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HUMPHREYDUKE OF GLOUCESTER
HUMPHREYDUKE OF GLOUCESTER
A Biography BY K. H. VICKERS, M.A. EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD LECTURER IN MODERN HISTORY AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, BRISTOL ORGANISER AND LECTURER IN LONDON HISTORY FOR THE LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL LONDON ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LIMITED 1907 Edinburgh: T and A. Constable , Printers to His Majesty TO THOSE KIND FRIENDS WITHOUT WHOSE SYMPATHY AND KINDNESS THIS BOOK WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN BROUGHT TO COMPLETION...
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PREFACE
PREFACE
The following pages have been written amidst many interruptions and completed amidst great difficulties. The excuse for their existence is to be found in the total absence of any adequate biography of their subject, and the attraction (to the author at any rate) of a varied and interesting career. My indebtedness to those who have made a study of the fifteenth century is acknowledged in the bibliography, but my obligations extend much further. My thanks are due to many librarians who have given
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
It was Polydore Vergil who first drew attention to the fatality of the Gloucester title. It was borne by luckless King John, Thomas of Woodstock earned a violent death, Thomas le Despenser was beheaded, while in days later than those treated of in this volume, King Richard III. found that the hand of fate was against him. Humphrey Plantagenet of the House of Lancaster was no exception to this rule. His life was violent, his death suspicious, and even after this his misfortunes did not desert him
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CHAPTER I EARLY LIFE
CHAPTER I EARLY LIFE
On the north-east border of the German-speaking races, there existed in the latter days of the fourteenth century one of those old religious military orders, which had been founded to carry on war against the infidel in the Holy Land. Here, where German met Slav, and Christian met Pagan, the Knights of St. Mary found a new sphere of usefulness, after the military orders had become discredited, and in their war against the heathen Lithuanians they attracted many of the adventurous spirits of Chri
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CHAPTER II THE WAR IN FRANCE
CHAPTER II THE WAR IN FRANCE
With the battle of Agincourt the days of Humphrey’s apprenticeship end, and we find him fairly embarked on his public career. That career assumes a threefold aspect, but at the same time there are certain definite threads of temperament and character which run through all the web of his life. We shall find him first busy in the French wars as the capable and trusted lieutenant of his royal brother; later for a brief space he will be found aping the ambitions of his grandfather, striving for reco
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CHAPTER III THE EVOLUTION OF GLOUCESTER’S POLICY
CHAPTER III THE EVOLUTION OF GLOUCESTER’S POLICY
After landing in England Gloucester had not long to wait before he took up his new duties. On December 30, 1419, his commission to be ‘guardian and lieutenant of England’ in the place of Bedford, who was about to go to France, was sealed at Westminster, and his powers in this office were defined. He was to preside at the meetings of Parliament and Council, and to summon the lords and the commonalty of the kingdom for consultation. The executive power was put into his hands, and he was empowered
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CHAPTER IV GLOUCESTER AND HAINAULT
CHAPTER IV GLOUCESTER AND HAINAULT
No sooner were the discussions and heartburnings of the settlement of the Protectorate over, than the volatile nature of Humphrey drew him off on another venture which, though dictated by his main characteristic—ambition, was entirely inconsistent with his desire to be supreme in England. It may be that disgust and disappointment at his partial failure in his first struggle with Beaufort impelled him to abandon his English ambitions for a time, but it is quite obvious that if he wished to direct
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CHAPTER V THE PROTECTORATE
CHAPTER V THE PROTECTORATE
With Humphrey’s return from Hainault the second phase of his life ends and the third begins. His early life had been that of a soldier; he had celebrated the death of his brother by making a bid for the position of an independent prince; now he was to devote the rest of his days to political intrigue, and it is perhaps in this last phase that his career assumes its greatest interest. Undoubtedly his actions during the minority of his nephew have more importance in the history of his country than
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CHAPTER VI GLOUCESTER AS FIRST COUNCILLOR
CHAPTER VI GLOUCESTER AS FIRST COUNCILLOR
The coronation of Henry VI. had its significance at home as well as abroad; for Gloucester it meant the abandonment of the title which he had held since the death of Henry V. The festivities were barely over when Parliament declared that, since the King was now crowned, he had taken the responsibility of the government on himself, and that therefore the Protectorate was at an end: on November 15 Humphrey resigned his office, stipulating that by this action he did not prejudice the right of his b
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CHAPTER VII DISGRACE AND DEATH
CHAPTER VII DISGRACE AND DEATH
The expedition to Calais and Flanders was the last military enterprise undertaken by the Duke of Gloucester, indeed the active part of his life abruptly ends with his return to England. Hitherto there had been no question of public policy which had not attracted his attention, his boundless restlessness had made his biography the mirror of the English history of his time. Henceforth, however, the habits of his life undergo a change, the last stage of his career has been reached. With all the lim
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CHAPTER VIII SOME ASPECTS OF GLOUCESTER’S CAREER
CHAPTER VIII SOME ASPECTS OF GLOUCESTER’S CAREER
In spite of the circumstantial story which records the events of the last few days of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, there hangs over the manner of his death a cloud which no existing evidence can entirely remove. Was he murdered, or was his death the result of natural causes? Such is the question to which the circumstances surrounding his last days give rise. Of contemporary chroniclers who give their opinion the Englishmen mostly agree in a quiet acceptance of the idea that arrest and disgrace
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CHAPTER IX THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND
CHAPTER IX THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND
No period of English history is less romantic than that in which Humphrey of Gloucester’s life was cast. Apart from the fleeting glories of Agincourt, there is no outstanding event of transcendent interest, no episode of which Englishmen may be honourably proud. A disastrous and ill-conducted war abroad, bitter political dissensions at home, a feeble regency followed by a still feebler King, personal ambitions rampant, patriotic and unselfish action lost under the enervating influence of a false
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CHAPTER X THE REVIVAL OF ENGLISH SCHOLARSHIP
CHAPTER X THE REVIVAL OF ENGLISH SCHOLARSHIP
Had the Duke of Gloucester confined his patronage to scholars of foreign birth, and taken no part in the intellectual life of England as a whole, he would deserve only a passing mention by those who would trace the development of English thought. His praises, however, were not sung by Italian humanist and French ecclesiastic alone. In England he was the acknowledged leader in the world of letters, the centre round which native scholar and poet alike revolved, and his patronage was extended to al
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APPENDIX A BOOKS ONCE BELONGING TO GLOUCESTER STILL EXTANT
APPENDIX A BOOKS ONCE BELONGING TO GLOUCESTER STILL EXTANT
The dispersion of a Library is in all cases unfortunate, but most especially so when it serves as a monument to a great personality. Even as Petrarch’s two hundred manuscripts are scattered and lost so that not forty of them can be now identified, so Duke Humphrey’s private library and the books he presented to Oxford, which in all must have numbered five hundred at least, are now recognisable only in a very few instances. Only three of the manuscripts given to Oxford repose now on the shelves o
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APPENDIX B THE TOMB OF HUMPHREY, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER
APPENDIX B THE TOMB OF HUMPHREY, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER
In Cotton MS., Claudius, A. viii. ff. 195-198, there is an entry of which the title runs: ‘In this sedule be conteyned the charges and observances appointed by the noble Prince Humfrey late Duke Gloucester to be perpetually boren by thabbot and Convent of the Monastery of Seint Alban.’ The entries contained in the schedule are as follows:— Paid by the said Abbot and convent ‘for making of the tombe and place of sepulture,’ £433, 6s. 8d. To two priests for saying Mass daily at the altar of the to
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APPENDIX C GLOUCESTER’S WILL
APPENDIX C GLOUCESTER’S WILL
Wheathampsted tells us that the Duke died intestate (Whethamstede, i. 74), and on March 24, 1427, a commission was issued to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Say de Sele, Sir Thomas Stanley, John Somerset, and Richard Chester, empowering them to dispose of the goods and chattels of the late Duke of Gloucester, since he had died intestate ( Rot. Pat. , 25 Henry VI. , Part ii. m. 35; Rymer, V. i. 171). On the other hand, there is a strong presumption that a will did really exist, and that the Du
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APPENDIX D GLOUCESTER’S RESIDENCES
APPENDIX D GLOUCESTER’S RESIDENCES
There are indications that Duke Humphrey possessed several houses scattered about the country in which he dwelt from time to time. We have seen him residing and holding his Court at Pembroke Castle ( Rot. Parl. , iv. 474); on one occasion, at least, he was resident at his manor of Penshurst in Kent (Oriel MS., xxxii.); and he is said to have at one time dwelt at the Manor of the Weald, near St. Albans (Newcome, History of Abbey of St. Albans , 510). Another story declares that he held the castle
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APPENDIX E PORTRAITS OF GLOUCESTER
APPENDIX E PORTRAITS OF GLOUCESTER
I. In a book of portraits in Vol. 266 of the Bibliothèque de la ville d’Arras , on folio 37, there is a portrait bearing Gloucester’s name, a reproduction of which hangs in the Bodleian Library. It appears among a series of portraits of people from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, which represent in most cases Flemish grandees and prominent courtiers of the Court of Burgundy. On folio 36 there is a portrait of Jacqueline of Hainault, and on folio 35 another of the Dauphin John, her fir
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APPENDIX F A LEGEND OF GLOUCESTER’S DEATH
APPENDIX F A LEGEND OF GLOUCESTER’S DEATH
Amongst seventeenth-century chroniclers there are many accounts as to the way in which Gloucester was murdered, the most popular of which, perhaps, is the one that he was smothered to death between two pillows. A contemporary Frenchman gives a different version, which has an extraordinary resemblance to the stories which surround the death of George, Duke of Clarence, in 1478. This occurs in a rhymed account by George Chastellain of the unusual and interesting events which happened in his days a
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I. ARMS
I. ARMS
Like his brothers, the Duke of Gloucester adopted the arms of England and France quarterly, but whereas their arms were differentiated with various labels, his own were surmounted with a border argent (Garter Types, College of Arms). At this period the arms of France, as borne by the English Kings, were changed from ‘ azure semée of fleur de lys or ’ to ‘ azure three fleur de lys or, ’ and this is the only difference which marks Humphrey’s arms from those of a predecessor in the Gloucester title
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II. BADGES
II. BADGES
Humphrey bore no less than three badges. From a political song, written probably about 1449, it appears that he was known by the title of ‘the Swan,’ a name taken from the badge he had adopted from his Bohun ancestors. In the course of the poem the phrase ‘the Swanne is goone’ appears, and in a different though contemporary hand the word ‘Gloucetter’ is written above the word ‘Swanne’ ( Political Songs , ii. 221. Cf. Excerpta Historica , p. 161) The second badge was on a shield sable three ostri
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III. SEALS
III. SEALS
There are few impressions of Gloucester’s seal still surviving. In the British Museum there is attached to a warrant a very small seal bearing the Duke’s coat of arms and round it the motto ‘ Loyalle et Belle ’ ( Additional Charters , xxxvi. 146). This is the only evidence to prove the use of this motto by the Duke, save some rather inconclusive remarks on the fly-leaf of one of his manuscripts (Sloane MS., 248). A larger impression is attached to a grant of custody given by Gloucester and dated
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I. PRINTED BOOKS
I. PRINTED BOOKS
This calendar only contains excerpts from the Patent Rolls. The new calendars published do not as yet include the important periods of the Duke of Gloucester’s life. Certain selections from these rolls only. Miscellaneous documents illustrative of English History. Documents drawn mainly from the Archives of the City of London. A collection of Ancient Wills, from Henry V. to Elizabeth inclusive. Miscellaneous documents, collected from various sources; published originally in four parts during 183
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II. MANUSCRIPT AUTHORITIES
II. MANUSCRIPT AUTHORITIES
Stowe MS., 668. Heraldic and some other Collections, including the letters exchanged between the Dukes of Gloucester and Burgundy. Cotton MS., Claudius, A. viii. (1) ‘A Chronicle of King Henry v. ’ The last part of a much longer chronicle, probably a continuation of the Brut. (2) A schedule of the charges of the Monastery of St. Albans for making the tomb of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and for perpetual masses for his soul. Cotton MS., Claudius, D. i. Letters written by Wheathampsted, Abbot of
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