Volume I Part 13 (1/2)
By the obliging kindness of Sir Henry Ellis, the Author is enabled (p. 250) to enrich his work by authentic representations of the Great and Privy Seals of Owyn Glyndowr as Prince of Wales; he borrows at the same time the clear and scientific description of them, with which that antiquary furnished the Archaeologia.[245] The originals are appended to two instruments preserved in the Hotel Soubise at Paris, both dated in the year 1404, and believed to relate to the furnis.h.i.+ng of the troops which were then supplied to Owyn by the King of France.
[Footnote 245: Vol. xxv.]
”On the obverse of the Great Seal, Owyn is represented with a bifid beard, very similar to Richard II, seated under a canopy of Gothic tracery; the half-body of a wolf forming the arms of his chair on each side; the back-ground is ornamented with a mantle semee of lions, held up by angels. At his feet are two lions. A sceptre is in his right hand; but he has no crown. The inscription, OWENUS ... PRINCEPS WALLIae. On the reverse Owyn is represented on horseback in armour: in his right hand, which is extended, he holds a sword; and with his left, his s.h.i.+eld charged with four lions rampant: a drapery, probably a _kerchief de plesaunce_, or handkerchief won at a tournament, pendent from the right wrist. Lions rampant also appear upon the mantle of the horse. On his helmet, as well as on his horse's head, is the Welsh dragon. The area of the seal is diapered with roses. The inscription on this side (p. 251) seems to fill the gap upon the obverse, OWENUS DEI GRATIA ... WALLIae.
The Privy Seal represents the four lions rampant, towards the spectator's left, on a s.h.i.+eld, surmounted by an open coronet; the dragon of Wales as a supporter on the dexter side, on the sinister a lion. The inscription seems to have been SIGILLUM OWENI PRINCIPIS WALLIae.
No impression of this seal is probably now to be found either in Wales or England. Its workmans.h.i.+p shows that Owyn Glyndowr possessed a taste for art far beyond the types of the seals of his predecessors.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Seal]
CHAPTER XII. (p. 252)
REPUTED DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HENRY AND HIS FATHER EXAMINED. -- HE IS MADE CAPTAIN OF CALAIS. -- HIS RESIDENCE AT COLDHARBOUR. -- PRESIDES AT THE COUNCIL-BOARD. -- CORDIALITY STILL VISIBLE BETWEEN HIM AND HIS FATHER. -- AFFRAY IN EAST-CHEAP. -- NO MENTION OF HENRY'S PRESENCE. -- PROJECTED MARRIAGE BETWEEN HENRY AND A DAUGHTER OF BURGUNDY. -- CHARGE AGAINST HENRY FOR ACTING IN OPPOSITION TO HIS FATHER IN THE QUARREL OF THE DUKES OF BURGUNDY AND ORLEANS UNFOUNDED.
1409-1412.
Henry of Monmouth, whose years, from the earliest opening of youth to the entrance of manhood, had chiefly been occupied within the precincts of his own Princ.i.p.ality in quelling the spirit of rebellion which had burst forth there with great fury, and had been protracted with a vitality almost incredible, is from this date to be viewed and examined under a totally different combination of circ.u.mstances. Early in the year 1409 he was appointed Warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover for life, with a salary of 300_l._ a year. Thomas Erpyngham, ”the King's beloved and faithful knight,” who held those offices (p. 253) by patent, having resigned them in favour of the King's ”very dear son.”[246] He was made on the 18th of March 1410, Captain of Calais, by writ of privy seal; and he was const.i.tuted also President of the King's Council.
[Footnote 246: MS. Donat. 4599.]
The character of Henry having been a.s.sailed, not only in times distant from our own, but by writers also of the present age, on the ground of his having behaved towards his father with unkindness and cruelty after the date of his appointment to these offices, it becomes necessary, in order to ascertain the reality of the charge and its extent, as well as the time to which his change of behaviour is to be referred, to trace his footsteps in all his personal transactions with his father, and in the management of the public affairs of the realm, more narrowly than it might otherwise have been necessary or interesting for us to do. Every incidental circ.u.mstance which can throw any light on this uncertain and perplexing page of his history becomes invested with an interest beyond its own intrinsic importance, just as in a judicial investigation, where the animus of any party bears upon the question at issue, the most minute and trifling particular will often give a clue, whilst broad and striking events may not a.s.sist in relieving the judge from any portion of his doubts. On this principle the following facts are inserted here. They may perhaps appear too (p. 254) disjointed for a continuous narrative; and they are cited only as separate links which might form a chain of evidence all bearing upon the question as to Henry's position from this time with his father.
Early in the year 1409, the King, in a letter to the Pope, when speaking of the Cardinal of Bourdeaux says, ”He came into the presence of us and of our first-born son, the Prince of Wales, and others, our prelates.”
At this period we are informed by the dry details of the royal exchequer, that the King was anxiously bent on the marriage of his son. To Sir William Bourchier payment is made, (17th May 1409,) on account of a voyage to Denmark and Norway, to treat with Isabella, Queen of Denmark, for a marriage between the Lord Henry, Prince of Wales, and the daughter of Philippa of Denmark; and on the 23rd of the same month[247] a payment is made to ”Hugh Mortimer, Esq., lately twice sent by the King's command to France, to enter into a contract of marriage between the Prince and the second daughter of the King's adversary, the King of France.” In the August of 1409 the council a.s.sembled at Westminster, resolved, with regard to Ireland, that, should it be agreeable to the King and the Lord Thomas, it would be expedient for Lord John Stanley to be appointed Lieutenant, he paying a stipulated sum every year to the Lord Thomas. Before the council broke up, the Prince, who presided, undertook to speak on this (p. 255) subject, as well to the King his father, as to his brother the Lord Thomas. At this time it would appear that, so far from any coldness, and jealousies, and suspicions existing between the Prince and the members of his family, he was deemed the most fit person to negociate an affair of much delicacy between the council and his father and his brother.
[Footnote 247: The payments prove nothing as to the dates of the debts incurred.]
On the 31st of January 1410, the King, in the palace of Lambeth, ”delivered the great seals to Thomas Beaufort, his brother, in the presence of the Archbishop, Henry of York, and my lord the Prince.”[248] On the 5th of March following, the King's warrant was signed for the burning of John Badley. The Prince's conduct on that occasion, which has been strangely misrepresented, but which seems at all events to testify to the kindness of his disposition, and his anxiety to save a fellow-creature from suffering, is examined at some length in another part of this work, where his character is investigated with reference to the sweeping charge brought against him of being a religious persecutor. On the 18th of that month, when he was appointed Captain of Calais, his father at the same time made him a present for life of his house called Coldharbour. It must be here observed that the disagreement which evidently arose and (p. 256) continued for some time between the King and the Commons, though the Prince was compelled to take a part in it, seems not to have shaken the King's confidence in him, nor to have alienated his affections from him at all. On the 23rd of March the Commons require the King to appoint a council; and on Friday, the 2nd of May following, they ask the King to inform them of the names of his council: on which occasion this remarkable circ.u.mstance occurred.[249] The King replied that many had been excused; that the others were the Prince, the Bishops of Worcester, Durham, and Bath, Lords Arundel, Westmoreland, and Burnell.
The Prince then, in the name of all, prayed to be excused, if there would not be found money sufficient to defray the necessary charges; and, should nothing adequate be granted, then that they should at the end of the parliament be discharged from all expenses incurred by them. Upon this they resolved that the Prince should not be sworn as a member of the council, because of the high dignity of his honourable person. The other members were sworn. It is to this stipulation of the Prince that the King refers at the close of the parliament in 1411, when, after the Commons had prayed the King to thank the Prince and council, he says, ”I am persuaded they would have done more had they had more ample means, as my lord the Prince declared when they were appointed.”
[Footnote 248: These insulated facts may be thought to prove little of themselves; but they throw light (it is presumed) both on Henry of Monmouth's occupations, through these years of his life, and especially on the point of any rupture existing between himself and the King his father.]
[Footnote 249: Parl. Rolls, 1410.]
It has often been a subject of wonder what should have brought (p. 257) the Prince and his brother so often into East-Cheap; and the story of the Boar's Head in Shakspeare has long a.s.sociated in our minds Henry Prince of Wales with a low and vulgar part of London, in which he could have had no engagement worthy of his station, and to which, therefore, he must have resorted only for the purposes of riot and revelry with his unworthy and dissolute companions. History records nothing of the Prince derogatory to his princely and Christian character during his residence in Coldharbour; it does indeed charge two of the King's sons with a riot there, but they are stated by name to be Thomas and John. Henry's name does not occur at all in connexion with any disturbance or misdoing. The fact, however, (not generally known,) of Henry having his own house, the gift of his father, in the heart of London, near East-Cheap, (the scene indeed of Shakspeare's poetical romance, but really the frequent place of meeting for the King's council whilst Henry was their president,) might seem to call for a few words as to the locality of Coldharbour and its circ.u.mstances.
The grant by his father of this mansion, dated Westminster, March 18th, 1410, is couched in these words: ”Know ye, that, of our especial grace, we have granted to our dearest son, Henry Prince of Wales, a certain hostel or place called Coldharbour, in our city of London, with its appurtenances, to hold for the term of his life, without (p. 258) any payment to us for the same.”[250] These premises, we learn, came into Henry IV.'s possession by the right of his wife. Stowe, who supplies the materials from which we safely make that inference, does not seem to have been aware that it was ever in the possession of either that King or his son. He tells us it was bought in the 8th of Edward III. by John Poultney, who was four times mayor, and who lived there when it was called Poultney Inn. But, thirteen years afterward (21 Edward III.), he, by charter, gave and confirmed it to Humfrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Ess.e.x, as ”his whole tenement called Coldharbour, with all the tenements and key adjoining, on the way called Haywharf Lane (All Saints ad foenum), for a rose at Midsummer, if demanded. In 1397, John Holland, Earl of Huntingdon, lodged there; and Richard II, his brother, dined with him. It was then counted a right fair and stately house.”[251]
[Footnote 250: Rym. Foed. vol. vii.]
[Footnote 251: Stowe's London, ii. 206.]
We are led to infer, though the formal grant of this house to Prince Henry was made only in the March of this year, yet that it had been his residence for some time previously; for, on the 8th of the preceding February, we find a council held there, himself present as its chief.
It does not appear by any positive statement that the Prince visited Calais immediately on his appointment to its captaincy, but we (p. 259) shall probably be safe in concluding that he did so; for, very soon afterwards, we find letters of protection[252] for one year (from April 23) given to Thomas Selby, who was to go with the Prince, and remain with him at Calais. At all events, he was resident in London by the middle of June, and had apparently engaged most actively in the affairs of government. On the 16th of that month we find him president at two sittings of the council on the same day:[253] the first at Coldharbour, in which it was determined that three parts of the subsidy granted to the King on wools, hides, &c. should be applied to the payment of the garrison of Calais and of the marches thereof; the second, at the Convent of the Preaching Friars, when an ordinance was made for the payment of the garrison of Berwick and the East March of Scotland.
[Footnote 252: Rymer's Foed.]