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Certainly Henry IV and the Lancastrian kings who succeeded him were usurpers. Henry had achieved the royal dignity by deposing England’s lawful sovereign, and the legitimacy of his title to the throne would remain a sensitive issue. The basis of his claim to rule by right of blood was an ingenious lie which, says Adam of Usk, had already been rejected by a committee of lords and clergy. Henry had asserted that Edmund Crouchback, 1st Earl of Lancaster, from whom he was descended through his mother, Blanche of Lancaster, had in fact been the eldest son of Henry III, not the second son, and had been overlooked because of bodily deformity in favour of his ‘younger’ brother, Edward I, an ancestor of his own father, John of Gaunt. This claim had serious implications because, if accepted, all the kings since Edward I’s time must be deemed usurpers. It also ensured that the children of Gaunt’s later wives, especially the Beauforts, were excluded from the succession, and made Henry’s claim through his mother far superior to that which he inherited from his father.
Even though the committee had rejected this preposterous claim, Henry clung to it, preferring to stress his descent through his mother rather than basing his title solely on his descent from Edward III through John of Gaunt, which of necessity involved overlooking the prior claim of the Mortimers. This falsified descent was fraught with contradictions, since, to counteract any legitimist sympathisers, he also took his stand on the Salic Law, which prevented claims to the throne by or through a female. In France the Salic Law did apply to the royal succession, and it was because of it that the French had denied Edward III’s claim through his mother to the throne of France. The English, Henry among them, had repeatedly disputed the existence of the Salic Law, even in France, though he now used it to nullify the claim of the legitimate heir to England.
Henry’s blatant attempts to justify his succession by massaging the facts about the royal descent deceived no one. Although it was vital to present himself as a lawful king, his title was really derived from his already being de facto king of England. His birth, wealth, abilities, and the fact that he had four strapping sons all convinced his subjects that he had been the only viable candidate for the empty throne. He was also the only man capable of restoring law and order and firm government to the country. Henry also claimed to rule by divine appointment: God, by granting him the victory, had thereby called him to the throne. He certainly did not believe he held his crown by right of parliamentary election; Parliament had merely recognised him as king. He and his successors of the House of Lancaster were similarly acknowledged by every great institution of Church and State, were hallowed and anointed at their coronations and acclaimed by the magnates, who swore fealty to them. Nevertheless, Henry had set a dangerous precedent. Although he had no right to it, he had taken the throne by force. In time, others, with a better or worse right, might do the same. It remained to be seen whether Henry IV could successfully hold on to the throne which he had taken.
During all these proceedings, no one had thought to support the superior claim of the legitimate heir-general, the seven-year-old Earl of March. Henry was a renowned and popular figure, a man of authority and power, whereas March was an unknown and untried child. Indeed, Archbishop Arundel took it upon himself to preach a sermon justifying the setting aside of the boy. England, said the Archbishop, would from now on be ruled by men, not boys. As a result of the decision to overlook March, the claim of the rightful heirs to the throne would remain dormant for sixty years after Henry IV’s accession, although its existence remained an ever-present threat to the House of Lancaster because it provided a focus for rebels and malcontents. Henry IV himself regarded young March as a dangerous rival, and with good reason, as we shall shortly see.
On 13 October, Henry was crowned in Westminster Abbey with oil said to have been given by the Virgin Mary to St Thomas à Becket for the sanctifying of a king who would regain the realm lost by his ancestors. Unfortunately, as the sacred moment of the anointing arrived, the Archbishop discovered that the King’s head was alive with lice; and at the offertory, Henry dropped his gold coin, which rolled away and could not be found. The superstitious took these to be evil omens.
Henry marked his coronation by instituting a new order of chivalry, the Order of the Bath, and his four sons were its first members. Two days after the coronation, the King’s eldest son, Henry of Monmouth, aged twelve, was proclaimed heir apparent to the throne and created Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall and Earl of Chester, titles borne by the Black Prince and conferred ever since then on the eldest son of the reigning monarch.
After the coronation, York, now in poor health, retired to his beloved manor at Langley. Henry appointed him Master of the Royal Mews and Falcons, giving him the opportunity during his retirement to indulge his passion for falconry. The Yorkist badge of the ‘falcon and fetterlock’ is thought to have its origins in this appointment. York died in 1402, and was succeeded as 2nd Duke by his son, Rutland.
Rutland had suffered for his support of Henry IV. Twenty courtiers whose sympathies lay with the deposed Richard had thrown their hoods at his feet in challenge. Treated with contempt and hatred, Rutland was subject to verbal abuse or angry silences when he showed his face at court. Nevertheless, he now enjoyed the King’s favour, and Henry protected him from his enemies, although he kept a watchful eye on one who had been so close to Richard II.
Henry IV soon discovered that it was less easy to hold on to the crown than to usurp it. He had promised to provide good and just government but, because of his dubious title to the throne, the first decade of his reign was troubled by conspiracies to overthrow him. He dared not emulate Richard II’s reliance on the advice of favourites, and took steps to ensure that he was seen to be ruling with the advice and support of Parliament. In order to woo Parliament, Henry sanctioned laws giving it unprecedented powers, and established the custom of free debate and the immunity of members from arrest, leaving them free to criticise the King as they pleased.
Henry had the delicate task of restoring prestige to a throne he had weakened by usurping it and at the same time retaining the loyalty of those who had supported him. Yet the charisma which had attracted them to his cause and the heady burst of popularity that greeted his accession were not so much in evidence after it, especially when people realised that the evils of Richard’s misgovernment could not be put right overnight. Henry was an industrious man of business and could be ruthless when it came to dealing with rebels, but a permanent shortage of money, exacerbated by the cost of putting down rebellions, and the distrust of some magnates, were problems he could not surmount, and consequently his reign was a time of continual tension. He did secure the support of the Church, having authorised the passing of the statute De Heretico Comburendo, which condemned heretics to be burned to death. This was aimed chiefly at the Lollards, whom Henry believed were a threat to his throne, not so much because of their religious beliefs, but because many supported Richard II.
Although Henry IV brought the vast wealth of the duchy of Lancaster to the Crown, as well as much of the wealth of the de Bohuns, it proved insufficient. He had therefore to make a virtue of the necessity to consult Parliament because he needed to obtain grants of money. It could truly be said that the bankruptcy of the Lancastrian kings did more to undermine the stability of the monarchy than their usurpation of the throne.
From 1399 onwards, the government of Charles VI of France steadfastly refused to recognise Henry IV as king of England, denouncing him as a traitor to his lawful sovereign and referring to him, when addressing English envoys, as ‘the lord who sent you’. This led in 1401 to the reopening of the Hundred Years War. The Valois court was at that time divided into opposing factions led by Charles VI’s powerful relatives, the dukes of Burgundy and Orléans. Henry IV became adept at playing these two nobles off against each other, but despite England’s declaration of war, little action was seen in France during his reign.
Meanwhile, the former King Richard was still a prisoner in the Tower in the care of Sir Thomas Rempson. Thomas Walsingham heaps praises on Henry IV for his courteous treatment of Richard at this time, but it would not be long before Adam of Usk was referring to his being held in chains.
On 21 October 1399, the Commons petitioned in Parliament that Richard be called upon to answer the charges laid against him. One magnate suggested he be put to death to ensure the security of Henry’s throne, but Henry strongly objected. On 23 October Parliament sat in secret session and debated what to do, concluding that it would be dangerous to let Richard be seen by the public because he would be a natural focus for rebellion. It was therefore decided, on a majority vote, that the ex-king should be condemned to perpetual imprisonment in a secret place from which no one could rescue him, and this sentence was read out in Parliament four days later. Denied any opportunity of speaking out in his own defence, Richard was made to disguise himself as a forester and on 28 October conveyed secretly by river from the Tower to Gravesend, and thence to Leeds Castle in Kent, a luxurious dower palace of the queens of England. But he was not to remain so comfortably lodged for long, for within a few days he was moved north, first to Pickering Castle in Yorkshire, then to Knaresborough Castle, and finally to Pontefract Castle, where he was placed in the custody of Sir Thomas Swynford, son of the Duchess of Lancaster by her first husband, and a staunch Lancastrian.
Richard still had friends in high places who were determined to restore him to the throne and so regain their former influence. They wore his badge of the ‘white hart’, called themselves ‘Richard’s nurselings’, and even had someone to impersonate him, a priest called Richard Maudelyn. After Christmas, four of these lords, the earls of Salisbury, Gloucester, Exeter and Surrey, made an attempt to assassinate Henry IV and his sons. But Rutland, who had become involved, betrayed their plans to the King, who wasted no time in gathering a great army and tracking down the traitors. Three of the rebel lords were lynched and decapitated by hostile mobs, and twenty-six other persons, including Maudelyn, were executed by process of law. The King returned to Westminster with the heads of the traitors, which were publicly displayed in London as a deterrent to other would-be rebels. Henry had been badly shaken by the rebellion, and was beginning to realise that he would not sit safely on his throne while Richard still lived.
The order for Richard’s murder probably went to Pontefract soon after the executions of his friends in January 1400. Adam of Usk says that death came miserably to the former king as ‘he lay in chains in the castle of Pontefract, tormented by Sir Thomas Swynford with starving fare’. A French source described in graphic detail how, in the agony of starvation, Richard used his teeth to tear strips of flesh from his arms and hands and devoured them. Most of his contemporaries believed he had been deliberately starved to death, although the government claimed that, having learned of the abortive plot to restore him, he was so distraught that he killed himself by voluntary starvation. When it had become too late, he had tried to break his fast, but his throat was too constricted to swallow: thus he could not have been guilty of the mortal sin of suicide. In the seventeenth century, a panel of distinguished antiquarians examined Richard’s skull, which showed no marks of a blow or wound, thus giving the lie to other contemporary tales that he had been bludgeoned to death.
Predictably, there is very little official evidence as to his fate. Even the date of his death is not known. The Council’s minutes for 9 February 1400 state that, if Richard still lived, he should remain in close confinement; if he was dead, his body should be shown to the people. The wording of this implies that he was actually dead or dying a long-drawn-out death. He had certainly died by 17 February, because on that date the Exchequer issued funds to cover the cost of bringing his body to Westminster.
It was important to Henry IV not only that Richard should be dead, but also that he should be seen to be dead. Only then would his supporters be deterred from rising on his behalf. On 27 February, his corpse was therefore conveyed to London at a cost of £80, being shown to the people at the more populous places that lay along the route. At length it was put on view for two days at St Paul’s Cathedral. Only the face, from the forehead to the throat, was exposed; the rest of the body was encased in lead. While the corpselay in state, King Henry attended a solemn requiem mass in the cathedral and laid a rich pall on the coffin. He also commanded chantry priests to say one thousand masses for the repose of Richard’s soul. On 12 March, the former king was buried in the church of the Dominican Friars at King’s Langley. A richly decorated tomb adorned with heraldic shields, which may have once held Richard’s body, may still be seen there today.
In the spring of 1400, Henry IV may have felt rather more secure on his throne, but he was shortly to be disabused of that comfortable illusion.
When the news of Richard’s death was broken to his ten-year-old widow, she was stunned with grief and lay prostrate for a fortnight. Young as she was, she guessed who had been responsible for depriving her of the husband who had been so kind to her, and when she returned to France the following year, she went ‘clad in mourning weeds, giving King Henry angry and malignant looks, and scarcely opening her lips’, according to Adam of Usk. Eight years later, having married the poet Duke of Orléans, who adored her, she died in childbirth.
Richard II was more popular in death than he had ever been in life. Rumours that he was alive persisted for nearly two decades after his murder, and were so strongly believed that people were willing to incite rebellions and risk a traitor’s death in order to restore him to the throne. Some were prepared to impersonate Richard in the belief that he was alive somewhere and would materialise once the Lancastrian usurper was out of the way. Others tried to assassinate Henry IV: in September 1401 a caltrap with three poisoned spikes was found in his bed. Soon after this, Jean Creton, having been asked by the French government to ascertain the truth about Richard, sent his masters evidence obtained from certain persons in high places which proved to their satisfaction that the former king was dead. But there were many who believed otherwise.
In 1402, Friar Richard Frisby was tried for plotting to restore Richard II in order to make Henry ‘the Duke of Lancaster, which is what he ought to be’. Frisby and his associates had been caught before they had a chance to do anything. Asked what he would do if he learned that King Richard were still alive, Frisby retorted that he would fight anyone to the death on his behalf. The friar told Henry IV to his face:
I do not say that he is alive, but if he is alive he is the true King of England. You usurped his crown. If he is dead, you killed him. And if you are the cause of his death you forfeit all title and any right you may have to the kingdom.
These words sealed Frisby’s fate, and he was hanged, drawn and quartered wearing the habit of his order.
In 1407, according to Walsingham,
documents circulated in many parts of London which claimed that King Richard was still alive and would return in glory and splendour to recover his kingdom. But shortly afterwards the lying fool who had committed such a rash act was captured and punished. This tempered the joy he had aroused in many people by his lies.
At the same time, a man was going about London pretending to be Richard. The Lord Mayor, Sir Richard Whittington, had him arrested, and thereafter the rumours ceased for a time. But although it was now a capital crime to spread false rumours of Richard’s continued existence, nothing could prevent continued speculation on his survival, especially in the north. For years, the belief persisted that Richard was living in Scotland, a conviction fuelled by the fact that the Scots had coached a lunatic, known as the ‘Mummet’, to impersonate him. Although Henry IV was not deceived, others were, and the Mummet was retained by the Scots until 1419.
Impersonations of his dead rival were not all that Henry IV had to contend with. Shakespeare calls the first decade of his reign ‘a scrambling and unquiet time’ because it witnessed a series of rebellions against the King.
Henry believed that young March would be an obvious focus for malcontents, and because of this he ordered that the boy be kindly treated but kept under house arrest in the care of a governess. To this post the King appointed his cousin Constance of York, Countess of Gloucester, whose husband had been executed in 1400 for plotting Henry’s death. As we shall see, she was an unwise choice.
A far greater threat came at this time from Wales. Owen Glendower was an obscure Welshman, a descendant of the princes of Powys, who had studied law in London before serving Bolingbroke as a squire, in which capacity he demonstrated extraordinary martial abilities. By 1400 he was living in a moated wooden manor house at Sycarth in Wales with his wife and a brood of children, but in that year he quarrelled over possession of a minor Marcher property with one of the King’s councillors, Lord Grey de Ruthin, and this led to a serious rift with Henry IV. Glendower appealed to the Welsh to support him and began calling himself Prince of Wales, at which the King had him proclaimed an outlaw. Thereafter, Glendower inspired the Welsh people to revolt against English rule, and made efforts to drive the invaders out of Wales. The English hated and feared him, and his guerrilla warfare and devious but deadly strategies earned him the reputation of being a wizard.
Owen was a man of great ability and charisma, and by 1404 his power in Wales was such that he was able to summon a Welsh parliament. In that same year he made a treaty with France and secured French aid against the English.
In June 1402, Glendower scored a great victory over the English at Pilleth in Radnorshire, and had the good fortune to capture Sir Edmund Mortimer, March’s uncle. Mortimer, an important Marcher baron, was a considerable prize and a potential bargaining counter, and he was treated with great courtesy by his captor. He soon came under Glendower’s spell and, already resentful of his nephew’s claim having been passed over, abandoned his allegiance to Henry IV, entered into an alliance with Glendower and was given the hand of his daughter Katherine in marriage.
Henry IV was by no means anxious to ransom Mortimer, much to the chagrin of the elderly but formidable Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and the Earl’s son, the brave and volatile Harry Percy, nicknamed ‘Hotspur’, who was married to March’s aunt, Elizabeth Mortimer. The Percies, powerful lords in the north, were a constant thorn in Henry’s side and he feared they would form a coalition with the disaffected Mortimer, which is exactly what did happen when Glendower made much of Henry’s failure to ransom his kinsman, fanning the flames of Mortimer’s disaffection.
In December 1402, from his base in Radnorshire, Mortimer informed his tenants and supporters that he and Glendower intended to rescue Richard II, restore him to the throne, and secure for Glendower his rights in Wales. If Richard was indeed dead, then March, ‘my honoured nephew, who is rightful heir to the crown’, would be made king. Mortimer then appealed to Hotspur for support, which was readily given, and very soon the northerners were rising in revolt against Henry IV.
This led to open warfare between the King and the Percies. Hotspur sent a formal defiance to the ‘Duke of Lancaster’, accusing him of breaking his promises not to harm Richard, levy high taxes or break the laws, and of forcing Parliament to proclaim him king to the detriment of March, the rightful claimant. Henry regarded this as treason, and took to the field against Hotspur. At the Battle of Shrewsbury on 23 July, Hotspur was killed and the conspiracy shattered. The King had his mangled corpse exhumed, salted and cut into quarters, which were then put on display in various cities. Northumberland fled from Henry’s wrath, and sought to ally himself with Glendower and Mortimer, who were planning to invade England.
Unknown to the King, the Countess of Gloucester, March’s governess, had secretly remained loyal to her husband’s belief that the crown belonged of right to the late king or his true heir, March. She had concealed her antipathy to the House of Lancaster well, because Henry IV had entrusted her, not only with the care of March, but also with that of his younger brother. Late in 1404, the Countess learned that Glendower was in control of Glamorgan, and decided that, if she could somehow get them there, her charges would be in safe hands and at liberty among men who would fight for their cause. In February 1405, she managed to remove the boys from Windsor and travelled west with them as far as Cheltenham, where they arrived a week later. Here, however, the King and his men caught up with them and placed them under arrest. After this, young March and his brother were kept under a much stricter guard.
After her arrest, the Countess had her revenge on her brother, the new Duke of York, for his abandonment of Richard II. She accused him of conspiring to assassinate Henry IV in order to place March on the throne, alleging he meant to murder Henry in his bed. The King had York arrested and kept in strict confinement in the Tower, where he occupied his time by writing a treatise on hunting called The Master of Game, which he prudently dedicated to the Prince of Wales. Nothing could be proved against him, and he was released after nine months. By 1406 he was once again the King’s ‘dear and loyal cousin’.
After his return to favour York devoted his attention to building a spacious choir and other buildings in and around the church at Fotheringhay, one of his principal residences. The foundation of a collegiate chantry dedicated to the Virgin Mary and All Souls at Fotheringhay had been the brainchild of York’s father, but he had died before it could become reality. York founded a college of priests there in 1411 and endowed it with six acres of land between the castle and the newly built rectory house, and Henry IV further endowed the college with an annual grant of £67.6s.8d (£67.33). During the fifteenth century the House of York would beautify and enrich this magnificent foundation, intending it to be their mausoleum. Eventually, there were twelve chaplains, eight clerks and thirteen choristers, all under the rule of a Master, and their chief duty was to pray for the good estate in life and the souls after death of the King and Queen, Prince Henry, the Duke of York, and all the royal family.
In Wales, Glendower, Mortimer and Northumberland still plotted the overthrow of Henry IV. When this had been accomplished, they proposed to divide the realm of England between them: Northumberland would rule the north, Mortimer the south, and Glendower Wales. This was enshrined in an agreement known as the Tripartite Indenture, and it was signed in February 1405 at Bangor. The conspirators reckoned, however, without the martial Prince of Wales, who vengefully descended on them with a great host, crushed the incipient rebellion, and began the gradual task of clawing back the lands that had been lost to Glendower.
In May 1405, at the Battle of Shipton Moor, the victorious Prince captured one of the rebels’ chief supporters, Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York, a connection of the Percies who had given the rising the Church’s blessing. The King considered this the ultimate treachery and, despite an appeal from Archbishop Arundel for clemency, insisted on Scrope’s execution. Scrope paid the extreme penalty in a field of barley belonging to the nuns of Clementhorpe, having ridden there ‘ignominiously facing the tail of his mare’. Most people regarded the beheading of Scrope as an outrage, and this single act turned the tide of public feeling against Henry IV. He would almost certainly have been excommunicated for executing a prince of the Church but for the fact that the Church was then riven by schism, with rival popes battling for pre-eminence. However, there were many who claimed that miracles were taking place at the dead archbishop’s tomb, and it was said that the King had murdered a saint.
After the rebellion had been suppressed, Northumberland fled abroad, while Glendower and Mortimer, realising that their power was in decline, entrenched themselves in the seemingly impregnable castle at Harlech. In 1408, Northumberland, who had returned to take up arms against the King, was killed at the Battle of Bramham Moor, and the following year, after a six-month siege, Harlech Castle fell to the Prince of Wales, When he breached the walls, the Prince found that Mortimer had ‘brought his days of sorrow to an end’ by dying during the siege. His three infant daughters, and Glendower’s two adult daughters, were still in the castle. These the Prince sent to the Tower where they shortly afterwards died.
Of Glendower there was no trace. He had disappeared into the Welsh hills whence he had come and thence into legend. Such records as we have are mostly silent as to his activities or existence after this time, although he was probably dead by 1417, when his son received a royal pardon.
Henry IV’s title to the crown was enshrined in an Act of Parliament passed in 1406. In 1407 the King took further steps to ensure the future security of his dynasty by excluding his Beaufort half-siblings from their rightful place in the succession. As the only surviving legitimately born son of Gaunt, Henry may well have resented the promotion of the Beauforts, and although he confirmed Richard II’s statute legitimising them, he added an amendment by his own letters patent, inserting the words ‘excepta dignitate regali’, which effectively barred the Beauforts and their descendants from inheriting the throne of England.
However, this amendment was of dubious legality and caused some controversy because it was never incorporated into an Act of Parliament, nor was it approved by Parliament. Nevertheless, it had the effect of debasing the status of the Beauforts, and it was not until much later in the fifteenth century that lawyers acting on their behalf would assert that letters patent could not supersede an Act of Parliament and that consequently the Beauforts should not have been excluded from the succession. That Henry’s bar was not very highly regarded was proved in 1485, when the son of a Beaufort became king of England.
All the Beauforts were competent, vigorous and ambitious people. Lacking an inheritance from Gaunt, whose lands and titles descended to Henry IV, they acquired land and wealth from the Lancastrian kings in return for faithful service and sheer hard work. Both John and Thomas Beaufort were good friends and advisers to Henry IV, serving him in the council chamber and in the field of battle. John’s estates were located mainly in the west of England, and his chief residences were at Corfe Castle in Dorset and Woking in Surrey. He became Great Chamberlain of England and Captain of Calais before dying in 1410 at the Hospital of St Katherine-by-the-Tower in London. He was buried in Canterbury Cathedral and succeeded as Earl of Somerset by his son, who died childless in 1418. He in turn was succeeded by his younger brother, another John Beaufort.
Henry Beaufort had turned out to be a clever and gifted lawyer, and had acquired a substantial number of church appointments. While still in his twenties he had become Chancellor of Oxford and Bishop of Lincoln, and in 1399 he had abandoned Richard II in Ireland and hastened to join Henry of Lancaster. Bishop Beaufort now enjoyed substantial wealth and a luxurious lifestyle. In every sense he was a prince of the Church, and his vow of celibacy did not preclude him from keeping a mistress.
In 1402, the Bishop was made a member of the King’s Council, and in 1404 he was translated to the influential and richest – at around £4000 per annum – of English bishoprics, that of Winchester, where he succeeded William of Wykeham. Despite his youth, he was now a central figure in English politics, entrusted with important matters of diplomacy. His fortune grew steadily from ecclesiastical revenues, the export of wool and manorial rents, and it was at this time that he began to operate as chief financier to the House of Lancaster, to whom he made a steady series of substantial loans and gifts.
Beaufort was proud, volatile and provocative, and had already incurred the enmity of Archbishop Arundel, who was instrumental in persuading Henry IV to exclude the Beauforts from the succession. This enmity may well have been the result of Beaufort making the Archbishop’s niece pregnant.
The youngest of the Beaufort brothers, Thomas, had matured into a man of integrity and wisdom. Less grasping than Henry, he carried out his duties with diligence. Henry IV entrusted him at various times with the offices of Admiral of the North West of Ireland, Aquitaine and Picardy, Commander of Calais, and Chancellor of England. He proved an able strategist and perceived the crucial importance of defending England’s possessions in France. Thomas married a kinswoman of his brother-in-law, the influential Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, and thereby gained a firm friend in the Earl and the backing of the powerful Neville affinity.
Henry IV could count himself fortunate in having the support of his Beaufort half-brothers, whose descendants would remain loyal to the House of Lancaster for the next sixty years.
By 1409 the rebels who had dominated Henry’s first decade as king had been eliminated. He was now on better terms with the French and the Scots, and also with his own magnates, and therefore in a much stronger position. However, he was still short of money, and there had been a noticeable degeneration in law and order. But this was not all that the King had to contend with: from 1405 onwards he suffered extreme ill-health.
The Brut chronicle says that immediately after Archbishop Scrope’s execution Henry was smitten with leprosy, while Giles’s Chronicle claims that the leprosy broke out during the same hour as Scrope’s death. Most people, including the King himself, regarded this visitation as evidence of God’s wrath. The first attack of the disease was terrible indeed, and caused Henry to scream with pain and cry out that he was on fire. Worse still, with pain came disfigurement. John Capgrave says that from 1405 ‘the King lost the beauty of his face. He was a leper, and ever fouler and fouler.’ His face and hands were covered with large pustules ‘like teats’ and his nose became misshapen. The swellings and rashes on his skin grew so vile that few people could bring themselves to look at him. Later on, a tumour grew beneath his nose, and his flesh began to rot. The doctors could do nothing for him. Rumours about his condition were manifold: the French believed his toes and fingers had fallen off, the Scots that he had shrunk to the size of a child.
What was this terrible disease? It was certainly not leprosy. Modern medical opinion is that it could have been syphilis, or tubercular gangrene, combined with erysipelas, which produces a burning sensation. The condition of Henry’s well-preserved face, seen upon his exhumation in 1831, proved that contemporary descriptions of his skin disease were somewhat exaggerated. But in 1408 the King also suffered a mild stroke and thereafter his general health deteriorated. He suffered fainting fits and some form of heart complaint, and was essentially an invalid, unable even to walk on occasions.
As the King’s health declined, the Beauforts successfully increased their influence at court. The Prince of Wales, impatient to wear the crown, sought to gain control of the kingdom and allied himself with his Beaufort uncles in an attempt to seize power. This led to exceedingly strained relations, and eventually total estrangement, between father and son. Despite his illness, the King refused to abdicate. He was determined to govern England himself right to the end, even though he was becoming increasingly enfeebled. When, at times, the burden of sovereignty became too much he relied on Archbishop Arundel, his Chancellor, who tried unsuccessfully to ensure that the Prince of Wales and the Beauforts did not gain control of the government. In 1409 Arundel was forced through young Henry’s machinations to resign as Chancellor, and the Prince and his faction became the dominant power on the Council.
In 1412, Henry IV declared war on France, a war he could not hope to prosecute, although he was planning to lead an army into Aquitaine. Walsingham wrote: ‘I believe that he could have taken France if the strength of his body had equalled the strength of his spirit.’
On 20 March 1413, the King walked painfully to the shrine of St Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey, where he knelt to pray. Suddenly, he collapsed in agony with a seizure. His attendants carried him into the nearby Jerusalem Chamber, so called because of the tapestries depicting the history of Jerusalem which hung there. When he could speak, Henry recalled that he had once expressed a desire to go on a final crusade and die in Jerusalem.
They laid him on a pallet by the fire, but in spite of the warmth he complained that his arms and legs felt cold. Guilt seems to have weighed heavily on him, for he was heard to whisper, ‘Only God knows by what right I took the crown.’ The King’s confessor arrived and begged Henry to repent of the murder of Archbishop Scrope and his usurpation of the throne. Henry replied that he had already received absolution for the killing of Scrope: as for usurping the crown, his son would never let him abjure it.
He was obviously dying. Custom decreed that the crown be placed by his side on a cushion of cloth of gold, and it was brought at once. By then the King appeared to be dead and a napkin was laid over his face. The Prince of Wales had been summoned; he entered the chamber and picked up the crown, about to place it on his head. At that moment the King stirred. He talked for a while with the Prince and was heard to say that he repented of ever having charged himself with the crown of England, for it had proved too heavy a burden for him. At the last he made his peace with his son, and died blessing him.
Henry IV was buried behind the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral, near to the tomb of the Black Prince and the shrine of St Thomas à Becket. Later a fine tomb was erected to his memory, on which were placed marble effigies of Henry and his second wife, Joanna of Navarre, who outlived him by twenty-four years.
Henry left England more prosperous and in a more settled state than he had found it: while he had achieved nothing that brought glory upon himself, he had successfully vanquished his enemies and driven baronial opposition underground, and, although there were still those who regarded him as an upstart whose right to the crown was dubious, his son succeeded unchallenged to the throne.