THE MAKING OF A DISSIDENT (1382–1387)
The Passenham dispute was the prelude to Henry's rapid estrangement after 1382 from Richard II's court. Between 1379 and 1381 he had continued to receive winter and summer livery robes from the king, but from 1383 onwards he received no gifts apart from the annual Garter robes which were his entitlement. Richard's household account for the period from September 1383 to September 1384 does not mention Henry once. Those who now clustered around the young king, who had his ear and were the beneficiaries of his generosity, were men such as Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, Thomas Mowbray, earl of Nottingham, his tutor Sir Simon Burley, and his confessor, the Dominican friar Thomas Rushook.1 Nor does Henry's name occur with any frequency in the chancery letters for these years. Rarely did he petition the king,2 and hardly ever was he the recipient of royal favour or associated with Richard in acts of government.
Henry's alienation from the court paralleled the simultaneous collapse of John of Gaunt's relationship with his royal nephew. Gaunt was a proud man who resented being sidelined from the central role in English politics he had enjoyed since the death of his brother the Black Prince in 1376, while Richard was impatient to shake off his uncle's leading reins and to govern in concert with advisers of his own choosing. Military and diplomatic policy was a particular bone of contention.3 Despite the failure of the 1381 expedition to Portugal led by his brother Edmund, earl of Cambridge, Gaunt still hoped to vindicate his claim to the Castilian throne, and in the parliament of November 1381 he argued that England's (as well as his own) resources should be directed to that end.4 Others, however, saw this proposal for what to some extent it was: a strategy for the personal aggrandizement of the duke of Lancaster which would do little to solve England's real problems. Rebuffed and his pride dented, Gaunt accepted defeat for the moment, but continued to press his case, and for the next two or three years the debate over ‘the way of Spain’ or ‘the way of Flanders’ was the major fault-line in English foreign policy. In the parliament of February 1383, which sanctioned the despatch of a ‘crusade’ to Flanders commanded by Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich, rather than a Lancastrian campaign in Castile, Gaunt was so irritated that he stormed out in disgust.5
By 1384–5, the relationship between Gaunt and Richard was so strained that each suspected the other of conspiring to assassinate him. During the Salisbury parliament of April 1384, a mischief-making Carmelite friar called John Latimer was invited to celebrate mass in the king's presence and used the opportunity to launch a tirade against Gaunt (who was not present), accusing him of plotting against the king's life. Richard ordered his uncleto be put to death without further investigation, although he was soon dissuaded from such folly and in the event Gaunt exonerated himself with ease, while Latimer was tortured to death by a group of royalist knights in an unsuccessful attempt to make him divulge his informants.6 Yet Richard's distrust of his uncle was now plain to all, and incidents multiplied. In August 1384, when Gaunt's protégé John of Northampton, a draper who had been mayor of London between 1381 and 1383, was brought before the king to answer charges laid against him by his enemies in the city, he expressed the opinion that Richard ought not to pass judgment on him in Gaunt's absence; Richard retorted that he was quite competent to sit in judgment on him and on the duke of Lancaster as well.7 In the following year the tension between them reached breaking-point. At a council meeting at Westminster in early February 1385, Gaunt proposed that Richard should personally lead an English army to France. Although his two brothers supported Gaunt's proposal, the king and his friends were against it, leading to another scene when all three royal uncles walked out. Gaunt declared that he would offer the king no assistance if he would not go to France, while Richard and his friends accused the duke of disloyalty, ‘and so’, stated the Westminster chronicler, they ‘busied themselves about removing him by underhand means’.8 In other words, they planned to have Gaunt assassinated, apparently with the king's approval. The duke got wind of the plot on 14 February and fled to Pontefract castle, which he prepared for a siege, but ten days later he was back and, protected by a breastplate and accompanied by an armed guard, strode into the king's manor-house at Sheen and upbraided Richard for the company he kept and the shame which he brought upon himself and the kingdom. Richard was emollient and promised reform, but Gaunt was in no mood to be soothed. Since his life was not safe at court, he declared, he would absent himself, and withdrew to Hertford castle. It was left to Richard's mother, Princess Joan, to effect a reconciliation between them, with Gaunt agreeing to forgive those who had plotted his death three weeks earlier, identified as Thomas Mowbray, earl of Nottingham, Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, and William Montague, earl of Salisbury.
If Gaunt was still inclined to treat his eighteen-year-old nephew as a child, there were times when Richard acted the part. A week later, after a disagreement with William Courtenay, archbishop of Canterbury, at a council meeting, he happened to encounter Courtenay again while being rowed down the Thames, whereupon he drew his sword and had to be restrained from running the archbishop through on the spot.9 Ten months later, on 25 January 1386, he punched the earl of Arundel hard enough to knock him down.10 Even if those who riled him were far from blameless – and Arundel was no saint – Richard's propensity for violence was unnerving, and it is not surprising that within months his reconciliation with Gaunt collapsed. On the campaign to Scotland in August 1385, Richard's first military command, he and Gaunt quarrelled yet again when, having reached Edinburgh, Gaunt advised Richard to set off in pursuit of the Scottish army, but the king, apparently believing his uncle's advice to be disloyal if not treacherous, decided to burn the city and return to England.11 By 20 August the English army had arrived back at Newcastle, having achieved next to nothing; Richard returned to Westminster, while Gaunt and Henry spent the next two months in Yorkshire and Lancashire.
By now it must have been apparent that the two most powerful men in England found it difficult to work together, and the fear was that, as with Edward II and Thomas of Lancaster seventy years earlier, their mutual distrust might well be leading the realm towards civil war. It was thus fortunate that at the very moment when Richard and Gaunt were quarrelling over strategy in Edinburgh, events at the other end of Europe were conspiring to make Gaunt's claim to the Castilian throne a viable option. The battle of Aljubarrota, fought on 14 August 1385, was a decisive victory for João of Avis, the new Portuguese king, over his great rival Juan of Trastámara, king of Castile,12 and the weakening of Trastamaran power gave Gaunt his chance. In the parliament of 20 October 1385 (the first parliament to which Henry was summoned) the duke once again requested financial support for an expedition to Spain, and this time king, lords and commons were happy to acquiesce.13 Whether they truly believed that the Castilian crown could be won is debatable; uppermost in the minds of some, perhaps, was the thought that it would be better if Gaunt left England for a while.14 An Anglo-Portuguese alliance was thus drawn up, the Roman Pope Urban VI lent his support, and by Christmas 1385 preparations were under way for the duke's voyage d'Espaigne. From early April 1386 Gaunt and Henry were at Plymouth,15 and at the end of June a Portuguese fleet arrived to bring the English army over to Iberia.16 On 8 July, while father and son were dining on board Gaunt's ship, a favourable breeze sprang up and the decision was made to sail. Henry returned ashore, and as night fell the fleet slipped out of Plymouth Sound and the duke embarked on a venture that would not see him return to England for three-and-a-half years.17
One consequence of the collapse of the relationship between Gaunt and Richard was that from 1382 onwards few of the duke's retainers continued to hold office in the royal household and administration, as several of them had done during the first four or five years of the reign.18 The Lancastrian affinity was closing in on itself and Henry followed suit, staying almost continuously in his father's company.19 His first experience of diplomacy, an Anglo-French conference at Leulinghem in November 1383, and his first military venture, the Scottish campaign of August 1385, were both gained while serving in his father's retinue.20 Henry was also taking on more personal responsibilities. In December 1384, since Mary de Bohun was now fourteen, she and Henry were granted livery of her share of the Bohun inheritance and began to cohabit: their first child, the future Henry V, was born in September 1386, two months after Gaunt left for Iberia.21 Henry's household expanded accordingly: by 1385 he had a treasurer and steward of his lands, and by 1387 he and Mary had separate chambers and wardrobes.22 His father's departure imposed additional responsibilities. Froissart said that before leaving Gaunt appointed Henry as ‘lieutenant of all that he had in England’.23 No longer could he shelter under his father's wing.
If there were hopes that Gaunt's absence would cool the political temperature, it took less than three months for them to be confounded. The Wonderful Parliament which met at Westminster on 1 October 1386 brought to a head the tensions of the mid-1380s and sparked a political crisis which consumed England for two years and more, and it was a crisis in which Henry played a leading role. Fears of invasion during the summer exacerbated the already febrile atmosphere. At Sluys in Flanders, one of the largest French fleets of the Middle Ages had been assembling since June for an assault upon England, and in mid-September the English government issued a general summons for troops: Henry responded by assembling 47 knights, 203 esquires and 300 archers who remained close to London throughout October.24 In the event, bad weather prevented the French fleet from sailing,25 but the panic which gripped the south-east of England during these months – exacerbated by rumours that Richard and his unpopular chancellor, Michael de la Pole, were planning to cede Calais and other lands to the French to secure the peace which they had been seeking for the past few years – set the tone for what followed, and when de la Pole opened the parliament by announcing that the government required four fifteenths and tenths (around £150,000) in taxation to meet its obligations, he was greeted with calls for his dismissal and impeachment.26 Richard retired to his manor of Eltham (Kent), where he remained for several days if not weeks, refusing to bow to the commons' demands until they agreed to grant a tax. Eventually a deputation, led by the king's uncle Thomas (Buckingham, now also duke of Gloucester) and Thomas Arundel, bishop of Ely, arrived to advise the king to return to parliament and accede to the commons' requests; they mentioned the possibility of deposition should he refuse to do so.27 Chastened, Richard agreed to come back to Westminster, where he was obliged to agree to the dismissal and impeachment of de la Pole. Convicted of peculation and incompetence, the former chancellor was sentenced to imprisonment at the king's mercy, though in fact he spent little time in custody. It was also agreed in parliament that a commission of fourteen lords would be appointed to hold power for one year, beginning on 19 November 1386, with a mandate to effect root and branch reform in all departments of the royal administration, including the king's household. Thus by the time parliament was dissolved on 28 November the nineteen-year-old king had effectively been deprived of executive authority, more or less as if he were still a minor. Power now resided with the Commission of Government, as it was called.
While parliament remained in session, Richard put on a show of compliance, but once it became clear that the Commissioners were in earnest he adopted a policy of non-cooperation.28 In the second week of February 1387, following an angry meeting of the council at Westminster, he decamped to the Midlands, taking his household with him to evade the Commissioners' scrutiny. Apart from a brief visit to the south-east around the time of the Garter celebrations in late April and early May, Richard and his household remained in the Midlands for the next eight months, while the Commissioners governed the country from Westminster. As the latter's popularity waxed, especially following the earl of Arundel's capture of a Franco-Flemish wine fleet in March, that of Richard and his friends waned.29 The real butt of popular hatred was Robert de Vere, now duke of Ireland, who in the summer of 1387 compounded his sins by divorcing his wife Philippa, the granddaughter of King Edward III, and abducting one of Queen Anne's Bohemian ladies-in-waiting, Agnes Landskron, whom he married at Chester, probably in mid-July when the king was also there. This insult to the royal family infuriated the king's uncles, especially the duke of Gloucester.30
By now Richard's mind had turned to ways of avenging himself on those who had humiliated him. Early in August, while at Shrewsbury, he summoned the royal justices and sergeants-at-law and placed before them a list of ten questions to which he required answers; three weeks later at Nottingham, he repeated the process. Some of these ‘Questions to the Judges’ dealt in general terms with the king's exercise of his prerogative, others referred specifically to the parliament of 1386. The answers given by the justices, who later claimed coercion but also took their lead from the strongly royalist Chief Justice, Robert Tresilian, were precisely those which the king would have wished to hear: they affirmed the king's control over the agenda and proceedings of parliament and declared that the impeachment of de la Pole and the establishment of the Commission of Government had been illegal; those who had been responsible for them deserved to be punished like traitors. So dire were the ramifications of these responses that Richard initially tried to keep them secret, but by October 1387 Gloucester had learned of them and had informed his chief allies among the lords, the earls of Arundel and Warwick.
Events now gathered pace. The Commission of Government's term of office was due to end on 19 November, and Richard, anticipating his resumption of power, returned in splendour to London on 10 November and summoned Gloucester and Arundel to his presence. They refused to come, saying they feared for their lives. The king sent the earl of Northumberland to arrest Arundel at his castle of Reigate, but Arundel slipped away and, on 13 November, joined Gloucester and Warwick at Harringay, five miles north of London. Each of the three lords had his retainers with him. On the following day, at Waltham Cross (Hertfordshire), they met a delegation from the king led by the archbishop of Canterbury and the duke of York, where they proclaimed the Appeal of Treason from which derives the name by which they are commonly known, the Appellants or Lords Appellant. The Appeal set out charges of treason against five men close to the king: Robert de Vere, Michael de la Pole, Chief Justice Tresilian, Nicholas Brembre, the former mayor of London, and Alexander Neville, archbishop of York. On 17 November, accompanied by 300 retainers, the three Appellants came before the king in Westminster Great Hall and repeated their appeal. Richard calmly assured them that their accusations would be heard in the next parliament, which would meet on 3 February 1388; in the meantime, the five accused would be kept in custody and the Appellants' safety was guaranteed.31 Yet within days it had become apparent that Richard would not keep his word. De la Pole and Neville were allowed to flee, eventually reaching Paris,32 while Tresilian went into hiding and Brembre tried to rally the Londoners to Richard's cause. Meanwhile de Vere had decided on resistance: armed with letters from the king, he hastened northwards to Cheshire and Lancashire where, together with his agent Sir Thomas Molyneux, constable of Chester castle, he managed within a few weeks to raise some 3,000–4,000 troops.33 The Appellants were aware of his movements, however, and by early December both sides were preparing for war.34
It was at this point that Henry, along with Thomas Mowbray, the young earl of Nottingham, joined Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick, and on 12 December the five Appellants, as they now were, gathered at Huntingdon to plan their campaign.35 Whether Henry and Mowbray made their decision jointly or individually is not clear. When Gloucester first heard of the Questions to the Judges (in October), he had apparently tried to persuade Henry to join them.36 If true, this meant that Henry must have weighed up his options for some two months before eventually throwing in his lot with them. As to his reasons for doing so, there must have been more to it than Fovent's belief that Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick made Henry and Mowbray partners in the appeal ‘because of affinity’, although that may have played a part.37 For Henry, the deciding factor was probably de Vere's recruitment of forces in Lancashire and Cheshire, and the consequent undermining of Lancastrian influence there. Gaunt's absence had left his county palatine vulnerable, not just to royal encroachment but also to the local rivalries and ambitions which even the most powerful resident magnate found it hard to keep in check, and there were plenty of men in Lancashire (to say nothing of Cheshire, of which Richard was the earl) who felt themselves excluded from the duke's patronage. Sir Thomas Molyneux, de Vere's chief agent in Cheshire, was a disaffected former Lancastrian retainer who must have relished the chance to strike a blow at Lancastrian influence in the north-west.38 Richard II had also taken advantage of the week that he spent at Chester from 12–16 July 1387 to bolster his support in the region through the issue of pardons and other favours. The threat to Gaunt's position in the north-west was real enough, and when Henry heard of the musters taken by Molyneux at Flint and Pulford (Cheshire) in the first week of December, it was clear that the defence of his father's interests brooked no further delay.39 Issuing orders to his servants to send his equipment to Stony Stratford, Henry marched north from London for the ‘riding against the duke of Ireland’.40
From Huntingdon, the Appellants could either march south to London to confront the king directly, or west to intercept de Vere's army before it could reach the king. Both options were considered. At their trial in 1397, Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick were alleged to have wanted to depose Richard forthwith, but were dissuaded by Henry and Mowbray from doing so.41 Henry's own evidence corroborated this: ‘Did you not say to me at Huntingdon,’ he said to Arundel, ‘where we first gathered in revolt, that before doing anything else it would be better to seize the king?’ ‘You, Henry earl of Derby, you lie in your teeth’, replied Arundel, protesting that he had always sought the king's welfare and honour.42 These accounts need to be treated with caution (for Henry, in a sense, was also on trial in 1397), but they are far from implausible. Warwick may also have argued that, rather than deposing Richard, they should direct their energies against de Vere, but on balance such sentiments are more in keeping with Henry's and Mowbray's views.43 Warwick, as far as can be gathered, stood firm with Gloucester and Arundel throughout the crisis: the ‘undivided trinity’, as Fovent called them.44
Yet if Henry and Mowbray acted as a moderating influence on their senior colleagues, this was not the main reason why they joined the Appeal. Both of them, after all, were of an age with Richard and had been brought up with him; both also had private scores to settle with de Vere and may well have believed that, once his influence had been eliminated, the king should be given another chance. Moreover, if Richard were to be deposed, who would replace him? He and Anne of Bohemia had been married for nearly six years but had failed to produce an heir, and the succession was an increasingly live issue in 1386–7. An entail of the crown drawn up by Edward III in 1376–7 had stated that, should Richard die childless, the throne should pass to John of Gaunt and then to his male heirs, failing whom to his other two sons (the dukes of York and Gloucester) successively, and to their male heirs.45 With Gaunt out of the country, however, his (and thus Henry's) claim might fail by default. Here, then, was another reason why Henry could not afford to remain aloof in 1387, for although the existence of Edward III's entail was not widely known, and there is no evidence that Henry ever cited it, he was probably aware of its terms.
The Westminster chronicler said there were four main reasons for the Appellant rising: first, the rumours that Richard was planning to abandon or sell various English territories and rights in France to the French king; secondly, their belief that England was being misgoverned; thirdly, the incompetence of the king's advisers; fourthly, their fear that the king's counsellors were actively planning their death.46 Yet if the Appellants shared a dissatisfaction with the way in which England was being governed, they also feared for their own lands and families should the king and de Vere be permitted to win this trial of strength – and none more so than Henry.
1 E 101/400/12, m. 4; E 101/401/6, mm. 19, 23; E 101/401/16, mm. 20, 24 (rolls of great wardrobe liveries 1379–87). The household account book for 1383–4 is E 101/401/2.
2 For two minor favours granted at Henry's request in November 1380 and February 1384, see CPR 1377–81, 561 and CPR 1381–5, 374.
3 Saul, Richard II, 108–10.
4 Goodman, John of Gaunt, 96–103.
5 Westminster Chronicle, 36–7.
6 Westminster Chronicle, 68–80.
7 Westminster Chronicle, 90–6; SAC I, 728–30. Northampton was initially condemned to death, but subsequently imprisoned instead following the intercession of Queen Anne.
8 For this and what follows, see Westminster Chronicle, 110–15, which added that ‘these temporal lords went in constant fear of the duke of Lancaster because of his great power, his admirable judgment, and his brilliant mind’; Goodman, John of Gaunt, 102–3.
9 Westminster Chronicle, 116–17; SAC I, 754–6, states that he was so angry with Courtenay that he wanted to deprive him of his temporalities; when John Devereux, John Trivet, and the chancellor Michael de la Pole advised him against this, he accused them of treason.
10 Trinity College Library Dublin, MS 500, fo. 3. C. Given-Wilson, ‘The Earl of Arundel, the War at Sea, and the Anger of Richard II’, in The Medieval Python, ed. R. Yeager and T. Takamiya (New York, 2012), 27–38.
11 Versions of the dispute differ, with Froissart placing much of the blame on the earl of Oxford for his insinuations regarding Gaunt's motivation. See Westminster Chronicle, 128–30, and SAC I, 762, where Gaunt is said to have advised the king to cross the Firth of Forth; Froissart, Chroniques, ed. S. Luce (SHF, Paris, 1869), xi.271–5, said that Gaunt wanted Richard to head south-west to cut off a Franco-Scottish raiding-party in Galloway, but that de Vere warned Richard that Gaunt only wanted to pursue the Scots because he hoped that Richard might be killed, whereupon Gaunt could claim the throne. Cf. Goodman, John of Gaunt, 104–5; Saul, Richard II, 145. See also Froissart's comment (Chroniques, xii.121) about de Vere's influence at this time: ‘par celui estoit tout fait et sans lui n'estoit riens fait’.
12 J. Sumption, Divided Houses: The Hundred Years War III (London, 2009), 560–8.
13 PROME, vii.6–7. The amount granted to Gaunt by the commons was £13,300, but it was understood that he would also use his own resources. In February 1386 the king lent him a further £13,300: Goodman, John of Gaunt, 115–16.
14 See the comment by Froissart, Chroniques, xii.297: ‘Et estoit l'intencion du duc qu'il emmenroit avecques lui femme et enfans et feroit de biaux mariages en Castille et en Portingal avant son retour, car il ne voloit pas si tost retourner, et bien y avoit cause, car il veoit les besongnes d'Engleterre dures et le roy son nepveu jone, et avoit d'en costé lui perilleux conseil, pour quoy il se departoit le plus volontiers’.
15 Here they remained for most of the next three months, although Knighton says that on 22 April Gaunt and Duchess Constanza paid a final visit to the court to say farewell; they were each presented with a golden crown by the king and queen, and Richard issued an order that Gaunt was in future to be known as ‘king of Spain’. Gaunt and Henry also attended the Garter ceremonies at Windsor the following day: Knighton, 340; E 101/401/16, m.20 (issue of Garter robes).
16 Sumption, Divided Houses, 582, says that Gaunt's army of about 5,000 men was transported in a total of 104 ships: 18 from Portugal, 75 English merchantmen, and 11 chartered from Germany or the Low Countries.
17 Knighton, 341.
18 Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, 106.
19 It is worth noting that when Mary de Bohun came of age in December 1384 and was granted livery of her inheritance, Richard told Gaunt to take Henry's fealty rather than receiving it himself: CPR 1381–5, 511–16.
20 Goodman, John of Gaunt, 98–9; Foedera, vii.412–14, 418–21. For his presence on the 1385 campaign, see The Scrope and Grosvenor Controversy, ed. N. H. Nicolas (2 vols, 1832), i.50; ii.165–6. It has been claimed that Henry accompanied Gaunt on his brief raid into Scotland in April 1384: A. Tuck, ‘Henry IV and Chivalry’, in Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406, (York, 2003), 56; J. Kirby, Henry IV of England (London, 1970), 22, but there is no contemporary evidence for this. On 19 February 1386, father and son were admitted to the fraternity of Lincoln cathedral, with Sir John Beaufort, his illegitimate half-brother; Sir Robert Ferrers; Sir Thomas Swynford; Sir William Hauley; Thomas Bradley, Edward Beauchamp and Arnald of Gascony, esquires; and Philippa Chaucer, sister of Katherine Swynford and wife of Geoffrey Chaucer: Chaucer Life-Records, ed. M. M. Crow and C. C. Olson (Oxford, 1966), 91–3.
21 CCR 1381–5, 511–16; Holmes, Estates of the Higher Nobility, 24–5. For the division of the Bohun inheritance see DL 41/240, which assigned lands worth £931 per annum to Eleanor, mainly in England, and lands worth £913 (including the great Welsh lordship of Brecon, said to be worth £624 per annum) to Mary. See below for discussion of Henry's income at this time, pp. 80–1. For Henry V's date of birth, see C. Allmand, Henry V (New Haven, 1997), 7; Mortimer, Fears, 371.
22 Somerville, Duchy of Lancaster, i.131–2; DL 28/1/2, fo. 1r.
23 Froissart, Chroniques, xii.297; Gaunt certainly made Henry keeper of the duchy and palatinate of Lancaster: Somerville, Duchy of Lancaster, i.120; JGR II, xlvii; CIPM 1384–92, no. 128.
24 He received £1,902 in wages: DL 28/3/3, m. 2. Henry had been at Monmouth in mid-September for the birth of his first son; Knighton, 348–51; E 403/534, 22 April; DL 28/1/2, fo. 29.
25 Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys 1380–1422, ed. M. Bellaguet (6 vols, Paris, 1839–52), i.458–60, said that the invasion was finally called off around the middle of October.
26 PROME, vii.31–54; Saul, Richard II, 157–64; J. Palmer, ‘The Parliament of 1385 and the Constitutional Crisis of 1386’, Speculum 46 (1971), 477–89.
27 Knighton, 354–62.
28 For example, the Commissioners cut down significantly the flow of cash to the royal household and diverted resources towards a naval campaign against the French commanded by the king's old enemy, the earl of Arundel. For their financial policy, see RHKA, 105–6, 118–20.
29 Arundel sold off some 4,000 tuns of wine in England at rock-bottom prices: A. Bell, ‘Medieval Chroniclers as War Correspondents during the Hundred Years War: The Earl of Arundel's Naval Campaign of 1387’, Fourteenth Century England VI, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Woodbridge, 2010), 171–84.
30 The Dieulacres chronicler, a royalist sympathizer, described it as the main reason why the duke ‘and many others’ took up arms against de Vere: M. Clarke and V. Galbraith, ‘The Deposition of Richard II’, BJRL (1930), 125–81 (at p. 167). See also Westminster Chronicle, 188; SAC I, 823, 829; Froissart, Chroniques, xiv.46–7; A. Goodman, The Loyal Conspiracy (London, 1971), 25; and Saul, Richard II, 183, 471.
31 Westminster Chronicle, 210–12; Knighton, 414–15.
32 Saint-Denys, i.496–8, describes their welcome to Paris.
33 Richard had appointed de Vere as Justice of Chester on 8 September and North Wales on 10 October, which allowed him to make military arrays there: CPR 1385–9, 357; A. Tuck, ‘Edmund of Langley, First Duke of York’, ODNB, 17.762–5. Cf. CPR 1385–9, 217.
34 Arundel's servants at Holt Castle (Clwyd) kept him informed of de Vere's activities: A. Tuck, Richard II and the English Nobility (London, 1973), 118; P. Morgan, War and Society in Late Medieval Cheshire 1277–1403 (Chetham Society, Manchester, 1987), 188.
35 Westminster Chronicle, 218–20; PROME, vii.408. Arundel Castle Ms FA. 13, fo. 20, suggests that on 1 December 1387 the earl of Arundel was at his castle of Arundel, in the company of Thomas Rushook, bishop of Chichester, who confirmed the statutes of the earl's college at Arundel. Yet just a few months later Rushook would be accused in parliament of treason by the Appellants.
36 SAC I, 828.
37 ‘racione affinitatis’: Historia Mirabilis Parliamenti 1386, Per Thomam Fovent, ed. M. McKisack (Camden Miscellany 14, London, 1926), 18. Mowbray's marriage to Arundel's daughter in July 1384 certainly marked a turning-point in his relations with the court, for before this he had been one of Richard's favourites. After serving as second in command to Arundel on their naval expedition in 1387, he and his father-in-law were snubbed by the king and de Vere despite their success. If de Vere had supplanted Mowbray in Richard's affections, Mowbray may have seen the Appeal as a way of getting rid of the detested favourite: SAC I, 814–15.
38 Sir Ralph Radcliffe, dismissed from the shrievalty of Lancashire by Gaunt, was another disaffected retainer who joined de Vere, as did several who had never looked kindly on Gaunt's ascendancy, such as Gilbert Halsall, Robert Clifton and John Radcliffe of Chaderton: Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, 165–70, 176n; JGR II, 1237; Westminster Chronicle, 222; J. L. Gillespie, ‘Thomas Mortimer and Thomas Molineux: Radcot Bridge and the Appeal of 1397’, Albion 7 (1975), 161–73.
39 Morgan, War and Society, 188; one of the charges later brought against the Appellees was that they planned to arrest Gaunt as soon as he arrived back in England: Westminster Chronicle, 261.
40 ‘equitationem contra Ducem Hibernie’: DL/28/1/2, fo. 15v.
41 PROME, vii.408. Also accused in 1397, along with Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick, was Sir Thomas Mortimer, illegitimate uncle of the earl of March and steward of the earl of Arundel, the ‘sixth Appellant’; he was probably the senior captain, apart from the five lords, in the Appellant army, but did not join in the Appeal of Treason, presumably because he was not a parliamentary peer like the others. He avoided capture in 1397 and died in Scotland in 1399.
42 CR, 59; Usk, 28–30.
43 Westminster Chronicle, liv.218–19 (based at this point on a source in Warwick's household); PROME, vii.355.
44 Historia Mirabilis Parliamenti, 21 (indivisa trinitas).
45 M. Bennett, ‘Edward III's Entail and the Succession to the Throne, 1376–1471’, EHR 113 (1998), 580–609. See pp. 96–9 for a fuller discussion of the succession.
46 Westminster Chronicle, 204–7.