Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2

J >> J. Endell Tyler >> Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2

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CHAPTER XXI. (p. 119)

PREPARATIONS FOR INVADING FRANCE. -- REFLECTIONS ON THE MILITARY AND
NAVAL STATE OF ENGLAND. -- MODE OF RAISING AND SUPPORTING AN ARMY. --
SONG OF AGINCOURT. -- HENRY OF MONMOUTH THE FOUNDER OF THE ENGLISH
ROYAL NAVY. -- CUSTOM OF IMPRESSING VESSELS FOR THE TRANSPORTING OF
TROOPS. -- HENRY'S EXERTIONS IN SHIP-BUILDING. -- GRATITUDE DUE TO
HIM. -- CONSPIRACY AT SOUTHAMPTON. -- PREVALENT DELUSION AS TO RICHARD
II. -- THE EARL OF MARCH. -- HENRY'S FORCES. -- HE SAILS FOR NORMANDY.

1415.

PREPARATIONS FOR INVADING FRANCE.

It is impossible for us to revert with never so cursory a glance to
the departure of Henry of Monmouth from his native shores at the head
of an armament intended to recover his alleged rights in France,
without finding various questions suggesting themselves, both on the
mode adopted for raising and embodying the men, and for transporting
the troops and military stores, and all the accompaniments of an
invading army. The Kings of England had then no standing army, (p. 120)
nor any permanent royal fleet.

In the present volume we have often seen that on an emergence, such as
an irruption of the Scots, or the necessity of resisting the Welsh
more effectually, the sheriffs of different counties were commanded to
array the able-bodied men within their jurisdiction, and join the
royal standard by an appointed day; and, no doubt, many a motley, and
ill-favoured, and ill-appointed company were seen in the sheriff's
train. We have also been reminded with how great difficulty even these
musters could be collected, and kept together, and marched to the
place of rendezvous; and how seldom could they be brought in time to
join in the engagement for which they were destined. We have
repeatedly also learned that the nobles who would recommend themselves
to the royal favour, or espoused heartily the cause in which they were
engaged, headed their own retainers to the field, and made themselves
responsible for their maintenance and pay. In the present case we have
reason to believe that the army consisted mainly of volunteers; at
least, that the principal persons in rank and fortune joined the
King's standard without compulsion. A very lively and enthusiastic
interest in the success of his expedition prevailed through the whole
country; and the nobles redeemed their pledge, without grudging, that
they would aid him in their persons. The pay of the army was (p. 121)
settled beforehand, at a fixed rate, from a duke downwards.[93]

[Footnote 93: But though a person were a volunteer,
yet if, after "making his muster," he failed in his
duty, the punishment was both summary and severe.
In a subsequent expedition of Henry, Hugh Annesley
had made his muster in the company of Lord Grey of
Codnor, and had received the King's pay from him,
but tarried nevertheless in England. He was
summoned before the council, and confessed his
delinquency; his person was forthwith committed to
the Fleet, and his estates seized into the King's
hands.]

Whether there is any foundation at all in fact for the tradition of
Henry's resolution to take with him no married man or widow's son, the
tradition itself bears such strong testimony to the general estimate
of Henry's character for bravery at once and kindness of heart, that
it would be unpardonable to omit every reference to it altogether. The
song of Agincourt, in which it occurs, is unquestionably of ancient
origin; probably written and sung within a very few years of the
expedition.[94] Internal evidence would induce us to infer that it was
composed before Henry's death, and just after his marriage with
Katharine:

"The fairest flower in all France,
To the rose of England I give free."

[Footnote 94: The song will be found in a note on
our account of the battle of Agincourt.]

The ballad, at all events, is among the earliest of our English songs,
and was delivered down from father to son in the most distant (p. 122)
parts of the kingdom, when very few of those who preserved the national
poetry from oblivion could read. This circumstance easily accounts for
the many various readings which are found in different copies now,
whilst these in their turn tend to establish the antiquity of the
song. The admirable simplicity and true natural beauty of the verse
will justify its repetition here, though it has already appeared in
our title-page, when it ascribes to Henry the combination of valour
and high resolve, with merciful considerateness and tender feeling for
others. Be the authority for this reported restriction, imposed by
Henry on those who were commissioned to recruit soldiers for his
expedition, what it may, (let it be founded in fact, or in the
imagination of the writer,) it bears that testimony to Henry's
character,[95] which the whole current of authentic documents tends
fully to establish. He was brave, and he was merciful.

[Footnote 95: Should it occur to any one, that if
in this case we allow the poet to have weight when
he speaks of what reflects honour on Henry's name,
we ought to assign the same credit to Shakspeare;
when he tells us of madcap frolics and precocious
dissipation, it must be remembered, that on testing
the accuracy of Shakspeare by an appeal to history,
we established a striking discrepancy between them;
and that Shakspeare lived more than a century after
the death of Henry; whereas we are led to regard
this song of Agincourt as contemporary with the
events which it celebrates; and its eulogy
harmonizes in perfect accordance with what history
might lead us to expect.]

"Go! call up Cheshire and Lancashire, (p. 123)
And Derby hills,[96] which are so free;
But neither married man, nor widow's son,--
No widow's curse shall go with me."

[Footnote 96: Query, Are these counties especially
mentioned as being more peculiarly Henry's own? He
was Duke of Lancaster, and Earl of Chester and
Derby.]

Of the numbers who went with Henry to France various accounts are
delivered down, and different calculations have been made. The song of
Agincourt raises the sum of the "right good company" to "thirty
thousand stout men and three:" and probably this total, embracing
servants and attendants of every kind, is not at all an exaggeration
of the number actually transported from England to Normandy; though,
if by "stout men" we are to understand warriors able to handle the
spear, the bow, the sword, and the battleaxe, we must not reckon them
at more than one-third of that number.

* * * * *

The expedients which Henry found it necessary to adopt for the safe
transportation of this armament, compel us to review, however briefly,
the state and circumstances of English navigation at the period. The
Author has already hazarded the opinion in his Preface, that Henry of
Monmouth may with justice be regarded as the founder of the British
navy; and he feels himself called upon to refer to some facts by which
such a representation might seem to be countenanced. He gladly (p. 124)
acknowledges that the idea was first suggested to him by the
publication of Sir Henry Ellis; whilst every subsequent research, and
every additional fact, have tended to confirm and illustrate the same
view.[97]

[Footnote 97: Mr. James, in his Naval History of
Great Britain, does not seem to have carried back
his researches beyond the reign of Henry VIII, to
whom he ascribes "the honour of having by his own
prerogative, and at his sole expense, settled the
constitution of the present royal navy." Much
undoubtedly does the English navy owe to that
monarch; but he would be more justly regarded as
its restorer and especial benefactor, than its
founder.]

Though few subjects are more interesting, or more deserve the
attention of our fellow-countrymen, yet it is confessedly beyond the
province of these Memoirs to enter at any length upon a dissertation
on the naval affairs of Great Britain. Since, however, if
satisfactorily established, the fact will recommend the hero of
Agincourt to the grateful remembrance of his father-land in a
department of national strength and glory in which few of us have
probably hitherto felt indebted to him, it is hoped that these brief
remarks may not be deemed out of place.

Unquestionably, many previous sovereigns of England had directed much
of their thoughts to the maritime power of the country. From the time
of Alfred himself, downwards, we may trace, at various intervals,
evident marks of the measures adopted by our Kings and the legislature,
and also by powerful individuals and merchant companies, to keep (p. 125)
up a succession of sea-worthy vessels, and mariners to man them. Two
hundred years before the date of Henry's expedition, as early as the
year 1212, King John seems to have established a sort of dry covered
dock at Portsmouth for the preservation of ships and their rigging
during the winter. But the very instances to which appeals have been
made by various writers, to prove the antiquity of the naval force of
South Britain, tend by their testimony to confirm the opinions we are
here disposed to adopt. In every successive reign, the annals of which
supply any information on the subject, the evidence is clear that the
rulers of England did not contemplate the establishment of a fleet
belonging to the nation as its own property. The tenures, moreover, by
which many maritime towns held their charters, whilst they evince the
importance attached to this department of an island's political power,
coincide altogether with the view we are taking. The obligation, for
example, under which the Cinque Ports lay of furnishing, whenever
required, fifty ships, manned each with twenty-four mariners, for
fifteen days, enabled the monarch indeed to calculate, from the
fulfilment of such stipulated engagements, on a certain supply,
adequate, it may be, to meet the usual demand; but at the same time it
implied that he had no fleet of his own on which he could rely. Whilst
the limited extent to which ships could be supplied by the most rigid
exaction of the terms of those tenures compelled the state, on (p. 126)
any occasion when extraordinary efforts were requisite, to depend
upon the varying and precarious supply produced by the system of
impressment.[98]

[Footnote 98: See Hardy's Introduction to the Close
Rolls, and Lord Lyttelton's History of Henry II.]

When Henry ascended the throne, he found still in full operation this
old system of our maritime proceedings. Whenever, as we have seen, an
occasion required the transport of a considerable body of men from our
havens, or forces to be embarked for the protection of our shores and
of our merchants, in addition to the contingent, which could be
exacted from various chartered towns, the King's government was
obliged either to hire ships from foreign countries, or to lay
forcible hands by way of impressment on the vessels of his own
subjects. A few instances, more or less closely connected with the
immediate subject of our present inquiry, will serve to illustrate
that point.

When, for example, Henry's great grandfather Edward III. was preparing
for the expedition, which he headed in person, intended to relieve
Rochelle, his grandfather John of Gaunt, February 10, 1372, as we find
by the records of the Duchy of Lancaster, commanded all his stewards
in Wales to assist Walter de Wodeburgh, serjeant-at-arms, appointed by
the King to arrest all ships of twenty tons' burden [and upwards?] for
the passage of the King and his army to France, and to take (p. 127)
sufficient security that they be all ready by the 1st of May either at
Southampton, Portsmouth, Hamel in the Rys, or Hamel Stoke.

The records of the Privy Council (11 December, probably 1405,) supply
us with an instance (one out of many) which shows, at the same time,
the great injury which the public service sustained by this system,
and the ruinous consequences which it was calculated to entail on the
merchants and the owners of ships. Henry IV. had intended to proceed
in person to Guienne; and for that purpose, with the advice of his
council, had impressed all the ships westward. His voyage was
deferred; but the ships were still, as they had been for a long time,
under arrest. The masters had sent a deputation to him to implore some
compensation for their great expenses,[99] and some means of support.
Henry then wrote to the council, praying them [vous prions] to provide
some help for these poor men; and to assure them that no long time
would elapse before their services would be called for, since either
himself or his representative would undertake the voyage. In the same
letter he prayed the council also to write under his privy seal to the
King of Portugal, to beg of him a supply of galleys, sufficient to
enable him to resist the malice of his enemies the French, and to
protect his land and his realm.

[Footnote 99: "Par long temps a lour grantz
custages et despenses."]

We must not suppose that the French monarch found himself under (p. 128)
more favourable circumstances when he would prepare for any important
affair on the sea. The same system of impressment and hiring was
necessarily adopted in France. Thus we find, in 1417, when the French
government resolved to make a powerful effort to crush the navy of
England, the ships were first to be "hired, at a great sum of gold,
from the state of Genoa." These mercenary vessels formed the fleet
over which the Earl of Huntingdon gained a decided victory immediately
before Henry's second expedition to France.

Thus, too, (not to cite any more examples,) no sooner had Henry
determined to assert his rights on the Continent, and to enforce them
by the sword, than he despatched ambassadors to Zealand and Holland to
negociate with the Duke of Holland for a supply of ships; doubtless
assured that all which he could impress or hire in all his ports would
not be sufficient for the safe transport of his troops, and "their
furniture of war." But Henry's ardent and commanding mind soon saw how
powerful an engine, both of defence and of conquest, would be found in
a permanent royal navy, and how indispensable such an establishment
was to any insular sovereign who desired to provide for his country
the means of offering a bold front against aggression, protecting
herself from insult, maintaining her rights, and taking a lead among
the surrounding powers. He resolved, therefore, not to depend (p. 129)
upon the precarious and unsatisfactory expedients either of hiring
vessels, which would never be his own, (in a market, too, where his
enemy might forestal him, and where his necessities would enhance the
price,) or of compelling his merchants to leave their trading, and
minister to the emergence of the state, at their own inevitable loss,
and not improbable ruin. His immediate determination was to spare
neither labour nor expense in providing a navy of his own, such as
would be ever ready at the sovereign's command to protect the coast,
to sweep the seas of those hordes of pirates which then infested them,
and to bear his forces with safety and credit to any distant shores.
He thus thought he should best secure his own ports and provinces from
foreign invasion; afford a safeguard to his own merchants, and to
those traders who would traffic with his people; and generally make
England a more formidable antagonist and a more respected neighbour.

This new line of policy he adopted very early in his reign. Whilst he
was at Southampton, (at the date of this digression, on his first
expedition to Normandy,) we find him superintending the building of
various large ships: and, two years afterwards, when news reached him
of the victory gained by his brother the Duke of Bedford over the
French fleet off Harfleur, the tidings found him making the most
effectual means for securing future victories; he was at Smalhithe in
Kent, personally superintending the building of some ships to (p. 130)
add to his own royal navy, then only in its infancy.[100]

[Footnote 100: The Pell Rolls record the payment of
a pension which bears testimony to the interest
taken by Henry in his infant navy, and to the
kindness with which he rewarded those who had
faithfully served him. The pension is stated to
have been given "to John Hoggekyns,
master-carpenter, of special grace, because by long
working at the ships his body was much shaken and
worsted."]

Nor did he confine his labours in this great work to England; he
employed also his Continental resources in forwarding the same object.
A letter from one John Alcestre, from Bayonne,[101] informs us of a
ship of very considerable dimensions then on the stocks at that port,
for the building of which the mayor and "his consorts" had contracted
with Henry. The vessel was one hundred and eighty-six feet in length
from "the onmost end of the stem onto the post behind." "The stem" was
in height ninety-six feet, and the keel was in length one hundred and
twelve feet.

[Footnote 101: Ellis, Second Series, Letter XXI.]

Henry appears also to have acquired the reputation in foreign
countries of having a desire to possess large vessels of his own. An
agent in Spain, for example, after informing one of the King's
officers in England of his unsuccessful endeavour to cause to be
seized for the King's use four armed galleys of Provence, expected to
enter the port of Valencia, and which the King of Arragon's government
had consented to arrest for Henry, but which disappointed them (p. 131)
by not coming to land, mentions that two new carraks (a species of
large transport vessel) were in building "at Bartholem," which the
King might have if he pleased.

The high importance which Henry attached to these rising bulwarks of
his country shows itself in various ways; in none more curious and
striking than (a fact, it is presumed, new to history,) in the solemn
religious ceremony with which they were consecrated before he
committed them to the mighty waters. One of the highest order of the
Christian ministry was employed, and similar devotions were performed
at the dedication of one of the royal "great ships," as we should find
in the consecration of a cathedral. They were called also by some of
the holiest of all names ever uttered by Christians.[102] Thus, on the
completion of the good ship the Grace-Dieu at Southampton, the
"venerable father in Christ, the Bishop of Bangor,"[103] was
commissioned by the King's council to proceed from London at the
public expense to consecrate it.

[Footnote 102: When he sailed from Southampton in
his first expedition to France, he went on board
his own good ship, the Trinity:

"But the grandest ship of all that went,
Was that in which our good King sailed."
_Old Ballad._]

[Footnote 103: Pell Rolls, 16 July 1418.]

When Henry of Monmouth died, the navy of England was doubtless yet in
its infancy;[104] but it owed its existence as a permanent royal (p. 132)
establishment to him. We cannot look back on that "day of small
things" without feelings of admiration and gratitude; nor now that we
seem, for a time at least, free from the danger of foreign invasion,
must we forget that, in the late tremendous struggle which swept away
the monarchies and the liberties of Europe in one resistless flood, to
our navy, which had grown with the growth of our country, and
strengthened with her strength, our native land may, under the
blessing of Heaven, have been indebted for its continuance in freedom
and independence. Of those wooden walls of Old England, as a royal
establishment based on systematic principles, Henry of Monmouth was
undoubtedly the founder.

[Footnote 104: Among the preparations for bringing
Henry's corpse with all the solemn pomp which an
admiring, grateful, and mourning nation could
provide, all ships and vessels on the east coast
were impressed, and sent to Calais.--Pell Rolls,
Sept. 26, 1422.]

* * * * *

Whilst Henry was engaged at Southampton in personally superintending
the preparations for invading France, an event occurred well fitted to
fill him equally with surprise, and indignation, and sorrow. A
conspiracy against his crown and his life was brought to light, which
had been formed by three in his company against whom he could have
entertained no suspicions: Richard of York, whom he had created Earl
of Cambridge; Henry Lord Scrope, the treasurer; and Sir Thomas Grey of
Heton. The Rolls of Parliament, containing the authentic record (p. 133)
of the proceedings consequent upon the discovery, and the original
letters of the Earl of Cambridge, leave no question as to the designs
of the conspirators. Some doubts may exist as to their motives:
whether they were influenced singly by a generous resolution to
restore the crown to its alleged rightful heir,[105] or by some less
honourable and more selfish feeling;[106] whether by any offence taken
against Henry, or, as it is alleged, by the vast bribe offered to them
by the crown of France; or whether by more than one of these motives
combined, must remain a matter of conjecture. We cannot, perhaps, be
certified of the means by which Henry became acquainted with the plot,
nor if, as we are told, he was informed of it by the Earl of March
himself, can we ascertain beyond doubt how large or how small a share
that nobleman had in the previous deliberations and resolutions of the
conspirators. Whether he first consented to their design of (p. 134)
setting him up as king, and then repented of so ungrateful an act
towards one who had behaved to him with so much kindness and
confidence, or whether he instantly took the resolve to nip this
treason in the bud, no documents enable us to decide. If the Earl of
Cambridge's confession be the truth, the Earl of March at one time was
himself consenting to the plot.

[Footnote 105: To suppose that this conspiracy
could have originated, as it has been lately
(Turner's History) suggested, in "the resisting
spirit which Henry's religious persecutions
occasioned, and which led some to wish for another
sovereign," is altogether gratuitous, and contrary
to fact. He was not carrying on religious
persecution, and no resisting spirit on that ground
had manifested itself at all.]

[Footnote 106: Richard of Coningsburg, second son
of Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, fifth son of
Edward III, was high in favour with Henry V, who
created him Earl of Cambridge in the second year of
his reign. He married Ann, daughter of Roger
Mortimer, Earl of March, whose son Richard (aged
fourteen in the third year of Henry V,) was heir to
Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March. Leland says, that
the "main design of the Earl of Cambridge's
conspiracy was to raise Edmund Mortimer, Earl of
March, to the throne, as heir to Lionel, Duke of
Clarence; and then, in case that Earl had no child,
the right would come to the Earl of Cambridge's
wife, (sister to the same Edmund,) and to her
issue, as it afterwards did; and this is most
likely to be true, whatever hath been otherwise
reported."--Lel. Coll. i. 701.]

On the 21st of July a commission was appointed, consisting of the
Earl Marshal, two of the judges,[107] six lords, and Sir Thomas
Erpingham, to try the conspirators: and the sheriff of the county was
ordered to summon a jury, who assembled at Southampton on the 2nd of
August, and found as their verdict, that, on the 20th of July, the
Earl of Cambridge and Sir Thomas Grey had traitorously conspired to
collect a body of armed men, to conduct Edmund Earl of March to (p. 135)
the frontiers of Wales, and to proclaim him the rightful heir to
the crown, in case Richard II. were actually dead, against the
pretensions of the King, whom they intended to style "the Usurper of
England;" that they purposed to destroy the King and his brothers,
with other nobles of the land; and that Lord Scrope consented to the
said treasonable designs, and concealed them from the King.

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