Chapter 20

ARCHBISHOP ARUNDEL AND THE COUNCIL (1407–1409)

For ten months following the dissolution of the Long Parliament Henry was less active in government, perhaps because his health was still recovering but also because the thirty-one articles were strictly enforced. Initially he remained in London, where on 24 January he attended the wedding of the earl of Kent to Lucia Visconti, before retiring to Hertford for most of February and March.1 When the great council scheduled by parliament eventually met in London in mid-April, it lasted nine weeks, but although the king attended some of the sessions it was Arundel, Tiptoft, and Bishop Bubwith, the treasurer, who drew up new financial guidelines. One of its first acts, on 20 April, was to send a copy of the thirty-one articles to the exchequer, attaching to it a writ saying they were to be implemented without fail, even if Henry himself were to send them an order to the contrary; that this was sent in the king's name was perhaps rather humiliating. In the following month he was obliged to ask the exchequer to deliver money to his chamber ‘without any kind of difficulty or delay’.²

Yet Henry's confidence in his archbishop meant that he was content for the moment to leave day-to-day government in his hands. The number of surviving signet letters of the king fell from an average of over a hundred a year between 1399 and 1406 to about fifteen a year thereafter. Once the council was over, in mid-June he set off for the Midlands and Yorkshire, passing through Leicester, Nottingham and York to the shrine of John of Bridlington, presumably to pray for his health, while Prince Henry returned to Wales to besiege Aberystwyth. Adrift and becalmed, the king nevertheless hoped that his campaigning days were not over. Early in the year he was planning to go to France, and in May and again in September he declared his intention to march against Glyn Dŵr in person, but no royal campaign materialized, though whether this was because he was denied money or because his health prevented him is not clear.3 Nevertheless, Henry continued to keep a close eye on mercantile disputes and negotiations with the French and the Scots, and to impose his will on both the archbishop and the pope in the matter of episcopal appointments,⁴ and before long he began to chafe at the restrictions imposed upon him. When the thirty-one articles had been drawn up, it was agreed that they would remain operative only until the end of the next parliament; by late August, Henry had decided that parliament should meet at Gloucester on 20 October.

The Gloucester parliament proved a good deal more obliging than its predecessor. The commons chose as their speaker the butler of the household, Thomas Chaucer, son of Geoffrey – the first of five occasions that he held the office – but when Chaucer began by criticizing the council which had governed for the previous ten months he was put firmly in his place by Arundel's vigorous defence of both its policies and its integrity, for which, he added, it had received scant gratitude. Between them, the king and the archbishop also secured a grant of one-and-a-half fifteenths and tenths, although not without an ‘altercation’ when Chaucer objected to the fact that the sum requested had been presented to the commons as a fait accompli following negotiations between the king's ministers and the lords. Although the king had to agree that this was not the way things were usually done – that is to say, that the right to determine the level of taxation belonged to the commons, the role of the lords being limited to assent – the sum granted was what the government requested.⁵ However, probably the most important outcome of the parliament from the king's point of view was the dismissal (with royal gratitude) of the council established in December 1406 and the jettisoning of the thirty-one articles. Not that Arundel was dismissed; with Henry's blessing, he retained the chancellorship for two more years, having evidently overcome his reluctance to do so. The difference was that the king was now free to exercise his prerogative.

There were also signs that his strength was returning. When told in early February that Northumberland and Bardolf were back in England and raising another insurrection, he immediately made plans to challenge them. In fact the rapid response of his Yorkshire retainers deprived him of the chance to lead an army in the field. Led by the sheriff, Thomas Rokeby, they blocked the path of the rebel army at Grimbald Bridge near Knaresborough, forcing the earl to make a detour via Tadcaster, where on 19 February his force was encircled by loyalists. A brief fight ensued on Bramham Moor, a few miles to the west of the town, in which Northumberland was killed and Bardolf so severely wounded that he died soon after. Their heads were brought to the king at Stony Stratford and that of Northumberland, ‘with its fine head of white hair’, impaled on a lance and sent south to be placed on London Bridge.6 Henry went north anyway to supervise the mopping-up operation, despite it being one of the harshest winters in living memory. Leaving London at the beginning of March, he spent twelve days at Wheel Hall, a few miles south of York, sentencing or pardoning rebels, and then three weeks, including Easter, at Pontefract. By the end of May he was back at the Tower of London, whence he travelled upriver to stay with Archbishop Arundel at Mortlake. Here, towards the end of June 1408, he suddenly collapsed.

It was immediately apparent that what the king had suffered was a good deal more serious than what had afflicted him two years earlier; for a while he was even thought to have died.⁷ Henry's illness defies precise diagnosis, but it is safe to say that it was not the leprosy claimed by those contemporaries, French and Scottish as well as English, who believed that the king was being punished for the death of Archbishop Scrope. On the other hand, his symptoms evidently did include a disfiguring skin disease, variously reported as a burning sensation, as ‘great pustules’ on his face and hands, or by Adam Usk as ‘festering of the flesh [and] dehydration of the eyes’.⁸ He had suffered from the pox aged twenty, and his skin probably became more prone to rashes, or perhaps psoriatic, as he grew older. Yet this cannot have been the whole story. He remained at Mortlake for nearly a month, only resuming work in mid-July, and for the rest of his life his health remained precarious. He now travelled more by water and often preferred the seclusion of friends’ houses to royal residences.⁹ In September he engaged an Italian physician, David Nigarellis of Lucca, but although he was fit enough to preside over debates about the Schism in July and October, by early December it was thought prudent to recall Princes Henry and Thomas to Westminster.10

In mid-January 1409 the king suffered a relapse and believed himself to be dying: on 21 January he made a will regretting his ‘misspent life’ and four days later issued a general pardon to those who had rebelled against him. The grooms of his chamber who now cared for him, ‘sleeping around the king's bed at night’, featured prominently in his will. By this time he had been moved to Greenwich, whence he wrote on 1 March to the duke of Berry saying he had been seriously ill for six weeks.¹¹ By mid-March the crisis had passed, but despite Henry's protestation to Arundel on 31 March that he was no longer ill, in fact his health was from now on a constant concern.¹² Clearly this was something more disabling than a skin condition: perhaps a circulatory problem which weakened his heart, perhaps a chronic intestinal condition following his prolapsed rectum. His collapses were not strokes, for his brain seems to have been unaffected and his resolve to govern insofar as he could was undimmed. He was later reported to have told his son on his deathbed that his illness had made his mind stronger and more devout.¹³ That is quite plausible, but it inevitably placed strains on England's polity.

In such a crisis, those who expected, and were expected, to assume the burden of rule were the great lords of the realm, but as events in France demonstrated this was never straightforward. In Henry's case, however, there were compensating factors. First, unlike Charles VI, he remained sane at all times and capable of ruling much of the time; secondly, he had a large family; thirdly, the tight group of advisers on whom he relied had always been small and they were accustomed to working together, although naturally there were rivalries and individuals' influence fluctuated. For instance, once Arundel assumed control of the administration, that of the Beauforts certainly diminished. John Beaufort also suffered bouts of ill health from 1407 onwards, while his younger brothers were not fully trusted by the archbishop, who did not look kindly upon either the worldly and ecclesiastically uninterested Henry Beaufort or the conspicuous role his brother Thomas had played in Richard Scrope's trial. When John Beaufort, perhaps afflicted by illness, requested in February 1407 that the act legitimating him and his siblings ten years earlier be confirmed, it was probably at Arundel's prompting that its wording was altered to exclude any possibility that they might in future claim the crown. To be sure, such a possibility seemed remote at the time, for the king's sons and arguably several others stood between them and the throne, but this only made their exclusion seem gratuitous.14 There was no public falling-out with Arundel, and John and Henry Beaufort remained on the council through 1407 and beyond, but they were not the dominant force they had been or would again be.

In their place it was the king's sons who now came to the fore. Fortunately – though not fortuitously – by the time Henry became seriously ill his three elder sons all had several years' experience of military command and the financial responsibilities that came with it. As children, he had taken care to educate them, giving them personal tutors and ensuring they were schooled in Latin and music as well as leadership and swordplay; once he became king he tried to make time to spend with them.¹⁵ Barely had they reached adolescence when great responsibilities were thrust upon them. Henry became prince of Wales at the age of thirteen, Thomas lieutenant of Ireland and John warden of the East March at fourteen. Their role as imperial viceroys was a way of testing their suitability for kingship as well as underlining the primacy of the king's family, just as the increasing use of phrases such as ‘our dearest brother' or ‘our most beloved son’ during the second half of the reign underlined its unity.16 After 1406, especially after 1408, Henry's kingship gradually shaded into Lancastrian family government.

Yet although he groomed his sons for power, Henry did not indulge them, a point that did not pass unnoticed. In 1407, and again in 1410, the commons reminded the king that none of his younger sons had been granted the titles and lands that befitted their status and asked him to rectify the situation, but he was in no hurry to do so. Financial considerations doubtless played a part in this; as he told the commons in 1410, he would promote and endow his younger sons ‘as soon as it could well be done’.¹⁷ But there was also method in the king's meanness: he wanted to keep his sons hungry, and he wished to reserve for himself the option of using their marriages for diplomatic advantage.¹⁸ He also knew better than most that their characters and capabilities were very different: the impolitic and restless Thomas was said to make hard war on those who crossed him, but was a great promoter of those loyal to him; John was dutiful and upright, a man of good habits and a worker for peace; Humphrey was ‘most learned’.¹⁹ Yet it was Prince Henry, the heir to the throne, who was naturally the focus of attention. The 1406 parliament marked the prince's entry into politics, and from now on he was frequently listed as a member of the council and a witness to royal charters.²⁰ However, it was only from the winter of 1408–9 that his mission in Wales allowed him to devote the majority of his time to English affairs; until then it was Archbishop Arundel who continued to drive the policy agenda at Westminster.

Nor was there any doubt about what Arundel placed at the top of that agenda; the outstanding achievement of his administration was the restoration of solvency to crown finance. Insofar as this was done, it was principally by orthodox means such as restricting expenditure, improving cash flow to the exchequer, establishing priorities and appointing competent officers subject to conciliar supervision. The experiments of 1404–6 were mostly jettisoned. In certain respects Arundel was fortunate, for improved security in the Channel and the North Sea led to a surge in wool exports, to 13,000 sacks in 1406–7, 15,000 in 1407–8, and 17,000 (the highest total of the reign) in 1408–9.21 Yet the policy also bore its maker's hallmark, for Arundel's instincts were conservative and he had made it clear during his terms as chancellor in the 1380s and 1390s that his understanding of the idea of reform was not innovation but a return to first principles.²² This began straight after Christmas 1406 with a moratorium on payments from the exchequer. The first two months of 1407 witnessed no issues of either cash or assignments, despite the fact that the exchequer was open on eight days between 19 January and 4 March. Meanwhile, the proceeds of the lay subsidy granted in December were allowed to accumulate, and by 23 April, when the last substantial payment arrived, more than £30,000 had been amassed.²³ The moratorium on assignments meant that this was almost entirely in cash, a deliberate policy of channelling revenues through the exchequer rather than allowing them to be anticipated at source through the issue of tallies. The collection and disbursement of revenues was to be controlled from the centre, thereby enabling effective planning and prioritized allocations. The sum of £40,025 received in cash at the exchequer during the Michaelmas 1406–7 term – nearly all of it in February and March – was twice as much as it had received in cash in any term of the reign hitherto.²⁴

It was soon needed, for around Christmas time a crisis developed at Calais when the garrison, despairing of being paid, seized the wool in the town's warehouses in the hope of selling it to recoup their arrears. Finding the £18,000 a year which the garrison cost in time of war was never easy, but following the dismissal of the war-treasurers in the 1406 parliament the system of reserving a portion of the wool subsidy for Calais more or less broke down, and by 1407 the town's treasurer, Robert Thorley, was £30,000 in arrears.25 The government's initial reaction was to offer the mutineers just £5,000 in assignments, but in early March a more realistic agreement was drafted, perhaps as a consequence of a new threat to the town (real or imagined) from Burgundy.²⁶ The London merchant and former war-treasurer Richard Merlawe became treasurer of Calais, the stapler merchants upon whom its prosperity depended were given a greater say in running its finances, reservations on the wool subsidy were renewed, and in April the great council arranged for £19,500 to be sent across the Channel during the next two months.²⁷ This calmed the situation, although it added fuel to the debate over the long-term funding of the garrison, a question that later proved divisive.

This injection of cash to Calais meant, however, that less was available to distribute to others. This was the task of the great council which met in London in mid-April.²⁸ Allocations were made in cash, thus reducing the risk that sources of revenue would become over-committed, leading to uncashable tallies and the creation of fictitious loans. In 1406, only 47 per cent of all issues were in cash; in 1407, the figure was 83 per cent. Control over the exchequer was also tightened by limiting the ability of regular spenders such as royal lieutenants or the household to use recurrent writs to secure funds: specific writs authorizing one-off issues and their sources were now more widely (though not exclusively) needed to secure payments, for the open-ended nature of recurrent writs created uncertainty about which revenues had been tapped. The most difficult task, however, was to decide on the order of priorities between spenders. Military and defence expenditure topped the list: £12,086 was allocated to Prince Henry for operations in Wales in addition to the £19,543 sent to Calais, but the decision to return to the system whereby half of the wool customs was reserved for Calais left dangerously little for Scotland, Guyenne, Ireland or sea-defence; until the next crisis, they would simply have to make do.29 A further complication was the king's desire to lead his own campaign to Wales. Bowing to his wishes, the council allocated him over £10,000 from the lay subsidy; when the royal campaign was abandoned, some £5,000 of this was instead used to finance the royal household.

Although this use of the lay subsidy to fund the household was noted on the exchequer receipt roll, such had not been the intention of the council; misappropriation of taxation granted for defence was after all contrary to one of the commons' cherished principles, which the appointment of war-treasurers in 1404 had been explicitly intended to uphold and the thirty-one articles implicitly confirmed.³⁰ On the other hand, it had been agreed in parliament that £6,000 from the wool subsidy would be given directly to the king to be spent as he wished, the expectation presumably being that at least part of this would be spent on the household, so the council in 1407 had already begun to retreat from the principle of using taxation only for purposes of defence. This retreat would not be confirmed for another year, but it is noteworthy that no complaint was heard in the Gloucester parliament about what would assuredly have been deemed misuse of taxes two or three years earlier.³¹ There were three main reasons for this. The first was that the king had been obliged to surrender his power to authorize payments from the exchequer: in other words, he had agreed that his right to make grants should be subject to conciliar supervision, something which the commons had been urging on him since the start of the reign.³² The second was because under the eye of its new treasurer, John Tiptoft, household spending was being brought under control. Between December 1406 and July 1408 (Tiptoft's period of office) the annual average expenditure of the wardrobe was £20,446, about four-fifths of what it had been between 1399 and 1406.³³ There were doubtless many who still regarded this as excessive, and the Gloucester parliament complained that the household was continuing to abuse its right of purveyance. Yet the combination of reduced expenditure (attributable in part to Henry's shrinking itinerary) and flexibility in the use of taxation meant that criticism regularly directed at the household during the first half of the reign now subsided. The third reason for satisfaction was the resumption of payment of annuities. After 1406 it was generally annuitants rather than household creditors who were given preference on non-taxative sources of revenue – another beneficial effect of the use of taxation to support the household, for it relieved the pressure on ordinary revenues.34 For the next two or three years, annuities were paid more regularly and many arrears were cleared, thereby rebuilding trust among the regime's supporters.

It was thus with both vigour and justification that Arundel defended the council's financial policy to the October 1407 parliament, and although the commons quibbled over procedure they granted the one-and-a-half lay subsidies which he requested, to be paid in three instalments between February 1408 and February 1409.³⁵ In return, the king promised not to request any more lay subsidies until March 1410 and to step up annuity payments, at least ‘to those who have deserved it’, a refrain which now began to figure increasingly in government rhetoric.³⁶ With the wool customs also renewed until Michaelmas 1410 and convocation voting one-and-a-half clerical tenths, the council had a clear idea of how much money it had to spend over the next three years, and detailed financial planning could begin. Broadly speaking, the policy of maintaining exchequer control of revenues was continued, although the percentage of cash it received was never as high again as it had been in 1407, with the year from Easter 1408 to Easter 1409 showing an almost exact balance between cash and revenues assigned by tallies.³⁷ What really mattered, however, was whether tallies would translate into cash, and the fact that fictitious loans accounted for less than £800 during this year indicates that assignment was usually a successful operation and thus that the council was continuing to estimate and allocate resources with care.³⁸ This is reflected in the orderliness of the issue rolls for these two terms: substantial arrears of annuities and debts of the household from earlier years were cleared, and hardly any sources were overcommitted.39

As in the previous year, a review of resources was undertaken during a great council meeting in late January and early February 1408 (although this year there was no moratorium on issues during these months), and the decisions taken then acted upon in March.⁴⁰ Naturally, priorities had changed. Under pressure from the staplers, the commons had asked that attention be paid to Calais and the security of the Channel, and their requests were heeded.⁴¹ The reservation of half of the wool subsidy for Calais was extended for another year, and £10,100 was given to the new admiral, the earl of Kent, to sweep the sea of pirates.⁴² Prince Henry was given a further £13,890 for Wales, while the Scottish marches and Ireland, having been neglected in 1407, were by now desperate for resources: Prince John and the earl of Westmorland were allocated £9,500 for the former and Prince Thomas £4,666 for the latter. The indenture agreed with Thomas in February 1408, which covered the next three years, specified the individual tax-collectors from whom his current allocations and outstanding debts were to be drawn, as well as his ranking in the order of priorities, an example of the attention to detail now underpinning global budgeting decisions at Westminster.⁴³

However, the most radical decision taken by the council in early 1408 was that all sources might now be used to fund the household: £7,000 of its income was to come from the first instalment of the lay subsidy, £4,000 from the wool customs, and all the income from alien priories, episcopal and abbatial vacancies, wards, marriages and other feudal casualties was to be reserved exclusively for its use, existing annuitants excepted.⁴⁴ The decision to use lay subsidies for the household seems not to have been controversial, and in November its projected income from this source was raised to £10,000, although the council simultaneously resurrected the idea of a certum, set at £16,000 for the wardrobe and £4,000 for the king's chamber. This was not effective: wardrobe expenditure alone stood at £20,463 in 1408–9, while the chamber devoured another £8,000 and the great wardrobe over £1,500.45 Nevertheless, the freeing up of ordinary revenues allowed many annuitants' arrears to be cleared during the year and this, combined with the relative reduction of household expenditure, the clearing of some of its debts, the general reliability of assignments and the king's restraint in making grants, meant that, in the absence of military or other emergencies, the council was justified in believing its policy was working.

Early in 1409, therefore, another budget review was held. Calais, Ireland and the household had already been provided for, but following the last half lay subsidy (payable on 2 February) no further direct taxation was due from either laity or clergy during the year, and the mood was cautious. The allocations to Wales and the Scottish marches were reduced by half to around £5,000 each.⁴⁶ Yet even these reduced payments soon strained the exchequer, and as revenue dried up during the spring and summer of 1409, fictitious loans once again became a problem, totalling around £12,700 between Easter 1409 and Easter 1410, and there was increased resort to borrowing, mainly from the Londoners.⁴⁷ The council continued to try to allocate resources as rationally as possible: following his illness in the spring, Henry begged Arundel to ensure that provision was made for Queen Joan, who always had difficulty securing payment of her 10,000 marks a year dower, and by 1 July Arundel had made the necessary arrangements. The queen now surrendered the letters patent issued to her in 1403 and was instead given a mixed bag of assignments, mainly on the customs and alien priories, totalling some £2,800 (she also received around £1,000 a year from the duchy of Lancaster). Although promised less than in 1403, the strong likelihood is that she would actually receive more. The allocation to her of revenues from the alien priories was a characteristically pragmatic step. Tiptoft had noted in the parliament of 1406 that the failure to pay her dower meant that Joan was unable to make her expected contribution to the income of the royal household; the alien priories had been reserved for the household, and the new arrangements made in July 1409 must have envisaged that that is what they would be used for. Her expenditure was also being more carefully monitored by now.48

Tiptoft's role in stabilizing royal finances in 1407–9 was as influential as Arundel's. For eight months in 1407 he served as both keeper of the wardrobe and chief butler to the king, thus simultaneously controlling the wardrobe's two main spending offices and enabling him to cut expenditure by 20 per cent.⁴⁹ In July 1408 he was promoted to the treasurership of the realm, for which he was granted 200 marks a year on top of the usual fee for his ‘very good service’.⁵⁰ Meanwhile, in late 1407, he married Philippa, widow of Sir Matthew Gournay, as a result of which he became seneschal of Les Landes and constable of Dax in Guyenne.⁵¹ These interests encouraged him to try to reform the exchequer at Bordeaux, for which task he chose Jean de Bourdieu (or Bordili), a Gascon doctor of laws and canon of Bordeaux cathedral. Bourdieu was already the king's procurator-fiscal in Guyenne and lieutenant to the constable of Bordeaux, William Farrington (the duchy's chief financial officer), and in August 1408, a month after Tiptoft became treasurer of England and almost certainly on his initiative, Bourdieu was granted the keepership of the seal of the superior court of Guyenne and asked to carry out an audit of the accounts of the constable and his former lieutenant, Sir John Mitford, sending his report to the exchequer at Westminster. At the same time, all royal officials in the duchy were told not to meddle with the raising of royal revenue but to ensure that it was delivered directly to the constable, who in turn was ordered to make sure these officials were paid first, followed by others with royal grants in accordance with the dates of their grants. What Tiptoft was trying to establish in the duchy was a system of centralized revenue collection and rationalized priorities such as he and Arundel had implemented in England since early 1407.52 He faced opposition, however, for the constable's accounts had never been subject to local audit and Farrington and Mitford reacted angrily to this intrusion on their autonomy. Bourdieu had already crossed swords with Mitford, whom he had replaced as Farrington's lieutenant in January 1408, and whose unorthodox financial transactions were now subjected to close scrutiny, but Tiptoft backed Bourdieu strongly and on 21 August 1409 ordered Farrington to arrest Mitford and bring him to Westminster along with both men's accounts so that they could be properly audited. On the same day, Bourdieu was promoted to the chancellorship of the duchy with power to supervise all income and expenditure, submitting annual accounts to the exchequer at Westminster, and all officials in Guyenne, Farrington included, were ordered to obey him. He remained chancellor of the duchy until the end of the reign and beyond.⁵³

Although the impact of these reforms on the finances of Guyenne is unknown, the thrust of the policy is clear. In Ireland too, where, as in Guyenne, there was a local exchequer, attempts were made from early 1407 to establish more control over the collection and disbursement of revenues, although again the effect is unknown.⁵⁴ In England, at any rate, it is clear that the reforms introduced by Arundel and Tiptoft made 1408, financially speaking, the best year of the reign. By the autumn of 1409, however, they were running into the sand. Without new grants of direct taxation, competition for resources was creating rivalries and economies were needed: in November an attempt was made to reduce the wardrobe's annual expenditure to £13,333, but when the keeper tried to secure a down payment on this on 22 November, nearly a third of it had to be borrowed from the city of London.⁵⁵ The decision in the same month to cut the proportion of the wool subsidy reservation for Calais from a half to a quarter pushed Prince Henry's patience to the limit, for he had assumed the role of champion of the garrison. Within the next fortnight matters came to a head. A council meeting at Westminster led to a row over the allocation of resources, and on 11 December Tiptoft either resigned or was dismissed from the treasury. He had already sent letters to the customs collectors telling them to send their receipts to the exchequer rather than directly to Calais, but the king, probably urged on by the prince, rather than appointing a new treasurer, issued letters under his signet countermanding Tipftoft's instructions.56 Parliament had already been summoned to Bristol, perhaps to escape the pressure of the London mercantile and stapler communities, but on 18 December the venue was switched to Westminster. Three days later Arundel resigned the chancellorship. Once again the king did not appoint a replacement but kept the great seal with him for almost a month, during which writs were sealed at his oral instruction.⁵⁷ Against the background of this unusual hiatus, a power struggle was played out for control of the crown's executive and resources. The first indication of its outcome came on 6 January 1410, with the appointment as treasurer of the prince's supporter Henry Lord Scrope of Masham, but not until 19 January was the prince's ascendancy confirmed when the king was obliged to countermand the signet letters he had sent to the customs collectors in early December and to place the great seal in the custody of John Wakering, keeper of the rolls of chancery.⁵⁸ It took another twelve days for a new chancellor to be appointed, during which time parliament met (on 27 January). The choice of Thomas Beaufort as chancellor four days later marked the definitive collapse of Archbishop Arundel's administration, and the parliament that followed served as midwife to Prince Henry's assumption of power.

¹ A decade earlier, Lucia had thought about marrying Henry. He now gave her away at the church door and gave her a wedding gift of a pair of gold dishes ‘engraved with sun rays inside and out’ (Mackman, ‘Hidden Gems’, 71); in Nov. 1408, Henry redeemed silver vessels worth £200 for her (CPR 1408–13, 147).

² E 175/11/32 (aliquo mandato nostro vobis in contrariam directo non obstante . . . per ipsum regem); E 403/591, 1 June (absque dilatio aut difficultate quacunque).

³ Probably the latter, for on 2 June he was promised £2,000 for his retainers and given £1,236 of it: although received in his chamber, it was lay subsidy money (E 403/591, 1 June, 2 June; E 403/593, 3 Oct.; Foedera, viii.466).

⁴ Below, pp. 354–60; Foedera, viii.466, 478–9; Signet Letters, nos. 688–706.

⁵ PROME, viii.417–18, 422, 425–9.

⁶ SAC II, 530–5.

⁷ SAC II, 534–7. He was at Mortlake from 19 June to 12 July.

⁸ Usk, 247; CE, 405–8, 421 and Giles, 47, both claimed that leprosy afflicted him immediately after Scrope's beheading, but he was riding and campaigning again within a week; cf. Mortimer, Fears, 300–3; P. McNiven, ‘The Problem of Henry IV's Health’, EHR 100 (1985), 747–72. The examination of Henry's face in 1832 (see pp. 523–5) showed his nasal cartilage still intact, most unlikely for a leper.

⁹ Among those in whose houses he stayed during 1408–9 were Hugh Waterton, Henry Beaufort, Henry Bowet and John Fordham, bishop of Ely: D. Biggs, ‘An Ill and Infirm King: Henry IV, Health, and the Gloucester Parliament of 1407’, in The Reign of Henry IV: Rebellion and Survival, ed. G. Dodd and D. Biggs (York, 2008), 180–209; Wylie and Waugh, Reign of Henry IV, iii.159, 246.

¹⁰ E 403/596, 4 Dec., although Thomas only arrived in March. On 30 Nov. the king was looking forward to the festive season, ordering 1,000 marks to be set aside ‘for the array of our person’ for Christmas (E 404/24, no. 252).

¹¹ J. Nichols, A Collection of all the Wills of the Kings and Queens of England (Society of Antiquaries, London, 1780), 203–7; E 403/596, 13 February (the general pardon was extended in May: E 403/599, 23 May); Signet Letters, no. 952. The grooms and other personal servants who he asked his executors to reward were Wilkin, John Warren, William Thorpe, Thomas de la Croix, Jacob Raysh and Halley. The garciones vigilatores circa lectam domini in noctibus named in the 1408–9 great wardrobe account were John Halley, John Warren, William Thorpe, John Burford and William Wardell (E 101/405/22, fo. 31).

¹² SAC II, 564–5; Signet Letters, nos. 735–6. Henry often commented on his health in his letters; Prince Henry apparently liked to be reassured about his father's health (ANLP, 286–7, 405, 465; CDS, v.917). Letters saying he was ‘in good health’ are thus not evidence that he had been ill, although in 1409 this was certainly the case. In October 1409 a royal sergeant, Henry Fowler, had permission to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land for ‘the convalescence and health of the king's person’ (CPR 1408–13, 113).

¹³ De Illustribus Henricis, 111.

¹⁴ CPR 1405–8, 284. This was done by inserting the words excepta dignitate regali in the clause specifying the inheritances to which they were entitled; the duke of York and his brother, to say nothing of the two Mortimer boys, would certainly have been considered closer to the throne than the Beauforts (McNiven, Heresy and Politics, 134).

¹⁵ Prince Henry's tutor in 1398–9 was Peter Melbourne, Thomas's was Winslow Dorstayner, and John's was Thomas Rothwell: Henry bought ‘seven books of grammar in one volume’, costing four shillings, for Henry, a Latin grammar for John, and ‘two books of ABC’ for his daughters; also swords, bucklers, hauberks, daggers and horses (DL 28/1/10, fo. 2v; 28/1/6, fo. 11r, 36v; 28/1/5, fo. 34r; 28/4/1, fos 13–14; 29/1/9, fos 2v, 3v, 14v, 22v; ANLP, 404).

¹⁶ His plans for Humphrey, twenty-two at his father's death but less dashing than Thomas and less politic than John, are not clear: G. Harriss, ‘Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester’, ODNB. 28.787–93. Humphrey may have chafed at the lack of responsibility, but there is no evidence of disloyalty to his father, although he was involved in a property dispute with the duke of York in 1409, which the king decided in York's favour; Humphrey's ‘warden’ at this time was John Hartlepool (CPR 1408–13, 150; Biggs, ‘Witness Lists’, 414–15).

¹⁷ PROME, viii. 427, 482. In fact he did begin to provide for them, perhaps in response to parliament: Humphrey received 5,000 marks to purchase the reversion of the lands of Sir Matthew Gournay in November 1407, and John was given the remaining lands of Northumberland and Hotspur in the king's hands in July 1410: E 403/593, 16 Nov., 4 Dec. (Humphrey's treasurer, ‘Arkesworth’, was given 2,000 of the 5,000 marks straight away); CPR 1408–13, 212.

¹⁸ In January 1410, it was suggested that John might marry a daughter of the duke of Albany (POPC, i.326.)

¹⁹ De Illustribus Henricis, 109. Thomas's men twice became involved in affrays with the Londoners in 1410–11, once in association with John's men (Chronicle of London 1089–1453, 93).

²⁰ After November 1406, the prince witnessed 57 per cent of royal charters (Biggs, ‘Witness Lists’), 415.

²¹ Carus-Wilson and Coleman, England's Export Trade, 122–3.

²² M. Aston, Thomas Arundel (Oxford, 1967), 351–2, 377.

²³ Most of the lay subsidy, due for collection on 14 February, was received from 22 February to 4 March: E 403/589 and 657 (issue rolls, showing no payments from 13 December to 4 March); E 401/639, 22 Feb., 1 March, 4 March; E 401/641, 4, 13, 15, 22 and 23 April (receipt rolls).

²⁴ Steel, Receipt, 94–5.

²⁵ The system of reservation had worked reasonably well since 1390, but in 1406 the pressure on the exchequer was too great: Grummitt, ‘Financial Administration of Calais’, 277–99; £30,000 was Thorley's debt in June 1407, but he ceased to be treasurer in March; see the letter from the garrison to the king in January 1407 (RHL, ii.145–8).

²⁶ Foedera, viii.466; the French took Oye castle round this time; the English responded, taking Pouille (SAC II, 516).

²⁷ E 403/589, 11 Dec.; E 403/591, 9 and 24 May, 12 and 23 June; Tiptoft went to Calais to supervise the payments.

²⁸ Wright, ‘Recovery of Royal Finance’, 72–81.

²⁹ £1,000 was allocated to Scotland, but nothing for Ireland or the sea: Wright, ‘Recovery of Royal Finance’, 78; Griffiths, ‘Prince Henry, Wales and the English Exchequer’, 214; Grummitt, ‘Financial Administration of Calais’, 298.

³⁰ E 403/591, 2 May; Wright, ‘Recovery of Royal Finance’, 76–7.

³¹ RHKA, 130; cf. CPR 1405–8, 297.

³² G. Harriss, ‘Budgeting at the Medieval Exchequer’, in War, Government and Aristocracy in the British Isles c.1150–1500: Essays in Honour of Michael Prestwich, ed. C. Given-Wilson, A. Kettle and L. Scales (Woodbridge, 2008), 179–96, at p. 189. Hence Henry's writ to the exchequer in April 1407 (above p. 302). The commons alleged tactfully in 1401 that people took advantage of Henry's ‘kindness and generosity’ (PROME, viii.150).

³³ RHKA, 76–94, 271–2. The cost of the household thus fell to £30,300 a year, despite increased exchequer issues to the chamber, up from £4,300 in 1399–1406 to £8,000 in 1407–13: Wright, ‘Recovery of Royal Finance’, 76–7.

³⁴ RHKA, 135–7.

³⁵ For the ‘altercation’ with the commons, see above, p. 303.

³⁶ PROME, viii.427–9.

³⁷ Steel, Receipt, 97–8 (£50,710 was received in cash during this year, £51,353 assigned).

³⁸ However, in the first few months of 1408, before the new subsidies began to come in, there was a crop of fictitious loans totalling over £7,000, which had to be reassigned later in the year (Steel, Receipt, 96–8, 457).

³⁹ E 403/595 and 596. On 16 Feb. 1409 the council ordered the payment of all arrears of annuities ‘to the best of your ability, according to the discretion of you, the treasurer’ (E 404/24, no. 292, and see nos. 39, 103, 189, for examples of individual writs for payment of arrears).

⁴⁰ E 403/594, 13 Dec. 1407 (summons of great council); the lay subsidy was yielding large sums from 3 Feb. 1408 (E 401/643, 3, 11, 14 Feb.).

⁴¹ The Calais staplers also lobbied the council to maintain their share of the wool subsidy and their monopoly over exports, as well as to preserve the truce with Flanders (POPC, i.305–9).

⁴² Kent went to sea but was killed in a raid off the Breton coast in August (below, p. 329).

⁴³ BL Cotton Titus B. xi (CPR 1405–8, 431–2).

⁴⁴ Harriss, ‘Budgeting at the Medieval Exchequer’, 190; Foedera, viii.510; CPR 1405–8, 408. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 44–6, gives slightly different figures based on warrants (E 404) rather than issue rolls (E 403).

⁴⁵ For the certum of 1404, see above, p. 284;. RHKA, 94, 272; CPR 1408–13, 35; E 403/606, 20 Nov.; E 404/24, no. 272. The great wardrobe received £1,750 from the exchequer in 1407–8 and £1,593 in 1408–9, and lesser sums from other sources. This did not cover its expenditure: William Loveney left office in May 1408 with debts totalling £4,733 and his successor, Richard Clifford, incurred nearly £2,000 of debts during his first fifteen months (E 101/405/13 and 22). Some of the chamber's money came from the duchy of Lancaster: Rogers, ‘Royal Household’, 172, 670.

⁴⁶ E 403/596, 13 Feb., 1 March. The absence or loss of council records from mid-1408 to mid-1409 makes this process obscure. Prince Henry received £5,204 for Wales between Sept. 1408 and Sept. 1409 (Griffiths, ‘Prince Henry, Wales and the English Exchequer’, 215).

⁴⁷ Steel, Receipt, 98–9.

⁴⁸ Signet Letters, no. 736; CPR 1408–13, 85–7; PROME, viii.348, 477–8; DL 28/27/1 and 9. For moving her household from Havering (Essex) to Gloucester in the autumn of 1407, Joan was allocated 100 marks; for moving on from Gloucester to Malmesbury (Wiltshire), 10 marks (E 403/593, 16 Nov.). There is no record of Joan making contributions to the income of the royal household, as queens were expected to do; Philippa of Hainault, wife of Edward III, had paid £3,650 a year to the wardrobe when her household merged with the king's; Anne of Bohemia, wife of Richard II, paid £1,200 a year in the 1390s (RHKA, 93–4).

⁴⁹ L. Clark, ‘John Tiptoft’, ODNB, 54.832–3.

⁵⁰ E 404/24, no. 505 (21 May 1409).

⁵¹ In Sept. 1408 he also became prévôt of Entre-deux-Mers (CGR 1407–9, nos. 53, 78).

⁵² CGR 1407–9, Introduction (by Guilhem Pepin) and nos. 24, 28, 30, 43, 44. The appointment in Sept. 1408 of Adam de Urswick as receiver of revenues at Fronsac was doubtless part of the same programme (no. 45). The 1406 parliament had already passed an ordinance forbidding the granting of any crown revenues in the duchy until the end of the 1407 parliament (no. 9).

⁵³ CGR 1407–9, 65, 66, 119, 121, 125, 126 (Mitford's unorthodox transactions), 140; Foedera, viii.595–6.

⁵⁴ CIRCLE CR 1406–7, no. 3 (25 Jan. 1407); PR 1408–9, no. 96; PR 1409–10, no. 58.

⁵⁵ Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 48–9; cf. CPR 1408–13, 151. For the issue of £8,618 to Thomas Brounfleet, keeper of the wardrobe, he was given tallies for £5,951 and borrowed £2,666 from London (E 403/602, 22 Nov.).

⁵⁶ These have not survived, but must have ordered the collectors either to bring their takings to the household or to assign them to recipients whom the king specified (CCR 1409–13, 25–6, 51; McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings, 107–8).

⁵⁷ CPR 1408–13, 229–35. Over fifty writs were sealed during this time, none of them controversial, several relating to Guyenne and the restitution of goods seized from foreign merchants.

⁵⁸ CCR 1409–13, 73, 115. Wakering did not relish this role: when asked to keep the great seal again in June 1411 during the twelve-day absence of Thomas Beaufort, he was very reluctant (CCR 1409–13, 224–5).