In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster, challenge this realm of England and the Crown with all the members and the appurtenances, as that I am descended by right line of the blood coming from the good lord King Henry Third, and through that right that God of his grace has sent me with help of my kin and of my friends to recover it, the which realm was in point to be undone for default of governance and undoing of the good laws.
With these words, on 30 September 1399, Henry Bolingbroke claimed the throne of England from his cousin Richard II. Since his return from disinheritance and exile in July 1399 Henry had acted swiftly and ruthlessly to outmanoeuvre Richard himself and to divide and neutralise his supporters. It was a breathtakingly audacious coup and, the deposition of Edward II not withstanding, an unprecedented one. After two hundred years during which the throne of England had passed uninterrupted from father to son (or grandson), Henry’s usurpation marked a radical departure which foreshadowed a century of dynastic instability. Before 1500 three more kings, Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII, were to seize the throne by force, in disregard for the traditional principle of primogeniture. Another, Henry V, was to claim the throne of France in a similar way: under the Treaty of Troyes of 1420 he became the heir of Charles VI, and the Dauphin Charles was disinherited.
The usurpation of 1399 provided a precedent and a model which exercised a profound influence over the politics and government of fifteenth-century England. The dubious title of the Lancastrians diluted the hereditary principle and thus widened the field of potential claimants to the crown. Henry IV’s reliance on the support of a few powerful magnates, notably the Percy family, made him beholden to a faction and threatened the stability of his rule from the outset. The Percies’ dissatisfaction with the rewards they received from their role as ‘kingmakers’ led to their rebellions in 1403 and 1405, just as, sixty years later, Edward IV’s determination to assert his independence led to the disaffection and rebellion of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick. The enforced abdication of Richard II on the grounds, inter alia, of breach of his coronation oath and lack of good governance gave added prominence in the following century to the king’s obligations to enforce the law, defend the realm and maintain sound finances, at a time when royal government faced great difficulties in those areas.
The Lancastrian era, from Henry IV’s usurpation until Henry VI’s deposition in 1461, was dominated by three interwoven themes: warfare, service and finance. Henry IV’s accession in 1399 and his survival of the years of rebellion which followed rested ultimately on armed force, and the legitimacy of the Lancastrian dynasty came to be particularly bound up with military success or failure. The battle of Agincourt in 1415 consolidated the stability of the dynasty, whereas the fall of France between 1449 and 1453 irreparably weakened Henry VI’s rule. Military success helped foster political stability, but both were dependent on the quality of service the king could command from the nobility and gentry. Henry IV relied on a comparatively narrow group of trusted Lancastrian servants. Henry V’s qualities of leadership and his victories in France won him the unqualified support of political society as a whole; whereas the dominance of a small household clique during Henry VI’s adult rule bred faction and division, and helped prepare the ground for the open hostilities of the Wars of the Roses. Inadequate financial resources and the dependence on parliament for taxation caused intractable problems for the Lancastrian kings, which even Henry V was able only to defer, rather than resolve. A crushing burden of debt crippled Henry VI’s government and severely hampered the war effort as Lancastrian France crumbled and then disintegrated in the 1440s.
The themes of warfare, service and finance come to the fore from the very outset of Henry IV’s reign. Not only did Henry have to combat repeated internal revolt to retain his throne, but, until 1407 at least, he faced a full-scale rebellion in Wales led by Owain Glyn Dwr, intermittent war against the Scots, and threats to Gascony and Calais from the kingdom of France. His survival was due in no small part to the loyalty and ability of his Lancastrian servants, both in the military and political spheres. Warfare and service were costly items, however, particularly for a king as insecure as Henry IV. The series of military emergencies and Henry’s need to buy support early in the reign soon created serious financial problems, and he faced prolonged struggles with successive parliaments over taxation and royal finances.
Henry’s military success enabled him to seize and retain the throne. His abilities as a military leader and strategist were crucial not just to his success in 1399 but also to his defeat of the Percy rebellion in 1403, the most serious challenge of the reign. On both occasions he moved decisively to divide his opponents geographically before they could muster against him in force. He was also well served by able captains in several different theatres of war, for example Prince Henry in Wales, Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, in the north and John Beaufort, earl of Somerset, in Calais.
Service was one of the most contentious issues of the reign. As a usurper Henry IV came to the throne as the head of a faction, with a narrow base of committed support amongst the nobility. Under his rule the Lancastrian affinity never entirely lost its factional character. The king made lavish grants of retainer to bolster his regime early in the reign, but the core of his support came from the Lancastrian following established before 1399. Henry filled the royal household with trusted Lancastrian knights and esquires, among them John Norbury, John Tiptoft, Thomas Erpingham and Hugh Waterton. Such men were unusually prominent in all aspects of royal government, particularly in the first half of the reign, before the parliamentary crisis of 1406 and the establishment of the magnate council.
Henry IV’s dependence on the knights of his household was accentuated by the depletion of the higher nobility, caused largely by forfeitures and rebellion during the political crises between 1398 and 1405. Only after 1407 did a new generation of magnates begin to emerge, several of them closely associated with the prince of Wales. In the crucial middle years of the reign the circle of adult magnates on whom the king could rely was very restricted. They included Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, and the king’s Beaufort half-brothers: John, earl of Somerset, Sir Thomas and Henry, bishop of Winchester. Neville was the Beauforts’ brother-in-law through his second wife Joan; thus the Beaufort—Neville connection lay at the heart of the Lancastrian political establishment from the beginning. The eventual breakdown of that connection in the early 1450s was to signal the disintegration of that establishment.
The heavy costs of warfare and service, and the lack of effective controls at the exchequer, led Henry IV into acute financial problems, which soon made it impossible for him to keep his promise, made at the beginning of the reign, to ‘live of his own’ and do without parliamentary taxation. In fact the king had to turn repeatedly to parliament for tax grants, and in response faced a growing barrage of criticism, culminating in the ‘Long Parliament’ of 1406. The basis of criticism in the House of Commons was the king’s failure adequately to defend the realm and suppress rebellion, in spite of heavy taxation; his inability to maintain public order and do justice; and his failure to manage royal finances. The Commons demanded the appointment of the royal council in parliament, the reform of royal administration (in particular the application of crown revenues to the expenses of the household), the appropriation of taxation to specific military needs and the appointment of special treasurers to oversee the disbursement of taxation.
In the parliament of 1406 these demands were conceded. A new, largely aristocratic council was appointed under the leadership of the prince of Wales, and its members swore to adhere to the articles of reform put forward by the Commons. Exercising control of government expenditure, the council curtailed the king’s spending on the household and committed itself to a policy of ‘bone governance’, aimed at securing the defences of the realm, restoring the crown’s financial credibility and regaining the confidence of parliament.
Initially Prince Henry’s involvement in the council was only nominal, and it was led by the chancellor, Archbishop Thomas Arundel. After suppressing the Glyn Dwr rebellion in Wales, however, the prince was free to spend more time at Westminster, and from 1407 his presence was increasingly felt in central government. His abilities and obvious impatience to rule, compounded by Henry IV’s debilitating bouts of illness, spawned rumours of the king’s abdication. Indeed during 1410—11, as head of the council, Prince Henry was effectively the ruler of the kingdom, until a dispute with his father over military intervention in the civil war in France enabled the old king to reassert his authority.
Henry IV’s entire adult life, first as magnate, then as king, was shaped by political crisis. His principal achievement was to ensure the survival of the Lancastrian dynasty. The effort broke his health, however, and his usurpation prolonged and exacerbated the bitter aristocratic faction of Richard II’s reign. Political and military instability translated directly into financial insecurity, and his impoverishment led to humiliation at the hands of parliament. Nevertheless, Henry IV was a well-served king. His own family, notably the prince of Wales, proved particularly able; and several of his most trusted retainers, such as Tiptoft and Erpingham, went on to serve his son and grandson with equal distinction, providing an important thread of continuity within Lancastrian government.
Henry V ascended the throne in March 1413 better prepared for kingship than any English monarch since Edward I. Although only twenty-six at his accession he already had ten years of military experience and five of active involvement in government. Henry was thus a known quantity, with strong credentials as a ruler and an established network of relationships with leading magnates and royal administrators. This helps to explain the confidence and purposefulness with which he assumed power: there was no sense of youthful impetuosity such as characterised the early adult years of Edward III or Richard II.
Indeed, as king, Henry V was merely picking up where he had left off at the end of his period as head of the council during 1410—11. In that sense there is a strong degree of continuity between the first two years of Henry V’s reign and the closing years of his father’s. In the parliament of May 1413 the Commons pointedly drew attention to Henry IV’s failure to fulfil his repeated promises to restore ‘bone governance’, and raised several matters of ‘unfinished business’ from the old reign, including the defence of Calais and Gascony, the safekeeping of the sea, the settlement of Wales following the Glyn Dwr rebellion and the restoration of public order.
On the other hand Henry V was determined to put an end to the aristocratic faction, financial and administrative mismanagement and widespread lawlessness which had prevailed since 1399. Most pressing was the reconciliation of the Lancastrian dynasty with the noble families which had suffered loss and disinheritance as a result of the rebellions against Henry IV: notably the Hollands, Mowbrays, Montagues and Percies. Here Henry V was lucky in that the heirs of these houses, like much of the nobility in 1413, were young men of about his own age and untainted by personal involvement in revolt. Henry allowed them a partial recovery of the lands and titles forfeited by their ancestors, making it clear that further restoration was dependent upon continuing active service, above all in war.
In the first two years of his reign Henry V also devoted considerable time and energy to restoring the financial health of the crown and enforcing public order. Royal creditworthiness was swiftly re-established by the imposition of strict controls at the exchequer over the assignment of income, and by the vigorous exploitation of all available sources of revenue. The effectiveness of these measures helped to create a virtuous circle of solvency by increasing parliament’s confidence in the king and its willingness to grant taxes, so that in preparation for the Agincourt campaign Henry was able to amass a war-chest of over £130,000 in cash. Just as vigorous was the king’s campaign to curb public disorder, which had been particularly widespread in the Welsh Marches and the midlands. During 1414 the court of king’s bench was sent from Westminster to hold visitations in Leicestershire, Staffordshire and Shropshire. Thousands of offenders were indicted and summoned before king’s bench, including many powerful Lancastrian supporters whose misdeeds Henry IV had chosen to ignore.
Nevertheless, despite Henry V’s best efforts, a shadow of uncertainty still hung over the dynasty until 1415. There were fears of a Ricardian rising supported by the Scots, and in 1414 the Lollard Sir John Oldcastle, a former member of Henry V’s household who had fallen out with the king over his heretical beliefs, attempted unsuccessfully to raise a rebellion of his sect to overthrow the lay and ecclesiastical establishment of the realm. Finally the earl of Cambridge’s abortive plot of July 1415, which was revealed to the king by its supposed beneficiary Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, demonstrated that, on the eve of the Agincourt campaign, the legitimacy of the dynasty was still not universally accepted amongst the nobility.