1442

King Henry VI (1422-1461) was the third and last Lancastrian king of England. There is no systematic, chronological analysis of the sources for Henry’s reign. Four of the principal sources, the Proceedings of the Privy Council, the Foedera, the chronicles covering Henry’s reign, and Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Wars of the English in France are brought together here with references to other authorities, primary and secondary. King Henry’s regnal year dates from 1 September to 31 August.

See Introduction.

Money

A pound sterling (£) was worth twenty shillings.  A shilling (s) was worth 12 pence (d). A mark was the most common money of account in England. It was worth 13s 4d or two thirds of a pound sterling. The livre tournois was the most common money of account in France. Nine livres tournois equalled approximately £1.

 

 CONTENTS

The King’s Council

The Proceedings record 25 meetings of the council in 1442.

Parliament

Parliament convened on Thursday 25 January 1442 at Westminster and sat until Tuesday 27 March. 

Taxation

The Commons granted the standard tax of a tenth and a fifteenth and extended the wool subsidy for two years.

Sea Keeping

A Commons petitioned for a plan for keeping the seas. The Council’s response.

Council Proceedings

Denization. Safe Conducts. John Machon. Louis Clifford. John Rosencrans. Walter Strickland. George Francho of Venice. Raffo d Grimaldi. William Le Bouteiller. Thomas Chapman. John Bridde.

Lawlessness

Northampton. Bedfordshire. Lord Grey.

Wales

The Lords of the Marches. Riots in Wales.

The Church

The Carmelites. General Pardons.

Embassy to the Emperor

John Lowe, Bishop of St Asaph. Reginald Boulers, Abbot of Gloucester. John Wheathamstede.

Pope Eugenius

Eton College. Adam Moleyns. William Lyndwood, Thomas Normanton.

 London

John Astley and a knight of Aragon. John Welles, Mayor of London. Affray in Fleet Street.

Wardens of the Marches

Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland and Marmaduke Lumley, Bishop of Carlisle, Wardens of the March, took an oath to maintain the truce with Scotland.

Ireland

King’s lieutenants in Ireland. Lord Welles. The Earl of Ormond. Richard Talbot, Archbishop of Dublin.

Calais

Robert Whittingham, Treasurer of Calais. Humphrey, Earl of Stafford, Captain of Calais. The Calais Staplers and the Partition Ordinance.

The Netherlands

Holland and Zeeland renegotiated trade with England.

The Duchy of Gascony

Bishop of Bazas. Abbot of Sorde. Gaston de Foix. Tartas.

King Charles’s Campaign

Tartas. Saint Sever. Dax.

An Armagnac Marriage

An Armagnac Marriage. Robert Roos and Thomas Beckington in Gascony. The Defence of Bordeaux. La Réole. The Earl of Armagnac. The End of the Mission.

An Army for Gascony

Loans. Bayonne. John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset.

The Duke of York and Isabelle of Burgundy

York and Isabelle negotiated a perpetual truce for Normandy and Burgundian lands. England was not included.

 A Truce with France

Peace talks were to resume in October. King Charles VII’s opinion. Peace commissioners were named by the English Council, no members of the English Council were included.

The Duke of Brittany

John V, Duke of Brittany died on 28/29 August.

War in France

The Duke of York and the Estates of Normandy. Lord Talbot in England. Lord Talbot’s Campaigns. Gallardon. Dieppe. Granville. Honfleur. Henry Bourchier.

 

The King’s Council

The Proceedings record 25 meetings of the council in 1442.  Two in March, one each in April, May, and June, three in July, seven in August and ten in October. Only the names of the councillors present on 17 October are recorded.

The commission to raise loans dated to 14 May 1442 by Nicolas, Proceedings V (pp. 187-189) is incorrect. It is an identical copy of instructions issued in 1455, which included the list of commissioners to whom the king’s letter was sent (Nicolas VI, p. 236-244). The regnal year ‘xx’ was added to the 1442 copy, presumably by Nicolas.

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“Three sets of instructions [in the Proceedings] relate to a threat to Calais and two of them, attributed by Nicolas to 1442 and 1455 are identical. Their correct date appears to be May 1455.”

Footnote 9:  The king was at Sheen not Westminster on 14 May 1442. He was at Westminster on 14 May 1455. The names of the commissioners are appropriate only for the latter decade. In the MS of the ‘1442’ commission (B.M. Cleopatra F VI fo. 294 the last letters of the date are erased.”

G.L. Harriss ‘Aids, Loans and Benevolences,’ The Historical Journal, vol. VI, no. 1 (1963), pp. 1-19.

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 Parliament

Parliament convened on Thursday 25 January 1442 at Westminster and sat until Tuesday 27 March.  The chroniclers’ only interest in the parliamentary proceedings was taxation, the keeping of the seas, and the loan of £3,000 to the crown by the Common Council of London.

“Also the same yere whas a parlement and it began at Cristemas and lasted til Estre; at the whiche parlement was orderyned that the see schulde ben kept a yere at the kynges coost, and therfore to paye an holl fyftene, and London to lene hym iij m¹ lib’.”  A Chronicle of London (Harley 565) p. 130.  Chronicles of London (Cleopatra C IV) pp. 149-150

Taxation

On 27 March, the last day of parliament, the Commons granted the standard tax of a tenth and a fifteenth with a deduction of £4,000 as they had in 1440, to exempt impoverished towns and villages such as Lincoln.  Payment would be collected in two halves: a quarter of the first half (equalling one eighth of the total) by 28 May, for the keeping of the seas. The rest of the first half by November 1442 and the second half by November 1443 (1, 2).

“After Christmas the king held parliament at London, in which he was granted a fifteenth [by the laity] and a tenth by the clergy.” Benet’s Chronicle, p. 189

The subsidy on wool exports was extended for two years from November 1443, the same as in the Parliament of 1437, for sea keeping.

See Year 1437: Parliament, Taxation.

Tunnage and poundage was extended for two years from April 1443, also for sea keeping. The allocations make it clear that sea keeping, not the war in Normandy, was the Commons’ priority.

Commissioners to collect the tax were appointed on 28 and 29 March (3).

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(1) PROME XI, pp 318-319 (Curry).

(2) PROME XI, pp 326-332 (Taxation. Items 5 – 8).

(3) CFR 1437-1445, pp. 213-224 (tax collection and collectors).

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Sea Keeping

The Commons outlined a comprehensive plan for keeping the seas, and the means to pay for it. Sea keeping was synonymous in their minds with the defence of the realm (1). But their estimates, based on allocations from the tax grant, did not make allowance for other financial commitments, such as the war in Normandy or the repayment of loans so that more money could be borrowed, which would absorb most of the taxes granted.

The Commons Proposal

A fleet of eight great ships to be kept at sea from February to November with 150 fighting men aboard.  Total: 1200 men:

Each ship to be accompanied by a barge and a balinger and four pinnaces. Each barge to carry 80 men,    Total: 640 men

Each balingers to carry 40 men:   Total:  320 men.

A total of 2,260 men.

Every man to be paid 2 shillings monthly.

Plus twenty-four ships’ masters and quarter masters at 40 pence a month.

Eight knights or squires should be selected from different counties to command the ships, so that no county might feel slighted. King Henry should name a chief captain from among them.

(1) PROME XI, pp. 373-375 (Commons petition).

The Council’s Response

The royal assent demonstrates the wide diversity between theory and practice. The crown’s naval resources had been decimated by the Council’s over hasty selling off of Henry V’s ships in 1423.

See 1423: King Henry V’s Will.

Without a royal navy the Council could not afford to lease ships and keep them at sea for long periods. They preferred to issue letters of marque for English ship owners to recover any loses by retaliation against foreign ships, and ship owners preferred this lucrative practice too.

Sir William Eure, Sir Stephen Popham, Miles Stapleton, and John Heron were commissioned at the end of June to take command of putting ships to sea. All four were members of parliament in 1442. Eure and Heron for Yorkshire and Northumberland, Popham and Stapleton for Hampshire and Norfolk. They had no experience of fighting at sea, but perhaps they sponsored the Commons’ petition.

Stephen Popham and Sir John Passhele, John Hunt a king’s sergeant, and three others were to commandeer ships, barges, and balingers in southern and western ports, especially Le Barry and Le Julian, of Fowey which were currently in London. Popham was to victual the ships and bring them to Southampton to assemble at Camber near Winchelsea. Passhele was to bring the barges and balingers to Sandwich and then to Camber, to assemble by 1 August. Victualling for 100 archers, in addition to the assignment in his indentures, was to be delivered to Stephen Popham, and he was to account for the expenditure (1).

Sir William Eure, Miles Stapleton, and John Heron, with the king’s sergeant at arms Thomas Derlyng, William Heron and four others were likewise to commandeer ships in the port of London and the more northern ports.  Eure was to assemble at Kingston on Hull and bring his ships to Camber. Miles Stapleton was to assemble at Kirkley in Suffolk, and William Heron (a mistake for John?) would assemble at Newcastle on Tyne to bring the ships to Camber (2).

There is an obscure reference in Harley 565 and Cleopatra C IV, which derive from the same source. It may relate to the gathering of ships and the selection of war captains from different counties:

“Allso this same yere went a were in iiij partys of Englond, of euery coast xxiiij shippes a werr.”   A Chronicle of London (Harley 565) pp. 130-131 and Chronicles of London    (Cleopatra C IV), p. 149

Only a three-month commission was envisaged, not the nine months requested in Parliament. The chancellor was to issue permits for them to take prisoners (and presumably ships) at sea. The Exchequer would supply them with eight barrels of gun power. Their protections, issued at the end of June, were valid until October (3).

Their commission was reissued on 18 July as ‘leaders of all men of arms and archers provided by the king for the safe keeping of the sea by the authority of parliament’ (4). At the end of July, Eure, Stapleton and Heron were instructed to comply with their indentures. Sir John Popham and William Soper would take the musters. A note on the possibility of Eure coming to London is crossed out in the Proceeding (5). 

The assembly point was changed to the Isle of Wight at the end of August (6). Initially 200 spears, 300 bows and three hundred sheaves of arrows were to be supplied to them, but at the same council meeting, on 22 August, King Henry ordered an increase to 500 bows and sheaves of arrows. Payment would be made to Stephen Popham who was to account for the expenditure (7).

See A Navy for Gascony? Below.

On 28 August Sir John Popham and William Soper were again ordered to take the musters of 2,260 men at arms and archers authorised by Parliament (8, 9). This figure is taken from the Commons’ petition but since four, not the eight, ‘large’ ships requested by the Commons, were commissioned the actual numbers may have been about half that.

NB: the entry in the Proceedings chronological abstracts (p. xliii) is incorrect.  Sir John Popham was to take the musters, his cousin Stephen Popham was to take the fleet to sea.

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(1) CPR 1441-46, p. 105  (Commission to Stephen Popham).

(2) CPR 1441-46, p. 106 (Commission to Eure, Stapleton and Heron).

(3) PPC V, p. 190 (Three-month commission. Gunpower).

(4) CPR 1441-46, p. 108 (Commission reissued).

(5) PPC V, p. 193 (Eure, Stapleton and Heron to perform their commission).

(6) PPC V, p 196 (assembly at Isle of Wight).

(7) PPC V, pp. 198-99 (bows and arrows ordered in August).

(8) CPR 1441-46, p. 107 (John Popham and Soper August).

(9) PPC V, p. 204 (musters August).

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Council Proceedings

Denization

Two Venetians, Jeromino Dandulo and his son Marino received letters of denization for 40 marks paid in the Hanaper (1, 2)

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(1) Foedera XI, p. 2

(2) CPR 1441-1446, p.  34

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John Machon

John Machon submitted a petition to the Council ‘touching his clothing.’  I have been unable to identify Machon. He was probably a servant in the royal household who was entitled to a set of clothes, perhaps at Easter or the previous Christmas (1). Petitions for clothing and other entitlements for service in the royal household are not unusual.

(1) PPC V, p. 195

Louis Clifford

The Council directed that a letter should be sent to the Abbot of Faversham, ‘as it is said’ that he had certain deeds and muniments as evidence of possessions belonging to Louis Clifford, the king’s ward.  Louis was in the keeping of James Fiennes [Fenys]. The abbot was ordered not to deliver the deeds etc. to anyone without the king’s permission (1).

(1) PPC V, p. 200

John Rosencrans

“Grant to the king’s sergeant John Rosencrans, merchant of the city of Cologne of 250 marks of English money out of the customs of London for merchandise and goods brought to England and taken hence by merchants of the Hanse; he having made many voyages and ridden abroad during the last five years for divers matters touching the good of the king’s dominions and subjects as he had notified to certain lords of the king’s blood and council for which matters he had demised the doing of his own trade and magnanimously expended his own property without any reward or compensation hitherto”  (1, 2).

Was Rosencrans trading on King Henry’s behalf or travelling as a Council messenger?

The entry in Foedera XI for February 1443 in almost the same words is probably a confirmation of the 1442 grant (3).

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(1) PPC V, p. 206 (250 marks to Rosencrans).

(2) CPR 1441-46, dated 28 August 1442, p. 92.

(3) Foedera XI, p. 19 (250 marks to Rosencrans).

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Walter Strickland

Walter Strickland was pardoned £40 as formerly the sheriff of [. . . . ] (1). He was probably the Walter Strickland who was regranted the office of Keeper of Calgarth Park in Westmorland on 16 October 1442 ‘in full satisfaction of 6d a day and £10 yearly granted to him in other letters patent” (2) He was MP for Westmorland in 1442 (3).

It was not unusual for sheriff’s accounts to be in arrears due to the difficulty of collecting the income from crown lands for which they reported to the Exchequer twice yearly. The Council could instruct the Treasurer to pardon justified shortfalls.

See Year 1423: Sheriffs.

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(1) PPC V, p 221 (Strickland, late sheriff).

(2) CPR 1441-1446, p. 149 (grant to Strickland).

(3) Wedgwood, Parliamentary Biographies  p. 823 (Strickland).

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George Francho of Venice

A safe conduct was issued in June to George Francho of Venice who was traveling to various countries on business for the Order of St John of Jerusalem at Rhodes. He may have visited the headquarters of the order at Clerkenwell in London and was planning a return to Europe (1).

 Raffo de Grimaldi

A safe conduct for Raffo de Grimaldi a resident of Genoa, born in Spain and a subject of the King of Castile, to come to England was issued in July. Castile was an ally of France and therefore an enemy of England (2).

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(1) Foedera XI, p. 9

(2) Foedera XI, p. 12

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William Le Bouteiller

The Duke of Orleans requested safe conducts to send wine into England. The wine was undoubtedly intended for Orleans brother John of Angoulême who was still a captive in England.  King Henry commanded that they be issued in August (1).

Orleans had pledged Angoulême and six other hostages, including William Le Bouteiller, in 1412 for payment of a debt he owed to the Duke of Clarence which he failed to honour.

See Year 1434: Sir Thomas Rempston.

Clarence died in 1421, and the debt passed to Clarence’s wife and stepson, John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset. Le Bouteiller remained a captive in England until in 1440 when Orleans paid 10,000 écus towards Angoulême’s ransom which secured Le Boutellier’s release. He returned to France and to service in Orleans’s household.

In December 1442 the Earl of Somerset requested a safe conduct for William Le Boutellier to come to England to negotiate for Angoulême’s release (2, 3). Whatever the Duke of Orleans had to offer was unacceptable, Angouleme remained a captive until 1445.

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(1) PPC V, p 206 (Orleans’s request to send wine).

(2) Foedera XI, p. 17 (safe conduct for Le Boutellier).

 (3) DKR xlviii, French Rolls, p 356 (safe conduct for Le Boutellier).

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Thomas Chapman

‘A letter of request to be made for Master Thomas Chapman, going to Rome as the king’s messenger who was taken in Flanders’ (1).

The letter was presumably to request the Duke of Burgundy’s officials in Flanders to release Chapman.  Thomas Chapman is a common name, but he is referred to as ‘Master’ and it is possible that he was the same Thomas Chapman who was unsuccessful in his bid, backed by Pope Eugenius but opposed by the English Council, to become Treasurer of Limerick Cathedral.

See Year 1438: Treasurer of Limerick Cathedral.

(1) PPC V, p. 203

John Bridde

King Henry granted John Bridde, a friar whom he often employed as a messenger 20 marks yearly assigned on the customs of the port of [ . . . .] to be paid to him until he received the £120 due to him for his services (1).

(1)  PPC V, p.  221

Lawlessness

Disturbances in provincial towns were a common occurrence, and the Council was quick to warn local authorities to suppress unrest before it could get out of hand.  Justices holding local assizes were often forced to suspend or postpone proceedings when retainers of local lords or even the lords themselves attended  judicial sessions and intimidated the justices to find in favour of their tenants or of themselves (1). Two writs with similar wording, were issued in July 1442:

Bedfordshire

The Earls of Norfolk and Huntingdon had been forbidden to attend the assize in Bedfordshire in 1428 because they could not be trusted not to interfere in the judicial process. Disturbances at the summer session in 1442 caused the Council to instruct the justices in Bedfordshire to punish those who ‘demean themselves at the assizes otherwise than according to the law’ and to send their names to the Council (2).

Northampton

Reports reached the Council of rumours circulating in the town of Northampton that the town was under threat. The citizens had congregated and the town bell had been rung. This was the usual method of calling men to arms to defend the town or to take sides in a riot. The Council ordered the mayor, bailiffs and burgesses of Northampton to punish whoever had started the rumours and disturbed the peace.

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(1) Bellamy, Crime and Public Order, pp 96-98 (justices of the peace).

(2) PPC V, p. 191 (Northampton) and p. 192 (Bedfordshire).

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 Wales

As part of the Council’s effort to raise money from all possible sources, the Chamberlain of South Wales or his deputy was instructed at the end of August to collect certain sums owed to the crown. Seven Welsh names are listed with amounts ranging from 500 marks [£333 6s 8d] to £11 2s. The matter was urgent as King Henry had already assigned the money to ‘divers persons’ (1).

(1) PPC V, p. 209

Riots in Wales

In October the Council ordered that King Edward I’s Statute of Winchester dealing with riots and lawlessness should be examined in the context of disturbances in Wales.  The provisions of the Statute of Winchester against thieves were to be issued under the Great Seal. The riots may have been sparked by cattle rustling, or thefts in raids by local landowners on their neighbours’ property.

Letters directing the Marcher Lords ‘to make good ordinance and rules’ along the Marches to restore order so that ‘all misgovernance and rioting shall cease’                   were read and approved on 11 October (1).

‘Lord Grey’ was ordered to appear before the king and council in October ‘in all haste for certain causes’ and he was to keep the peace towards ‘Digby’ on pain of a fine of £1,000.  Everyone else ‘complained of’ was to appear on pain of £100 (2).

I have been unable to identify which Lord Grey is meant, possibly Lord Grey of Ruthin. The extensive Grey family held lands along the borders of Wales.  His summons may relate to disturbances.

King Henry ordered the Marcher Lords to convene and restore order in their localities before Christmas, otherwise he would ‘ordain a remedy’. A similar order, without the threat, had been sent to the border lords in 1438.

See Year 1438: Wales.

Unnamed Marcher Lords were summoned to appear before the Council in November and present witnesses, six, five or four local gentlemen of good standing, to testify as to who was responsible for the rioting. They were then to take order to the culprits so that the disturbances would cease.

See Year 1423: The Marches of Wales.

The situation was sufficiently serious for the Council to request the Duke of York, the greatest of the Marcher Lords, to appoint members of his counsel in England to ‘commune’ with other Marcher Lords (3, 4).

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(1) PPC V, p. 215 (letters to the Marcher Lords)

(2) PPC V, p. (211) (Lord Grey)

(3) PPC V, p. 213 (orders to the Marchers Lords and the Duke of York).

(4) Griffiths, ‘Wales and the Marches in the Fifteenth Century,’ in King and Country, pp. 70-71.

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The Church

Carmelites

In June 1442 Giovanni Faci, ‘John Fassy’ prior general of the Carmelite order of mendicant friars was granted a licence and a safe conduct for himself and four companions to make a visitation to the houses of the order in England (1).

The Carmelites established priories, friaries and convents in London, Oxford, Norwich and York in the thirteenth and fourteenth century under the protection of King Edward I. Their earliest house was at Aylesford in Kent, founded in 1240 by Richard Grey, the ancestor of Lord Grey of Codnor.

King Edward granted them a plot of land in Fleet Street to build a priory and during Edward III’s reign the mayor and Common Council of London granted them Crockers Lane connecting Fleet Street to the Thames (2). There were about forty Carmelite houses in England in the fifteenth century.

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(1) Foedera XI, p. 9 (Carmelites, visitation).

(2) Stow, Survey of London II, p. 46 (Carmelites).

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General Pardons

King Henry granted ‘general pardons’ periodically throughout his reign. Supposedly the act of a merciful king, they were used occasionally to quell unrest, but more often as a fund raiser or indirect tax – pardons had to be paid for.  Easter was the appropriate time, and Henry apparently offered a general pardon in April 1442.

His warrant to Thomas Thorp to collect the expected ‘great good for the setting forth of oure armee to the see and to the saulfgarde of oure town of Calais’ is dated 22 April but with no year. Henry was usually at Windsor in April for the Feast of the Garter. Nicolas assigned the date of 1442 (1).

(1) PPC V, pp. 185-186 (general pardon).

Embassy to the Emperor

King Henry commissioned John Lowe, Bishop of St Asaph, and Reginald Boulers, the Abbot of Gloucester to attend the Emperor Frederick and the German Diet at Frankfurt, they were to travel with Adam Moleyns. Letters of protection for Boulers and Moleyns were issued at the end of November 1441 (1).

See Year 1441: The Emperor Frederick.

King Henry was not interested in German domestic politics, but he and the bishops on the council were concerned by the quarrel between Pope Eugenius and the Church Fathers at Basel which caused a schism in the church. Henry looked to the Emperor Frederick to resolve it, but according to Ferguson, ‘nothing was accomplished’ (2).

Lowe and Boulers returned to England in August carrying a verbal reply from the Emperor, but nothing in writing. What it was is not recorded in the Proceedings.

See Year 1439: Church Union – and Disunion.

Frederick sent to in England in October to request that ‘singers’ should be sent to him.  Nicholas Sturgeon, clerk of the royal chapel, was instructed to select ‘six singers’ from the choir of King Henry’s chapel to be sent to the Emperor’s court (3).

Before they left London in March 1442 John Lowe petitioned King Henry for a reward for his services during the last six months of 1441. He requested permission to make his will and choose his executors. He was granted £100 and given the permission he sought. The king’s response was written by Adam Moleyns.  (4)

Lowe and Boulers requested that their expenses for visiting the Emperor should be paid, and King Henry authorised payment or assignment to them of the same daily wage allowed to former ambassadors to the Emperor, but with no amount given (5).

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(1) Foedera XI, p.1 (Boulers and Moleyns).

(2) Ferguson, English Diplomacy, p. 18 (Embassy to Frankfurt).

(3) PPC V, p. 218 (choristers to be sent to the Emperor).

(4)  PPC V, p. 183 (Bishop Lowe)

(5) PPC V, p. 197 (Lowe and Bourlers return).

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Abbot John Whethamstede

John Whethamstede was sent to Frankfurt in 1442 just as the two other English envoys were about to return to England, presumably to continue to influence the Emperor Frederick and possibly the Imperial Electors in favour of Pope Eugenius.  Whethamstede had resigned as the Abbot of St Albans in 1440, but the Council continued to recognise his status. A protection for him as Abbot to go as an ambassador to Frankfurt at the end of July 1442 has been overlooked by historians of Henry VI (1). It is not mentioned in DNB. The ODNB says ‘his activities during his retirement remain obscure (2, 3).

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(1) Foedera XI, p. 10 (Whethamstede to Frankfort).

(2) Dictionary of National Biography

(3) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

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Pope Eugenius

Adam Moleyns

Moleyns travelled from Frankfurt to Florence to meet Pope Eugenius. He had served at the papal court in 1434 and 1435. Eugenius employed him as a messenger to England in 1435 and commended him for his handling of the negotiations in 1434 to make Thomas Bourchier Bishop of Worcester.

See Year 1434: Thomas Bourchier.

Moleyns was to assure Pope Eugenius of England’s friendship and alliance (1), and probably to report on the Diet at Frankfurt.  More practically, Moleyns was entrusted with instructions to promote two causes near to King Henry’s heart: the canonisation of St Osmund, the first bishop of Salisbury (Moleyns was Dean of Salisbury) and of Alfred the Great ‘the first monarch of England’ (2).

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(1) Foedera XI, p. 3 (friendship and alliance with the pope).

(2) Bekyngton, Correspondence I, pp. 117-119 (canonisation).

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Eton College Indulgences

King Henry founded Our Lady of Eton College in 1440 (1, 2, 3).

See Year 1440: Henry VI and Eton College,

In 1441 at King Henry’s request, Pope Eugenius IV granted the same indulgences or pardons, to people visiting Eton College on 15 August, the Feast of the Assumption, as were granted to those who visited St Peter’s ad Vincula in Rome for the same feast (4).

In May 1442, for a substantial fee, Pope Eugenius granted plenary remission of sins (indulgences), valid during King Henry VI’s lifetime, to people visiting Eton and giving alms towards its building and maintenance, and to aid the Knights Hospitallers on the Island of Rhodes to fight the Turks. The Provost of Eton was authorised to hear confession and grant full absolution to all college personnel (5).

A final grant of these indulgences in perpetuity was obtained, again at considerable cost, in May 1444 (6). The Papacy never missed out on a chance to finance its own commitments.

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(1) Bekyngton, Correspondence I, Introduction pp. lxxxi-lxxviii.

(2) H.C. Maxwell Lyte, History of Eton, pp. 1-22.

(3) PROME XI, pp. 344-358 (petition on behalf of the Provost and Royal College of the Blessed Mary of Eton near Windsor. It recapitulates King Henry’s letters founding the college in 1440 and his letters of March 1441 granting lands and rights to the college).

(4) Wolffe, Henry VI, pp. 137-138 (papal grants).

(5) Papal Letters VIII p 239 (indulgence for Henry’s lifetime).

(6) Papal Letters VIII, p. 271(indulgence in perpetuity).

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 William Lyndwood

William Lyndwood, Keeper of the Privy Seal since 1432, became Bishop of St David’s by papal provision following the death of Thomas Rudbourne in June 1442 (1). The temporalities were restored to him in August after he modified the oath of fealty required by the papal provision ‘prejudicial to the king’s prerogative,’ i.e. the pope’s sole right of election, and he swore fealty to King Henry (2, 3).

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(1) Papal Letters IX, pp. 253 and 297 (papal provision)

(2) PPC V, p. 195 (Lyndwood).

(3) Foedera XI, p. 13 (Lyndwood).

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Thomas Normanton

In March 1442 Pope Eugenius granted Thomas Normanton, a monk of the Benedictine order of the Abbey of Saint German, Selby, in the diocese of York, the standard papal dispensation for him  to accept any benefice offered to him and to exchange or resign it if he so wished (1).

Papal bulls issued to English clergy had to be confirmed by the king, otherwise the recipient would be in breach of the Statue of Provisors. King Henry issued a licence in the following September permitting Normanton to accept the papal provision (2, 3).

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(1) Papal Letters IX, p. 264 (dispensation to Normanton).

(2) Foedera XI, p, 14 (king’s confirmation).

(3) CPR 1441-1446 pp. 192-193 (king’s confirmation).

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 London

John Astley and a Knight of Aragon

Jousts and single combat encounters took place at Smithfield, a large area outside London’s city walls.

“A knight of Aragon,’  came to England in 1441 and issued a challenge to all comers to meet him in the lists, to fight with spear, axe, and dagger. John Astley, a squire in the king’s household, accepted the challenge. They met at Smithfield at the end of January 1442. Astley wounded his opponent and would have killed him, but King Henry stopped the contest (1).

The king knighted Astley and granted him an annuity of £40 (2). The Issues of the Exchequer identifies the ‘knight of Aragon’ as ‘Philip Boyle.’ He was rewarded with £100 on King Henry’s orders (3).

“And that yere the laste day of [       ] save on, there was a batayle in Smythfeld, withinne lystes aforn the kyng, betwen the lord Beaufe a Arrogonere and John Ashele squyer of the kynges hous, a chalange for spere to caste pollex and dagger at the lord aforeseyd in brekynge of his gauntelette and reysng of his umbray, and hadde hym at myischief redy to a popped hym in the face with his dagger, tyl the kyng cried hoo: amd there the seid Asshle was mad knyght in the feld. [be the kings hande for his wel doing, and afterward the lord offered up his harness at Windsor in Julius B I ] 

A Chronicle of London (Harley 565), p. 130 and Chronicles of London (Cleopatra CIV), p. 150

‘Gregory’ in his usual muddled fashion  implies that there were two Astleys, father and son. Joan Astley had been King Henry’s nurse, and her husband Sir Thomas Astley was a servant in the royal household. Was John Astley, a squire in the household, their son?  This is speculation.

Ande the xxx day of Janyver was certayne poyntys of armys done in Smethefylde by twyne a knyght of Catelan and a Engelysche squyer, i-callyde Syr John Ascheley; of the whiche tyme the sone of the sayde knyght, in presens of alle the pepylle there, was made knyght opynly by the kyngys owne hondys.  And the sayde John Ayschelay also was made knyght att the same tyme. Gregory’s Chronicle,  p. 184

Chronicles: Robert Bale’s Chronicle, p. 116. Short English Chronicle, pp. 63-64

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(1)  R. Barber, ‘Malory’s Le Morte Darthur,’ and court culture under Edward IV,’ Arthurian Literature, 12 (1993) pp. 133-155.

(2) CPR 1441-1446, p. 101 (John Astley knighted).

(3) Issues of the Exchequer, p. 442 (payment to Philip Boyle).

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An Affray in Fleet Street and the Inns of Court

Brawls were commonplace in the streets of London, but not usually after dark when a curfew was imposed. On the night of 31 August a fight broke out (perhaps towards dawn) between the inhabitants of Fleet Street and the gentlemen of the four Inns of Court, the lawyers in training. William Harbotell, a member of Clifford’s Inn, was responsible for staring the garboil, but no reason for it is given. Both sides were armed themselves with bows and arrows, and according to Benet’s chronicle, five lawyers were fatally wounded. Order was finally restored in the morning by the mayor and sheriffs.

Chronicles of London, Vitellius A XVI, has two accounts of the same incident, one under Mayor John Paddesley (1440-1441) and a second under Mayor Robert Clopton (1441-1442)

“Also the same yere the last day of August [1441] in fletestrete ther was a grete debate by the nyght tyme bitwene men of Courte and men of London. Where thurgh shotte of bowes, as in londe of Werre, of both parties there were many men hurt fowle and slayne; and one called William herbotell a man of Courte, Beyng principall cause of all that mysgouernaunce.”  Vitellius A XVI, p. 154 

“Also this yere [1442] was affray in fletstret by nyghtyme bitwene men of courte and of london wherof one herbotell was the occasioner.”  Vitellius A XVI, p. 155

Benet’s Chronicle dates it to 1441 immediately after the affray in Oxford on the night of 30 August.

See Year 1441: Affray in Oxford.

“On the following day in London there was an affray between the citizens and men of [the Inns of] court during which five of the court party [lawyers] were fatally wounded by arrows.”   Benet’s Chronicle, p. 189

The Tudor chronicler, Robert Fabian, dated it to Robet Clopton’s mayoralty, and identified William Harbotell as a member of Clifford’s Inn.

“Also this yere [Clopton] in the month of August was a grat affray in Fleet Street; which affray began in the nyght, and so continued with assawtes and small bykerynges tyll the next daye, in whiche season moche people of the cytie thyder was gaderyd and dyuerse men of both partyes were slayne & many hurt. But lastly, by the presence and discression of y mayer and sheyreffes this affray was appeased; of the whiche was chief occaisioner a man of Clyforde Inn named Herbotell.”   Fabian, New Chronicles, p. 616

“In This mayers tyme [Clopton] also was a Grete & perylous affray In Fleetstrete among the Gentyllmen of the Innys of Court. The which was by nygthis tyme, whereof was begynner a man namyd herebotell. This contynuyd a grete part of the nygth In soo much that much people of the said strete were hurt & sore woundid and some slayn, and was not styntid tyll the mayer & shyrevys w^t assystence of many worshypfull comoners cam thidyr to depart theym.”  Great Chronicle, p. 176

The Drapers and the Tailors

The Drapers Company had appealed to the then mayor of London, John Paddesley in 1441 against a royal grant to the Tailors Company of the right of search, the regulation of the measurement and quality of woollen cloth sold in the City, which traditionally belonged to the Drapers.

See Year 1441: Robert Clopton Mayor

A year later in August 1442 King Henry was forced to concede that the royal grant had breached the rights and privileges of the Mayor and the City. A letter in King Henry’s name to the incumbent mayor, Rober Clopton (a draper) confirmed the mayor’s right of search in accordance with the ancient liberties and privileges of the City, despite the opposition of the Tailors.

Henry’s letter to the warden of Tailors Company revoked the letters patent by which the king had granted them the right of search. The grant was rescinded, and the tailors were ordered to obey the Mayor of London and follow the customary usage of the laws of the City. The original letters patent making the grant to the Tailors were to be returned to the king and council.

(1) Letter Book K, ed. Sharpe, pp. 260-261 (where Henry’s letter to the Tailors is printed in full).

John Welles, Mayor

John Welles, a Master of the Grocer’s Guild, died in 1442. His will directed that he should be buried in the Grocer’s Church of St Anthony.

“Ande in the same yere deyde John Wellys, the nobylle Aldyr man, and sum tyme Mayre of London.” Gregory’s Chronicle, p. 184

Welles represented the City in Parliament in 1417, 1425, 1426, 1427 and 1433. He became Mayor of London in October 1431. John Stow describes him as ‘a great benefactor to the City.’

Welles paid for the repairs to the Fleet Bridge in 1431. He contributed to the construction of the new standard (water conduit) in West Cheap; an engraving on the coping depicted him as ‘embraced by angels.’ He welcomed King Henry into London on the king’s return from France in 1432. The wells depicted in the pageants were in his honour.

See Year 1432: King Henry’s Return to England, The Great Conduit, Cheapside

His executors, presumably on his instructions, contributed to the construction of a new chapel for the Guildhall, the great east window, a presbytery, two niches for images and an altar with marble steps.

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(1) Stow, Survey of London, vol I, pp. 26 and 109; vol II, pp. 333 (executors).

(2) historyofparliamentonline.org

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Henry Frowyk

Henry Frowyk a member of the Mercer s Company, MP for London 1422, 1423-24, and 1437, sheriff of London in 1427-28, and mayor in 1435-36, was designated in November 1442 as the alderman to hear complaints from the German merchant community in London (1).

The merchants of the Hanseatic League resident in London had petitioned Parliament in 1426 to appoint a respected and experienced alderman as judge in a special court to hear their complaints when they could not get justice from the mayor and sheriffs of London. Parliament agreed and successive aldermen were appointed.

See Year 1426: The Hanseatic League.

(1) Foedera XI, p, 16 (Frowyk as judge).

 St Mary Graces Abbey

The Cistercian Abbey of St Mary Graces situated east of the Tower of London was also known as the Abbey of Tower Hill. It had a bad reputation. It had been subject to an investigation in 1427 which found that the abbey’s jewels had been pawned illegally.

See Year 1427 London, St Mary Graces Abbey

In October 1442 King Henry directed the chief justice Sir John Fortescue to investigate an indictment against the Abbot, Robert Welles ‘and others’ that he believed had been instigated maliciously by ‘evil wishers.’ Fortescue was to examine the truth of the indictment and send a copy of his findings to the Council.  In the meanwhile, Fortescue was to suspend all judicial processes against the abbot until the king ordered otherwise (1).

This incident may relate to the custody of the temporalities of the abbey. In 1441 the abbey was required to answer for £566 18s. 10d. said to be due to the king from its lands in London and Middlesex during the vacancy after the death Abbot John Pecche who died in 1440.  The abbot appealed to King Henry who agreed that his predecessors never had the custody at such times. He promised that in future the abbey would not be held accountable in this respect (2).

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(1) PPC V, p. 215 (indictment against Robert Welles).

(2) http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/london/vol1/pp461-464 (St Mary Graces).

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Wardens of the March

A nine-year truce between Scotland and England had been signed in May 1438 on the authority of Queen Joan, the Regent of Scotland.

See Year 1438: Scotland.

Four years later in May 1442 the Wardens of the March were required to renew their oath to maintain the truce. Robert Neville the new Bishop of Durham, his brother William Lord Fauconberg, recently returned from France, and Sir William Eure were at Newcastle to take the oath of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, Warden of the East March.

The northern lords William, Lord Fitzhugh, Thomas, Lord Dacre of Gillesland and Sir Christopher Cowan were to witness the oath of Marmaduke Lumley, Bishop of Carlisle, Warden of the West March. The wardens in turn were to administer the oath to the border lords (1).

(1) Foedera XI. p. 6 (oath to maintain the truce with Scotland).

Ireland

The power struggles over the past twenty years between Richard Talbot, Archbishop of Dublin and James Butler, Earl of Ormond, for control of the government of Ireland came to a head in 1442 (1).

The sorry succession of king’s lieutenants after the death of Edmund Mortimer in 1425 failed to establish stable government in Ireland, perhaps because none of them stayed long enough. The English Council compounded the problem by chopping and changing the officers of state. Richard Talbot was in and out of the chancellorship, and he also acted as justiciar. The Earl of Ormond had been the king’s lieutenant in 1425-1426 and then deputy to the lieutenants sent over from England.

Lionel, Lord Welles, appointed as the King’s Lieutenant in 1438, was an absentee, and he returned to England permanently in 1441.

See Year 1438: Ireland, Lionel, Lord Wells

The Council appointed the Earl of Ormond as the king’s lieutenant for the second time in February 1442, largely by default (2). Who else was there? Archbishop Talbot was ineligible; the position required an experienced soldier able to wage war.  The archbishop’s brother, John, Lord Talbot, a former king’s lieutenant, was conducting military operations in Normandy.

In March 1442 a letter from King Henry to Richard Wogan the current Chancellor of Ireland acknowledged requests from the Irish Parliament:

Lacunae in the text of the letter make it difficult to interpret, but the Irish parliament had requested that money should be assigned immediately to pay the soldiers specified in Ormond’s indenture. The king appears to inform Wogan that this had been arranged. The parliament also requested that judgments in the Irish courts should be recognised and not be referred to courts in England. The king stated that he would follow the precedent of his ‘noble progenitors.’  A request that the lieutenant be authorised to create Irish peers to attend parliament was refused. The king reserved this right as part of the royal prerogative, although he would consider any names submitted to him (3).

Ormond’s appointment was too much for the archbishop to stomach. Talbot came to London to report to the Council on a session of the Irish Parliament that he asserted had been held at Dublin in November 1441.

According to Talbot the Irish Parliament had indicted Ormond on numerous counts of malpractice amounting to treason and declared that it did not want Ormond as lieutenant or deputy lieutenant. The Irish Parliament believed that it should have been consulted on his successor when Lord Welles left office, and they would not have chosen Ormond. They suspected that he would repeat his past irregular and self-interested conduct even though he was under oath to keep the peace and rule for the good of the country.

The Irish Parliament wanted King Henry to appoint an English magnate, a man of noble birth and a courageous solider who would ‘keep the field’ to protect the common people. Such a man would be respected and obeyed in Ireland in a way that an Irish peer would not.  Apart from other considerations, Ormond was too old (he was fifty-one). He had lost most of his lands in Ireland to his enemies because he was unable to defend them, so he was unfit to protect the king’s domains.

Ormond’s crimes while in office dated back many years, He had been appealed of treason by previous lieutenants, Lord Talbot (the archbishop’s brother) the Earl of March and Sir John Grey (both dead).

Ormond had promoted his own servants as MPs to the Irish parliament. They had opposed ‘good rule’ at Ormond’s instigation, to the detriment of the king. He had allowed lords to be absent from Parliament, fined them for absenteeism, and pocketed the fines. He had allowed Irishmen to be imprisoned unjustly to exact ransom from them.

The archbishop alleged that Ormond was guilty of other crimes which as a man of the church he was unable to disclose: ‘which I may not declare for cause of myne ordre.’

He recommended that the former lieutenants, Sir John Sutton (now Lord Dudley), Sir Thomas Stanley, Lord Welles and other officers should be summoned to testify before a commission of enquiry in Ireland to establish the truth, and that Ormond should be discharged as lieutenant so that he could not use his position to intimidate witnesses (4).

The embattled earl refuted the charges at a meeting of the Irish Council in June. Ormond stated that he would leave King Henry to judge for himself if he was too old. The castles, towns, and lordships he had inherited in 1411 were in better shape now than they had been when he inherited them; the Earl of March had never charged him with treason and if anyone repeated the charge in the name of Lord Talbot or John Grey, he stood ready to defend himself to the king.

The Irish Council accepted that the archbishop’s charges against Ormond were false and malicious, all except one, the Chancellor, Richard Wogan; he declared that Ormond had intimidated the council into exonerating him.  In July, according to an unlikely story, Wogan absconded to Wales taking the Great Seal with him. It was subsequently restored by a Dominican friar (5).

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(1) M. C. Griffith, ‘The Talbot-Ormond Struggle for Control of the Anglo-Irish Government, 1414-47,’ Irish Historical Studies , Vol. 2, No. 8 (Sept, 1941), pp. 376-397 (pp. 385-387 for 1442).

(2) CPR 1441-46, p. 45 (Ormond lieutenant).

(3) PPC V, p. 184 (King Henry’s letter).

(4) PPC V, pp. 317-320 Appendix (Archbishop Talbot’s accusations).

(5) Otway-Ruthven, Medieval Ireland, pp. 370-373 (Ormond’s response).

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Archbishop Talbot and the Earl of Ormond

Archbishop Talbot was still in England in August, and the King’s Council inexplicably reappointed him as Chancellor of Ireland on the same terms as Chancellor Chace, whom they had appointed in 1430 to replaced Talbot!  (1)

The Earl of Ormond was to be summoned to London. A letter would be sent to remind him that although his indentures specified that as the king’s lieutenant he was to receive the income, ‘the revenues and profits’ from Ireland, he was still expected to pay the ‘wages and rewards’ of government officials through the Treasurer of Ireland.  If this was not being done the King’s Council should be notified. This admonition may have been promoted by Giles Thorndon, the Treasurer of Ireland who was in England. He was requested to prepare a list of impartial men he considered suitable for appointment to official posts in Ireland. There is no record of such a list in the Proceedings

The memorandum Thorndon submitted reviewed the conditions in Ireland. It is moderate in tone. In a long preamble he stressed his loyal service to King Henry V and Henry VI over many years and declared his impartiality. In his opinion the unsettled state of Ireland was due entirely to the quarrel between the Earl of Ormond, Archbishop Talbot, and John Lord Talbot, a previous king’s lieutenant, which had reduced the Irish council and courts to an impotence bordering on farce.

Treasury officials could not collect the taxes and subsidies due to the crown for fear of vengeance against them every time there was a change of the king’s lieutenant while at the same time those in power wasted the royal revenues by making excessive grants to their own supporters.  Thorndon recommended that the position of Chief Baron of the Exchequer should always go to a properly qualified individual who should not be permitted to delegate the work to a deputy.  Grants of doubtful legality already made should be investigated, and the law of absenteeism should be enforced.

The castles of Dublin (Thorndon had been constable of Dublin) and Wicklow needed urgent repair, the work should be done immediately as delay would only increase the cost.

According to Thorndon the deficit in Ireland currently stood at £1,456 8s 1d for 1442.  Payment of the petty customs should be enforced to meet it and Thorndon asked for a patent to strengthen him in his office as Treasurer (3).

The Council declared that as the rumours of unrest emanating from Ireland were a direct result of the discord between Archbishop Talbot and the Earl of Ormond King Henry required them to reconcile their differences so that good government could be restored.

They were to appear before the Council in February 1443, to hear the king’s judgement. They were to appoint honest and reliable deputies to occupy their offices during their absence (4).

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(1) CPR 1441-46 p 91 (Talbot appointed chancellor).

(2) PPC V, p. 202 (Letter to Ormond).

(3) PPC V, Appendix, pp. 321-323 (Thorndon’s memorandum).

(4) PPC V, p. 206 (Talbot and Ormond to appear before the Council).

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Calais

Sir Robert Whittingham

Sir Robert Whittingham became Treasurer of Calais in February 1436 in succession to his father-in-law Richard Buckland, probably because of his wealth (1).

Whittingham was dismissed as Treasurer in December 1441, and in 1442 the Council instituted an enquiry into his misappropriation of funds (2).

See Year 1441: Treasurer of Calais.

At the end of the lengthy council meeting on 29 July 1442 King Henry instructed the Chancellor that his signet letters ordering the release of ‘Batte and Pyle,’ two servants of Sir Robert Whittingham, late treasurer of Calais, who had been imprisoned on the Council’s orders, be enacted under the Great Seal. The Chancellor requested that the king’s order should be a matter of record and Henry commanded that this be done (3).

As it stands this entry is obscure. Who were ‘Batte and Pyle’ and why was the chancellor concerned to have the king’s signet order enrolled? Were they accused, along with Whittingham, of the theft of supplies for the repairs at Calais?

The background to Whittingham’s dismissal dates to the late summer of 1439 when Cardinal Beaufort was at Gravelines and Calais following the end of the abortive peace talks at Oye.

See Year 1439: Oye.

The sea walls at Calais were crumbling, and a breach in the walls near the castle led to extensive flooding which threatened to undermine the already weakened castle’s walls.

Cardinal Beaufort ordered the damage to be repaired; the initial efforts by the people of Calais and the garrison had proved ineffective. Beaufort and the lords who were with him in Calais decided to hire a professional master ditcher.  Robert Whittingham, as Treasurer of Calais, warmed that he did not have the £85 needed to pay a professional. Beaufort, the bishops of Norwich and St David’s, and the Earl of Oxford guaranteed £20 each to raise the money (4).

In September storms swept away the work had that been done and Whittingham put further repairs in hand but the attempt to fill the breach and stem the flow of water failed. In the deposition against Whittingham in 1442 it was stated that ‘it turned the king to great cost and to no avail.’

In October the Council sent William Morton with a master mason and a carpenter to assess the situation and report on what would be needed to repair the damage.

Morton was appointed surveyor of the king’s works at Calais. The earliest grant to him, of £10 yearly, was in January 1440. In the French Rolls his appointment is dated 31 March and 27 July 1440.  His wage of £10 p.a. was reissued in May 1441 because the grant of January 1440 was invalid (5, 6).

Carpenters and labourers were hired in England. Purveyors were instructed to obtain the necessary materials, including the purchase of stone, and 1400 ‘great oaks’ from three monasteries in Essex.  Armed ships were hired to carry the workmen and the supplies to Calais, but some of the ships were captured at sea by French pirates sailing out of Dieppe.

As Treasurer of Calais, Whittingham was responsible for paying the workmen hired by Morton. The Council issued a mandate to him in June 1440 (7).  It is not in the Proceedings and there is no record of what money, if any, was allocated to him.

According to Morton’s account there was little or no ready money available and ‘written obligations,’ i.e. assignments, were issued but not always honoured. By 1442 it was estimated that £30,000 would be needed to totally repair Calais. Morton continued his work until 1451.

Whittingham appears to have discharged his duties faithfully and well in so far as he could. But towards the end of 1441 King Henry wanted the position of Treasurer of Calais for his favourite chaplain John Langton, and the Council was looking for a scapegoat for their failure to fund the repairs at Calais and pay the garrison’s wages, which were always in arrears.  The Exchequer had questioned Whittingham’s accounts in 1441, and the Council decided to investigate Whittingham’s tenure.

Despite his exemplary record, and the loans he made to the crown, the accusation by the Council against Whittingham in 1442 has been accepted by historians as true because it is recorded in ‘source material’: ‘A serious scandal concerning his misappropriation of funds came to light . . . . the government had seriously neglected the upkeep of the fortifications . . . . but this process of collapse was accelerated by Whitingham’s treasurership because of his deliberate policy of economising on repairs . . . . .  he diverted cash and supplies to his own private use’ (the council’s accusation). Whittingham understandably sought to avoid prosecution and petitioned for postponements. Was there some doubt as to the validity of the evidence? He was never brought to trial in the Exchequer or any other court.

Which is more likely? That a wealthy London merchant and member of Parliament would misappropriate funds entrusted to him as Treasurer of Calais or that adequate funds were never allocated, and the Council attempted cover its own negligence over a long period by accusing the Treasurer of malfeasance?  The state of Calais before and after Whittingham’s tenure is spelled out in detail in the King’s Works (8).

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(1) historyofparliamentonline.org ‘Sir Robert Whittingham.’

(2) TNA  E101 /193 / 5 (Whitingham’s indictment).

(3) PPC V, p. 194 (Henry VI’s order to release ‘Batte and Pyle’).

(4) Harriss, Beaufort, pp.  326-327 (Cardinal Beaufort in Calais).

(5) CPR 1436-1441 p. 381 18 January 1440 (Morton earliest grant) and p. 534 18 May 1441 (grant of January 1440 surrendered as invalid in and reassigned to the port of Sandwich).

(6) DKR  48, French Rolls, pp. 333 and 337 (Morton appointed March and July 1440).

(7) DKR  48, French Rolls, p. 336 (mandate to Whittingham to pay workmen).

(8) Brown, R.A., A History of the King’s Works I, pp.  438-440, citing E 364/82 rot. B  (the best and most detailed account of the works at Calais).

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Humphrey Earl of Stafford, Captain of Calais

The Earl of Stafford was appointed as Captain of Calais in February 1441, replacing the Duke of Gloucester (1, 2). His lineage as a direct descendant of King Edward III and his wealth made him the Council’s choice, in the hope that he would bear some of the cost of maintaining the garrison (3). Stafford did not go to Calais, and his appointment appears to have been forgotten or suspended until 1442.

The Council approached the merchants of the Calais Staple in August 1442 for an advance of £500 to William Pirton, the lieutenant of Guines castle, to pay the garrison there. King Henry sent a letter of appreciation and thanks to the soldiers. He also wrote to the soldiers at Calais to thank them for their cooperation with the repair works at Calais. John Langton, now the Treasurer of Calais was ordered to pay the soldiers two nobles, with one noble assigned (daily?) for the cost of the work, so that the repairs would continue without interruption. Giles St Loo, the comptroller of Calais, was to be sent for (to account of the expenditure?)  (4)

Stafford attended council meetings in August when the attention of its members was split between King Charles VII’s threat to Gascony, and the financial needs of Calais. He indented again as Captain of Calais and promised King Henry that he would go to Calais in the autumn, or send some trusted servants, but he was worried that the garrison might mutiny before he could arrive and seize the wool stored there, as they had in 1433, because their wages were in arrears.  If this happened, he wanted to be sure that he would not be blamed (5).

Stafford presented King Henry with a ‘schedule,’ the articles of service amd terms for his indenture, to be confirmed under the Great Seal. He was to be paid 1,000 at Easter from the wool subsidy, but if no payment was made then he would receive crown jewels as pledges of payment. His indenture was confirmed under his new title, the Earl of Buckingham, a title not previously used in England, and a warrant was to be issued to pay his wages (6, 7).

All in all, it does not sound as if Stafford wanted the appointment; he performed his duties over the next seven years largely though deputies, preferring to remain at court with King Henry.

Sir Thomas Kyriell the lieutenant of Calais was summoned to London and discharged of his office on 28 August, presumably to make way for the Earl of Stafford to appoint his own lieutenant. Kyriell was not to return to Calais until and unless the king commanded him to (8).

Stafford loaned 1,000 marks [£666 13s 4d.] to the crown, probably to defray part of the garrison’s wages, and in October he received pledges of crown jewels from the Treasurer Lord Cromwell: two gold basins studded with jewels valued at £458 13s 4s. A tablet of St George decorated with jewels worth £184 6s 8d and a ‘little bell’ of gold worth £23 6s 8d (9). He was licenced as Lord of Buckingham to take 5,000 marks in gold, jewels and plate with him, but no more.

In October the officials in Calais, or any two of them were commissioned to take the muster of Stafford’s retinue in Calais. This is followed by an unfinished sentence: ‘Though there are aged men at Calais and . . . .’  Presumably they were not to be counted (10).

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(1) DKR 48, French Rolls, p. 347 (dated 18 February 1441. Appointment of Humphrey Earl of Stafford as captain of Calais).

(2) TNA, E101/71/4/910  (Indenture of Stafford as Captain of Calais.  No exact date given 1440-1441, 20 Henry VI.  E 101/74/4 /908 (captain of Calais castle) and 909 (captain of Rysbank).

(3) C. Rawcliffe, The Staffords, Earls of Stafford and Dukes of Buckingham, pp. 104 and 121 (Stafford’s wealth).

(4) PPC V, p. 207 (loan for Guines).

(5) PPC V, pp. 203-204 (Stafford’s petition).

(6) PPC V, p. 209. E 101/71 / 912-913 (Stafford’s second indenture).

(7) Powell, & Wallis, The House of lords in the Middle Ages p. 380 (Earl of Buckingham).

(8) PPC V, p. 205 (Kyriell’s dismissal, repeated on p. 209 ‘with all the lords present’),

(9) Foedera XI, p. 15 (crown jewels to Stafford).

(10) PPC V, pp 213-214 (Calais musters).

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The Calais Staplers and the Partition Ordinance

The  Parliament of 1429/30 had passed the partition and bullion ordinance governing the sale of wool through the Staple at Calais. The realisation that this act had seriously damaged England’s economy and the crown’s income had become increasingly obvious to the merchant community if not to the Council.

See Year 1430: The Bullion and Partition Ordinance.

Price fixing and pooling the wool offered for sale combined with the requirement for payment to be made in silver bullion at the time of purchase, with a third to be lodged at the Calais mint, had resulted in a serious decline in wool sales. Far less wool was sold through Calais during the 1430s than in the 1420s. English merchants withheld their wool rather than sell it at a loss and foreign buyers, especially those from the Netherlands, bought less and looked elsewhere. More wool was sold to English cloth manufacturers and although export wool was highly taxed, woollen cloth was not (1, 2).

English wool merchants petitioned in Parliament at the beginning of 1442 for an immediate repeal of the statute respecting payment in bullion because of the ‘evils’ it had brought to the Calais Staple and the country.

The mercantile lobby in the Commons was strong, and the partition ordinance was repealed but with the proviso that one third of the purchase price of wool still had to be paid in bullion to be deposited at the Calais mint and minted in coins to be brought back to England. But purchase on credit was restored for the remaining two thirds of the price as had been the practice in the past (3).

The Calais Staplers

The Mayor of the Calais Staple (his name is not recorded) attended two Council meetings at Eltham in October with King Henry present.  At the meeting on 12 October the mayor raised the Staplers’ first concern, which was as always for the safe keeping of the wool stored at Calais. The unpaid soldiers of the garrison were threatening to seize the wool as they had in the past.

See Year 1433: Calais.

The mayor asked that one mark (13s 4d) on each sack of wool shipped to Calais should be assigned to the Staple towards the repayment of their loan of £10,000, made in November 1441. At that time they had been assigned four marks from the subsidy on each sack of wool sold in Calais (4).

See Year 1441: Calais.

The mayor’s third request was the real reason behind his appearance before the Council. He demanded the repeal of the requirement that one third of the purchase price of wool must be paid in bullion and lodged with the Calais mint.

The Council debated the issues on 12 October and again a week later. They assured the mayor that the garrison would be paid. The king had appointed the Earl of Stafford as the new Captain of Calais to deal with this and other matters affecting the town.

The Council accepted the Stapler’s request for a levy of one mark on each sack of wool, but Cardinal Beaufort and the Treasurer, Lord Cromwell, objected. They argued that assignments on the wool subsidy (including Beaufort’s loans) had already been made; if these were diverted, lenders would lose faith in the government’s promises, the crown’s credit would be damaged, and it would become more difficult to raise loans in the future.

The Cardinal also objected to the repeal of the bullion requirement; it would be to the advantage of the Duke of Burgundy and the merchants of Flanders who had long resisted the imposition. Once the bullion requirement was repealed it would be almost impossible to reimpose it. The Cardinal was well aware of its unpopularity.

The Council resumed the arguments for and against repealing the bullion requirement on 18 October (5). The crown needed the Staplers’ loans and the mayor implied that these might be withheld in future because without the sale of the wool in sufficient quantities there would be no money for them to lend.

He announced that if he was forced to, he would revoke the bullion provision on his own authority. It was impossible to implement, and it was causing a serious loss of income to the merchants and to the crown. Flanders was the principal market for English wool, and the Duke of Burgundy had invoked every means in his power to prevent bullion from leaving the Low Countries, just as in England it was illegal to export bullion. The mayor admitted that he had raised the idea of unilateral action with the Staplers, but they had declined to express an opinion, and there was no time now to send to them for further advice (5).

The Council was not entirely convinced. Influenced by Cardinal Beaufort they remained concerned for the flow of bullion into England. Silver coinage was scarce; it was needed among other things to pay the wages of the army in Normandy, not to mention the Cardinal’s loans. Beaufort was outvoted and the Council compromised: the bullion requirement would be lifted; merchants could ship and sell wool on terms agreed to by the Staplers but only temporarily, the repeal was ‘only for this tyme of shipping’  (5).

A letter in King Henry’s name addressed to the mayor and the officers of the Staple cited their compliant that the Duke of Burgundy’s regulations made it impossible for his subjects to export bullion, and that the Staplers themselves had modified their regulations. Under the circumstances the Council had agreed to suspend the bullion payments temporarily, but the king requested the merchants to continue to collect payment in bullion whenever they could. He pointed out that without sufficient income the crown could not pay the Calais garrison’s wages or repay previous loans made by the Staplers (6).

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(1) Lloyd, T.H. The English Wool trade in the Middle Ages (1977)

(2) Munro, J.H, Wool, Cloth, and Gold: the struggle for bullion in Anglo-Burgundian trade 1340-1478 (1972)

(3) PROME XI, pp 382-384 (repeal of ordinance)

(4) PPC V, pp. 215-217 (Mayor of the Staple’s requests)

(5) PPC V, pp. 219-20 (Council debate on 18 October).

(6) PPC V, p. 221 (King Henry’s letter).

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The copy of the king’s letter in the Proceedings is followed by a brief entry without heading or date:

“Rauf Bailly hath licence to shippe xxx sarplers of woole into Nor[mandy] for certain causes etc. paieng custume etc. any estatut [statute] notwithstanding.” (1)

(1) PPC V, p. 223

The Netherlands           

Negotiations to improve trade relations with Holland and Zeeland had broken down in 1441 over the partition ordinance.

As soon it was repealed the Dutch offered to resume trade talks. Safe conducts were issued in March 1442 for five representatives from Holland and Zeeland to come to England to negotiate for a trade treaty along the lines proposed by Hugh de Lannoy in 1438 (1).  At the end of July, they requested safe conducts to return home for further instructions and an extension of their powers.

See Year 1438: The Netherlands.

See Year 1441: The Netherlands.

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(1) Foedera XI, p. 4 (Henry Stenhove, Hugh Hugonis, Arnold Sgranenzando, Jacob Lange, and Cornelius Barom ambassadors from the duke of Burgundy).

(2) PPC V, pp. 193-94 (permission to return to Holland).

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The Duchy of Gascony

Walter Colles

Walter Colles was Constable of Bordeaux from 1431 when Sir John Radcliffe returned to Gascony as Seneschal. The Earl of Huntington’s appointee, Sir Robert Clifton replaced Colles in March 1439 (1).

The Exchequer was instructed in July 1442 to pay or make assignments to Master Walter Colles for the wages due to him for his services in Gascony.  Additional letters warranted payment for monies previously assigned to him – i.e. his arears.

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gasconrolls.org C61 / 124 (Colles); C 61 /129 (Clifton).

(2) PPC V, p. 194 (payment to Colles).

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Bishop of Bazas

Henric Cavier, Bishop of Bazas since 1433 and administrator of the monastery of Sainte Croix in Bordeaux, was appointed to the council in Bordeaux in May 1442. He was to swear the councillor’s oath and receive the customary fess and wages to be paid by the Constable of Bordeaux.

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(1) Foedera XI, p. 8 (Bishop of Bazas).

(2) https://www.gasconrolls.org/edition/calendars/C61_132/document.html

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The Abbot of Sorde

The Earl of Huntingdon as the king’s lieutenant of France had confirmed the rights and possessions of the Abbey of Sorde in July 1441.

William de Laulan, the Abbot of Sorde, petitioned in November 1441 for confirmation by the king of the abbey’s charter, which he claimed had been granted by Charlemagne – King Henry’s ancestor! His petition was granted by the king on the authority of parliament.

The abbot of Sorde was influential in Southern Gascony. Huntingdon appointed Abbot William to the council in Bordeaux and as a judge in Bordeaux’s superior court for one mark, paid in the hanaper. His wage was to be paid by the Constable of Bordeaux. The appointments were confirmed by the king on 9 June 1442 (2).

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(1) Foedera XI, pp. 8-9 (Abbot of Sorde)

(2) https://www.gasconrolls.org/edition/calendars/C61_131/document.html

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Gaston de Foix

Gaston de Foix, Count of Longueville remained loyal to King Henry. In July 1442 Henry confirmed the grant made by the Earl of Huntingdon to Gaston and his heirs in 1440 just before he left Gascony (1).

See Year 1440: The Duchy of Gascony.

Thes grant comprised two lists of items on which Gaston was entitled to levy tolls, ostensibly for the defence of the town of Castillon.  One is for 56 items already granted to Gaston, the second is for 46 items added to the grant. The lists are in Latin in the Foedera, but there is an English translation in the Gascon Rolls. They range from wine, wheat and salt, wool, cloth and hides, through animals and fish, and luxury items such honey and pepper, to metals, iron and steel.

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(1) Foedera XI pp 10-12 (grant to Gaston de Foix)

(2) https://www.gasconrolls.org/edition/calendars/C61_131/document.html

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King Charles’s Campaign

Tartas

John Holand, Earl of Huntingdon laid siege to the fortress town of Tartas in 1440 just before he was recalled to England.  Sir Thomas Rempston, the Seneschal of Gascony, maintained the siege until early in 1441 when he negotiated a truce with Tartas’s defender, Charles, Lord of Albret. They agreed that the fate of Tartas would be decided by a journée, a trial by battle, with the victor retaining possession of the town and its vicomté. A journée was a matter of honour as well military might, and the loyalty of vassal lords often depended on its outcome.

See Year 1441: The Duchy of Gascony, Tartas.

As part of his agreement with Rempston, Charles d’Albret swore to vest the vicomté of Tartas and other Albret lordships in Gascony in his younger son.  If King Charles VII failed to rescue Tartas, Albret’s son would switch his allegiance and swear fealty to Henry VI as Duke of Gascony. If the younger son had a son, he would inherit the vicomté but on his death it would revert to the English crown (1).

An English victory at Tartas could mean substantial gains for the English in lands, prestige and support from the southern French magnates. King Charles VII recognised the supreme importance of the journée at Tartas and he promised Albret that he would come to Tartas in person at the head of as large an army as he could muster (2, 3).

Charles assembled his army early in 1442 and called on the southern magnates, Jean, Count of Armagnac, Jean, Count of Foix, and Charles d’Albret to join him at Toulouse.  The journée was set for 1 May 1442. Rempston and the Council at Bordeaux requested a postponement to St John’s Day, 24 June. Charles acceded graciously, as well he might, since it gave him more time to organise his forces.

King Charles and the Dauphin Louis appeared before Tartas at the head of a large French army on the appointed day. No English army was there to oppose him and Tartas surrendered without a fight (4). Its capitulation dealt a major blow to English prestige and weakened the already shaky commitment of the southern French lords to their truces with England (5).

“And in this yere come tidynges unto the kyng that Gascoigne and Gyan was lost save Burdeux and Bayon, be the Armynakes take.”  Chronicle of London (Harley 565), p. 130

“And after Michaelmas the king of England suffered great damage from the Dauphin of France in Aquitaine.” Benet’s Chronicle p. 189

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(1) Vale, English Gascony, p. 61 (terms of the truce).

(2) Monstrelet II, p. 124-125 (Tartas).

(3) Escouchy III, Preuves p.  45 (Tartas)_

(4) Beaucourt, Charles VII, vol. III, pp. 233-241 (Tartas campaign).

(5) Wolffe, Henry VI, pp. 155-156 (Tartas).

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Saint Sever

Thomas Rempston evacuated Tartas and retreated to Saint-Sever with his small garrison. King Charles followed; he took the town by assault and captured Rempston.

Dax

Charles moved on to Dax, about 26 miles northeast of Bayonne.  According to Beckington Augerot de Saint Pée who had been slighted by the Council in London in 1441, negotiated the surrender of Dax in August 1442 to protect its citizens. King Charles accepted the surrender on 3 August and promised the town his protection. James Harsage, the Englishman whom the Council had favoured over Augerot in 1441 had turned traitor. He had handed the keys of the castle to King Charles and swore fealty to him, ‘toke hym to the white cross.’

See Year 1441: The Duchy of Gascony, Augerot de Saint Pée and James Harsage.

The Gascons remained loyal, A group of men led by Piers Arnald of Saint Cryk then recovered Dax by stealth and subterfuge after King Charles left. Beckington does not record that Augerot de Saint-Pée and his son John took part in the recovery of Dax: he reported to King Henry that Dax had fallen and that Bayonne, the second largest city in Gascony, was under siege. This was not strictly true; King Charles did not lay siege to Bayonne.

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23 October 1442. Westminster.

“Grant for life to Johan de Saint-Pée, kt , and his son Augerot [de Saint-Pée], esquire, because of their good service, and because they took part in the submission to the king’s obedience of the city of Dax and the town of Hastingues which had previously submitted to the king’s adversary of France when he came with a large army in the duchy of Aquitaine, of the prévôté of Dax with its toll, pasture and appurtenances, and the baylie, toll and pasture of Hastingues with its appurtenances, to be held as they previously held them for their lifetime by the king’s grant before the coming there of the king’s adversary of France in the duchy of Aquitaine.”

Footnote 4: Dax submitted to Charles VII on 2 August 1442 but was soon retaken at night by a commando-style raid led by Per-Arnaut de Saint-Cricq with the support of the local population (24 August 1442).

Footnote 5: Johan de Saint-Pée and his son Augerot had received them for their lifetime on 21 March 1437. See entry in C 61/127.

https://www.gasconrolls.org/edition/calendars/C61_131/document.html

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 An Armagnac Marriage

Jean V, Count of Armagnac had been summoned by King Charles before Tartas. He sent his son, the Viscount of Lomage to join the French army but at the same time he sent envoys to England to propose an Anglo-Armagnac alliance to be sealed by a marriage between King Henry and one of his three daughters.

The English Council was not overly enthusiastic, but King Henry was. He issued letters of protection for Armagnac’s envoy Jean Batute and nineteen others to come to England in mid-May 1442 (1).

On 28 May he commissioned Sir Robert Roos, a household knight, his secretary Thomas Beckington, and Sir Edward Hull, who had recently returned from Gascony, to travel to Bordeaux and undertake the negotiations (2). Did the Council acquiesce, or was the initiative solely King Henry’s?

NB: The source for the Armagnac marriage and for conditions in Gascony is the journal kept by one of Beckington’s secretaries, or maybe by Beckington himself in the third person (3, 4).

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(1) Foedera XI, p. 6 (English translation in Beckington, Journal, pp. ii-iii).

(2) Foedera XI, pp. 7-8 (English translation in Beckington, Journal, pp. iv-vi).

(3) T. Beckyngton, Official correspondence of Thomas Bekynton, vol II,  . . .  . ed. G. Williams   (1872),  pp.178-248. Original letters and memoranda in a mixture of Latin, French and English. Many of them merely record where Beckington was and what he had for dinner.

(4) Beckington. A Journal by one of the suite of Thomas Beckington during an embassy to negotiate a marriage between Henry VI and a daughter of the Count of Armagnac, ed. N.H. Nicolas (1825)  A translation into English of the documents in Beckington’s  Official correspondence.  Nicolas made errors in transcribing French names, but it is not always easy to determine what the spelling should be, or which town or person is meant, even for modern commentators.

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Prospective Brides

Thomas Beckington and Robert Roos were at Plymouth on 27 June where they received two letters from King Henry written on 23 June.  He informed them that Edward Hull would not accompany them to Bordeaux as planned. The possibility of sending an army to Gascony was under discussion, as Beckington was aware, and the king wanted Hull to remain in England until it was assembled.

See John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset below.

Henry instructed his envoys to make one change in the full powers he had given them to negotiate his marriage. Batute had offered any one of Armagnac’s three daughters as a prospective bride, but Ross and Beckington’s instructions specified that they would make the selection as part of the negotiations. Henry was anxious to amend this: the choice should be his alone.  So anxious was he that he wrote the letter in his own hand, ‘the whiche as ye wote wel we are not muche accustomed for to do.’ They were to request that portraits of the girls should be sent to him so that he could make an informed decision.

Roos and Beckington balked. Henry’s letter invalidated their full powers to conclude a marriage treaty. They would need a new commission incorporating the change before they could sail.

A third letter probably written by Nicholas Husse who had carried Henry’s letters to Plymouth and returned to Windsor with their reply informed them that the king considered their powers to be sufficient. The change in their instructions was covered by the letter in his own hand, but at their request he had issued another commission. Henry required portraits of the prospective brides ‘in their kertelles simple and their visages, lyk as ye see their stature and their beaulte and color of skynne and their countenaunces  with al maner of features.’ It is one of the few recorded occasions on which Henry expressed an interest in the physical appearance of women.

Roos and Beckington in Gascony

Roos, Beckington, and Batute sailed for Gascony on 10 July and reached Bordeaux on the sixteenth. They were met by shocking news: Tartas was in French hands and Sir Thomas Rempston the Seneschal of Gascony had been captured. The timing could not have been worse. The presence of King Charles’s army made it too dangerous for Roos and Beckington to proceed to Auch, Armagnac’s capital, or even to Lectoure, his principal town, some seventy miles southeast of Bordeaux. Batute left them to their own devices while he went to report to his master.

Sir Robert Clifton the Constable of Bordeaux welcomed them. They presented King Henry’s letters to Pey Berland the Archbishop of Bordeaux and the Council of Bordeaux. The royal letters were translated into Gascon French, the langue d’oc and read aloud in St Andrews’s church. King Henry’s promise that an English army would be sent to defend Bordeaux reassured the citizens.

Beckington prepared a long report for King Henry full of doom and gloom: Bordeaux was ‘as soroful a town and as gretly dismayed and discoraged as any might be.’ Rumours were rife of impending catastrophe after Tartas; the people believed they had been abandoned because there was no ‘socour to be had from your said mageste ayeinst your ennemies that ben in this countrey in grete puissaunce.’

King Charles and the Dauphin Louis had taken most of the Landes except for Bayonne, and Dax which was now under siege. When both towns had fallen King Charles would march on Bordeaux.

Sir Robert Roos and his retinue were doing all they could to defend the town which was being fortified. Beckington’s letter pleaded with King Henry to send help at once and make good the promise Roos has given in the king’s name. The king should remember ‘how this Duchie of Guienne is oon th’oldest lordship longing to your coroune of Englande;’

Henry should not believe any letters sent under Thomas Rempston’s seal as the seneschal had been captured. The Archbishop of Bordeaux was preparing to leave for England to plead for urgent assistance.

Sir Robert Roos soon recognised that the Earl of Armagnac was not the powerful ally the English hoped for. He was outraged when he learned that Armagnac’s son, the Viscount of Lomage was serving in King Charles’s army. He threatened Armagnac that such bad faith would not go unpunished, and wrathfully declared that the English army, when it arrived, would be sent against Armagnac as well as against King Charles.  He and Beckington would be on the next ship bound for England just as soon as he had completed the preparations to defend Bordeaux.

Batute did not return to Bordeaux. He wrote to express astonishment at the tone of Roos’s letter. Surely Roos understood that the earl had no choice, he had to send the Viscount of Lomage to King Charles, or risk Charles invading Armagnac lands. King Henry had no cause to attack Armagnac, King Charles’s campaign had nothing to do with him. Batute attempted to shift the responsibility by suggesting that the idea for a marriage had not originated with Armagnac, but with the Dukes of Brittany, Orleans, and Alençon.  He then contradicted himself: the Earl was committed to the marriage and to a truce. He suggested that it was up to Roos to find and send an artist to paint the desired portraits.

Roos, mindful that his mission was to conciliate not castigate the Earl of Armagnac modified his tone in later letters, but his patience was exhausted, all he wanted was to obtain the portraits that King Henry had demanded and return to England to explain why his mission had failed, even though he professed to believe that Armagnac was sincere. Roos and Beckington requested Armagnac to send a marriage contract by a reliable official with powers to treat so that they could take a tangible offer back to England.

Beckington wrote to King Henry on 18 October recounting King Charles’s victories and lamenting that if even a small English force had been sent it would have been enough to check King Charles’s advance. If the wine fleet had sailed on time the ship’s crews could have been employed. Now it was too late.  Sir Robert Clifton, Constable of Bordeaux had died on 3 October. With the Seneschal of Gascony in captivity and the Constable of Bordeaux dead, King Henry should send suitable replacements immediately.  The rest of the letter has nothing to do with the war or the marriage. Beckington cautioned Henry to listen to his council and not make indiscriminate grants of lands in Gascony. This may have been the tenor of the letters Beckington sent to the Duke of Gloucester and to Cardinal Beaufort, Only the letter to the king is transcribed in Beckington ‘s Journal.

Edward Hull arrived in Bordeaux on 22 October carrying letters from King Henry announcing that an army would be sent to Gascony – as soon as it could be assembled.

Henry remained confident that the marriage would go ahead. He sent an artist, one Hans, to Bordeaux with Hull to paint the portraits of the prospective brides since the Earl of Armagnac had failed to provide them. Roos had the artist conveyed through enemy lines.

Defence of Bordeaux

The fall of Dax alarmed the Council in Bordeaux. On 15 August they named Sir Robert Roos as ‘Regent’ i.e. seneschal of Gascony, and he set about raising an army to resist King Charles with the willing assistance of Gaston de Foix, Captal de Buch.

Hull was astonished at the lack of progress in the negotiations with Armagnac. He had brought a contingent of four hundred men from England. These, plus sailors from his ships and a force of about 1,000 Gascons that Roos had assembled, attacked and routed the French garrison occupying St Loubés at the end of October (Beckington misdated it to 20 October).

It was a victory of sorts but of no use in the defence of Bordeaux.  St Loubés was seven miles north of Bordeaux, King Charles was far to the south making his way up the valley of the Garonne. He turned north from Dax towards Bordeaux.  Beckington recorded the towns and villages taken by at the French.

Hull and Roos recovered the town of Langton in mid-November, but the only real contribution to the defence Bordeaux was the stout resistance at La Réole a strong fortress on the Garrone some thirty-five miles south of Bordeaux built by King Richard I to defend the approaches to Bordeaux.

King Charles captured the town of La Réole  early in October but was unable to take the castle.  Its captain George Swillington, with a garrison of 140 men held out for nearly two months until the French brought heavy artillery into the town. The bombardment of the castle began on 24 November and Swillington surrendered on 7 December after being promised safe passage to Bordeaux for himself and his men. He had held up the French advance long enough for the severe winter weather to set in.  King Charles was forced to retreat south to Montauban by the cold, by a lack of supplies, and by the rumour that an English army would shortly arrive. It was the end of his campaign.  The veteran war captain Etienne de Vignolles, La Hire, died at Montauban (1, 2).

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(1) Berry Herald, pp, 256-257  (La Réole).

(2) Sumption, Triumph and Illusion,  p. 607  (La Réole).

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The Earl of Armagnac

The Earl of Armagnac promised much but did little. He used the excuse that ‘because of the things that have happened and the impediments which have occurred’, i.e. the presence of a French army, it was impossible for the ambassadors to proceed to Auch or to Lectoure. He had applied to King Charles for safe conducts for the English, but, unsurprisingly, they were not forthcoming.

Armagnac mendaciously regretted that present conditions prevented him from visiting them as he wished, but perhaps when the English army, promised by Roos, reached Gascony the ways would be opened!

He had no real intention of coming to Bordeaux, it would be against protocol for an Earl to visit King Henry’s envoys. It was too risky for Roos and Beckington  to travel south across the war-torn country, but messengers passed to and fro regularly albeit with some delays. Batute could have come had he so wished. Bordeaux was in no danger despite the cries of alarm.  Armagnac had taken fright at the success of King Charles’s army, and the danger to himself once King Charles discovered his perfidy.   He appears to have suffered delusions of grandeur. He came up with an extraordinary delaying tactic which did not reach Roos and Beckington until November. He offered to act as a mediator to promote a truce between France and England and thus expedite the marriage. There would then be no need for the earl to meet the envoys, as the truce would remove all difficulties. Roos and Beckington were rightly sceptical, they dismissed an offer they were not in any case authorised to consider.

They urged Armagnac to send representatives with full powers to Mont Ségur not far from La Réole to negotiate the terms for a marriage contract and to send the promised portraits as soon as possible.  Batute reported in November that Hans had completed one portrait but was unable to continue because the cold weather meant he could not mix his colours properly. King Henry never received the portraits, and the fate of Hans is unknown.

The End of the Mission

Roos and Beckington corresponded with the Earl of Armagnac and Jean Batute from their arrival in July until the end of 1442, but they never met the former and the latter never returned to Bordeaux.

Roos, Beckington and Hull wrote to Batute for the last time on 30 December in diplomatic speak but with a veiled threat: they thanked him for his ‘meritorious conduct;’ they still hoped to fulfil their mission to arrange a marriage, but he must be aware that the time was not right. They were leaving for England, but they would be back. They expected ‘to return with a medicine of such kind as will accelerate the business.’ They were only waiting for the artist to deliver the portraits, which they had requested several times.

Beckington sailed on 10 January 1443 but was delayed by bad weather. He landed in England on 10 February. Roos left Gascony a few days after Beckington. No more is heard of the Armagnac marriage. The chronicles, with hindsight, blame the Earl of Suffolk for the failure of the Armagnac marriage, but in 1442  Suffolk had yet to achieve a prominent position in Council. The accusation that he foiled the marriage was made at his trial in 1450.

The Earl of Armagnac paid dearly for his flirtation with the English.  Charles VII sent an army under the Dauphin Louis, who would show him small mercy, into Armagnac territory.  Armagnac was arrested and his lands were confiscated just as he had feared; he had brought his punishment on himself. He was not released until 1446, four years before his death.

Chronicles

“And in that yere come tydyngs to the kyng that Gascoyne and Gyan whas lost save Burdeaux and Bayon, be the Armynakkes take. 

In the mene tyme embassatoures of the same party of Armynakes were com vnto the kyng, ffor to entrete ffor a marriage of the Erll of Armynakes dow[gh]ter to be wedde vn to the kyng. But be cause of ϸe same treson the sayd marriage was dashed.” Chronicles of London (Cleopatra C IV), p. 149

“Also in this yere were dyuers ambassadours sent into Guyan, for a mariage betwene the kyng and the Erlis doughter of Armynak; which was concludid, but by meanys of therle of Suffolk it was lette and put a part.”   Chronicles of London (Vitellius A XVI)  p. 155

“And this yere was a goodly & honourable ambassd sent ffrom the kyng Into Guyan, To treate of a mariage w^t the Erlis dowgthyr of armynak, and as the ffame went was afftyr concludyd, But this by the duke of Suffolk was lastly annullid & put by, to the huge hurt of this Realm, and ffynally to the destruccion of the said Erle of Suffolk as affter shall appere.”  Great Chronicle, p. 176

“In this same yere wer diuerse Embassatoures sent in to Guyan for A Mariage for pe King for perles doughter of Arminak, which was concluded; but, by þe mean of þerle of Suthfolk, it was lett & put Aparte.”  Brut Continuation G, p. 509

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S.E. Dicks, ‘Henry VI and the daughters of Armagnac’, Medieval and Renaissance Studies Vol 15 No 4, (Emporia State Research Papers, 1967).

S.E. Dicks, ‘The Question of Peace: Anglo-French diplomacy 1439-1449,’ PhD thesis, University of Oklahoma 1966, pp. 97-106 (Armagnac marriage).

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An Army for Gascony  

Pey Berland Archbishop of Bordeaux arrived in England and appeared before the Council on 21 August to seek urgent assistance (1).

Thomas Beckington’s bleating combined with Archbishop Berland’s importunities convinced the Council that Gascony was in grave danger. With Cardinal Beaufort, and the Duke of Gloucester present, they debated how to raise an army for Gascony. The Council agreed that King Henry should bear the cost of sending wheat to Gascony (2).

Loans

The only expedient was, once again, to solicit loans. The Treasurer was to address letters to those most likely to lend explaining the situation and why a loan was necessary. Repayment was to be guaranteed against whatever was left of the last tax granted by Parliament.

The Chancellor, John Stafford the Duke of Gloucester, William Aiscough Bishop of Salisbury, the Earls of Stafford and Suffolk offered to loan (3).

Commissioners would visit ‘the mightiest men in every shire in England;’ the sheriffs would be instructed to assemble ‘the thriftiest men in the shire’ to meet the commissioners who would offer guarantees of repayment, from the tax take, the crown jewels, and other royal revenues (4).

Letters would be sent to the Common Council of London and to towns and individuals.

King Henry’s letter to William Curteys, Abbot of Bury St Edmunds, in is an example of the letters sent in the king’s name by the privy seal:

The King of France ‘oure capital adversaire’ and his son had invaded the Duchy of Gascony which time out of mind had belonged to Henry’s ancestors. They had taken Saint Sever and killed 4,000 people (surely an exaggeration?). They had captured Dax and laid siege to Bayonne (which was not true). Bordeaux would be next; to allow it to fall with the likelihood that the navy would be destroyed would be a shame and a disgrace. Only an army sent to defend the Gascony could avert such a disaster, but this could only be done with the ‘helpe of you and othire of oure welle wiillinge lovers and subgittz.’ Henry hoped that the abbot would lend ‘a notable summe of mony’ to be paid into the hands of the bearer of Henry’s letter immediately (5).

Councillors’ Loans

King Henry would write to John Kemp, the Archbishop of York

Cardinal Beaufort said if he had the money, he would of course loan it, but he hadn’t, and he grudgingly offered £4,000 in plate.

The Duke of Gloucester would loan as much as any of the others.

The Chancellor, John Stafford                      £500

Edmund Beaufort Earl of Dorset                  £500

Edmund Beaufort, Earl of Mortain received his patent as Earl of Dorset on 29 August, with a grant to him and his heirs of £20 annually ‘to maintain his estate’ (6).

John Holand, Earl of Huntingdon               £500

William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk was ready to loan but no amount is recorded.

William Ainscough, Bishop of Salisbury     £500  (to be assigned on his demesne).

Humphrey, Earl of Stafford up to               500 marks

John Viscount Beaumont                            500 marks

Walter Lord Hungerford                             £50

John Lord Tiptoft                                        £50

John, Lord Stourton                                     £40

Privy Seal no amount recorded (7).

Lord Cromwell was to report to the Council on what assignments could realistically be made on the Exchequer ‘such as he wol abide by,’ and what crown jewels were available to offer as surety (8).

The response to the appeal for loans throughout the country in was disappointing. The Council resumed the debate in October on how enough money was to be raised.  On 12 October and on 16 October the Treasurer Lord Cromwell reported once again on what might sureties be offered and to whom for further borrowing: ‘madde declaracion what grounds there were to borowe moniere  on’ (9).

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(1) PPC V, p. 198 (Archbishop of Bordeaux at council meeting).

(2) PPC V, pp. 199-200 (wheat for Gascony).

(3) PPC V p 199 (how to raise an army; loans)

(4) PPC V p 201 (commissioners to raise loans).

(5) L&P II ii, pp. 465-466 (Henry’s letter to the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds)

(6) PPC V, p. 208 repeated p. 209 (Edmund Beaufort made Marquis of Dorset).

(7) PPC V, p. 202 (councillors’ loans)

(8) PPC V, p. 204 (28 August assignments and crown jewels for repayments)

(9) PPC V, pp. 217 and 218 (sureties).

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Bayonne

Beckington had warned the king and council that Dax was under siege and Bayonne, the second city in Gascony and an important port, would be next.

In July the Council granted Sir Philip Chetwynde, the mayor of Bayonne, 940 marks to raise and pay for as many archers as he could for three months to defend Bayonne (1).

The Council approached the city officials in Bristol to pay for one hundred archers to serve under Chetwynde for three months.  During the visit of a delegation from Gascony in 1441, which included Chetwynde, the Council had supported the merchants of Bristol who claimed exemption from a tax on imports imposed by Bayonne. The Council expected Bristolian merchants to be willing to protect their trade with Bayonne and prevent the town from falling to the French (2).

See Year 1441: The Duchy of Gascony: Bayonne

The Council received letters at the end of August from the city officials in Bayonne requesting that the city be supplied with 500 pipes of wheat. ‘They also desire aid.’ They had expended £2,000 for the wages of men they had sent to recover Dax.  A courteous letter was to be sent to Bayonne acknowledging receipt of their letters (3).

See King Charles’s Campaign, Dax, above.

King Henry decreed that 1,000 quarters of wheat should be sent to Bayonne without paying the usual taxes and the Mayor of Bristol and the city officials were again requested to send aid to Bayonne, possibly wheat this time? (4)

Master Menault de Luko Malo, a friar, was paid 5 marks for bringing the letters from Bayonne and returning with the king’s reply (5).

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(1) PPC V, p. 193 (940 marks to hire archers in Bayonne).

(2) PPC V, p. 194 (Bristol merchants).

(3) PPC V, p. 205 (requests from Bayonne)

(4) PPC V, p. 207 (wheat for Bayonne; second request to Bristol).

(5) PPC V, p. 208 (Master Menault messenger from Bayonne).

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Castile

As part of their defensive measures for Bayonne, the Council decreed that no safe conducts were to be issued to any Spanish ships sailing from Flanders to Spain (1). For Spain read Castile. The order comes immediately after the Council instructed Philip Chetwynde to raise a force to resist King Charles.

The Kingdom of Castile was an ally of France. Castilian ships periodically threatened the coastline of southern Gascony: the authorities in Bayonne had raised men-at-arms to fight the Castilians at sea during the French invasion of Gascony in 1438.

See Year 1438: Bayonne.

Restrictions on safe conducts for Castilian ships had been issued in 1441, requiring that the names of the ships and ship masters be recorded, although this may have been intended to check piracy.

See Year 1441: Spain. 

(1) PPC V, p. 194

A Navy for Gascony?

There is an intriguing entry in the Proceedings at the end of the list of the councillors who would make loans for an army for Gascony: ‘to tarry the navy unto the time that the voyage be ready,’

The sea keeping force demanded by the Commons had been assembled over the summer months. The Commons expected the fleet to sweep the Channel and keep the sea lanes between England and France safe for English ships to facilitate trade.

See Sea Keeping above.

But were the ships held up throughout August, diverted to Gascony?  King Henry referred in his letter to Bury St Edmunds to the possible loss of the navy if Bordeaux was captured.  At the end of August John Yerde was instructed to go to the army ordained for the sea  and order its captains to proceed to put to sea and go straight to Bayonne ‘to see [to] the rule there’ and to inform the citizens they had come at the king’s command and that he had sent 500 archers to join Sir Philip Chetwynde to remain there if they were not needed elsewhere, and he was arranging to send wheat and fodder to Bayonne (1).

The Council also sent sergeants at arms to delay the merchant ships preparing to sail to Bordeaux for the annual wine harvest. They were to gather in one port but not to sail until the army was ready (2). Beckington complained that the wine fleet expected at Bordeaux had not arrived,

An entry in the Proceedings for 27 August reads:

‘Popham to be sent for to go into Guyenne to be Seneschal and to have leading of them that shall go into Guyenne. Bonville to be entreated for the said matter.’  Did the Council send Stephen Popham and the fleet to the relief of Bayonne or Bordeaux? Edward Hull was reported to have 400 men with him when he arrived in Bordeaux (3).

‘Bonville was to be entreated.’ On 18 October the Council ordered the Chief Justice and other judges of Kings Bench to grant bail to about 140 of Sir William Bonville’s’ retainers. Proceedings against them were to be postponed until February 1443. Was the Council currying favour with Bonville to persuade him to go to Gascony? (4) He accepted a commission on 28 November to lead a relief force to Gascony as seneschal, although he did not sail until 1443 (5).

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(1) PPC V pp. 205-206 (fleet ordered to go to Bayonne).

 (2) PPC V, p. 205 (wine fleet delayed)

(3) PPC V p. 203 (Popham and Bonville. This would have been Stephen Popham not Sir John Popham)

(4) PPC V, p. 221 (proceeding against Bonville’s retainers delayed.

(5) CPR 1441-1446, p. 154 (Bonville’s commission).

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John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset

The Council had made provision in June to assemble ordnance worth £240 for Gascony, probably in a belated response to a request from Sir Thomas Rempston to send an army to defend Tartas, but Lord Talbot’s army for Normandy took precedence over Gascony.

King Henry ordered the ordnance to be delivered to John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset. This was at a time when Henry was enthusiastically pursing the idea of marrying a daughter of the Earl of Armagnac. Was he also considering sending Somerset to Gascony as the king’s lieutenant? (1)

King Henry wrote to Roos and Beckington on 21 September that he had appointed the Earl of Somerset ‘and with hym right a noble puissance of men of were’ to go to Gascony ‘in al possible haste.’ Somerset presented his conditions, his ‘articles for service,’ for accepting the commission in October, but no indentures were signed (2, 3).

Cardinal Beaufort had refused in August to lend money for Gascony but by October he had grasped the possibility of a major role for Somerset and a renewal of the Council’s reliance on his loans, which would reassert his influence. Two days later the treasurer was again instructed to establish who had and who would lend money and what they would require as security for repayment, but this time he was to send the information to the Cardinal immediately; the Cardinal then consult King Henry (3).

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(1) Harriss, Beaufort, p. 332 (ordnance for Somerset).

(2) PPC V, p. 218 (Somerset’s conditions).

(3) M. Jones, ‘Beaufort Family, pp 155-156 (appointment of Somerset).

(3) PPC V, pp. 220-221 (Cardinal Beaufort to oversee finances).

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The Duke of York and Duchess Isabelle

Isabelle, Duchess of Burgundy had abandoned her attempt to reconcile King Charles and the English.

See Year 1441: The Duchess of Burgundy.

She turned her attention to peace within her husband’s domains (1). Isabelle knew that King Henry would not deal directly with the Duke of Burgundy. In the summer of 1442 she sent John, Bastard of St Pol to Rouen as her ambassador to the Duke of York. St Pol was in Rouen from 11 to 26 July 1442 where he was well received. York ordered Pierre Baille receiver general of Normandy to pay his expenses (2).

Isabelle offered to open negotiations for a perpetual truce, an abstinence de guerre, along the borders between Normandy and Burgundian lands specifically to protect Flanders, Artois, and the strategic towns along the Somme (3). Her offer appealed to the embattled York. Not only would it help to safeguard Normandy’s borders it would protect the Pale of Calais. Isabelle sent Burgundy’s herald, Toison d’Or, to Rouen for further discussions (4).

As the king’s lieutenant in Normandy and France the Duke of York was well within his rights to negotiate a truce. He informed the Council of his dealings with Isabelle, and they discussed it implications.  York apparently suggested that England as well as Normandy should be included in the treaty but the Council, although accepting the inclusion of the territories of the Duchy of Burgundy and the Duchy of Gascony, would not commit England. Did King Henry refuse to consider peace with the Duke of Burgundy or did the Council wish to avoid angering King Charles and jeopardising the possibility of a truce with France by making a separate peace with Burgundy? (5)

William Bruges, Garter King of Arms was paid 5 marks for past services and for the journey he was about to undertake for the king, probably to the Duke of York (6),

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(1) Thielemans, Bourgogne et Angleterre, pp. 147-148

(2) L&P II, pp 324-327 (to innkeeper in Rouen 206 livres tournois and 5 sols;  of this 30 livres tournois and 5 sols were for the hire of horses and an escort of archers).

(3) Vaughan, Philip, p. 109  (Flanders, Artois and the Somme towns).

(4) L&P II, p. 329 (herald’s expenses were paid by the Norman Treasury in October).

(5) PPC V, p. 212 (Council discussions of York’s truce).

(6) PPC p 208 (payment to Garter King of Arms).

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 A Truce with France

King Charles VII had agreed to resume peace talks in October, although he made it clear that he had little expectation of success. He told the princes of France assembled at Nevers early in 1442 that peace negotiations had failed in the past because the English were unresponsive, uncooperative, and unreasonable. He would never willingly surrender an inch of French, except in homage, and he believed that the princes must share his sentiments (1, 2).

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    (1) Beaucourt, Charles VII, vol III, pp. 224-225 (meeting at Nevers).

(2) Monstrelet II, p, 120 (meeting at Nevers).

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Peace envoys

Messengers and heralds came to England during the summer of 1442. The Duke of Brittany sent his secretary, James Godart, with letters of credence, presumably to arrange the preliminaries of the peace talks at which the duke expected to act as mediator. Godart received a reward of £10, and 100 ‘escutz’ from King Henry. Brittany’s herald ‘Ermine’ was awarded five marks. The Duke of Orleans’s herald Valois came on the same errand; he received 40 shillings (1).

King Alfonso of Aragon’s envoy, Joao Villafranca, [Willefrance] came to England in 1442 ‘bringing letters and returning’ (2). Master Vincent Clement carried ‘letters and answers’ to Aragon approved by the Council (3). Clement was a subject of the King of Aragon who had been granted denization in England in 1438 with permission to hold benefices (4). He was King Henry’s personal messenger (orator) to the Pope to obtain indulgences for Eton College and is described as a papal chaplain in Pope Eugenius’s letters.

See Eton College Indulgences above

King Joao of Portugal’s envoy, Sir Roland Vasques, received a warm welcome. He was paid £20 and given two lengths of black velvet worth £12, to make a gown. A Portuguese herald was awarded five marks (5). The reason for the Portuguese visit is not given, it may have been in connection with the envoy from Aragon.

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(1) PPC V, p. 208 (Brittany’s secretary and Orleans’s herald sent to England).

(2 Ferguson, English Diplomacy, p, 201 citing E 404/60/14, 10 Sept 1442. Ferguson does not give a reason for the visit).

(3) PPC V, p. 218 (Clement sent to Aragon).

(4) CPR 1436-41, p. 312 (Clement denization).

(5) PPC V, pp. 208-09 (Portuguese envoys).

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The English Embassy

At Eltham in October, with the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort present, the Council advised King Henry that instead of insisting on peace they should consider accepting a truce, which the French had offered in the past. English commissioners should be instructed to try for a long truce but be equally willing to accept a short one if that was all the French would offer, rather than allow the negotiations to be broken off yet again (1).

The Council commissioned an impressive if distinctly warlike embassy made up of members of the council in Rouen and the war captains serving in Normandy but no representative from the English Council:  the Duke York, Louis of Luxembourg, Archbishop of Rouen and Chancellor,  the bishops of Lisieux and Bayeux,  John Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury, Lords Scales and Fauconberg (the three war captains even then assembling an army to take the field against the French) Sir John Montgomery, Sir Thomas Hoo, St Andrew Ogard, Richard Harirngton, Walter Colles, the former constable of Bordeaux, John Wenlock, and the king’s two secretaries Jean Rinel and Gervaise le Vulre.

They received full powers on 9 October to negotiate with French representatives to choose a venue on the borders of Normandy or Brittany for talks to take place at the end of October (2, 3).

Gervaise Le Vulre, was to go to Normandy with instructions for the Duke of York. He was assigned £20 on 14 October, and he set out from Poole on 18 October (4). The conference never eventuated.

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(1) PPC V, pp. 210- 211 (Council considered a truce).

(2) Foedera XI, p 13 (powers to treat with the French).

(3) PPC V, p. 212 (powers to treat with the French).

(4) PPC V, pp. 210 217 and 221 (Le Vulre to go to the Duke of York).

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The Duke of Brittany

John, Duke of Brittany died at Nantes on 28/29 August. It was probably his secretary, John Godart, who returned to England with the news and a request for clarification from the new Duke Francis concerning Brittany’s treaty with England (1).

See Year 1440: A Treaty with Brittany.

The Council issued orders for the restitution of all Breton goods seized prior to Duke John’s death to any Breton who laid claimed to them, although they would be required to give surety that they would pay for the recovered goods if Duke, Francis, failed to renew the treaty.  Bretons taken prisoner at sea since Duke John’s death were to be released.

The order issued on 8 October was confirmed under letters of Privy Sea on 11 October with an additional clause: Breton ships were not to be captured in future except by King Henrys express command (2). Despite treaties and prohibitions English piracy was alive and well in the Channel.

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(1) PPC V, p. 221 (Brittany’s secretary in England. He was given a silver gilt cup on 21 October).

(2) PPC V, pp. 211 and 214 (Breton goods to be returned; Bretons not to be captured at sea).

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John V, Duke of Brittany, a synopsis

John de Montfort, Duke of Brittany’s primary aim was to keep his duchy out of the war. At different times he allied with England or France as the fortunes of war dictated, with the result that he was not entirely trusted by anyone.

John became Count of Montfort and Duke of Brittany in 1399 at the age of ten.  His mother, Joan, Duchess of Brittany, acted as Regent until John came of age, and she subsequently became Queen of England through her marriage to King Henry IV.  John married King Charles VI’s daughter Jeanne de Valois, Katherine de Valois’s sister, making him Charles VII’s brother-in-law and Henry VI’s uncle.

Duke John suffered the humiliation of being kidnapped by Olivier de Blois, Count of Penthièvre in February 1420.  Olivier claimed that the Duchy of Brittany was rightfully his and demanded its return as the price of Duke John’s release. Duchess Jeanne rallied the Bretons to rescue their duke. It widely was believed that the Dauphin Charles had sanctioned the coup.

Under pressure from King Henry V, Brittany signed the Treaty of Troyes in 1420 acknowledging Henry as heir to the throne of France. His first commitment to an alliance with England after Henry V’s death was the Treaty of Amiens of 1423, a tripartite agreement with the Duke of Bedford and the Duke of Burgundy for mutual support and protection against the Dauphin.

See Year 1423 The Treaty of Amiens.

The English alliance was broken in 1425 when the Dauphin Charles offered Brittany’s brother, Arthur de Richemont, the prestigious post of Constable of France. The Dauphin then enticed Brittany to change his allegiance and renounce the Treaty of Amiens. England declared war on Brittany at the beginning of 1426.

See Year 1425: The Duke of Brittany.

England and Brittany remained at war until in 1427 when the Duke of Bedford persuaded Brittany to change sides once again.  Bedford demonstrated that he could wage war successfully along Brittany’s border with Normandy, and fearful of further incursions, Brittany again acknowledged the Treaty of Troyes and signed a peace treaty with England in September 1427.

See Year 1427: The Duke of Brittany.

Piracy by English and Breton seamen preferably although not exclusively against each other threatened to undermine cordial relations between England and Brittany despite the efforts of the Duke of Brittany and the Council in King Henry name to put a stop to the depredations.

See Year 1433: The Duke of Brittany, Piracy

Brittany did all he could to stabilise his relations with England.  In 1432 he sent his youngest son Gilles to join King Henry’s household and Gilles stayed in England for two years.

See Year 1432: Gilles of Brittany.

Brittany became involved unintentionally in negotiations for the release of the Duke of Orleans. Orleans claimed that if he was free to return to France, he would enlist military aid for King Henry against King Charles from many of the French nobles, among them the Duke of Brittany and Brittany’s brother Arthur de Richemont. This was extremely unlikely, and the Minority Council did not believe it.

See Year 1433: Hugh de Lannoy, Burgundian Envoy.

Brittany sent an embassy to King Henry in 1434 urging him to make peace with France. The Council replied that King Henry wanted peace and had done all he could to achieve it, it was the French who had refused to come to Calais to negotiate.

See Year 1434: The Duke of Brittany.

In 1437 as part of the continuing efforts to free the Duke of Orleans Brittany suggested himself as a mediator and even offered to contribute towards the expense of sending the Duke of Orleans to France to meet him and pave the way for peace talks. The Council agreed to allow Orleans to go, provided the money was paid.

See 1437: The Duke of Brittany and the Duke of Orleans.

Sir John Popham led an embassy to the Duchy of Brittany in 1438 to meet the duke and Dunois Bastard of Orleans in an ongoing effort to obtain the Duke of Orleans release. King Charles cold shouldered Brittany and ignored his offer of mediation.

See Year 1438: An Embassy to Brittany.

The Duke of Orleans was set free to return to France at the end of 1440. He was welcomed by the Duke of Burgundy who sent him to meet the Duke of Brittany at Nantes in 1441. They concocted a scheme to offer themselves as joint mediators in peace talks with England. A second meeting at Rennes in August was attended by Garter King of Arms. Their claim that they intended to facilitate peace with England gave them the moral high ground, but the purpose of both meetings was to find ways to undermine King Charles.

See Year 1441: Peace talks.

At a meeting in Nevers early in 1442 convened by the Duke of Burgundy the princes of France put their grievances and their demands to King Charles. The Duke of Brittany did not attend the meeting although he sent his son, Francis, Count of Montfort.  Brittany may already have been ill; he died unexpectedly at Nantes on 29 August 1442 at the age of fifty-three.

John IV, Duke of Brittany’s reputation has been tarnished by historians, English and French, because he changed sides more than once. But for the most part he adhered to his treaty with King Henry while being careful to avoid antagonising Chares VII. The independence and safety of his duchy was his overriding concern, and like Henry, he did not want to fight.  His people called him John the Wise.

 The War in France

The Duke of York’s first year as the King’s Lieutenant in France was not a resounding success. Creil, Pontoise, and Evreux had been lost.

The Estates of Normandy

The Estates of Normandy voted a mere 30,000 livres tournois to the Duke of York at the beginning of 1442.  York sent a summons to all the towns in Normandy ordering them to appoint representatives with sufficient authority to meet the duchy’s needs and to assemble in Rouen in April (1).

This time, under pressure, the Estates voted a subsidy of 110,000 livres tournois for six months, to be collected in three parts:  50,000 l.t., 14,223 l.t. and 20, 776 l.t.  to pay the garrisons’ wages and to maintain an army in the field.

In August they agreed to extend the sales tax of 2 shilling in the livre, known as the dixième, granted in 1441, for another year from 1 October; this was estimated to bring in 600,000 livres tournois.

At the end of 1442 York’s commissioners requested another 80,000 livres tournois without which, they claimed, it would not be possible to recover the towns lost to the French. The deputies voted only 60,000 to be paid half in February and half in April 1443 (2, 3).

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(1) L&P II, pp. 322-323 (York’s summons).

(2) Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, pp. 180-181 (Estates grants).

(3) Beaurepaire Les États de Normandie, pp. 78-81(Estates grants).

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Lord Talbot in England

John, Lord Talbot was frustrated and irritated; he had directed military strategy in Normandy until the Duke of York arrived but the loss of men and equipment in 1441 meant that he could not immediately resume the offensive.  Did Talbot request York’s permission to return to England to raise yet another army, or did York send him, preferring to exploit Talbot’s public image as a war hero rather than making the request himself for more money and more troops?

Talbot came home in February 1442 much as the Earl of Salisbury had in 1428, to use his reputation to raise an army. King Henry created Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury for his services. He was commissioned to muster 2,500 men to reinforce the Duke of York and to recapture the towns lost the French (1).

Chancellor Stafford was ordered on 14 May to instruct Sir John Echingham, Sir Roger Fiennes, John Yerde, and Walter Strickland to take the musters at Pentecost of 200 men-at-arms for Lord Talbot’s army (2). On 25 May, Sir Thomas Hoo, Master Walter Colles, and Hugh Stanlowe, treasurer of Normandy, were appointed to take the full muster of 200 men-at-arms and 2,300 archers (3).

Sir Henry Clifford was a late recruit. He was paid 400 marks to raise troops to accompany Talbot. I have been unable to identify this Henry Clifford (4).

Talbot was ready to depart in May, but the Exchequer was unable to cover the cost of his army plus the £15,000 now due to the Duke of York as the king’s lieutenant. King Henry authorised the Exchequer, as he had a year earlier to finance the Duke of York’s army, to break up, sell, or pawn crown jewels to meet the short fall (5).

“After Easter in 1442 [1 April] the Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, came from Normandy, and after Trinity Sunday [3 June] he went to France with 3,000 men.” Benet’s Chronicle, p. 189

“Also in this same yere come the lord Talbot out of Fraunce and was mad erle of Schrovesbury, and wente over into Fraunce ayen with iij m¹ men.”  A Chronicle of London (Harley 565) p. 130. Chronicles of London, (Cleopatra C IV) p, 149

“Ande the xxv day of May my lorde Talbot toke hys way towarde the see, for to passe yn to Fraunce whythe hys retenowe.”   Gregory’s Chronicle, p. 184

“And in this yere, the xxv day of Maye, the Lord Talbot toke hs iourney from London toward Normandy and Fraunce, for to help to gouerne and kepe vnder the Duke of York, the partyes byyond the see, with knyghtes, Squyers, men of armes and archers, and all maner stuff ϸat longed to werre: which, Almyghty God gouerne, save, and kepe, and all ϸe Kynges trewe peple, bothe in that party and in oures!  And er he toke his iourney out of this lande, ϸe Kyng made the Lord Talbot, Erle of Shrovesbury, and his son and heire Lord Talbot.” Brut Continuation F, p. 483

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(1) (Pollard, Talbot, pp. 58-59 (Talbot’s commission)/

(2) PPC V, pp. 186-187 (musters).

(3) CPR 1441-1446, p. 106 (musters).

(4) L&P I, p. 430 (Henry Clifford).

(5) L&P I, p. 431-32 (crown jewels).

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Talbot’s Campaigns

The war did not go well for the English.  The Duke of York rarely left Rouen. John Talbot, now Earl of Shrewsbury, conducted military operations with indifferent success. He had too few troops to cover too large an area. King Charles was campaigning in Gascony, but he had left his best general, Dunois Bastard of Orleans to harass the English whenever and wherever he could. Dunois made the most of his opportunity.

 Gallardon

Talbot laid siege to Conches to the west of Paris in July 1442.  Dunois retaliated by laying siege to neighbouring Gallardon. François de Surienne, the mercenary war captain in English pay had captured Gallardon earlier in the year. He defended with a depleted garrison until the end of October when he learned that Talbot would not come to his rescue. It was only a matter of time before he would be forced to surrender. Dunois offered him 10,900 gold saluts and Surienne sold Gallardon with the complicity of Matthew Gough, Thomas Gerard, and Thomas Stones. They received a payment of 2,900 saluts on 30 October (1).

Under the peculiar conventions of medieval warfare both sides could agree to demolish a fortress to prevent it from being occupied again by either side. It was for this undertaking that Dunois bargained. In March 1445 he consigned wine and silks worth 1,000 saluts to the treasury at Rouen against the debt he owed for the demolition of Gallardon (2, 3). By that time a truce between England and France had been declared.

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(1) L&P II, pp. 331-333 (payment for surrender)

(2) L&P II, pp. 360-61 (payment to Normandy treasury)

(3) Barker, Conquest, pp. 300-301 (Gallardon).

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Honfleur

The port of Honfleur, opposite Harfleur at the mouth of the Seine, formed part of the supply chain through which supplies of men and provisions reached Normandy.

In November 1442 the Duke of York ordered the captain of Honfleur to take the musters and maintain the garrison there at its current strength, reassuring him that provision for the payment of their wages would be made. The order is dated 4 November but with no year. Stevenson dated it to 1442, but it could be for any November during the Duke York’s term as king’s lieutenant (1).

Richard Curson, who had served the Earl of Warwick while he was Captain of Calais and then the King’s Lieutenant in France, was captain of Honfleur (2).

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(1) L&P II, p 333-34 (order to ‘the captain of Honfleur. He is not named)

(2) Bell and Curry, The Soldier, p. 128

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Dieppe

The port of Dieppe had been in French hands since 1435.

See Year 1435: Dieppe

Talbot laid siege to Dieppe in November 1442, at the end of the campaigning season. He had too few troops for a full blockade, and he ordered his men to construct a large bastille to the east of the town overlooking the harbour from where they could bombard it with heavy artillery.  He hoped to pound it into submission. Winter conditions were harsh, and some of his troops were seasonal recruits whose six-month service expired at the end of the year. They refused to remain at the siege. Talbot was forced to return to Rouen.  He left Sir William Peyto and 500 veterans from the garrisons in Normandy to hold the bastille. They maintained the siege for ten months, until August 1443.

“In this same yere the erll of Schrewesbery leyd sege be watyr and lond to depe; and kept it a while, till he ferd so foule with his men, that thei [w]olde not lenger abyde with him; and so he whas fayne to high awey thense to Rooen, and so brak the seege.” Chronicles of London (Cleopatra C IV) p 150. Chronicle of London (Harley 565) p. 131

“And after All Saints Day [1 November] the Earl of Shrewsbury besieged the town of Dieppe by land and sea but achieved nothing.” Benet’s Chronicle, 189

Granville

While Talbot was besieging Dieppe, the strategically important castle and town of Granville in the southwest of Normandy not far from Avranches was lost. The English had built a fortress and established at town at Granville on a high peninsula jutting out into the Bay of Mont Saint Michel which dominated the surrounding countryside. But Granville was accessible at low tide (1).

Louis d’Estouteville, captain of Mont Saint Michel, launched a raid on the night of 8 November 1442. Men from the garrison at Mont Saint Michel scaled Granville’s walls taking the fortress by surprise. According to Berry Herald the town was betrayed by an Englishman as revenge against the Bastard of Scales, who had insulted him (2).

Thomas Lord Scales was responsible for Granville. His bastard son, also Thomas, was its captain with a garrison of forty men. The younger Thomas was negligent, he received a timely warning from Avranches that Estouteville was planning  to attack Granville, but he ignored the threat (3). Whether Lord Scales himself knew of it is obscure.

The English chronicles have a different account:

“And in this yere was lost a good town in Normandye of the lord Scales, that is called there Graundevyle, in the coost of Baas Normandye, toward the coast of Bretaigne, wyth his bastard sone therinne; and the susbstaunce of alle the good that the lord Scales hadde in that land was thereinne, the whiche was falsly sold be a man that he trusted most too whiles he was at Roon.  A Chronicle of London (Harley 565) p. 132 and Chronicles of London (Cleopatra CIV) pp. 151-52

The occupation of Graville gave the garrison at Mont Saint Michel a base from which to raid, loot, and ransom the whole of the peninsula without having to cross the bay.  Lord Scales was forced to double the size of the English garrisons in the region. His attempt in 1443 to recover Granville failed (4).

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(1) Barker, Conquest, p. 302 (Granville).

(2) Berry Herald, pp. 257-258 (betrayal).

(3) Chronique de Mont Saint Michel II, ed. Luce, p. 145 (warning of attack).

(4) Sumption, Triumph and Illusion, p. 594 (Granville).

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Henry Bourchier, Earl of Eu

Henry Bourchier, Earl of Eu, accompanied the Duke of York to France in 1441. York appointed him as captain of Neufchậtel in September and as Captain of Le Crotoy for seven years from October.

As the English Earl of Eu he had a vested interest in the northeastern region of Normandy, and he became ‘governor general’ of the Normandy-Picardy border by March 1442.

The Council optimistically granted him £1,000 a year in wartime and £867 during peace. Stores and equipment were sent to him from London but the promised payments rarely materialised. Bourchier demanded a promise that if Le Crotoy, the principal port in the region, was besieged, a relief force would be sent within a month, or Bourchier would not be held responsible ‘for any disaster which might follow’ i.e. its capture by the French (1).

He was awarded 3,000 livres tournois from the treasury on Rouen for the three-month period from the end of March to the end of June 1442, ‘as a recompense in some sort for the many services rendered to the king.’ He acknowledged receipt of the money in August, so he was still in Normandy at that time (2).

“And in that same yere com hom out of Fraunce the erle of Ewe and S^r James of Urmond into Engelond.” A Chronicle of London (Harley 565) p. 130. Chronicles of London (Cleopatra C IV) p. 149 

Bourchier was not summoned to Parliament in 1442 since he was in France. He may have returned to England briefly, but there appears to be no other record of it.  ‘Sir James of Ormond’ was the son of the Earl of Ormond. He too had accompanied York to Ireland and presumably he came home at the same time as Henry Bourchier.

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(1) Griffiths, Henry VI, pp. 460-461, citing TNA E28/68/31-33 and E101/53/35 (grants to Bourchier).

(2) L&P II, pp 327-328 (Bourchier acknowledged receipt of 3,000 livres tournois).

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Bibliography 1442

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1. C. Griffith, M.C., ‘The Talbot-Ormond Struggle for Control of the Anglo-Irish Government, 1414-47,’ Irish Historical Studies vol. 2, No. 8 (Sept 1941)

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Lloyd, T.H. The English Wool trade in the Middle Ages (1977)

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 Theses

Dicks, S., ‘The Question of Peace, Anglo-French Diplomacy 1439-1449,’ Unoversity of Oklahoma, Ph.D., (1966)

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 Online

www.historyofparliamentonline.org

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