council allocated a further £1,673 10s 1d in May to be sent to the king for the wages of 400 men-at-arms and 1,200 archers for one month (2).

Lords and Commons alike were acutely aware that the current level of expenditure on the war in France was too costly to be sustained and that taxation alone would be insufficient. Parliament authorised raising loans of up to £50,000 and guaranteed repayment (3, 4).

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(1) PPC IV, p. 78 (£4,000 to John Hotoft).

(2) PPC IV, p. 89 (Council’s allocation in May).

(3) PROME X, pp. 460-461 (authority to raise a loan).

(4) CPR 1429-1436, pp 124-127 (commissioners to raise a loan).

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Crown Debts

Cardinal Beaufort

While Parliament was in session the Council arranged to repay the loans made by Cardinal Beaufort to the king in Rouen: £2,815 13s 1½d in November 1430, and £666 13s 4d in February 1431. These repayments were vital, despite the Exchequer’s inability to meet the crown’s other financial obligations. The Cardinal was expected to make a large contribution to the loan authorised by Parliament, although a sizeable chunk would come from his salary for services to the crown, a form of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Beaufort was to be paid £1,659 6s 9d as a councillor for his attendance in Normandy from 23 April (the day King Henry landed) to the end of December 1430 when he returned to England and £666 13s. for attending the council in England from December 1430 to 23 April 1431 ‘next suing’, plus £2,000 in advance for his attendance ‘about the king’s person in France’ for the next half year (1).

(1) PPC IV, p. 79 (Beaufort’s loans and salary)

 John, Lord Tiptoft

Tiptoft petitioned Parliament for 120 marks as the arrears of the 10 marks per annum owed to him from a grant made by Henry V in 1418. He requested payment from the Exchequer as the 10 marks, charged on the £12 paid to the crown by the Priory of Huntingdon, was not reliable.  His request was granted (1).

(1) PROME X, pp, 456-457 (Tiptoft’s petition).

 Calais Staplers

The Mayor of Calais and the Calais Staplers had loaned 3,500 marks for the defence of Paris in 1430, to be repaid from the subsidy voted by Convocation.

The debt was still outstanding and in May 1431 the Council assigned £2,333 6s 8d of the tax grant made by this parliament, to be collected in November. The money was to be delivered to Sir John Lusshingborne (1).

(1) PPC IV, p. 88 (repayment of Staplers’ loan).

London Citizens

John Reynwell

On 24 April 1431 Lord Cromwell reminded the Council of a quarrel between Reynwell and merchants of the staple which had previously been brought before the Council for resolution. The cause of the dispute is not known, but it is likely to have been a disagreement over the payment, non-payment, or manipulation of customs duties on wool.  It probably originated in 1429 during Reynwell’s tenure as Mayor of the Staple.

Reynwell was a wealthy Londoner, an entrepreneur and ship owner who traded in a variety of commodities, including the export of wool.  He was Mayor of London in 1426-1427 and Mayor of the Calais Staple in 1428-1429 (1).

The Council had appointed Richard Woodville lieutenant of Calais, Robert Darcy, an attorney, and Robert Whittingham, son-in-law of Richard Buckland, the Treasurer of Calais, to adjudicate. These appointments cannot date to April 1431, the date of the entry in the Proceedings, as Woodville had just been ordered to join the Council in Rouen and was about depart for France. April 1431 is the date of the resolution of the dispute.

On 28 April 1431 Reynwell appeared before the Council to offer a full apology. He declared that the adjudicators had ‘so truly laboured these matters that all manner [of] heaviness and grievance had been concluded to perfect rest and peace between the [Staplers] and me.’ He asked the Duke of Gloucester and the Council to forget ‘any of my bills, writing or other means’ and to ‘put it utterly out of your remembrance’ any complaints or criticisms he may have made. It had never been his intention to damage the merchants of the Staple. Reynwell ended by agreeing to pay the costs of the enquiry; he would leave the amount up to the Council and the Company of the Staple to decide (2).

Four years later in July 1435, Reynwell was awarded £1,000 by Richard Buckland and Thomas Chalton, arbitrators chosen by the Staple, and Robert Whittingham and Stephen Forster on Reynwell’s behalf in the presence of the Duke of Gloucester and John Stafford, the Chancellor (3).

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(1) ‘John Reynwell in historyofparliamentonline.org

(2) PPC IV pp. 85–86 (Reynwell).

(3) CClR 1429-1435, pp. 360-361 (arbitrators’ award).

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Master Thomas Mireton a Scot on his way from Scotland to London carrying letters from King James to the Council was captured by Sir William Iver [Evere] a Yorkshire knight and held to ransom. John Leman, a citizen of London and a member of the Skinners Guild stood surety for Mireton with a recognizance in chancery for the £100 claimed by Iver. The Council judged the case in April 1431 and awarded Iver £40 (1, 2).

Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury had loaned £2,000 towards King Henry’s coronation expedition.  Five London merchants John Gedney, John Wells, John Brockley and Robert Large, all former mayors of London and members of the Common Council, had stood surety for a loan. Repayment was assigned by the Council on the subsidy granted by Convocation in March to be collected at Martinmas (11 November) 1431 (3).

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(1) PPC IV, p. 83 (council award to Iver).

(2) Issues of the Exchequer, p. 413 (Iver payment, November 1431).

(3) PPC IV, p. 89 (Chichele’s loan).

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 Lollardy

A brief uprising in England in May 1431 has been dubbed ‘the Lollard spring.’

Lollardy was an heretical sect based on the teaching of the fourteenth century preacher John Wyclif.  Suppression of Lollardy had been the responsibility of bishops within their dioceses until the rebellion of the Lollard Sir John Oldcastle against King Henry V in 1414. It was supressed almost before it began but Oldcastle and his followers were hunted down and executed mercilessly, not primarily for their heresy but because they had dared to rebel. After 1414 Lollardy was associated with treason.

Thomas Bagley, an Essex priest, suffered the penalty for a convicted heretic on St Gregory’s Day (12 March) in 1431: He was burned in Smithfield (1).

“And about midlente Sir Thomas Baggely, preest & vicar of Mauen in Est-sexe beside Walden was disgraded and dampned for an heritike & brent in Smythfeld.”

                                                            Brut Continuation H, p. 569                     

“And in this same yere, on Seint Gregoryes day a preste of Essex was brought to London afore the clergye of Seint Paules, and there he was conuicte in heresy and false Lollardy, þat he mayntened and helde ayenst holy chirche; and so he was brent in Smythfeld for his heresy.”              Brut Continuation F, p. 456

Bagley’s death roused the anti-clerical feelings that simmered just below the surface of society throughout the fifteenth century. ‘Bills’ appeared in public places in London and elsewhere condemning the wealth of the church and suggesting its radical redistribution. A central tenet of Wyclif’s teaching was the incompatibility of the wealth of the church with the life of Christ. The chronicles record the emotive story that the rebels intended to have (or sell) three priests’ heads for a penny (2).

Chronicles of London (Cleopatra C IV (p. 134) mistakenly says St George’s day. A Chronicle of London (Harley 565), p. 118 ; Great Chronicle, p. 155;  Gregory’s Chronicle, p. 171 (Bagley’s execution).

Jack Sharp’s Rising

A man calling himself ‘Jack Sharp of Wigmoresland’ gathered a following at Abingdon in Oxfordshire. His real name is uncertain. He is identified in the chronicles as William Mandeville, bailiff of Abingdon and a weaver by trade, or as William Perkins (6, 7). The name Jack Sharp was probably intended as a link with the memory of ‘Jack Straw’ a leader of the Peasants Revolt of 1381 (1, 2, 3).

Manifesto

‘Sharp’ issued a manifesto (4). It is in Middle English, with a suspiciously misleading heading in Latin: ‘The most evil petition stirred up by John Sharpe to lord Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, protector of the realm for the subversion of the church.’

Pace the hysteria of the chroniclers, who are not independent witnesses, it did not advocate the wholesale destruction of the lords of the land: quite the opposite. The name Jack Sharp does not appear in the text which opens with a petition addressed not to Gloucester but to the king and the lords in Parliament, demanding that they resume the temporalities of the higher clergy and put them to better use.

The detailed analysis in the manifesto of ecclesiastical incomes, from the Archbishop of Canterbury down to assorted abbots, is unlikely to have been the work of a weaver from Abingdon, even if he were a bailiff. It claimed that the specific sum of 332,000 marks [£221,333 13s. 4d.] could be raised by stripping bishops, priors, and abbots of their wealth.

This would finance the creation of 15 additional earls, 1500 knights, and 6,200 esquires (gentlemen) by endowing them according to their rank: the earls would be granted 1,000 marks a year and the esquires £20 plus allocations of land. One hundred additional alms houses would get 100 marks a year and “a thousand priests and profitable clerks to preach the word of God” would replace the existing clergy, who neglected their duties. All this would still leave a surplus for the crown!

The petition strongly resembles an earlier parliamentary bill of Henry IV’s reign, also recorded in the chronicles, calling for church disestablishment, even to the exact sum of £20,000 which, according to both petitions, was to come to the crown (5).

‘Sharp’s manifesto’ was a ‘pamphlet war,’ a figment of over-heated imaginations, but what did it amount to? If it really constituted a carefully laid plot, the plotters were singularly inept.

Sharp’s followers were quickly dispersed without doing much damage. Sharp went into hiding in Oxford. He was betrayed by William Warbelton, who identified him as William Perkins, and he was arrested by the Chancellor of Oxford in Whitsun week. Warbelton later claimed that as soon as he learned Perkins’s whereabouts, he had informed the Chancellor of Oxford, and the bailiffs of the town had arrested Perkins that same night, 17 May (6, 7).

“Ande that yere was on namyd hym selfe Jacke Sharpe that wolde have made a rysynge in the cytte of London for he wolde have take owte the temperalteys of Hooly Chryche; but the xix day of May he was take at Oxforde and v moo of [his] secte, and whythe yn fewe dayes he was drawyd hangyde and quarteryde, and hys hede sete on London Brygge and hys quarterys i-sent to dyvers townys of Ingelonde, as to Oxforde, Abyngdon, and to moo othyr.  And sum of  [his – inserted in a later hand] felowys were takyn at Covyntre, and there they were drawe, hangyd and quarteryd; and a woman be-heddyd at the galous.”                                                   Gregory’s Chronicle, p. 172

In May the Council issued a proclamation prohibited the posting of ‘bills’ and the sheriffs were ordered to arrest anyone suspected of writing, disseminating, or even reading them. A reward of £20 was offered for the arrest of anyone caught distributing them (8).

Richard Gatone, the Mayor of Salisbury claimed the reward in November for apprehending one John Keteridge who had admitted receiving ‘seditious writings,’ possibly disseminated by ‘Jack Sharp’ (9, 10).

John Russell, a wool packer was hanged in July.

“And in þis same yere, the xiij day of Iuyll, John Russell, wollepakkere, was dampned at Westmynstre, and brought to the Kynges Benche, and leyde on a hirdell, and drawen thurgh the Cite to Tybourne, and quartered; and his quarters set ypon dyuers gates of London, and his hede set vpon London Brigge.” Brut Continuation F, p. 457

“In the same yere the xiij day of July ande that whas on the translacion of Seynt Mildred [12 July], Russell, a Wollman whas drawen and hongid his hede smytten of and his body quartered ffor diuerse causis and suggestions that were putt vpon him; whos soule Almyghtie Jhesu fforyeve, and hym to the blysse.  Amen!”  Chronicles of London, Cleopatra C IV,  p. 134

Jack Sharp and John Russell were hanged, not burnt as heretics. The sporadic nature of the risings of 1431 somewhat grandly dubbed “the Lollard spring” sound more like attempts by ‘have nots’ with delusions of grandeur to lay hands on church property than to an outbreak of widespread religious fervour.

‘Jack Sharp’s rising’ has received more attention than it deserves because of its extensive, albeit duplicated (deriving from the same source) coverage in the chronicles. The chroniclers were the news gathers of their time, and while sharing the fear of disorder they were naturally interested in sensational events such as rebellions and men burned as heretics or hanged for treason. Historians have been quick to accept contemporary accounts which were certainly in part, and probably wholly, politically inspired (11).

Only Thomson sounds a note of scepticism: “Although the motive force behind the 1431 rising is described as Lollardy in both narrative and record sources, it should be noted that it was very much a political kind of Lollardy . . . . it is not impossible that the attribution of the revolt to the Lollards may have been the action of the government . . . . whereas in fact the anticlericalism of these need have had no doctrinal basis” (12).

The seriousness of the Lollard rising in 1431 should be taken with a large grain of salt. Social disorder and unrest were major concerns, not only to the government but to all responsible citizens, who magnified any disturbance as a threat to property and a step towards anarchy. It was easier to blame sedition on the Lollards as heretics rather than on social or economic discontent. (William Wawe, a violent criminal, was called a Lollard in 1428).

Chronicles for Jack Sharp: Chronicle of London (Harley 565), pp. 118-119 ; Chronicles of London (Julius B I, pp. 96-97) and (Cleopatra C IV) pp. 134 ; Great Chronicle, pp. 155-156 ; Gregory’s Chronicle, p. 172. Brut F pp. 456-457 ; Brut G, p. 501 ; Brut H, p. 569 ; Annales (pseudo-Worcester) p. 760 ; English Chronicle, p. 59.

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1) Chronicles of London (Cleopatra C IV p. 134 (The copyist originally wrote ‘Jack Straw,’ which was crossed out, and Jack Sharp substituted by a later corrector. The error also occurs in The Chronicle of the Grey Friars).

(2) Chronicon Angliae, p. 13 (claims that Sharp attacked Abingdon Abbey, and names him as Perkins and Mandeville)

(3) Amundesham’s Annales I, p. 63 cites all three names.

(4) BL Harleian MS 3775. (Sharp’s manifesto. It was printed by H.T. Riley in Amundesham, Annales I, Appendix, pp. 453-55 (1870).  PROME X, Appendix, p. 480, for a version in modern English).

(5) Kingsford, notes pp. 295-296, in Chronicles of London (analyses the manifesto and comparison with the 1410 version, including the numbers estimates).

(6) PPC IV, pp 107-108 (Warbelton claimed the £20 reward in November 1431).

(7) Issues of the Exchequer, pp. 415-416 (Warbelton paid in February 1432).

(8) CCLR 1429-35, p. 123–124 (orders to sheriffs).

(9) PPC IV, pp. 99-100 (Gatone, Mayor of Salisbury claimed reward).

(10) Issues of the Exchequer, pp. 416-417 (Gatone paid £20 in February 1432).

(11) I.M. W., Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 pp. 25-28

(11) J.A.F. Thomson, Later Lollards, p. 61.

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The Duke of Gloucester

The Duke of Gloucester reacted swiftly to Jack Sharp’s rising. Like all members of the House of Lancaster Gloucester was strictly orthodox in his beliefs: heresy, if unchecked, threatened men’s souls as well as public order and holy church. He undoubtedly remembered the fear engendered by Sir John Oldcastle’s Lollard rising and Henry V’s savage suppression of it.

Gloucester personally supervised the execution of Jack Sharp and some of his followers at Abingdon. The Council voted him 500 marks for his expenses in subduing and punishing heretics and rebels who would have raised rebellion throughout the realm (1).

Gloucester despatched John Hals, a justice of King’s Bench, to Kenilworth to put Lollards and traitors in and around Coventry on trial and order their execution (2). A panel of the king’s justices went to Coventry in June to seek out troublemakers in the Midlands. Accusations of involvement in risings in Coventry and elsewhere resulted in men, and at least one woman, being executed on Gloucester’s orders.

“And sum of (his – inserted in a later hand) felowys were takyn at Covyntre, and there they were drawe, hangyd and quarteryd; and a woman be-heddyd at the galous.”

                                    Gregory’s Chronicle, p. 172

Gloucester followed this up by a personal visitation. An additional 100 marks was awarded to him in July as he was about to proceed into the Midlands to seek out and punish heretics and rebels (3).

These ‘risings’ did Gloucester’s reputation no end of good. He seized the opportunity to demonstrate that he could maintain royal authority even when the king and most of the other magnates were out of the country. His prompt action earned him the gratitude of a nervous council; they rewarded him with a pay raise for “the apprehension and execution of the horrible and wicked traitor to God and the king, the heretic who called himself Jack Sharp and other heretics his accomplices” (4).

It has been suggested that the pseudonym ‘Jack Sharp of Wigmoresland’ connected him in Gloucester’s mind with the Mortimer claims to the throne. Wigmore, on the border between Herefordshire and Wales, was a Mortimer patrimony. Custody of the Mortimer estates had been granted to Gloucester in 1425 until the Mortimer heir,  Richard Duke of York, came of age (5). As Griffiths points out, “the Welsh borderland was a noted refuge of Lollards.” (6).

The Mortimer link is tenuous indeed. There was no Mortimer claimant to the throne in 1431; the association is a modern hindsight. Jack Cade, the instigator of the far more serious rebellion in 1450, called himself John Mortimer.

Did Jack Sharp’s demand for church reform spread as far as the West Country? In August 1431 Gloucester ordered the mayor and sheriff of Bristol, and one Robert Russell, to arrest all ‘rebellious’ Friars Minor before a meeting of their general chapter (7). The Friars Minor, the Grey Friars, had long been known as champions of popular movements for greater social equality and they had supported the Peasants Revolt. They preached the doctrine of Christ’s absolute poverty, and like the Lollards they questioned the riches of the orthodox church.

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(1) PPC IV, p. 88 (award for pursing heretics).

(2) PPC IV, p. 89 (John Hals was paid 5 marks).

(3) PPC IV, p. 91 (Gloucester visited the Midlands).

(4) CPR 1429-36, pp. 184–85 (Gloucester’s pay rise).

(5) PPC III, p. 169. (Mortimer lands granted to Gloucester).

(6) Griffiths, Henry VI, p. 151 n. 71.

(7) Foedera X, p. 496 (Friars Minor in Bristol).

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London

Newgate 

The rebuilding of Newgate prison, begun in 1423, was complete by early 1431.

See Year 1423: London

Newgate was designed to hold criminals (men and women) whose offences ranged from misdeeds to serious crimes. Prisoners fell into two main categories: ‘freemen,’ often citizens of London imprisoned for debt or other civilian infringements of the law, and convicted felons, or those awaiting trial on criminal offences.

The Mayor and Common Council of London issued an ordinance for the administration and maintenance of the new gaol in February 1431, and the transfer of prisoners from Ludgate to Newgate began in late March (1).

The keeper of Newgate, John Kingscote, persuaded the sheriffs of London to remove some ‘freemen’ from Newgate and confine them in the Counters, the two prisons in London under the direct authority of the sheriffs. The ‘freemen’ (probably debtors) were transferred manacled in broad daylight, much to the indignation of the chronicler of Brut F since chains were usually only used on felons.

“And in this same yere, on the Tuesday next after Palme Sonday, all the prisoners þat were in Ludgate were brought into Newgate prison by Waltere Chirtesey & Roberte Large, shirreffes of London; and the Friday the xiij^th day of Aprell then next folowing, the same shirreffes fette oute of Newgate, by the false suggestion and compleynt of oon Iohn Kyngescote, Gaolere of Neugate, xviij presoners of fremen.  And the oon half of these xviij presoners were ledde to the oon Counter, and þat oþer half to þat other Compter, by malice and compleynt of þe seid Iohn Kyngescote. And these were ledde to the Compters, braced as though they had be felons and theves, openly in euery mannys sight.”      Brut Continuation F, pp. 456-457

(1) Sharpe, Letter Book K, pp. 124-27 (ordinance for Newgate).

Ludgate

In June 1431 Ludgate was declared a debtors’ prison, and the prisoners held in the Counters prison for debt were sent back to Ludgate.

The Common Council of London appointed Henry Dene, a tailor, as its keeper and uniquely, Cleopatra C IV names Dene’s lieutenant, Richard Haver, and the porter, Richard Clye.

“And in this same yere, the xvj day of Iune, the preson of Ludgate was made, and opened ageyn for fremen þat be presoners for dette.  And the same day they entred in first ageyn by ordynaunce and comaundment of the Maire, alder men and comyners.  And Herry Dene, Tayloure, was made keper of Ludgate prison, by the Maire and all the communialte in the Guyldhall.”         Brut Continuation F, p. 457

“And in the same yere in the passion weke the presonerys of ludgate were led to newgate and to the counterys and ther they were tyll vij dayes tofore midsomer day, and than alle the ffreeman in the covnterys and in newgate were boode by the sherves that they schuld goo to ludgate; and the maister of the seyde gayole Herry Dene Tayllour his leftenant Richarde havyr and his porter Ric. Clye.”    

                                                             Chronicles of London, (Cleopatra C IV), p. 134

Chronicles of London, (Julius B II), p. 97. Great Chronicle, p. 156

The Tower of London

The postern gate entry to the Tower of London sank into the mud of the Thames to a depth of some seven feet in 1431.

“Ande the same yere in the monythe of Juylle, the xvij day the posterne be-syde the Towre sanke downe into the erthe vij fote and more.” Gregory’s Chronicle, p. 172

The gate was built in the reign of Edward I as a water gate under St Thomas’s Tower to give easy access to the royal apartments.  It became infamous as ‘Traitor’s Gate’ in Tudor times. John Stow describes the Tower’s large water gate and beyond it “a small Posterne with a draw bridge seldom letten downe but for the receipt of some great persons prisoners” (1)

 (1) Stow, Survey I, p, 49 (water gate).

Calais

A report on the projected income of £1,355 4s 7¼d from the castles and lordships in the marches of Calais, from 4 February 1431 to 4 February 1432, may have been intended for presentation to Parliament. Fees and wages to baillis of the towns amounted to £72 18s 4d (1).

An undated entry referring to Calais was included by Nicolas in the Proceedings for 1431. It is in English and could date to any year in which efforts were being made to cut the cost of maintaining the garrison at Calais.

It requested permission from the Council for the treasurer and victualler of Calais to destroy the stores of vinegar, honey and ‘artre’ (?) which were kept in the town for its defence; keeping them was expensive but they were of no use, presumably because there was no actual fighting in or around Calais.

Vinegar had multiple uses for an army, dating back to Greek and Roman times. Vinegar mixed with water (which was usually unsafe to drink) was believed to quench thirst; it was called posca by the Romans. It could be used as a body wash and cleanser against disease or applied to wounds as a disinfectant.  Honey water was sometime drunk, but honey was expensive, and its principal use was to smear on open wounds before the wound was bandaged to aid healing.

The destruction was to be supervised by the captains of Calais and the towns of the marches (the Pale of Calais) ‘or ells (others)’ . . . [ a lacuna in the text].  The accounts for Calais should be credited at the Exchequer with the value of what had been destroyed so that it is not charged against the treasurer (2).

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(1) Foedera X, p. 490 (schedule of income).

(2) PPC IV, pp. 97–98 (destruction of stores).

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Ireland

Lord Hungerford, the Treasurer, reminded Parliament that despite his repeated requests, payment had not been made for the 400 men-at-arms who had served in the Earl of Salisbury’s retinue and remained in France after the earl’s death in 1428. Wages the King’s Lieutenant in Ireland and for the Seneschal of Gascony and would also have to be found: the total amounted to some £16,385 11s. (1).

Sir Thomas Stanley

There had been no King’s Lieutenant in Ireland after Sir John Sutton returned to England early in 1430. In January 1431, while King Henry was in France, the Duke of Gloucester’s administration appointed Sir Thomas Stanley as the King’s Lieutenant for six years commencing 12 April 1431 (2).

He was to engage a retinue of 525 men-at-arms and archers and was granted 5,000 marks for his first year of office and 4,000 marks annually thereafter (3). Letters of protection for men to accompany him appear in the Calendar of Patent Rolls from February to July 1431. But Hungerford, had been ordered to give preference to maintaining the king in France over Stanley.

Despite his difficulty in obtaining money from the Exchequer Sir Thomas Stanley mustered in July (4) and shipping for his men and 700 horses was commandeered (5). He sailed from Liverpool in August/September (6).

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(1) PPC IV pp. 79-80 (Hungerford’s report on crown debt).

(2) CPR 1429-36 pp 105 (Stanley’s appointment).

(3) Griffiths, Henry VI, p. 166 (Stanley to Ireland).

(4) CPR 1429-1436 p. 133 (Stanley mustered).

(5) CPR 1429-1436 p. 153 (Shipping).

(6) Otway-Ruthven, Medieval Ireland, p. 369 (Stanley lieutenant of Ireland).

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The Duchy of Gascony

Sir John Radcliffe 

Radcliffe had agreed reluctantly to return to Gascony as its seneschal in 1430 but delayed his departure until 1431.

See Year 1430:  The Duchy of Gascony, Sir John Radcliffe.

In March 1431, under pressure from the Council, Radcliffe indented to serve in Gascony for one year, with 20 men-at-arms and 500 archers. Radcliffe’s wage was 4s a day, the men at arms 40 marks, and the archers 20 marks for their years’ service (1).

Radcliffe was assigned 2,454 marks at the Exchequer on the customs of the ports of Melcomb and Ipswich, plus 4,000 marks from the last tax granted by Convocation. He was allocated £1,000 in ready money to be distributed among the local barons and captains in the duchy to buy military support.

He was also granted the revenues of the duchy for his term of service, but this was not nearly as generous as it sounds: the salaries of the mayors of Bordeaux and Bayeux, the Constable of Bordeaux, and all other royal officers had to be paid out of these revenues (2). Radcliffe mustered in July 1431 and sailed from Plymouth (3).

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(1) gasconrolls.org.   C61 124  # 39 (men at arms and archers).

(2) gasconrolls.org.   C61 124  # 7  (assignments to Radcliffe).

(3) CPR 1429-1436, p. 127 (musters).

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Bayonne privileges

Bayonne, a port on the coast in the far south of the duchy, was the second largest city in Gascony after Bordeaux.

The Mayor, Thomas Burton, and the citizens of Bayonne had petitioned the Council for the right to mint gold and silver coins because ready money was in short supply and very little silver reached Bayonne from the mint at Bordeaux. Coinage from its near neighbours, Castile, Aragon, Portugal, and Navarre was in circulation in the city, undercutting the profits of the merchants of Bayonne as well returns to the king.

In December 1431 the Duke of Gloucester and the Council granted Bayonne the right to appoint a proctor to oversee the establishment of a mint in the castle at Bayonne and to report to the exchequer at Bordeaux on its profits. The master of the mint in Bordeaux would be master of the mint in Bayonne. The building costs involved in establishing the mint must be borne by the citizens of Bayonne, and the profits were to be used for the defence of the city to lighten the costs to the crown.

The mayor also petitioned for the right of salvage from wreckages of the sea along the coastline from Bayonne to Fuentarrabia on the border with Spain.  Unauthorized private individuals were profiting from shipwrecks, and income which should have gone to the officials at Bayonne and to the king, were being subverted. The Council granted the petition but stipulated that a proctor must account to the Exchequer in Bordeaux for the expected profits (1, 2).

The Council favoured these requests because of their potential returns to the crown and because Bayonne was the designated city for meetings between English representatives and envoys from Aragon and Navarre.

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(1) Foedera X, p. 498 (grant of mint and shipwreck).

(2) gasconrolls.org.  C61 124  # 60 and 61 (mint and shipwreck).

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Scotland

The truce with Scotland signed in December 1430 was publicly proclaimed in England on 19 January 1431(1). The thorny question of King James’s ransom, a possible marriage for King Henry with a Scottish princess, and terms for a final peace were left in abeyance when the truce was signed.

See Year 1430: Scotland, A Five-year Truce

Scottish Embassy

“And the same yere com enbassystourys from the Kyng of Scottys unto the Parlyment for to trete of pes bytwyne Ingelonde and Schotlonde.” Gregory’s Chronicle, p. 171

Scottish ambassadors, John Cameron, the Chancellor, Douglas of Balvany, Alexander Seton, Lord Gordon, John Forrester, and William Fowlis, came to London, but the outcome of their deliberations is not known (2, 3). Their expenses in London amounted to £49 6s 11½d for themselves, their retinue of 36 men and 42 horses between 2 and 14 March 1431. They received gifts of three silver cups and two ewers valued at £35 18s 10¾d (4, 5, 6).

Also in March ‘Master William Forest, physician of the Queen of Scots, now in England’ received a safe conduct for one year ‘to go with eight attendants to Hainault and thence to Scotland at pleasure’ (7).

Co-operation was now the order of the day. Three English merchants accused four Scottish merchants of capturing two English ships and their cargoes in November 1428, valued at £1500 (8, 9).

King James invoked the 1429 agreement covering piracy and restitution.

See Year 1429: Scotland, Piracy.

He ordered the arrest of the Scots and the seizure of their goods. The Minority Council authorized English royal officers to impound the goods of Scottish merchants and mariners in all the ports in England, Flanders, Holland and Zeeland as compensation for Scottish piracy (10). Impounding goods in retaliation for piracy was standard practice under the laws of the sea.

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(1) Foedera X pp. 487–488 (proclamation of truce).

(2) Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland IV, p. 215 (Scots embassy).

(3) Balfour-Melville, James I, pp. 191–193 (Scots embassy).

(4) PPC IV, p. 78 (expenses and gifts).

(5) Foedera X, p. 491 (expenses and gifts).

(6) Documents Relating to Scotland IV, p. 215-216 (expenses and gifts).

(7) Documents Relating to Scotland IV, p. 215 (William Forest).

(8) Documents Relating to Scotland IV, p. 214 (James orders arrest of Scots).

(9) Foedera X, pp. 488-489 (James’s orders to arrest Scots).

(10) CPR 1429-1436, p. 105 (authority for English officials to seize Scottish goods).

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Scottish Hostages

King James’s ransom remained unpaid and the unfortunate Scottish hostages remained in England. Safe conducts for the servants of David Stewart of Athol, one of the original hostages, and for Andrew Keith of Inverness, Robert Stewart of Lorne and Thomas Hay of Yester, from the exchange of hostages in 1425, were issued between February and July 1431.

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Foedera X, pp. 496-497 (servants of Scots hostages).

Balfour-Melville, James I, pp. 293-294 (servants of hostages).

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The Duke of Bedford

King Henry landed in Calais in April 1430 and moved on to Rouen where he remained for most of 1431.

The Duke of Bedford accepted the Council’s decree that there could be no Regent in France for as long as King Henry remained on French soil, but he did not at first realise that the consequences of this piece of personal hubris, engineered by Cardinal Beaufort, would be dire. All administrative decisions and the vital payments to the army, formerly in Bedford’s hands, now had to be approved by the council in Rouen, made up of the English councillors who crossed to France and a smattering of Norman and French members of the Grand Conseil (1).

Bedford was widely respected, if not loved, throughout France even by his enemies; but the English councillors, including Cardinal Beaufort, knew little of conditions in Lancastrian France and cared less.

Bedford remained in Rouen until the end of 1430 but held aloof from council meetings and there is very little evidence that he was involved in the campaigns of the coronation expedition’s army. As soon as the Christmas/New Year festivities of 1430/1431were over, Bedford returned to Paris.

Paris was in English hands but the countryside around it was lawless. Bands of French robbers ranged unchecked, looting and plundering and effectively blocking all but a meagre trickle of food into the city. The Bourgeois of Paris noted that “nothing that was in any way useful to the human body could get to Paris without encountering their power” (2).

In January 1431 Bedford assembled a fleet of barges at Pont de l’Arche with ships and soldiers to escort them, carrying sorely needed food supplies to relieve the famine that threatened the Parisians. Thomas Blount, treasurer in Rouen, instructed Pierre Surreau, Receiver General of Normandy, to advance the wages of 100 men-at-arms and archers on horseback to accompany the slow-moving barges along the Seine.

The Earl of Huntingdon received 744 livres tournois for 50 men-at-arms and 150 mounted archers for two weeks to accompany Bedford. The need was so urgent that there was no time to take the musters of Huntingdon’s retinue, this would have to be done during the journey (3).

The Bourgeois of Paris estimated that the fleet consisted of fifty-six boats and twelve barges and that “not for four hundred years had so many goods come in at once” despite atrocious winter conditions; the wind had raged for three weeks without a break, rain fell continuously, and the tides in the river were very high. The convoy reached Paris safely. Pockets of French soldiers stationed along the route did not dare to attack even when they were more numerous than Bedford’s force, such was his reputation (4).

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(1) Rowe, ‘The Grand Conseil under the Duke of Bedford,’ pp. 224–225.

(2) Bourgeois, p. 255 (food situation in Paris).

(3) L&P II, ii, pp. 424-426 (Bedford and Huntingdon).

(4) Bourgeois, p. 256 (Bedford’s convoy reached Paris).

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Cardinal Beaufort

Cardinal Beaufort’s Army

King Henry’s coronation expedition did not go according to plan. Cardinal Beaufort intended to personally crown Henry king of France, but his scheme was no nearer to realisation at the end of 1430 than it had been when Henry landed at Calais in April.

King Charles VII’s forces had a strangle hold on the route from Rouen to Paris, and to take Henry even further east to be crowned at Reims was out of the question.

The army accompanying Henry to France proved insufficient to overcome French resistance; the king was stuck in Rouen and likely to remain there.

The lack of military progress frustrated the Cardinal. He had taken over the administration of the Council in Rouen and estranged the Duke of Bedford with little to show for it. He decided that a second army under his financial control was needed, and in December 1430 he returned to England to attend Parliament and raise an army.

His nephews, Edmund Beaufort and Thomas Beaufort, returned to England with him. Thomas had only recently been ransomed, and in March the Council licenced him to export £3,000 in gold towards his ransom. They also issued letters of authorisation to his attorneys, Thomas Chambre and William Dales, to act in his name for one year (1, 2).

See Year 1430: John, Duke of Bourbon.

The Cardinal appointed them to lead an expeditionary force. They indented for six months service and contributed the largest contingent to the new army, 128-men-at arms and 460 archers each, paid for by the cardinal (3).

James Touchet, Lord Audley and Walter, Lord Fitzwalter, (Brut H, p. 659 misnames him as Lord Fitzhugh) indented to join the army in April. Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury another of Beaufort’s nephews, would follow in July with an additional 800 men (4).

“And at Eyster aftyrwarde the Erle of Perche [and] of Mortenne, the Lorde of Fewater and the Lorde of Audeley wente in to Fraunce with a new retenewe to the kyng; in the secunde day of May wente the Cardynalle of Wynchester in to Fraunce, the Byschoppe of Northewyche and the Lorde Cromwelle whythe a nothyr mayny; and the ij day of June aftyr went the Erle of Salysbury in to Fraunce whythe a fulle fayre mayny.” Gregory’s Chronicle, p. 172

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(1) CPR 1429-1436, p. 112 (Thomas Beaufort’s ransom).

(2) Foedera X, p. 491 (Thomas Beaufort’s attorneys).

(3) Harriss, Beaufort, p. 204 (indentures and costs).

(4) Foedera X, p. 493 (Audley, Fitzwalter and Salisbury).

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 Ships were requisitioned to be ready by 12 April (1). Wages for the army of just over 2,500 men amounted to £17,082, with an additional £5,584 for the Earl of Salisbury’s force. The total costs for wages and shipping came to £24,000, the bulk of the money being supplied by the Cardinal.

“Thus during the six months following his return to France Beaufort lent almost precisely 20,000 marks ‘withoute the whiche loans . . . neither the siege of Louviers might have ben cundited to good conclusion neother the king have abiden to receive his crowne and sacre . . .  ne have returned agen to his Reaume of England” (2).

Cardinal Beaufort’s Return

Cardinal Beaufort returned to France in May 1431 with a large retinue, civilian and military.  William Alnwick, Bishop of Norwich, Keeper of the Privy Seal and Ralph, Lord Cromwell, a member of the original Minority Council accompanied him to France. They would be on hand to witness King Henry’s coronation in Paris.

Cromwell received 500 marks for six months attendance in Rouen (3). He petitioned the Council to negate proceedings against him in the Exchequer touching certain of his inheritances until he returned to England because there was no time to plead his case before his departure. His request was granted by Gloucester, Cardinal Beaufort, and six bishops (4).

Richard Woodville, Bedford’s lieutenant of Calais, John Tyrell, Speaker of the Commons, and Master William Lyndwood were appointed to attend the Council in Rouen for six months. They were each paid £100 with an additional £40 to Lyndwood as Deputy Keeper of the Privy Seal (5). For the rest of 1431 the Keeper and Deputy Keeper of the Privy Seal would be out of England.

John, Lord Tiptoft, was paid £200 plus 20 marks for his expenses in coming to England and returning to France (6, 7) with a further payments in April of £100 for attending the council in France for one-year (8) and for his indenture to contribute six men-at-arms, including himself, and eighteen archers to the army at four shillings a day for himself, one shilling for men-at-arms and six pence for archers, with the standard clauses of an indenture covering prisoners’ ransoms and booty (9).

John Tyrell received payment under the same conditions for himself and two other men-at-arms and nine archers (10). As soon as he reached Rouen Tyrell replaced John Hotoft, who had resigned in February as treasurer of the household (11).

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(1) Foedera X, p. 491 (shipping).

(2) Harriss, Beaufort, p. 212 (citing SC 8/7180 for the quotation).

(3) PPC IV, p. 78 (Cromwell paid as councillor).

(4) PPC IV, pp.  80-81 (Cromwell’s petition).

(5) PPC IV, pp. 81-82 (payment to Woodville, Tyrell and Lyndwood).

(6) PPC IV, p. 82  (Tiptoft expenses coming and going).

(7) Foedera X, p. 492 (Tiptoft expenses).

(8) PPC IV, p 84 (Tiptoft payment for attending council).

(9) PPC IV pp 83-84 (Tiptoft indenture).

(10) PPC IV 83-84 (payment to Tyrell).

(11) Griffiths, Henry VI, p. 58 (Tyrell as treasurer of the household).

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The Duke of Burgundy

An Envoy to England

The Duke of Burgundy sent Quentin Menart the provost of Saint Omer, to England to complain of the lack of English support, military and financial, for the Burgundian war effort (1, 2). There is no record of this embassy in the Proceedings or in Foedera but in June 1434 John Staunton, clothier of London, received £16 for the purchase of ‘an entire cloth of scarlet’ given to Master Quentin Menart, Reeve of Saint Omer, one of the ambassadors ‘lately sent’ by the Duke of Burgundy (3).

Duke Philip cannot have expected Menart to receive a favourable reception by his old adversary the Duke of Gloucester, but he may have hoped to obtain a promise of future assistance from Cardinal Beaufort.

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(1) Vaughan, Philip, p. 26 citing Plancher IV, no.75.

(2) L&P II, p. 90 and p.198 (Burgundian embassy to England).

(3) Issues of the Exchequer, pp.  424-425 (dated to 1435. Given the tardy payments by the Exchequer his may refer to the gift to Menart in 1431).

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An Embassy to Rouen

In May Burgundy sent two envoys to King Henry and the council in Rouen to reiterate his complaints. His grievances were much the same as those he had expressed in November 1430, they are spelled out again in the Council in Rouen’s reply.

See Year 1430: The Duke of Burgundy.

Burgundian territory was under attack on all sides by the French – Artois, Picardy, Namur, the county of Burgundy, Charolais, and Rethelois, had suffered ‘by occasion of the wars.’ He claimed compensation for his losses especially of artillery in the abortive Compiègne campaign of the previous autumn. He referred to the 1,000 men under John of Luxembourg that he had deployed in November for two months to defend Picardy, and another 1,000 men under the Marshal of Burgundy in the county of Burgundy at his own cost.

Burgundy was suspicious of envoys from Emperor Sigismund who were known to have visited Rouen. He suspected that Sigismund was about to ally with France against him. He also wanted to know what the representatives of Louis de Chalons, Prince of the County of Orange in the south of France were doing in Rouen. Louis was supposedly a war captain in the Burgundian army, but his allegiance was shaky, and he had had dealing with Emperor Sigismund in the past.

In 1428 Cardinal Beaufort had suggested to Burgundy a possible exchange of the captive Duke of Bourbon for the cardinal’s nephew John Beaufort Earl of Somerset.

See Year 1427: The Duke of Bourbon and the Earl of Somerset.

Duke Philip was not interested in an exchange which would not benefit him, but he now suggested that Bourbon could be released into his custody in lieu of the money owed to him for supplying Burgundian artillery to the English war effort.

The Duke of Bourbon was a prince of France. He could be invaluable as a bargaining chip in any future negotiations Duke Philip might initiate with King Charles. Charles would not bargain with the English for Bourbon’s release, but he might with the Duke of Burgundy. Cardinal Beaufort admitted these discussions but claimed that Bourbon himself had rejected the terms offered him by the Minority Council.

See Years 1429 and 1430: The Duke of Bourbon.

The Council’s Reply

The Council in Rouen delayed their answer until 28 May when Cardinal Beaufort had returned to France. It was a disingenuous and vague response to keep Burgundy onside without further commitments. Beaufort may well have dictated it. (1)

Their letter averred that ‘King Henry’ was as displeased by the attacks on Burgundian territory as if the lands had been his own, but reminded Burgundy of the English contribution: the late Earl of Salisbury and other English war captains had campaigned for several years with some success to drive the enemy out of Burgundian territories and would continue to do so if at all possible.

‘King Henry’ thanked Burgundy for the troops he had committed and assured him that England would continue to honour its commitments. The king had ordered that 600 men-at-arms and 1200 archers should remain in Picardy throughout July and August under John of Luxembourg’s command (a subtle reminder that he was in English pay). Combined with the 1,000 Burgundians, this force should be able to wage war effectively.

It would not be long now before the siege of Louviers ended and the Earl of Stafford would join John of Luxemburg and campaign in Upper Normandy. They would be reinforced by Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury who was due to arrive shortly.

As to reparations for Burgundy’s financial losses, the Council procrastinated: investigations were in hand and arrangements were being made at Bruges and in Calais for compensation payments. If Burgundy would send representatives a settlement acceptable to the duke could be reached.

The Council assured Burgundy that there could be no agreement with Sigismund or anyone else without Burgundy’s knowledge and advice as required under the terms of the Treaty of Troyes. A reminder that the English would not break the treaty.  As for Louis de Chalons, they intended to ‘make the best arrangement’ they could with him.

The Council professed ignorance of any steps the Council in England might have taken for the release of the Duke of Bourbon after Cardinal Beaufort left England in 1429.

Cardinal Beaufort addressed a personal letter to Burgundy hoping that his ‘most beloved nephew’ would be satisfied with the council’s reply and that Burgundy would be pleased with the verbal messages which Burgundy’s envoy, Jehan Le Gros was to convey to him. Beaufort also made the obligatory offer to do anything in his power that the duke might require of him (2).

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(1) L&P II, pp. 188-193 (Council in Rouen’s reply).

(2) L&P II, pp. 194-195 (Beaufort’s letter to Burgundy).

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Joan of Arc burned

After her capture in Compiègne in 1430 Joan of Arc remained in John of Luxembourg’s custody for seven months until she was purchased by the English and brought to Rouen for trial.  (Paris was far too dangerous). She arrived in Rouen on Christmas Eve 1430.

See Year 1430: Joan of Arc Captured at Compiègne.

Joan’s protracted ordeal began on 21 February 1431 with her trial conducted by Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais. Just over three months later, on 30 May La Pucelle, abandoned by her ‘gentle Dauphin,’ was burned in the marketplace as a heretic and a witch.

King Henry was in Rouen but he did not witness Joan’s death. The suggestion that Joan was tried and executed in Rouen because King Henry’s presence would lend weight to the proceedings is fallacious. There was nowhere else in all of France that Joan could be safely put on trial.

Cardinal Beaufort, Lord Cromwell, and William Alnwick witnessed Joan’s execution. The Duke of Bedford did not attend. Beaufort ordered her ashes to be carefully gathered and thrown into the Seine so they could not be disseminated as holy relics (1, 2).

Her fate did not interest the English chroniclers. Brut Continuation G (p. 501) is hostile; it mentions a trial, and records the erroneous propaganda that Joan claimed to be pregnant to delay her execution. Gregory’s Chronicle merely records that the Pucelle was burned at Rouen.

[Joan of Arc was] “brought to Roan; & þer she was put in prison & þer she was Iuged by þe law to be brent. And þen she said þat she was with childe, wherby she was respited A while; but in conclusion it was found þat she was not with childe & þen she was brent in Roane  . . .”     Brut Continuation H,  p.  569

“Ande the xxiij day of May the Pusylle was brent at Rone and that was a pon Corpus Crysty evyn.”     Gregory’s Chronicle p 172

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(1) Harriss, Beaufort, p. 209-10 (Joan of Arc burned).

(2) Castor, Joan of Arc, Chapter 9, pp. 165-194 (Joan of Arc burned).

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Campaigns of 1431

The army in Normandy

It was clear by 1431 that without Bedford’s controlling hand the Council in Rouen was losing its grip on military discipline. A mandate in Henry VI’s name dated 1 February condemned in the strongest possible terms the failure of captains and lieutenants of garrison towns to take and submit musters of the garrisons in Normandy and the pays de conquête. Muster rolls were basic bookkeeping, used to calculate and pay the soldiers’ wages and to gauge the strength and whereabouts of English forces in France.

Sir Thomas Blount, treasurer of Normandy, had appointed commissioners to take the musters but his orders in King Henry’s name had been ignored. No muster rolls had been taken or submitted for some time past, “wherefore we have not been able to know nor ascertain truly what number of men of war we can count nor if the said garrisons and strongholds are sufficiently guarded.”  In the middle of a war this was indeed a dangerous state of affairs.

The king’s mandate ordered that if the reason for the commissioners’ dereliction of duty was that the captains and lieutenants of the garrisons had refused their cooperation then they were not to be paid from the day on which the last muster rolls ended. The commissioners were to visit each garrison or stronghold individually and investigate.

A day for them to report to the Council in Rouen with the required information was to be appointed and they must come prepared to answer any questions the council might have. Failure to obey would result in imprisonment or confiscation of goods. Baillis and sheriffs were to be apprised of these orders and were to arrest those who did not come to Rouen ‘if they can find them!’(1).  In other words, the administration in Rouen had been dysfunctional for some time.

The commissioners are named in an appendix to king’s mandate:

Falaise garrison: Guillaume Lude, keeper of the granary and Jehan Sainte, vicomte (sheriff) of Falaise.

Vire garrison: Vicomte of Vire and Jehan Fauquet.

Bayeux garrison: Guillaume Bosquet and Jehan Vanville.

Caen garrison: Giraud Desquay and  Loys le Clire.

(1) L&P II, pp. 182-187 (muster rolls).

 The Siege of Louviers

The town and castle of Louviers on the Seine eighteen miles south of Rouen had been taken by the French in December 1429. It barred the route to Paris, and everyone agreed that it had to be recovered before King Henry could be moved to Paris for his coronation.

Louviers had been under siege since 1430, but it was not until May 1431, after the arrival of Cardinal Beaufort’s reinforcements, that English military efforts centred on recapturing it. Edmund and Thomas Beaufort, recently created Earl of Perche, took charge of the siege (1).

In June the Estates of Normandy allocated a third of its tax grant to the recovery of Louviers and paid 50,000 livres tournois for 400 men-at-arms and 1200 archers drawn from garrisons all over Normandy (2).

The English had one stroke of luck. Etienne de Vignolles, La Hire, who had captured Louviers in 1429, was himself taken prisoner during the siege (3, 4).  But Thomas Beaufort died at Louviers on 3 October, only weeks before the town surrendered.

Louviers was plundered and its walls and fortified defences dismantled.

“And in 1431 the town of Louviers surrendered to the king; it was plundered and destroyed after Christmas.” Benet’s Chronicle, p. 183

“And in þat same yere was Louers geton & the walles beton doun and made an open village for all maner of pepill both Englisshe and Frensshe.”  Brut Continuation H, p. 569

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(1) Jones, ‘Beaufort Family,’ pp. 82-85 (for Louviers).

(2 Beaurepaire, Les Etats de Normandie,  p. 42 (Normandy Estates grant).

(3) Bourgeois, p. 264 (La Hire captured).

(4) Chartier, Chronique I, p. 163 (La Hire captured).

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The Death of Lord Fitzwalter

Thomas Beaufort was not the only unlucky captain who returned to France in Cardinal Beaufort’s army. Walter, Lord Fitzwalter, died in November 1431. An English Chronicle (misdated to 1434) has the story that he was drowned while attempting to cross the channel from Dieppe to England during a storm on St Katherine’s eve, 24 November.

“And this same yeer, on saint Katerine[s] eve, the lord Fitz Watier wolde haue come fro Normandie in to Englond, and ayens the wille and counsel of the shipmenne wente heddily to ship at Dope ; and whanne he was in the se, ther fil on him a greet tempest, and drounde him with moche othir peple.”   English Chronicle, p. 54

“And that same yere on Syn Katheryn ys eve was the Lorde Fewater drownyd and moche pepylle whythe hym. And moche harme done in the see of loste of schyppys that were lade whythe wyne fro Bordowys by the grete tempasse in the see.” Gregory’s Chronicle, p. 175

An insert in The Great Chronicle (p. 170) says he drowned in the Thames.

Fitzwalter had indented to serve for six months, so he may have returned to England at the end of his indenture and died shortly thereafter. According to The Complete Peerage he died on 25 November 1431. His will is dated 10 April 1431, and he was buried at Dunmow Priory, so it is unlikely that he drowned at sea. His widow, Elizabeth, had livery of his lands on 5 June 1432 (1).

(1) Cokayne, Complete Peerage V, p. 483 (Fitzwalter).

 The Earl of Warwick

The Earl of Warwick, despite his duties in the royal household as King Henry’s governor, took the field during the summer of 1431.

The town of Beauvais housed a sizeable French garrison. A force led by the Marshal de Boussac (Jean de Brosse) and Poton de Xaintrailles left the town on a marauding (or foraging) expedition. They were caught in the open (or ambushed) by the Earl of Warwick (1).

“And the same yere the xj day of Auguste the Erle of Warwyke [and] the Erle Stafforde slowe and toke a grete nombyr of pepylle be-syde Bevys; and ther was take on Potyn and a scheparde that was namyd le Bergere and he namyd hym sylfe hooly and a saynte, for the Fraynysche men hadde a be-leve on hym that yf he hadde layde hys honde on a castelle walle that hyt shulde have fallyn downe by the power of hys holynys.”  Gregory’s Chronicle, pp. 172-173

Warwick captured Poton de Xaintrailles. As one of Charles VII’s most experienced and successful war captains he was a valuable prize. He had captured John, Lord Talbot at the Battle of Patay in 1429.  The importance of Xaintrailles to the French war effort is reflected in the willingness of King Charles to exchange him for John Talbot, equally important to the English war effort.

Chartier mistakenly says the Earl of Arundel captured Xaintrailles (2) and a marginal note added to The Great Chronicle also credits the Earl of Arundel with capturing Xaintrailles.

“This yere therle off Arundell disconfityd y^e marshall off France callyd bonsac beside beauvays w^t A grett puissance & toke prisoner poynton off Xaintrailles. A valiant capitayne whiche was eschangid for y^e lord talbott taken prisoner before att y^e battayle off Patay.”    Great Chronicle p. 156

John, Earl of Arundel was involved in the raid from Beauvais by Marshal de Boussac in February 1432 when the French temporarily captured the tower of the castle at Rouen. This raid is not recorded by Chartier and he may have confused it with that of 1431(3).

See Year 1432: The Duke of Bedford, Rouen

Guillaume le Berger (William the Shepherd) from the Auvergne was a would-be successor to Joan to of Arc. Le Berger claimed to have the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ, imprinted on his body like St Francis, and he said he had been sent by God. He too was captured. I have been unable to trace a source for Gregory’s statement that he was believed to be able to reduce castle walls by the laying on of hands. (4).

Chartier says many people thought he was mad, but he was a prize of sorts. The deluded young man was kept in strict confinement until the day of Henry VI’s processional entry into Paris in December when he was paraded in chains as a thief. After that, he disappeared (5).

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(1) Monstrelet I, pp. 585-86 (Warwick captured Xaintrailles).

(2) Chartier, Chronique I, pp. 132-33 (Arundel captured Xaintrailles).

(3) Monstrelet I, pp. 599-600 (raid from Beauvais in 1432).

(4) Barker, Conquest, p. 168 (holy shepherd).

(5) Bourgeois, pp. 266 and 269 (fate of Le Berger).

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The Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort

The Duke of Gloucester’s knew that his unchallenged position as the king’s lieutenant in England would end when King Henry and Cardinal Beaufort returned from France, and he laid his plans accordingly. He intended to strip Beaufort of the bishopric of Winchester, the richest see in England, and therefore his wealth, on a charge under the provisions of the Statute of Praemunire that Beaufort had unlawfully accepted a cardinal’s hat from Pope Martin V in 1427.

The questionable legality of Beaufort remaining Bishop of Winchester after he became a cardinal had been raised in 1429. The verdict then was almost unanimous: no less than thirteen bishops and eleven lords on the Council had reminded Beaufort that under English law he should not be both cardinal and bishop, especially as the pope, not the king, had granted him permission to remain Bishop of Winchester, but no action was taken against him at that time

See Year 1429: Cardinal Beaufort’s Crusade.

Gloucester instructed the king’s sergeants-at-law and royal attorneys to prepare precedents, and he invited them to present their findings to a special council meeting on 6 November 1431 even before King Henry had left Rouen for Paris. The lawyers found no difficulty in producing the required evidence:

Robert Kylwardby, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1272 to 1278 was created a cardinal by Pope Nicholas III in 1278. He resigned as archbishop. Simon Langham, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1366 to 1368, was made a cardinal by Pope Urban V in 1368. He resigned as archbishop (1).

The 1431 council meeting was attended by Archbishop Henry Chichele, John Kemp, Archbishop of York, the Chancellor, and ten other bishops plus the Abbots of Westminster and Glastonbury, not all of them members of the regular Council.  Of the lay magnates the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Huntingdon, and the Earl of Suffolk had recently returned from France. Lord Hungerford the Treasurer, and Lord Scrope.  The  Earl of Oxford and Lord Poynings were there by invitation.

In the middle of the debate, on 16 November, the Council confirmed the Duke of Norfolk’s wage of 300 marks as a councillor, to date from the time he had been created a duke with deductions for the six months he had served in France as Earl of Norfolk, and another six months when he had been in France as a duke. For his attendance from 1422 to 1425 as Earl Marshal he would receive the 200 marks per annum that had been agreed in December 1427 (2).

See Year 1425: The Earl of Norfolk and the Earl of Warwick.

Gloucester questioned Thomas Polton, Bishop of Worcester, who had been King Henry V’s proctor in Rome in 1417 when Beaufort had accepted a cardinal’s hat and sought exemption for himself and his diocese from the jurisdiction of the primate of England, Henry Chichele the Archbishop of Canterbury. Polton was a protégé of Beaufort, and he was reluctant to answer, but he admitted that John Catterick, the late Bishop of Lichfield, who had been a proctor in Rome at the time, had told him that he bought the exemption on Beaufort’s behalf and that Beaufort had repaid him. Henry V subsequently forbade Beaufort to accept the pope’s offer.

Chancellor Kemp asked each member individually to give their opinion, but they prevaricated. They agreed that the king’s rights must be protected and that the law of the land must be upheld, but there was a major stumbling block to forcing Beaufort’s resignation: money.

Their collective opinion was that Beaufort’s services to the crown (i.e. his loans) and his kinship with the king must be taken into account: it would be better not to proceed until King Henry was once again in England. In the meanwhile, further precedents should be sought, and the judges should be consulted.

Beaufort’s Vicar General, the Abbot of Chertsey, pointed out that Beaufort was not there to defend himself because he had gone abroad at the Council’s request and Marmaduke Lumley, Bishop of Carlisle, opined that nothing further should be done until Cardinal Beaufort returned.

Gloucester summoned another meeting for 28 November in the Green Chamber at Westminster. Four lords who were not council members and who had not been present on 6 November were invited to attend: William, Lord Harrington had been with Gloucester in France in 1415. William, Lord Botreaux had fought in France under Henry V. William, Lord Lovell and Reginald West, Lord de la War, had been with Henry VI’s coronation expedition. Gloucester presented the writs of praemunire facias against Cardinal Beaufort that he had had prepared and sealed. The Council cravenly endorsed the writs but decreed that they should be suspended until King Henry returned to England (3).

Perhaps to mollify Gloucester, the Council discussed increasing his salary as the king’s lieutenant from 4,000 to 6,000 marks per annum. The Treasurer, Lord Hungerford, said he would agree, but only for as long as King Henry remained in France. After that Gloucester would no longer be the king’s lieutenant and his salary should revert to its original 2,000 marks as the king’s chief councillor. The four additional lords endorsed the Treasurer’s opinion.

Lord Scrope proposed that Gloucester’s salary should be increased to 5,000 marks per annum after King Henry returned; in the meanwhile, Gloucester should receive 6,000 marks as lieutenant of England. Chancellor Kemp and Marmaduke Lumley dissented strongly.

On 29 November, after much discussion (and some pressure?), Lord Hungerford and the four additional council members changed their minds. They opined that in view of the expenses Gloucester had sustained as lieutenant of England against rebels and traitors and especially for apprehending and executing ‘Jack Sharp’ and other heretics, he should receive 6,000 marks yearly during the king’s absence and 5,000 marks yearly thereafter, with the proviso that if Gloucester was again called on personally to subdue rebellions, he was not to receive any addition to the 5,000 marks (4, 5). It appears that the Council did not except King Henry to return to England in the immediate future.

The Council meetings of 28/29 November as recorded in the Proceeding dealt with two separate but important issues and raise some interesting questions. Why were the four lords who were not council members invited to attend? Did Gloucester summon them to boost his support? As the text in the Proceedings stands, they voted on Gloucester’s salary but not on the writs of praemunire. Nicolas in his introduction, argued that the Council was split in two and that only the regular members voted on the praemunire question (6) but is this likely when the other four had been ordered to attend and were present in the Council chamber?

William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, was confirmed as a member of the Council on 30 November, the last council meeting of the year. Chancellor Kemp and Treasurer Hungerford were both absent. Kemp was ill and Hungerford had gone to Waltham to visit Queen Katherine (7). Was their absence tactical in anticipation of further moves by Gloucester?

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(1) PPC IV, pp. 100-101 (council meeting and precedents).

(2) PPC IV, pp. 101-103 (Norfolk’s wage as councillor).

(3) PPC IV, pp.104-105 (writs of praemunire to be suspended).

(4) PPC IV, pp. 105-106 (Gloucester’s salary increased).

(5) Issues of the Exchequer, pp. 414–415 (payment to Gloucester dated 18 January 1432).

(6) PPC IV, preface pp. xxxiv-xxxvi (Nicolas).

(7) PPC IV, p. 108 (Earl of Suffolk joined the Council).

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King Henry’s Coronation in Paris

The Duke of Bedford

Cardinal Beaufort and the Council in Rouen were giving serious thought to the future: King Henry would return to England as soon as possible after he had been crowned, and the Duke of Bedford would be needed as Regent once again. The English Council had agreed that Bedford should be urged to resume the regency once King Henry left France and this was still the intention, but with one important difference which Cardinal Beaufort was determined to impose.

At a Grand Conseil meeting in Rouen on 12 October 1431 letters patent were issued commissioning Bedford to resume the government of Lancastrian France when King Henry returned to England. The commission conferred on him le gouvernement de nostre royume de France.  Bedford objected that he was Regent of France by right of birth and as heir presumptive to the throne, and he questioned the Grand Conseil’s authority to issue such a commission.

A second document in King Henry’s name stated that no derogation of Bedford’s status was intended by the commission (1). Bedford accepted it under protest. He recognised it for what it was, Cardinal’s Beaufort’s attempt to clip his wings, but his strong sense of duty and identity would not allow him to refuse. He was Regent of France by right whatever a piece of parchment implied. In the end Bedford and Beaufort each got their way: the commission stood, but Bedford resumed the regency and his title in 1432 and governed exactly as he had since 1423.

The ‘evidence’ that there was a bitter quarrel at this time between the Cardinal and the Duke rests on a later interpretation of two not very reliable chronicles.  John Hardying merely says that Bedford was ‘wroth with the cardinall his vncle for asmuche as the kynge was there presente; therefore there shulde bee no regente’ (2).

The Tudor historian Edward Hall, writing with hindsight long after 1431, dates the quarrel to King Henry’s coronation at the end of December, rather than in the middle of October.

“Yet this high and ioyous feast [the coronation] was not without a spotte of displeasure for the Cardinall of Wynchester whiche at this tyme would haue no man to hym egall commaunded the duke of Bedforde to leue of the name of Regent duryng the tyme that the kyng was in Fruance, affirmyng the chief ruler being in prese[n]ce the authoritie of the subsitiute was clerely derogate . . . . The duke of Bedford toke suche secret displeasure with this dooyng that he neuer after fauored the Cardinall but repugned and disdained at al thynges he did and deuised.”             Hall’s Chronicle, pp. 161-162.

If Bedford kept his displeasure secret, then there was no quarrel. Nor is there any evidence that he subsequently maintained it; he simply could not afford a breach with Beaufort. He knew better than most that the war in France could not continue, let alone be won, without the Cardinal’s loans. Their subsequent disagreement in 1433 on whether to pursue truce talks with the French may form the kernel of the quarrel story.

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(1) Rowe, ‘Bedford and the Grand Conseil’ pp. 226-227 cites two documents in Collection Dupuy in the Bibliothèque Nationale. They are letters patent under the Great Seal of France dated 12 October 1431, Par le Roy à la relacion du Grand Conseil.

(2) John Hardying, Chronicle, p. 394

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King Henry in Paris

After the fall of Louviers the way was clear to take King Henry to Paris for his coronation. In November the Council in England ordered that 10,000 marks should be entrusted to William Leventhorp and William Burgh, tellers of the Exchequer, to be taken to France for King Henry’s ‘retinue.’ They were allowed 400 marks for their journey. Ships with armed men aboard were to be impressed at Winchelsea. These arrangements were confirmed on 30 November; the money was to be shipped to Dieppe with all measures taken to convey it safely (1).

Henry came to Saint Denis under heavy escort at the end of November 1431. The kings of France were buried, not crowned, at St Denis.

Henry spent two nights there before making his entry into the capital of France on Advent Sunday, 2 December. The date was significant: his father, Henry V, had entered Paris in triumph on Advent Sunday in 1420.

Representatives of the merchant guilds, members of the Parlement of Paris, the captain of the guard, and exchequer officials in their ceremonial robes, led by Simon Morhier the Provost of Paris, came out to meet and welcome him.

Twenty-five heralds and twenty-five trumpeters proclaimed Henry’s arrival. The crowds lining the narrow streets shouted the traditional greeting of “Noel.” The weather was bitterly cold, with frost on the cobbles where straw had been scattered to make footing easier for the horses.

(1) PPC IV, pp. 103-104 and pp. 108-109 (money sent to Henry from England).

Pageants

Pageants lined Henry’s route through the city (1).  Their theme was loyalty to, and acceptance of, King Henry VI of England as the rightful King Henri II of France. But as a sign of things to come it was Cardinal Beaufort who rode before the king, accompanied by Louis of Luxembourg, Bishop of Thérouanne, Chancellor of France, Jacques du Chatillier Bishop of Paris, and Jean de Mailly, Bishop of Noyen (2).

At the Porte Saint Denis a silver ship and its crew displayed three ‘blode rede’ hearts, with inscriptions declaring that the Parisians welcomed the king with all their hearts.  The hearts opened to release doves and other small birds. An azure canopy spangled with gold fleur de lys, the symbol of majesty, supported on spear shafts and carried by four men with garlands on their heads was held over King Henry. He was received into the city by the nine worthies, a staple royal pageantry; less usually, they were accompanied by nine female worthies.

Mermaids swimming in a pond with fountains spouting hippocras, red wine, and ‘mylk’ attracted the young king’s attention.  Men and women dressed as savages staged a mock fight and stag hunt in a mock wood: the stag threw itself at the king’s feet and was spared. The nativity and childhood of Christ was depicted in dumb show on a high platform; the actors stood like statutes, not moving a muscle, which mightily impressed the onlookers. There was also a tableau of the life and death – by beheading – of St Denis, a somewhat macabre touch.

The most significant display was at the Chatelet, where a lit de justice was staged to illustrate the dual monarchy:  Henry as King of France would bring justice to both his peoples. It was paid for by the English administration, and not, like the other pageants, by the civic and ecclesiastical authorities of Paris (3).

A boy dressed in royal robes to represent the king was enthroned on a high dais draped with cloth of gold and tapestries. Over his head two crowns were suspended from a canopy. The backdrop was a tapestry embroidered with the arms of England and France. Men dressed to represent the (absent) nobility of France: the Dukes of Burgundy, Alençon, Berry, and Nevers displaying a shield with the arms of France stood to the right of the throne. To the left men in the livery of the Duke of Bedford, the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury displaying their arms and a shield with the arms of England. Brut Continuation F includes the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort.

“And at þe Chastelet þere was made a stately ordynaounce of scaffoldes, hanged with clothes of golde and with arras, with the Kinges armes of England and of Fraunce; and a man lykened to þe Kyng sittyng in a sete, kepyng a state in scarled with a furred hode and with ij buylhons made with the armes of England and of Fraunce;

and vpon the right hande, knelyng, my Lord of Bedford, my Lord of Gloucestre, my Lord Cardynall and many oþer lordes of England, iche man after his degre, armed with his cote of armes vpon hym; and then the Duke of Burgoyne, knelyng on the lifte hande, offeryng vp the armes of Fraunce and alle the other lordes of Fraunce in theire degree, knelyng and offeryng up their armes; and dyuers scriptures  made þat all they requyre the kyng of rightwisnesse.”     Brut Continuation F  (p. 460)

The clergy assembled along the route displayed their holy relics, including the arm of St George, which Henry kissed. He progressed to Hotel des Tournelles, the Duke of Bedford’s town house, where he was received by Duchess Anne and her ladies (4).

Henry’s grandmother, the almost forgotten Isabelle, queen of France watched the procession from the windows of the Hotel de St Pol (5). The romantic version of their meeting in Brut F is fiction, but her presence was important, it indicated her acceptance of her grandson, not her son, as the true king of France.

“And so vpon the morowe the Kyng went to speke with his grandmoder, þe Quene of Fraunce.  And there she made hym chere, and welcomed hym with all the dalyaunce, countenaunce and chere þat she coude or myght; and seid þat ‘she was neuer so gladde as she was then, with she sawe þe Kynge of Fraunce in good plyte.”    Brut Continuation F, p. 460

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(1) G. Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 143-169 (An overly elaborate interpretation emphasising the biblical/religious aspects of the pageantry at the expense of its secular/political content).

(2) Bourgeois, p. 269 (Beaufort and bishops).

(3) Curry, ‘Coronation expedition,’ p. 49. (Chatelet display, paid for by English administration).

(4) Letter Book K, pp. 135-37 (description of the pageants).

(5) Bourgeois, p. 271 (Queen Isabelle).

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Coronation

Henry rested at Vincennes, where his father had died, while the finishing touches were put to preparations for his coronation. He returned to the Palais on 15 December, and on 16 December he went on foot to Notre Dame. French accounts all stress the Englishness of the coronation.  Elements of the English coronation ceremony were introduced, including the four great shouts of acclamation, which was foreign to French usage (1).

Henry was crowned King of France not by the Bishop of Paris, but by Cardinal Beaufort, who sang the mass, employing the Sarum Use, the English version of the service.  The Duke of Bedford, the Earls of Warwick, Stafford, Salisbury, Arundel, and Mortain (Edmund Beaufort), Lords Cromwell and Tiptoft, and Sir Ralph Butler witnessed the ceremony. Among other insults, English officers were allowed to carry off the silver flagon, the property of the canons of the cathedral, in which the king had made his offering of wine.

The coronation banquet was a shambles. The food was cold and stale, the seating arrangements had not been finalised, and protection for those invited proved inadequate.  A Paris mob forced its way into the Palais and fought with those present. They carried off all the food they could lay their hands on. The following day was no better.  Only one small tournament was staged, but what was much worse, the largesse for which the crowds had been waiting was not distributed, and the customary remission of taxes and the merciful release of prisoners, expected of a ‘good king,’ failed to materialise (2).

Brut Continuation H (p. 569) assertion that “where-as was hold as riall a fest as euer was had of eny kyng,” could not be further from the truth.

Cardinal Beaufort could hardly have made more of a mess, or have left a poorer lasting impression of the English and their king in the capital of France. Unlike the Duke Bedford, who sought to win the good will of the Parisians, and whose government had made Henry’s coronation possible, Beaufort showed only contempt for the people of Paris who had remained loyal. It should be remembered that in 1430 when Joan of Arc reached Paris with her army, the city, under Bedford’s protection, refused to open its gates to the Maid.

The princes and magnates of France were conspicuous by their absence. The Duke of Burgundy refused to come to Paris despite being England’s principal ally and a signatory to the Treaty of Troyes; and he was up to his old tricks. On 12 December, four days before the coronation, he wrote from Lille to give King Henry formal notice that he was withdrawing from the war. He had agreed to a general truce and abstinence of war with King Charles VII.

Burgundy defended his decision by with the excuse that despite his numerous requests and complaints he had received no aid from the English, and he could no longer afford to sustain the war. He had been forced by sheer necessity, ‘by default of your said succour and in order to [avoid] the destruction of my said countries and subjects’ to agree to receive and negotiate with Charles VII’s representatives. He said his people, under attack for so long, had petitioned him to make peace before they were quite ruined. At the same time Burgundy assured King Henry that this did not mean the end of the Anglo-Burgundian alliance: he had not, or course, and would not, ally himself with France against England (3).

Henry remained in Paris for ten days. He attended a session of the parlement of Paris on 21 December and received the oaths of fealty from its members. A single French source alleges he spoke only in English, with the Earl of Warwick deputising for him in French (4). This claim is not substantiated by the Bourgeois of Paris: “The king was present in royal state and all the parlement was there . . .  when the mass was over they made him several reasonable requests, which he granted, and they swore certain oaths asked of them . . . .”  (5)

The coronation expedition was an expensive failure. Apart from his youth, King Henry made no impression whatsoever on his French ‘subjects’ who never accepted him, and it is impossible to know now what impression or what lasting effects, if any, his protracted stay in Rouen and his coronation had on him.

Did the Duke of Bedford regret having insisted that King Henry must be crowned in France? He could have put the money wasted on the coronation to much better use. He was left in Rouen to pick up the pieces and continue the war as best he could with whatever money he could wring out of the Estates of Normandy and the Council in England.

On 26 December 1431 just after his tenth birthday, King Henry left Paris for Rouen, accompanied by Cardinal Beaufort and the Earl of Warwick. After a short stay in Rouen, he was escorted to Calais during the first week of January 1432 where he was well received; Calais was English soil.  Henry returned to England early in February.  He never visited France again.

“And after his coronacion at Parys the Kyng come down to þe Cite of Roan. And so, by candelmasse next, the Kyng came to Caleys.  And the Marchauntes of the Staple, with the peple of the towne welcomed hym with all reuerence and honoure, and presented hym with giftes.”    Brut Continuation F, p. 461

Henry’s coronation as King of France did not interest the London chroniclers. Brut Continuation F provides full details of the pageants and the crowning ceremony, but the others dismiss it in one sentence, with a passing reference to Cardinal Beaufort’s presence. The chroniclers either did not know or could not bring themselves to believe in the reports of English parsimony and the absence of the French nobility; they recorded what they thought had should have occurred:

“and there set to mete with all delicacye of metes and drynkes þat myght be ordeyned, and open fest to all men þat wold com, bothe pore and riche.”  Brut Continuation F, p. 461

“This same yere þe vj^te day of Decembre Kyng Henry þe Sext was crowned King of Fraunce at Paris, in þe chirch of our Lady, with gret solempnite þer beyng present þe Cardinal of Englond þe Duke of Bedford & many oþer lordes of Englond & of Fraunce.  And after þis coronacion a gret fest holden at Paris the King returned from thens to Roan & so toward Caleys.”  Brut Continuation G pp. 501-502

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(1) Wolffe, Henry VI, pp. 61-62 (account of coronation).

(2) Monstrelet I, pp. 596–597 (account of coronation).

(3) L&P II, pp. 196-200 (Burgundy’s letter announcing his truce with France).

(4) Curry, ‘Coronation expedition,’ p. 50 and n. 116, citing Journal de Clement de Fauquembergue ed. Tuetey iii, (Paris, 1903-15), pp. 28-29.  Thomas Beaufort did not do homage to Henry VI for the county of Perche.  He died at Louviers in the previous October. Perche was granted to the Earl of Stafford who may have done homage for it to Henry VI on 21 December.

 (5) Bourgeois, pp. 272-273 (Henry spoke in Paris).

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