Margery's Travels

Once Margery Kempe decided to dedicate her life fully to religious devotion, she decided a pilgrimage to the Holy Land was in order, inspired by hearing the English translation of the Revelations of Bridget of Sweden. Bridget's work promoted the purchase of indulgences, papal-approved pieces of paper that were intended to reduce your time in Purgatory. Margery bought several indulgences (available at pilgrimage sites) for herself and friends.

Although she spent three months in Venice along the way as well as time in Jerusalem, she records very little of what she saw; she was more interested in telling about conversations she had with Jesus along the way (well, she did mention falling off her donkey because she was so overcome with emotion at the sight of Jerusalem). She stayed in Assisi on the way home, visiting many churches. When she got home, she decided on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

On these trips (and when home in England) she had several negative reactions to her manner. She engaged in loud prayer and wild gesticulating, and her tears flowed constantly. Some found her actions the symptoms of a madwoman, or simply a public nuisance. The mayor of Leicester called her a cheap whore. accused her of Lollardy, and put her in prison for three weeks. She was later accused of heresy in York, but the archbishop of York cleared her.

She visited many religious figures, such as Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Arundel, and the female mystic Julian of Norwich, where she stayed for several days. Margery claims that Julian supported her and assured Margery that her visions were real and valid and that her tears were a sign of real devotion.

Later in life she made another pilgrimage, this time to Prussia in 1433. Specifically, she went to Danzig to see the Holy Blood of Wilsnack relic, three hosts that survived a fire in 1383 that burned down a church and whole village.

We know all this because in the 1420s she asked a priest to take down her story, producing the Book of Margery Kempe (you can read it on the website of my hometown university here). She continued to have the manuscript amended. A copy was made of it just before 1450 by a monk, after which it disappeared. Margery Kempe died some time after 1438, and was quickly forgotten.

Five centuries later, the manuscript...well, let's wrap this up tomorrow when the 20th century discovered Margery Kempe.

Bolingbroke

Edward III of England had several sons. His eldest was also Edward, known as The Black Prince. Another was John of Gaunt. Prince Edward had a son named Richard. Prince John had a son named Henry Bolingbroke. When Edward III died, his heir was Richard, the son of his eldest who had predeceased him. John by that time was Duke of Lancaster, inheriting the title (and vast property) through his father-in-law.

John supported his nephew's accession to the throne, despite the fears of many (including many in parliament) that John might want to take the throne for himself; John was very powerful, wealthy, and shrewd. Richard and his uncle John did not always see eye-to-eye, nor Richard and parliament. John's son Henry had at one point been named a Lord Appellant, a group created to manage the kingdom and supervise Richard, who had become capricious. When Richard had opportunity, he exiled Henry Bolingbroke for 10 years.

On 3 February 1399, John of Gaunt died. Richard refused to allow the title Duke of Lancaster to his cousin Henry; rather, he extended Henry's exile from 10 years to his lifetime. There came a time that Richard had to go to Ireland to deal with a rebellion, at which point Henry Bolingbroke returned to England. He brought with him Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury who had been exiled by Richard as well. With a small military force and Arundel as an advisor, Henry started gathering support and confiscating land from anyone who did not wish to join him. Originally he claimed that he only wanted to get back his rights as Duke of Lancaster, but as he gathered support, anti-Richard sentiment grew.

Ultimately Henry had enough support to declare Richard deposed. Richard was imprisoned. Richard had an heir, the seven-year-old Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March. He was bypassed and Bolingbroke was crowned Henry IV on 13 October 1399. Incidentally, it may have been the first time since 1066 that a king in England at his coronation addressed his subjects using English, not French.

Let's talk about the start of Henry IV's reign tomorrow, and what happened to Richard.

Henry's College Years

Henry V (16 September 1386 - 31 August 1422) was King of England from 1413 until his death.

For a time, in his youth, he was at Queens College in Oxford. There are no records saying he was enrolled (he would have been very young at the time, considering that he was away from Oxford by the time he was sixteen, fighting the Battle of Shrewsbury), but there is other evidence to examine.

For one, his uncle Henry Beaufort was chancellor there from 1397-99. A resident of Oxford named John Rouse affirms in a history that Henry studied there "under the guardianship of his uncle Henry Beaufort, then Chancellor of Oxford."

As king, Henry supported Queens College's rights in a dispute with Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Arundel. After this, Henry made sure that Queens would not be bothered by Canterbury, and instead put it under the protection of the Archbishop of York.

It is also recorded that he learned to appreciate literature and music while at Queens. Prior to Queens he had learned the harp, the recorder, and the flute. While campaigning in 1421 in France he even had a harp delivered to him. As king he granted pensions to musical composers. He is even known to have set to music two parts of the Mass, the Gloria and the Sanctus. Note the illustration and the words in red in the upper-left corner: "Roy Henry." The music is "highly skillful" and was possibly done with help from a professional composer. You can hear the selections at this link.

In a first for an English king, he learned to write in the Middle English vernacular.

Most people's knowledge of Henry is based on Shakespeare's plays. If they remember anything about the plays, it is probably the larger-than-life character of Falstaff. Falstaff was based on a real friend of Henry, Sir John Oldcastle. And yes, Henry had to change his attitude toward Oldcastle radically from when he was a prince. The colorful Sir John Oldcastle and his fate is a good tale for next time.

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.