War, English Delusion, and the effect on the Economy

I have a theory that a lot of what we call "history" arises from the "hospital pass". (For those who don't know, this term comes from Rugby. It's where the ball is passed to you at a moment or in a situation where the opposition is bound (or at least likely) to recover the situation with a violent tackle.)

A good example of this are the events arising from the Hundred Years War. Now yes, there were genuine issues arising between England and France. These mostly arose from the status of Guienne, which the kings of England held as vassals of the kings of France. (Though it is ironic that some of the issues were the very issues that the English imposed on their Welsh and Scottish* vassals.)

*To avoid response from angry Scots, during the time when the Scots accepted vassalage, for example the reign of John Balliol.

The fact remains that France had about five times the population Of England and was (almost) correspondingly more wealthy. For the English to take on France in a major war (as opposed to a small one) was always going to be a stretch.

Ah, but you say, Edward III and the Black Prince succeeded! Did they not have glorious victories at Crecy and Poitiers? Did they not actually capture the French king and impose a humiliating peace on him? (Treaty of Bretigny.)

Yes, they did, with the benefit of novel tactics, excellent leadership and, let's be honest, some help from Lady Luck.

BUT! (And it's a very big but.) The French were not stupid. They soon figured out new tactics to defeat the English, the most important of which was "Don't meet the English in pitched battle." It doesn't sound very impressive, does it, but the effect was remarkable. The English armies that went to France in the later 14th Century did a fair bit of damage (especially to poor people and their property) but they failed utterly to enforce the treaty or cause the French government to collapse. Moreover, these campaigns were costly in cash and lives.

What is too often forgotten by English historians (who are all too apt to pleasure themselves silly over Edward III's "greatness") is that by the end of his reign England was practically bankrupt, in a fair degree of political chaos and under regular attacks from French raids along the south coast.

At which point poor Richard II and his advisers took over this legacy of "glory".

The English (or more particularly their ruling class) were frankly deluded. Yep, they wanted to carry on with the war. Why, they wanted to enforce the Treaty of Bretigny. Did they want to pay for it? Did they heck as like.

So, make peace instead? What, are you a traitor, sir!

There were of course truces. As the century dragged on, these were to become more regular. But the cost of the war led to desperate measures in the treasury. Which led to the introduction of the Poll Tax. Do I need to spell out how that went down?

Richard II actually offered to lead an army to France. Yes, really. Would Parliament pay for it? Would they heck!

So we come to 1386, with the French poised to attack across the Channel. Make no mistake, this was a serious threat. Probably more of a genuine threat than anything prepared by Napoleon or Hitler, hard though that may be to believe. The King goes to Parliament to ask for money to defend the nation. Does Parliament pay up? No, it goes spare, and forces on Richard a commission to run the country for 12 months.

Now this in turn (to cut a long story short) leads on to the Appellant Crisis and the judicial murder - for that was what it was! - of many of the King's friends and advisers and the banishment of others. Do the Appellants do a better job? Do they somehow magically cut taxation and give the French a damn good thrashing? Do they heck as like. They prove just as clueless in government - if not more clueless - than the people they replaced.

Eventually, largely because John of Gaunt comes home and supports King Richard in his policies, and after a whole lot of haggling and abortive proposals, a peace of sorts is achieved. Not until late 1396 though, and it is in fact a 28 year truce, that leaves some of the awkward issues unsolved.

You might thing people would be delighted. But many of them weren't. No, they wanted to carry on the war that they didn't want to pay for. It's one of the issues that makes Richard unpopular and leads to his downfall. Next post will relate the Lancastrian aftermath.

Sir Roger of Clarendon

Not a lot of people know that Richard II had a paternal half-brother. This was Sir Roger of Clarendon, born at at unknown date to Edward of Woodstock, the 'Black Prince' and one Edith de Willesford.

He was almost certainly older than Richard II, and in 1372 received an annuity of £100 from Edward III.

In 1402 Roger was arrested, accused of conspiracy against his cousin, Henry IV. He may have been guilty of spreading rumours that Richard was still alive. He quite possibly believed that he was. In any event he was executed at Tyburn - which suggests he was hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason.

My main source for this is Plantagenesta

An Irrelevant Post - Edward II

I have lately been wound up by various people who insist on believing the fable that Edward III was fathered by William Wallace.

Let me set it out in plain terms for the hard of thinking. He wasn't! Edward III was not born until several years after Wallace's death. Human biology teaches us that the normal term of pregnancy is nine months, not seven years! Moreover, Queen Isabella was only 9 or 10 years old at the time of Wallace's execution, and she was still in France.

Edward and Isabella had several children and Edward also had at least one outside marriage. Fact - it is possible for a gay man to father children. Many if not all of us descend from such men in our ancestry, given that until very recently it was common for them to marry and give the appearance of being 'normal'.

There really is no reason to believe that Edward III was fathered by anyone other than Edward II - but he certainly wasn't fathered by William Wallace.

Rant over!

The Problems of Richard II

Medieval government was very dependent on the personal strengths (or weaknesses) of the reigning sovereign. If the king was unable to act for some reason, perhaps because he was temporarily unwell, it did not take long for the structure to start to creak. It's true that there was a bureaucracy (the ancestor of the civil service) and a council (not quite a cabinet, but capable of taking some executive decisions on the king's absence) but the king's input was vital.

Richard came to the throne while he was still a child, and there's no doubt that he had been raised by his father, the Black Prince, with a very high estimation of his own sacred person and of the royal prerogative. In a sense this was not controversial - there was no questioning of the king's right to rule, or of his exalted status in the hierarchy. The first problem was that he never developed the broad relationship with the nobility that Edward III (for example) had enjoyed - one has the impression that he was on a slightly different wavelength to people like his Uncle Gloucester, or the Earl of Arundel. He preferred to rule through a clique of his own choice, not always giving his important relatives the power they thought they deserved. (Come to think of it Edward IV ruled in the same way, so maybe Richard wasn't that far out?)

The second problem was that he had an awful lot of relatives to satisfy, and there was no way he was ever going to make them all happy. Medieval politics (if not politics in general) was ultimately all about the control of patronage, the gift of land, offices and revenues. The available pot was very small, and Richard had a nasty habit of giving most to the people he liked rather than those he disliked. Fancy that!

Third, the country was practically bankrupt. The long war with France which was so much part of the package of Edward III's allegedly glorious reign had resulted in the crown amassing intolerable debts. The normal revenue of England was only just enough to keep things ticking over - war meant taxation, and taxation was unpopular except (rarely) when the war was going really well. It was deeply unpopular when we were losing. The appalling financial straits that Richard inherited resulted in such measures as the Poll Tax which bore down most heavily on those least able to pay. (It would seem we still have the same taxation philosophy 627 years later.)

Several historians have explored Richard's psychological profile and developed various theories the latest of which - in Nigel's Saul's biography - is that the king was narcissistic. I'm no psychiatrist but I suppose my theory is as good as anyone else's. I suspect Richard was a depressive, maybe even bipolar. This would explain the difficulty he had in functioning at times, his occasional passionate - even violent - outbursts, and the problems he had with relationships outside his 'circle of trust'.

More another day...

Edmund of Langley

Before I go on to the Southampton plot, or start writing about two of the people I like most from all of history, I think I should say a bit about their dad, Edmund of Langley, father of the House of York.

Historians tend to be a bit sniffy about Edmund, generally rating him as incompetent, stupid, and generally useless - though I suspect he'd be better company on a pub crawl than most of them. If Edmund lived today he'd be driving a muddy Range Rover with dogs and shotguns in the back, and his feet would be clad in green wellies. He was much more interested in hunting than in politics, so the Chroniclers tell us. He also had an eye for the ladies, and according to Froissart was very much attached to his second wife, Joanne Holland - a mere 13 when she married him in 1393. (Different times, very different rules.)

Edmund was born in June 1341, the fifth (but fourth surviving) son of King Edward III and Queen Philippa. He started receiving grants of land as early as 1347, and his livelihood was gradually built up as he grew older, though he was never even a quarter as rich as big brother Gaunt. He took his fair share of fighting in the ongoing war against France, and he and Gaunt persuaded the Black Prince to halt the massacre of the people of Limoges - though it must be said that the main concern was to save French nobles. Edmund was given the Garter in 1361, and a year later was created Earl of Cambridge.

His first independent command was in Portugal 1381-82, and it turned out to be a complete fiasco. John of Gaunt never quite forgave him, and stated in his will that none of his money was to go to settling the accounts of the expedition.

York, like the rest of his family, was favoured by King Richard II, three times being left in charge of the country during Richard's absences, and gradually accumulating offices. Despite what the Chroniclers say, he was often at court and a fairly regular attender at councils and witnesser of charters. He does not seem to have suffered from his brothers' chronic ambition and in political terms was a moderate, essentially loyal to his nephew even if not always enthusiastic about his policies.

In 1388 he quarrelled violently in Parliament with his formidable brother Gloucester about the proposed execution of Sir Simon Burley, going so far as to challenge Gloucester to mortal combat over the issue. Strangely this episode is rarely mentioned by historians, perhaps because it might suggest that Edmund had some backbone, or that Richard II's enemies were not always supported by everyone who mattered.