Henry V as Warlord Read Free Page A

happened at Radcote; then, in the king’s presence, he accused Norfolk of being a traitor. Norfolk denied the charges, whereupon Richard referred the dispute to a parliamentary committee. The committee – which everyone knew to be controlled by the king – ordered a trial by battle.
    The duel was to take place at Coventry on St Lambert’s Day (16 September) 1398 and would have been the social event of the year. Bolingbroke was the favourite because of his known strength and skill. On the appointed day he entered the lists in armour, his white war-horse barbed with blue and green velvet, sumptuously embroidered with swans and antelopes of goldsmiths’ work. His opponent’s charger was caparisoned in crimson velvet embroidered with mulberry trees and lions of silver. But the king threw down a baton from his dais and stopped the fight. He banished Norfolk for life, Bolingbroke for ten years – he wanted neither to win, but to destroy both of them.
    Any small boy would be thrilled at the prospect of his father fighting in such a combat. No doubt young Henry of Monmouth was disappointed that it did not take place. He must surely have been downcast by the sentence of banishment – which was also the reason for his summons to court.
    King Richard was an alarming figure, neurotic and overbearing, untrusting and untrustworthy, prone to fits of furious rage. Besides having had his uncle, Gloucester, murdered he had had the Earl of Arundel beheaded at the Tower without trial in that same year of 1398. In addition he had recently sentenced the Archbishop of Canterbury (Arundel’s brother) and the Earl of Warwick to perpetual banishment, the latter only just saving his life by grovelling for mercy. All of these had been involved in the rebellion of 1388 like Henry Bolingbroke, with whom the king was not yet finished. By this stage of his reign on some days Richard sat crowned on his throne from dinner, which was at 9.00 a.m., until dusk, every day, in total silence amid his courtiers; anyone who caught his eye had to kneel. Since the previous year he had been negotiating for his election as the Holy Roman Emperor (in place of Emperor Wenzel the Drunkard, soon to be deposed). An aesthete whose court was one of the most elegant in Europe, his fastidious mannerisms no doubt astonished his youthful hostage, such as his pioneer use of handkerchiefs – ‘little pieces [of cloth] made for giving to the lord king for carrying in his hand to wipe and cleanse his nose’. But the King’s delicate ways never inhibited him from shedding blood. Although Richard seems to have taken a liking to young Henry, it must have been unnerving for the boy to realize that this awe-inspiring figure, the realm’s crowned and anointed sovereign who was always so aware of his own majesty, was the enemy of his – Henry of Monmouth’s – banished father.
    Although Richard was showing signs of megalomania he was far from stupid – in fact he was too intelligent for his own good. This was particularly evident in his attitude towards the Hundred Years War, in which both his father and his grandfather had won such glory. The conflict between France and England had arisen earlier in the century because of the French monarchy’s attempts to assert its authority over the English kings’ duchy of Guyenne in south-western France whose capital was Bordeaux; and partly because of Edward III’s claim to the French throne as the heir of his maternal grandfather, Philip IV. After some striking victories Edward had secured, by the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360, most of south-western France in full sovereignty, including not only Guyenne but Poitou and the Limousin together with many other districts. In return for this he agreed to abandon his claim to the French throne. Yet he had not succeeded in regaining all the lands in France which his ancestor Henry II had ruled in the twelfth century, a notable omission being the duchy of Normandy. What is more, the shrewdness