Henry IV and His Cousin

If Richard II had treated his cousin Henry Bolingbroke a little better, Richard might have stayed king for at least a few more decades. As it happened, Henry forced Richard to relinquish the crown (portrayed here by an anonymous 15th century artist). Richard was to be allowed to retire comfortably after Henry deposed him.

Unfortunately, several of the lords who had supported Richard—and been demoted under the new King Henry IV—planned to murder Henry and restore Richard. Their plot was foiled and the actors executed without trial, but it showed the danger in allowing Richard to be free and the focal point of rebellion.

He was incarcerated in Pontefract Castle around St. Valentine's Day 1400. The constable of Pontefract was Thomas Swynford, a son of Katherine Swynford's first marriage before she married Henry's father John of Gaunt. It is assumed that he died of starvation, possibly self-inflicted. On 17 February his body was displayed in St. Paul's Cathedral—we don't know when he really died, of course—and then interred on 6 March at King's Langley Priory, a Dominican establishment near one of the royal palaces in Hertfordshire. He was only 33.

Despite the public display of the body, there were always rumors that he was still alive. The Duke of Albany in Scotland hosted a man claiming to be Richard at Stirling Castle. He was the catalyst for conspiracy theories in England about Lancastrian intrigues and even some Lollard rumors. Henry's administration simply ignored the rumors right up to the man's death in 1419, but the Dominican friary in Stirling buried him as a king.

Henry IV's son became Henry V in March 1413, and felt the need to atone for his father's usurpation and treatment of Richard. In December of 1413 he re-interred Richard's body from King's Langley to Westminster Abbey as befitted a king of England. There was already a spot for him there, in the elaborate tomb he had made for himself and his wife, Anne of Bohemia.

Let's get away from kings and killing for a bit (well, not completely, as you will see), and talk about the history of Pontefract Castle. I hope you'll check back tomorrow.

Katherine Swynford, Widow

After John of Gaunt died, in 1399, his third wife, Katherine Swynford, lost a lot of status. His health had been declining (he was approaching 60 years old), and in 1398 he had been expelled from England because he had displeased his nephew, King Richard II. On 3 February 1399, Gaunt made a detailed will, leaving all movable possessions (clothing, furniture, jewelry, etc.) to Katherine. He died the next day.

Immediately, the king's escheators (officers meant to keep track of where a decedent's inheritance goes) seized everything, including the Lancaster estates. She made a plea to the king in March, and got the estates returned, along with an annuity of £1000. Later, the king allowed her to keep the estates she had been given prior to marriage with Gaunt, but took the Lancastrian estates, since the king would have to find a new Duke of Lancaster. She gave the estates of Kettlethorpe and Colby (received from her first husband, Sir Hugh Swynford), to her only son from that marriage, Thomas as Swynford. She moved to a rented house in Lincoln, where she lived out the rest of her days.

All this took place in 1399. In the fall of that year, Gaunt's son Henry Bolingbroke (who had been exiled for life by Richard) returned to England, deposing Richard and crowning himself Henry IV. Katherine and Gaunt's children, the Beauforts, and Thomas Swynford supported Henry.

Although the new king referred to Katherine officially as "the Mother of the King," she did not return to court life, staying quietly in Lincoln and all but disappearing from history. In 1400 Henry gave her a new estate in Yorkshire, and £200 of the annual rents of Huntingdonshire, as well as an annuity of 700 marks (this was all in addition to the £1000 that had been assigned to her long ago by Gaunt). She had more than enough to live comfortably anywhere in the kingdom.

She died on 10 May 1403 and was buried in a tomb in Lincoln Cathedral (see the illustration). Made of fine marble and decorated with heraldic shields, with a carved likeness of her on top, it was topped with a brass canopy. The figure of her was partially damaged in 1644 during the English Civil War.

The king who exiled Gaunt and Bolingbroke, Richard II, has been mentioned many times, but not directly discussed. I'll tell you tomorrow about a king who was a boy who did not speak the language of the country he ruled.

Henry V

Henry of Monmouth was so-called because he was born in a tower at Monmouth Castle in Wales, but the date of his birth was not recorded because he was never expected to be king. (It has since been decided to call it 16 September 1386.)

King of England at the time was Richard II. Henry's father was the king's cousin (Henry senior was the son of John of Gaunt, younger brother of Richard II's father, Edward the Black prince.) Henry senior took part in a revolt against Richard, which resulted in his exile in 1398.

At that point, Richard took the twelve-year-old Henry under his wing, taking him to Ireland. A year later, his grandfather John of Gaunt died and the Lancastrian rebellion overthrew Richard and put Henry's father on the throne as Henry IV. Young Henry was now the eldest son of the reigning king, and was named heir apparent, Prince of Wales, and Duke of Lancaster. He also became Duke of Cornwall, Earl of Chester and Duke of Aquitaine.

In 1400 he was named Sheriff of Cornwall and put in charge of part of the military (note that he is about fourteen years old). In 1403 he led an English army to fight Owain Glendower (previously mentioned here). At the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 against Henry Percy (immortalized as "Hotspur" in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1), an arrow was embedded in the left side of our Henry's face.

This would have been dire for any soldier, but the king's son was going to receive the best care. The royal physician treated it with honey as a natural antiseptic, and developed a tool to extract the embedded arrowhead before flushing the wound with alcohol. The patient survived with impressive scars that proved his battle experience (although you'll note the absence of scars in the portrait above).

That physician was John Bradmore, and is too interesting a character to not stop and talk about him next.

Mayor Richard Whittington

One of the most prominent mayors of the City of London in the Middle Ages (and perhaps of all other eras) was Richard Whittington. He was born sometime in the 1350s into a well-to-do family, but as a younger son would not have expected to inherit anything substantial; he was therefore sent to London to learn to be a mercer (a merchant who deals in cloth). Fortunately, he was good at the trade, and by 1388 he was selling to the royal court. He used his growing wealth to become a moneylender, rather than buy property. This ingratiated him to many prominent people; King Richard II was borrowing from him in 1397.

By that time he had been a councilman, an alderman, and a sheriff as well as a powerful member of the Mercers' Company. In 1397, Mayor Adam Bamme died. London and the King were in the middle of a serious dispute: asserting mismanagement, King Richard had appropriated London's real estate. Richard forced London to accept Whittington as mayor. Richard owed Whittington money, and could simply default on the loan. If Whittington wanted his money, he would work with Richard to resolve the dispute. Within days, they struck a deal by which London would receive back all its real estate and right to self-government in exchange for £10,000. That was in June; in October, the citizens elected Whittington mayor in his own right.

In all, he was elected mayor 4 times (though not consecutively). When Richard II was deposed in 1399, Whittington's situation did not suffer: he also had business dealings with Bolingbroke, now King Henry IV, and so he remained on good terms with the (new) King. He also loaned large sums to Henry V, and continued to be successful, as a member of parliament representing London, and even as a judge in usury trials in 1421! Henry V also appointed him supervisor of the funds for rebuilding Westminster Abbey.

He was a magnanimous figure. Money from him helped to rebuild the Guildhall (used as town hall for centuries). He financed drainage systems for parts of London, a ward for unmarried mothers at a hospital, the rebuilding of his ward's church, and "Whittington's Longhouse," a public toilet that seated 128 and was situated so that high tide in the River Thames would flush it out. His will left £7000 to rebuild Newgate Prison, repair St. Bartholomew's Hospital, install public drinking fountains, and more.

Historians know him well, but schoolchildren in England know the name for things he never did, and we will look at that next.

Regarding the Burning of Heretics

In 1401, during the reign of King Henry IV of England, Parliament passed a law known by the phrase, De heretic comburendo ["Regarding the burning of heretics"]. Heresy was always a concern, going back to Pelagius and Arius, but England had a new threat in the Middle Ages, in the form of John Wycliffe, whose attempts at reforming the church and politics did not sit well with those establishments.

True, by 1401 Wycliffe (c.1324-1384) had been dead for years, but his ideas had inspired a movement called Lollardy, and his plan to bring the word of God into the hands of the masses via his English-language Bible ran the risk (according to Church authorities) of leading the faithful astray by giving them the chance to read Scripture without the proper learning to understand its precise meaning. Something had to be done; something proper and legal—after all, England was a country governed by law, not whim.

Hence the De heretic comburendo, which described the Lollards as:

...divers false and perverse people of a certain new sect...they make and write books, they do wickedly instruct and inform people...and commit subversion of the said catholic faith. [link]

The law states further

...and they the same persons and every one of them, after such sentence promulgate shall receive, and them before the people in an high place cause to be burnt, that such punishment may strike fear into the minds of others, ...

This statute stayed on the books in England until 1677.

Chaucer's Enemy

William Thorpe before Arundel, 1407; a case of heresy

Yesterday's post discussed Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, and suggested that he was Chaucer's enemy. Let's discuss that assertion.*

England had become more liberal under Richard II. John Wycliffe had pushed for a more people-oriented approach to Christianity that focused far less respect on the hierarchy of the Church—the hierarchy of which Arundel had reached the pinnacle in England, as Archbishop of Canterbury. Wycliffe had even started producing parts of the Bible in English, accessible to more people. The followers of Wycliffe, called "Lollards," were considered heretical by many, and especially by Arundel. Prior to his exile, he had tried to curb that hotbed of Lollardy, Oxford, and had been rebuffed and insulted by its chancellor. Now, restored as archbishop under Henry IV, Arundel had a freer hand to pursue his goal of asserting harsher control over the moral fiber of the realm.

One of his targets, by necessity, would have been the popular poet whose freely circulated works showed numerous signs of Lollardy. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales constantly mocked the hierarchy of church officials, displaying their worldliness and corruption. The pilgrim who seems to have Chaucer's greatest respect is the antithesis of the worldly Arundel:

The Parson may be poor but he is rich in holy thought and works. He's a learned man—a clerk—and he truly teaches Christ's Gospel. He's benign and diligent and patient in adversity. He is loathe to excommunicate folk because they can't pay their tithes ... and he would rather give them from his own income and property. [Who Murdered Chaucer, p. 219]

But would Arundel's dislike of these portraits turn into action? Well, it was during the reign of Henry IV (in 1401, in fact) that England started burning heretics, and a few years after that (1407) Arundel made knowledge of the Bible by non-clergy a sign of heresy. He was controlling, heavy-handed, vengeful when it came to Oxford and Lollardy and of anything that attacked or mocked the hierarchy of the church.

Jones et alia assert that Arundel's need to change the tone in England may have been the guiding force behind Chaucer's difficulties at the end of his life (Henry IV officially confirmed Chaucer's annuity, but records show that the payments weren't actually forthcoming) and the obscurity with which he was treated when he died—although praised by fellow-poets during his life, there is no public notice taken of his death. Chaucer might have seen the writing on the wall; hence the Retraction he wrote for the Tales in which he asks forgiveness for his vulgar stories and prays for God's mercy, in a tone very different from everything else he has written.

*I give full credit for this theory to the authors of Who Murdered Chaucer, discussed in a previous post.

Thomas Arundel

Thomas Arundel, Lambeth Palace Collection

Let us talk about the "Worst Briton" of the 15th century, according to a 2005 poll of historians, and the man who may have been Chaucer's greatest enemy.

Thomas Arundel (1353-19 February 1414) was a well-born lad of 20 at Oxford when he was made Bishop of Ely. He showed no particular proclivity to the religious life (or the scholarly life, for that matter), but his father—who had considerable financial standing at the court of the increasingly feeble-minded Edward III—arranged it for his son. Ely was a very lucrative position, and Arundel might have been comfortable with it, but good and bad fortune were to follow.

The reign of Richard II, starting in July 1377, was tumultuous. The Peasants' Revolt, waves of the Black Death, financial excesses of the Crown, continuing tensions with France, and maybe just the fact that a France-raised child was now king—all these and more contributed to a general unrest in England. Parliament took steps to curb Richard's authority, creating several political crises as loyalists faced off against the elements of the aristocracy that wanted to increase their own power.

One of the elements that opposed the Crown was Arundel's brother, John FitzAlan, the 1st Baron Arundel. He helped get Thomas promoted to the prestigious position of Archbishop of York in 1388, and eventually pulled Thomas into the political intrigue, getting Thomas' support during a crisis of 1386-88. Thomas did his best to stay on Richard's good side, and succeeded to an extent: Richard even made him Archbishop of Canterbury in 1396, but then exiled him to Florence within a year when Richard had apparently regained enough power to take revenge against those who had opposed him in the 1380s. Richard got Pope Boniface IX to make Arundel the Bishop of St. Andrews in Scotland, a huge demotion.*

But how did any of this make Arundel into Chaucer's enemy?

In 1399, Henry Bolingbroke invaded England and attacked his cousin, Richard II, with the intent to take the throne from him. Arundel joined him, and upon Henry's ascendance to the throne as King Henry IV, Arundel once again became Archbishop of Canterbury, the most powerful prelate in the land. While Henry worked to reverse many of the political works of Richard's reign, Archbishop Arundel set about to change the moral climate of the realm, which he felt had become very slack.

To do that, he had to undo the damage to society perpetrated by two of his countrymen: John Wycliffe and Geoffrey Chaucer.

More on that tomorrow.

*And a huge problem, since the Avignon Crisis was going on at the time, and Scotland recognized the Avignon pope, not the Roman pope, who had already put his own Avignon-loyal bishop in St. Andrews. Boniface needed England's support against Avignon and was happy to help him in the Arundel matter.

The Death of Chaucer

The 25th of October 1400 is the date of the death of Geoffrey Chaucer. Based on the records that exist from 14th century England that refer to him (over 300 of them!), we assume a birthdate around 1340. That would make him about 60 years old at the time of his death, a perfectly respectable number from which one could die of old age.

Unless he was murdered.

Terry Jones, who once amazed us all as the logical Sir Bedivere in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, collaborated on a book that explored what he considers the unsatisfying approach history has given us about the death of the English poet. Who Murdered Chaucer asks why—given that Chaucer was a well-known poet as well as a well-connected civil servant in his lifetime—his death occurs in absolute historical silence.

In 1400 his name simply disappears from the record. We don't know how he died, where or when; there is no official confirmation of his death and no chronicle mentions it; no notice of his funeral or burial. He left no will and there's nothing to tell us what happened to his estate. [Who Murdered Chaucer? Terry Jones, et alia, St. Martins Press, 2003]

Jones and company have a theory, and it is because Chaucer was so integrated into the culture of his day. Besides having enjoyed several well-paying positions, Chaucer had done diplomatic work for his king and was probably more "connected" than most civil servants. When Henry Bolingbroke rebelled against King Richard II and wrested the throne from him—becoming King Henry IV on 30 September 1399—the regime change would have swept from office and political favor those like Chaucer.

In December of 1399, Chaucer had taken out a very long lease on his new apartment; would he have done so if he wasn't healthy and didn't expect a long life ahead of him? He hadn't finished his major work, The Canterbury Tales: according to the "plan" in the Prologue, each pilgrim would tell two tales on the way to Canterbury, and two tales on the way back; the approximately 120 tales would have "one-upped" the 100 tales of Boccaccio's Decameron. Perhaps Chaucer expected a long and peaceful retirement, continuing what he loved to do, out of the public eye.

The authors also point out that Chaucer's contemporary and friend, John Gower, changed the dedication of his great poem, the Confessio Amantis [Latin: Confession of the Lover], from Richard II and Chaucer to Henry Bolingbroke. Even if Gower decided he wanted to support Henry over Richard, why the omission of his friend Chaucer from the dedication? Was Chaucer becoming persona non grata [Latin: "person without grace" or "unwelcome person"] in the changing political climate?

But does all this mean that Chaucer was murdered? The title of Jones' book seems more than a little sensationalistic. Would the king really have taken such a personal interest in suppressing the fate of Chaucer?

Or did Chaucer have an even more oppressive and powerful enemy who held a grudge against him and would be motivated to suppress the poet?

Stay tuned...



[If you are interested in Chaucer and his time, consider the link in the upper-right of this webpage. A Death in Catte Street is my first historical mystery in a proposed series (a sequel is in the works). A young Chaucer finds himself in the middle of a mystery of which the rest of London is unaware. Curiosity and a sense of moral obligation inspire him to delve into the history of England.]