Henry of Gloucester

“ GLOUCESTER As who, my lord?
SUFFOLK Why, as you, my lord,
An't like your lordly lord-protectorship.
GLOUCESTER Why, Suffolk, England knows thine insolence.
QUEEN MARGARET And thy ambition, Gloucester.
KING HENRY VI I prithee, peace, good queen,
And whet not on these furious peers;
For blessed are the peacemakers on earth.
CARDINAL Let me be blessed for the peace I make,
Against this proud protector, with my sword!
GLOUCESTER [Aside to CARDINAL] Faith, holy uncle, would
'twere come to that!
CARDINAL [Aside to GLOUCESTER] Marry, when thou darest. ”

“ The mind of Henry, already bordering on the brink of madness—a state in which suspicion is quick to arise—yielded readily to the treatment to which it was submitted. Gloucester, he came to believe, was plotting against his life from fear that an heir to the throne would be born; his preparations were being made. Everything, so Henry was told, pointed to this, for the deeds of Eleanor Cobham could not be disassociated from her husband. The one menace to the peace of the kingdom was Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. ”

“ Gloucester's first acts fully justified the caution of Henry V and the council. Before June 1421 Jacqueline of Bavaria fled to the English court, where she was given a pension and allowed to act as godmother to Henry VI. Born on 25 July 1401, she was the only daughter of William IV, count of Hainault, Holland, and Zealand, and lord of Friesland, and of Margaret of Burgundy, sister of John the Fearless. ”

“ Bedford was to be Regent of the kingdom of France and the Duchy of Normandy; Gloucester was to be Regent in England, and no qualification of the latter’s power was so much as suggested. There is less unanimity amongst the chroniclers as to the personal guardians appointed for the young King, but Exeter, Warwick, and the Bishop of Winchester were all probably mentioned. With the prophetic instinct of approaching death Henry besought his hearers to give no cause of offence to the Duke of Burgundy, and to repeat this warning to Gloucester. ”

“ We also find a letter addressed to Gloucester during the reign of Henry VI. from an English merchant at Amiens, asking for his protection in matters commercial. [1091] The Duke had realised the strength of that new power which was arising in England, the power of the middle classes, the traders, and herein he foreshadowed the subsequent commercial policy of the first Yorkist King.
Gloucester began life as a soldier, he ended it as a politician. In the first capacity he showed ability to adapt himself to the new methods of warfare. ”

“ Henry, as he gradually increased in understanding and knowledge, had been besieged by Gloucester and Beaufort, each trying to influence him in his own favour, and so it had continued till the great triumph of the Beaufort policy in the release of the Duke of Orleans and the marriage of the King to Margaret of Anjou. ”

“ The rivalry of Gloucester and Beaufort had been the central thread of the tangled web of the King’s minority, and now that Henry was a crowned King and claimed personal obedience in two countries, this rivalry did not lose its importance. The internal history of England is still the history of the faction fight which had marred the peace of the first nine years of the reign. ”

“ Open the gates; here's Gloucester that would enter.
WOODVILE Have patience, noble duke; I may not open;
The Cardinal of Winchester forbids:
From him I have express commandment
That thou nor none of thine shall be let in.
GLOUCESTER Faint-hearted Woodvile, prizest him 'fore me?
Arrogant Winchester, that haughty prelate,
Whom Henry, our late sovereign, ne'er could brook?
Thou art no friend to God or to the king:
Open the gates, or I'll shut thee out shortly.
Serving-Men
Open the gates unto the lord protector,
Or we'll burst them open, if that you come not quickly. ”

“ On October 8 he set out to march from Harfleur to Calais, [109] with some 900 men-at-arms and 5000 archers. [110] Of this number Gloucester’s share must have been the 142 lancers and 406 archers, which we find in his retinue at Agincourt. [111] With this small army it was very rash to challenge the forces of France, and a council of war had asserted it in no measured terms, but Henry felt that in honour he could not recede, and, putting his trust in God and in his righteous cause—as we are told—he set forth to invite a pitched battle with the enemy. ”

“ The name of Agincourt. Yet sit and see,
Minding true things by what their mock’ries be.
[Exit.]
SCENE I. The English camp at Agincourt. Enter King Henry, Bedford and Gloucester.
KING HENRY.
Gloucester, ’tis true that we are in great danger;
The greater therefore should our courage be.
Good morrow, brother Bedford. God Almighty!
There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out;
For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,
Which is both healthful and good husbandry. ”

“ The news of this counter-revolution reunited for a moment the barons. Gloucester joined Earl Simon in calling an autumn Parliament at St. Alban's, and in summoning to it three knights from every shire south of Trent. But the union was a brief one. Gloucester consented to refer the quarrel with the king to arbitration and the Earl of Leicester withdrew in August to France. He saw that for the while there was no means of withstanding Henry, even in his open defiance of the Provisions. Foreign soldiers were brought into the land; the king won back again the appointment of sheriffs. ”

“ The tiresome and monotonous domestic history of England during the next twenty years consisted of little else than quarrels between Gloucester and the lords of the council, of whom the chief was the duke’s half-uncle Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, the last to survive of all the sons of John of Gaunt. The duke and the bishop were both unscrupulous; but the churchman, with all his faults, was a patriotic statesman, while Gloucester cared far more for his own private ends than for the welfare of the realm. ”

“ It had not been easy to raise men in England, as Gloucester had found, and it was necessary in many cases to resort to impressment. Accordingly Henry took the precaution of sending his ships back to England, for fear that deserters from his army might by their help regain their native land. [390] In Normandy the Earl of Salisbury had done something to restore the prestige of the English arms; but round Paris the French were becoming very dangerous, for the Dauphin was threatening Chartres and an advance on the capital. ”

“ When Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick were arrested, Henry took a decided part against his old associates; but he avoided the violence of Nottingham, earl-marshal. He was not a party to the marshal's new appeal, and had no share in the getting rid of Gloucester. But he joined his father and the Duke of York after 28 Aug. in gathering troops to protect the king (Fœdera, viii. 14) . When the new parliament met on 17 Sept. ”

“ On his deathbed Henry warned Gloucester not to selfishly prefer his personal interests to those of the nation (Waurin, Chron. 1399-1422,p. 423) . The dying king appointed him deputy for Bedford during the latter's presence in France. Humphrey at once entered into this position. On 28 Sept. he received the seals from the chancellor in the name of his little nephew, Henry VI. But the council exercised the executive power, and he did not venture to gainsay their acts. In the end the question of the regency was referred to parliament, which Gloucester opened on 9 Nov. ”

“ To you, therefore, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, this work humbly sues for the favour of being so corrected by your advice, that it may not be thought to be the poor offspring of Geoffrey of Monmouth, but when polished by your refined wit and judgment, the production of him who had Henry the glorious king of England for his father, and whom we see an accomplished scholar and philosopher, as well as a brave soldier and expert commander; so that Britain with joy acknowledges, that in you she possesses another Henry. ”

“ Throughout the period of the King’s minority the struggle had been for the control of the Council of Regency, Gloucester asserting his privileges as Protector, Beaufort denying them and trying to secure further limitations of his power. So the struggle had worn on with varying success, till with Henry’s coronation in 1429 the Protectorate had come to an end. ”

“ Well he knew that his uncle was an ambitious man, who would fain have seen his daughter queen of England; and, besides, the duke longed to go to war with France, and lost no chance of exciting the passions of the English people and making the French alliance more unpopular than it was already. Perhaps Gloucester had cherished secret hopes of being left behind to rule the kingdom while Richard was away; but if so he was disappointed, for the king's cousin, Henry earl of Derby (afterwards Henry IV.) , was declared regent. ”

“ Thus the rivalry of Beaufort and Gloucester was more personal than political, in no sense was it dynastic, and though it weakened the hold of the House of Lancaster on the country, yet in itself it did not threaten the throne of Henry VI. Still less was this the case when the Beaufort faction had won their final victory, and had definitely placed Gloucester in permanent opposition, where he acted as safety-valve to the reigning dynasty. ”

“ He appears to have deserted Richard in 1399, but only at the last moment; and in Henry IV.'s first parliament he was vigorously denounced as the murderer of Gloucester. After declaring that his part in the proceedings of 1397 had been performed under constraint, his life was spared, but he was reduced to his former rank as earl of Rutland, and deprived of his recent acquisitions of land. ”

“ Gloucester charged the cardinal with contempt for the laws of the realm; and the cardinal avenged himself by accusing Gloucester's duchess of endeavoring to destroy the king by witchcraft, and banishing her to the Isle of Man. It soon appeared that the rivalry between Duke Humphrey and his illegitimate kinsman would involve the sovereign and people of England in serious disasters.
Nature had not gifted Henry of Windsor with the capacity which would have enabled a sovereign to reconcile such foes. Never had the Confessor's crown been placed on so weak a head. ”

“ The passage printed by Sir Francis Palgrave, which he compares with the corresponding part of the Exchequer Domesday—​to which it certainly has no 564 likeness—​relates wholly to the two towns of Gloucester and Winchcombe, so that it gives no means of seeing whether the number of carucates in any particular estate differs in the two reckonings.
I cannot believe with Lappenberg that “Henricus comes,” who appears among a crowd of not very exalted people as the owner of one burgess at Gloucester, is the future King; it is surely Henry Earl of Warwick. ”

“ The English had feared that the Scots would not fight a pitched battle, and were astonished to see them at daybreak prepared to receive an attack. Their contempt for their enemy made them eager to accept the challenge, but Gloucester, who, though only twenty-three, had more of the soldier's eye than most of the magnates, urged Edward to postpone the encounter for a day, that the army might recover from its fatigue, and the clergy advised delay out of respect to St. John the Baptist. Unmoved by prudence or piety, Edward denounced his nephew as a coward, and ordered an immediate advance. ”

“ Robert Fitz-Hamon, earl of Astremeville, in Normandy, came into England with William the Conqueror; and, by the gift of William Rufus, obtained the honour of Gloucester. He was wounded with a spear at the siege of Falaise, in Normandy, died soon afterwards, and was buried, A.D. 1102, in the abbey of Tewkesbury, which he had founded. Leaving no male issue, king Henry gave his eldest daughter, Mabel, or Maude, who, in her own right, had the whole honour of Gloucester, to his illegitimate son Robert, who was advanced to the earldom of Gloucester by the king, his father. ”

“ The climax came with the death of Bedford, and defection of Philip of Burgundy in 1435. This closed the first phase of Henry’s reign. There followed fifteen years of vain struggle in France, and growing disorder at home. The determining factor in politics was the conduct of the war. Cardinal Beaufort, and after him Suffolk, sought by working for peace to secure at least Guienne and Normandy. Gloucester courted popularity by opposing them throughout; with him was Richard of York, who stood next in succession to the crown. ”

“ It is probable that, in spite of his embassies and overtures, Henry never expected to come to terms with either party; at any rate his demands from the French King were too preposterous to be taken seriously as an overture of peace, [50] and at home he never ceased to prepare for war on a large scale. Ships were secured from Holland and Zealand; money and munitions of war were collected for the great undertaking; indentures were entered into with the chief men of the kingdom to serve abroad with the King, and amongst these we find the names of the Dukes of Clarence, Gloucester, and York. ”

“ It was formerly the custom of the city of Gloucester to present to the Sovereign at Christmas a lamprey-pie with a raised crust. The custom is of great antiquity, and as Henry I., of lamprey-loving celebrity, frequently held his Court during Christmas at Gloucester, it may have originated in his time. In 1530 the Prior of Lanthony at Gloucester sent “cheese, carp, and baked lampreys” to Henry VIII. at Windsor, for which the bearer received twenty shillings.—Tighe and Davis, Annals of Windsor, p. 562. ”