The Reign of Henry IV: Rebellion and Survival, 1403-13

Abstract

This collection of conference papers is a companion volume to Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime (2003; rev. ante, cxix [2004], 989–91), pursuing the story of the reign into its later years. Its ten essays cover a variety of themes. In the first, Michael Bennett discusses the two acts of succession of 1406, the first, in June, entailing the crown in the male line, the second, in December, restoring the customary understanding that the crown was heritable in the female line. He speculates that the first represented a compromise between the Prince of Wales and his younger brothers, with the prince conceding their superior right over any daughters he might have in return for a formal recognition of his right as his father's heir. This explanation depends on the author's speculative contention that the prince's ‘place in the line of succession had been in doubt’ (p. 19), and it is perhaps more likely that this assertion of the superiority of male descent was aimed at the Mortimer claim through the female line. Bennett attributes the restoration of the status quo six months later to a strengthening of the prince's political position and a concern that the potential disinheritance of his daughters might impede negotiations for his marriage. He might have added that the entail in the male line also compromised the English claim to the French crown. Two other essays directly examine Anglo-French relations, on either side of the great watershed represented by the murder of the Duke of Orleans by agents of John the Fearless in 1407. Both tell a story of low-level warfare pursued under the pretence of truce. Early in the reign, Christopher Given-Wilson argues, it was Louis, Duke of Orleans, who was the aggressor, issuing insulting lettres de défi, challenges that departed from customary chivalric language, and doing nothing to discourage the aggression of his chamberlain, Guillaume du Chastel, who was killed in a raid on Dartmouth in 1404. A. Tuck draws on the receiver-general accounts of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, to illuminate John, Earl of Arundel's mercenary expedition in support of the duke against the Armagnacs in 1411. He contends that the success of that expedition confirmed the future Henry V in his preference for an alliance with Burgundy, and brought before the English martial class the opportunities for honour and profit provided by the divisions within the French polity.