Henry Beaufort, bishop, chancellor, cardinal

Front matter

DA

FROM THE INCOME OF THE

FISKE ENDOWMENT FUND

Author's Preface

This book is an attempt to do neither more nor less than justice to an Enghshman who has not yet received the recognition which is his due. A generation ago Dr. Stubbs in his Constitutional History of England reversed the unfavourable verdict upon the character of Henry Beaufort to which the genius of Shakespeare has given an undeserved vitality ; and the final estimate of the tribunal of history will probably have but few deductions to make from the tribute paid to Beaufort in that masterly review of the evolution of English government. The plan of that work, however, left room only for a brief and incidental treatment of Beaufort, and that too confined to his statesmanship. " The Cardinal of England " deserves a biography of his own. His public life of nearly half a century was one of the main threads of continuity between three Lancastrian reigns. His activity was an important factor in the course of events at more than one critical stage in the history of England, and perhaps of Europe.

The present volume is an attempt to furnish such a biography. It grew out of a brief sketch of Beaufort written for the Church Historical Society's second series of Typical English Churchmen, but in its present form it is based upon a fresh study of the chief authorities for the whole of Beaufort's life. It has been written in the fragments of time left by the primary duties of a parish priest, and under all the difficulties of distance from great viii PREFACE

libraries. The setting of the biography has involved the writing of a period of history where the work of acknowledged masters has made it dangerous to be independent and impossible to be original. On the other hand, any adequate record of Beaufort's services requires the presentation of a number of details which it is hard to keep in subordination to the great events and tendencies of his day, and equally hard to condense without loss of interest. The writer is painfully conscious of such defects in this book as are due to these difficulties or to the fragmentary character of his own historical training. Yet he ventures to hope that this monograph, richer perhaps than the necessarily bare story of Beaufort's life in the Dictionary of National Biography, but poorer in many respects than the splendid picture which Mr. Vickers has lately given of the cardinal's famous rival, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, may prove to be a not unworthy memorial of an eminent English churchman and statesman, and incidentally a real, if slender, contribution to the accurate knowledge of true history.

L. B. R.

Holt, Norfolk, August, 1908.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following list is a classification of the chief authorities for the life and times of Cardinal Beaufort. Biographical information and literary criticisms are to be found in Ramsay's Lancaster and York, in Oman's Political History of England, 1377-1485 (App. i, pp. 497-512), in Vickers's Humphrey Duke of Gloucester (pp. 456-475), and in the introductions to Kingsford's Chronicles of London and Henry V.

A. Original Authorities. (i) Chronicles. 1. Contemporary.

(a) English —

Chronicon Angliae (ed. Giles, 1848).

Gesta Henrici Quinti (ed. Williams, 1850).

Vita Henrici Quinti, by Thomas de Elmham (ed. Hearne,

1727).

Historia Anglicana, by Thomas Walsingham (ed. Riley,

Rolls Series).

Annales Mon. S. Albani, by J. Amundesham (ed. Riley,

Rolls Series).

Gesta Abbatum Monasterii S. Albani, vol. iii (Rolls Series),

ed. Riley.

Anglicanarum Scriptores Veteres, vol. i, 1604). Gregory's Chronicle of London (in Gairdner's Historical

Collections of a London Citizen, Camden Society, 1876). Chronicles of London (ed. Kingsford, 1905). English Chronicle (ed. Davies, Camden Society, 1856). John Hardyng's Chronicle (ed. Ellis, 1812).

(b) Foreign —

Monstrelet (ed. Buchon, Paris, 1826-7 ; Engl. Trans, by

T. Johnes, 1810).

Wavrin (ed. Hardy, Rolls Series).

Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris (ed. 1881). Chronique du Religieux de St. Denys (ed. Bellaguet, 1852). LefSvre de S. Remy (ed. Buchon, 1838). J. J. des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI. Aeneas Sylvius, Historia Bohemiae. Andreas Ratisbonensis, Chronicon and Dialogus (in Hofler's

X BIBLIOGRAPHY

2. Later chroniclers.

Arnold's Chronicle, or The Customs of London.

Hall's Chronicle.

Raynald, Annales Ecclesiastici.

(ii) Documents, letters, records, etc. Rolls of Parliament (cited as Rot. Pari.). Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council (ed.

Nicholas).

Calendars of Patent Rolls, Henry IV and Henry VI. Issues of the Exchequer (ed. Devon). Foedera, Conventiones , etc. (ed. Rymer). Testamenta Vetusta (ed. Nicolas).

Royal Wills (ed. Nichols).

Excerpta Historica (ed. Bentley).

Concilia M. Britanniae, etc. (ed. WUkins). Papal Letters, vols, v, vi, vii (ed. Bliss and Twemlow). Munimenta Academica (ed. Anstey, Rolls Series). Epistolae Academicae Oxon. (ed. Anstey, Oxf. Hist. Soc). Gascoigne, Loci e libro veritatum (ed. Thorold Rogers). Official Correspondence of Thomas Behynton (ed. Williams,

Rolls Series).

Reports of the Historical MSS. Commission. Letters and Papers Illustrative of Wars in France, Henry VI

(ed. Stevenson, Rolls Series).

Letters of Margaret of Anjou (ed. Munro, Camden Society). Quicherat, Prods de Rehabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc (Paris,

1841).

T. Douglas Murray, Jeanne d'Arc (London, 1902, an English

translation of depositions made at the " process of

rehabilitation ").

Brown, Fasciculi Rerum Expetendarum, vol. ii. Finke, Konstanzer Konzil (especially diary of Cardinal

Filastre).

B. Modern Histories, Biographies, etc.

Wharton, Anglia Sacra (1691).

Godwin, De Praesulibus Angliae.

Duck, Life of Chichele.

Stubbs, Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum (1858). Wylie, History of England under Henry IV (1884-1898). J. Endell Tyler, Henry of Monmouth (1838). Armitage-Smith, John of Gaunt (1904). *Vickers, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester (1907). Kingsford, Henry V (1901).

Dictionary of National Biography (articles on Beaufort, Bedford, Gloucester).

BIBLIOGRAPHY xi

Church Quarterly Review, July, 1881 : Cardinal Beaufort

(vol. xii).

Hook, Lives of Archbishops (especially Arundel, Chichele,

Stafford).

Lord Campbell, Lives of Chancellors, vol. i. Maxwell-Lyte, History of the University of Oxford (1886). RashdaU, The Universities in European History. Voigt, Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums, vol. ii. Palacky, Geschichie von Bohmen, vol. iii. Leng, K. Sigismund u. Heinrich V.

Caro, Das Bundniss von Canterbury. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vols, ii, iii. Sismondi, Histoire des Franfais, vols, xii, xiii (ed. 1831). Capes, English Church in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth

Centuries.

Milman, Latin Christianity.

Poole, Wycliffe and Movements for Reform. *Creighton, History of the Papacy (ed. 1892). Lingard, History of England (ed. 1849). Stubbs, Constitutional History of England (ed. 1884), vol. iii. *Ramsay, Lancaster and York (1892). Lodge, Close of the Middle Ages. *Oman, Political History of England from 1377 to 1485.

To the works marked with an asterisk the present writer is indebted to an extent which can scarcely be indicated by particular references.

xiv CONTENTS

CH.vr. PACE

XI. THE GOVERNMENT OF ENGLAND,

1433-1434 218

XII. THE CONFERENCES AT ARRAS AND AT

XIII. THE POLICY OF THE BEAUFORT PARTY,

1439-1444 266

XIV. THE PASSING OF THE CARDINAL,

1444-1447 284

INDEX 301

Chapter I From Boyhood To Bishopric And Chancellorship

1375-1405

Henry Beaufort was the second of four children Origin and born of the illicit connexion of John of Gaunt, Duke "^'"^• of Lancaster, with Katharine, daughter of Sir Paon Roelt, a knight of Hainault. Both before and after her own marriage to Sir Hugh Swynford in 1368, Katharine had been governess to Philippa and Elizabeth, the children of the duke and his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster ; and the death of the duchess in 1369 left her in charge of the household. When in 1372 Sir Hugh fell fighting in Aquitaine, his wife was openly recognised as the duke's mistress. ^ In 1371 he had married a second wife, Constance of Castile ; but Katharine was mistress of the situation, tolerated or acknowledged at court, and approached as patroness by boroughs in disfavour. There is no record of the dates of the birth of her children, but the eldest, John, could tilt with success in the lists in 1390, and was probably therefore born about 1373. Henry was a " mere lad " {admodum puer) when he became a bishop in 1398, though the expression should perhaps be taken not literally of boyhood but comparatively of a scandalously young bishop. His

' Armitage-Smith, John of Gaunt, pp. 390, 391 ; App. vii, pp. 462, 463.

birth may be placed in 1374 or 1375. Two other children followed : Thomas, afterwards Duke of Exeter, and Joan, whose second husband was Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland. The surname Beaufort by which they were aU known was derived from Beaufort in Artois. A late tradition described Beaufort as their birthplace, but the lordship of Beaufort was lost by John of Gaunt in 1369. The surname was probably chosen because " it would not prejudice the rights of his legitimate heir."^ Court gossip in the reign of Richard II translated the name to " Fairborn " as "a jesting aUusion to the open secret of their birth." ^ Legittma- In 1396, two years after the death of the " queen

Beauforts^ of Castile," John of Gaunt rewarded the faithfulness of his mistress by marrying her at Lincoln. The turn of the children came next. Probably it was for their sake even more than for their mother's that John braved the criticism and the resentment of the ladies at court. He procured from Pope Boniface IX the sanction of his marriage and the recognition of his children ; and in February, 1397, the King issued letters patent of legitimation to " our most dear cousins, the noble John the knight, Henry the clerk, Thomas domicello, ^ and to our beloved the noble Joan Beauford domicelle, the most dear relatives of our uncle the noble John, Duke of Lancaster." These letters of legitimation, which were duly confirmed by parliament, were the crowning act of a policy of reconciliation by which Richard secured the support

1 Armitage-Smith, John of Gaunt, pp. 196-199.

'The diminutive domicellus (almost =" page ") was applied to youths of rank not yet old enough for knighthood, domicella to girls of similar rank and age. For the patent of legitimation, see Excetpta Historica, p. 154.

HENRY THE CLERK of John of Gaunt. Relying upon this support the young King, now thirty years of age, proceeded to take a despotic revenge upon the magnates who liad overridden him ten years before. The Duke of Gloucester died a suspicious death ; the Earl of Warwick was banished ; the Earl of Arundel was beheaded, and his brother the primate driven from his see. Revenge upon enemies was followed by rewards for friends. Five new dukes were made in a day. John Beaufort, who was made Earl of Somerset on his legitimation, now became Marquis of Dorset and Admiral of England. In March, 1398, " Henry the clerk " was Bishop-elect of Lincoln. The Beauforts were established as favourites of the crown. It remained to be seen whether Richard could retain their confidence or their allegiance.

The record of Henry Beaufort's early history is but fragmentary. The bursar's roll at Peterhouse, Cambridge, notes the receipt of 20s. from Henry Beaufort in 1388-9 for the rent of his room. ^ The accounts of Queen's College, Oxford, include payments in 1390-1 for keys for the provost's chamber and for that of " Bewforth," and " to John, servant of Bewforth, for necessaries bought and for his labour upon the vestments " of the college chapel ; and in 1392 an entry of " wine for the Lord Duke of Lancaster " points to a visit of the father while the youthful undergraduate was stiU in residence. ^

Preferment in the Church came early, while Henry was yet in statu pupillari, in minor orders only. Already in 1389 and again in 1391 he was given a prebend at Lincoln, and soon afterwards the wardenship of the free chapel of Tickhill, a Lancastrian estate

' Hist. MSS. Commission, Ist Rep., p. 78. " Ibid., n, 141.

Education and early preferment.

from which his mother was granted an annuity in 1381. The legitimation of 1397 opened the way to further promotion. A papal indult of April, 1397, granted permission for ten years to Henry Beaufort, Dean of Wells, master of arts and student of theology, to hold and farm his deanery and other benefices while he was studying letters at Oxford or some other university. ^ At this stage probably should be placed his reputed residence at " Aken in Almaine " (Aachen or Aix in Germany) , where he is said to have studied canon and civil law. ^ An undated conveyance signed by the president and chapter of Wells speaks of Henry Beaufort, Dean of Wells, as then absent abroad. ^ Bishop of In February, 1398, John Bokyngham, the old Lincoln. Bishop of Lincoln, was driven from his diocese by an arbitrary exercise of papal authority, and translated to the far poorer see of Lichfield and Coventry. Lincoln was promptly given to " Bewford " by a papal provision granted in answer to the request of the King, who desired to show " his re\'erence and affection " for his uncle of Lancaster.'' Richard's motive was probably twofold. He was as desirous to win the services of the son as to reward and retain the loyalty of the father. Henry was now at least twenty-three, and giving promise already perhaps of the ability which he displayed in later years. Of his character nothing is known beyond the fact that he

1 Papal Letters, v, 26.

^ Holinshed, ii, 485. Wylie, Henry IV, iii, 263, regards this tradition as a misunderstanding of Froissart's reference to Beaufort's residence " &. I'ecole i Acquessonfort, " i.e. Oxford. The university of Aix was at the southern Aix in Provence, and dated from the fifteenth century

» Hist. MSS. Comm., iii, 356.

' Walsiugham, ii, 228.

CHANCELLOR OF OXFORD 5

had been guilty of a youthful sin which his worst slanderers passed over afterwards in silence. A child was born to him by Alice, daughter of the Earl of Arundel and niece of his subsequent rival, the Archbishop of Canterbur}'. This child, named Joan after her father's sister, became the wife of Sir Edward Stradling, who was gi\'en an appointment in \\'ales in 1423, and was remembered along with his wife in the Cardinal's will in 1447. It is uncertain whether she was born before or after her father's ordination, but it is certain that there is no trace of licentiousness in his later days, and that no imputation of the kind was ever cast upon his life as an ecclesiastic.

Beaufort was chancellor of the University of Oxford Chancellor in 1398, but it is not certain how long he held the °^ ^^°'^^ office. The usual tenure was for two years. Thomas Hendman, however, was chancellor late in 1397. On the other hand, Beaufort was consecrated bishop of Lincoln on July 14th, 1398, and it would have been an anomaly indeed if the chancellorship had been held by the \-ery bishop from whose jurisdiction the university had struggled successfully to set the chancellorship free. In 1395 with the consent of Archbishop Courtenay, a former chancellor of Oxford, a bull had been obtained from Boniface IX exempting the university from episcopal jurisdiction. The bull was repudiated by the faculty of law at Oxford, and in February, 1397, Archbishop Arundel, who was bent upon suppressing the Lollardism of the university, took the side of the jurists. The masters argued in despair that the right of visitation was the privilege of the crown , but the King in council insisted that it belonged to the primate, and nothing but the banishment of Arundel in September, 1397, gave the beaten graduates a respite. It was apparently at this stage

6 CARDINAI, BEAUFORT

in the conflict that the youthful Dean of Wells became chancellor. The chancellors of Oxford were elected by the university, no longer requiring even confirmation by the Bishops of Lincoln, whose delegates they had been originally. Nothing is known of the circumstances of Beaufort's election, but it is possible that the electors were desirous to have as their representative head a graduate of their own body who was at once a favourite of the crown, an adherent of the party which had triumphed over Arundel and his friends, and a son of the magnate who had great territorial influence in the counties which composed the diocese of Lincoln. On the other hand, Beaufort may have been imposed upon them by the influence of the crown. The whole question is obscure, for the academic conflict was twofold. The defenders of the liberties of the university were largely identical with the adherents of the Wycliffite movement, but whatever Beaufort may have done to awaken the hopes of the champions of academic freedom, he showed no sign in later years of sympath}' with LoUardism. ^ Guardian Tradition says that Henry of Monmouth, after-

Monmouth. wards Henry V, was entrusted to the guardianship of his uncle the chancellor, and resided for a time at Oxford, in a room in a now vanished gateway of Queen's College. The unusual expenditm"e upon plate and other signs of hospitality in the college accounts for 1398 may be evidence of the residence of the chancellor in his old college or of a visit of his during the residence of his nephew, though some doubt is cast upon this supposition by the fact that

' For the visitation controversy see Maxwell Lyte. Hist, of the Univ. of Oxford, pp. 291-295 ; for Arundel and Oxford LoUardism, pp. 277-284.

BISHOP OF LINCOLN the lad was only eleven, over-young for an undergraduate even in those days. The association between the two may date from 1398, when the boy's father was driven into exile ;'^^and in that case it was perhaps a precaution of Richard's own guilty anxiety. It may, however, date from the end of 1399, in which case it would be a proof of Henry IV's confidence in his half-brother. Yet it is significant that in 1409 and 1411, when uncle and nephew were associated in political action, the Prince was mediating or fighting on behalf of the liberties of the university, once more threatened by the archbishop ; and it is quite credible that the two were actuated as much by a common attachment to Oxford as by their general opposition to the policy of Arundel.

The consecration of Beaufort to Lincoln in July, Death of

1398, would naturally put an end to his chancellorship. Qj„nt° It is improbable that he would retain the chancellorship with the idea of closing the conflict between the university and the diocese by uniting their representatives in his own person. The real conflict now was between chancellor and primate, and Arundel was by

this time an exile. A year later came the first great crisis of Beaufort's career. The King was sinning away fast his ill-gotten hold upon the government of the nation. Parliament was practically replaced by a packed council. A personal quarrel between Henry of Lancaster and Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, two of Richard's recent supporters, was made an excuse for the banishment of both. Finally, when John of Gaunt died broken-hearted in February,

1399, his exiled son was robbed of his birthright by the confiscation of the Lancastrian estates. Meanwhile Bishop Henry had first to bury his father. The chronicler of St. Albans tells with pride the story of the resting of the duke's body at that monastery on the way to London,— how the Bishop of Lincohi and his widowed mother requested the hospitaUty of the convent, and how the abbot, fortified by papal decree and royal injunction on behalf of the independence of his house, refused the request until the bishop withdrew his refusal to sign letters of immunity for the convent from the jurisdiction of the see of Lincoln ; how the Bishop of London celebrated mass next morning, and the Bishop of Lincoln, who served, presented costly vestments which had belonged to the duke ; how he thanked the convent for the honour done to his father's body, and promised to be a friend to the convent in proof of his thanks ; and how the whole convent escorted the funeral procession to the gates as it journeyed on its way to St. Paul's for the burial. ^ The zealous scribe was thinking chiefly of the honour of his community ; but the young bishop, amid the last duties to the departed and the problems of episcopal jurisdiction, must have Return of been facing a still greater question of the immediate

Henry of future. Sooner or later he must choose be+ween the Lancaster. ^^. , ,, , , _, , .

Kmg and the absent son. The choice came my re

swiftly than men expected. On May 29th Beaui^ort

and two other bishops accompanied^RicI^ra,TO to

Ireland on his fruitless campaign against recalcitrant

chieftain of Leinster. On July 10th came the news

that Henry of Lancaster was back in England, and

the North was in arms on his side. John Beaufort,

Marquis of Dorset, had been already in correspondence

with his half-brother. Henry Beaufort's movements

1 Gesta Abbatum Mon. S. Alban, iii, 438-440. For the duke's will, see Armitage-Smith, pp. 420-436. He bequeathed to Henry Beaufort amongst other things his missal and breviary, once the property of the Black Prince.

BEAUFORT AND HENRY IV 9

are not known, beyond the fact that he landed with Richard at Milford Haven. He may have gone over to Lancaster at once when Richard's army was disbanded by its leaders after the King's flight into Cheshire ; he may ha\'e simply waited for the inevitable end. All that is known is that when parhament met in September, 1399, to receive the King's abdication, Henry Beaufort was on Lancaster's side. His motives scarcely need analysis. Twenty-one other prelates and thirty-six temporal peers voted with " I'evesq' de Nicholl " in Henry IV's first parliament in October for the " safe and secret imprisonment " of the King whose despotism had forfeited his crown. ^ But long before this solid vote spoke for the ration, Beaufort's course must have been plain. Lancaster was his brother ; Richard only his cousin, and his brother's enemy.

The part which Henry Beaufort pla3'ed in the Promotion troublous reign of Henry IV was mainly political. Reauforts In the parliament of 1401 he appears for the first of many times on one of the committees of peers appointed to consider petitions, and in 1402 he was a member of a small advisory council of bishops and barons formed to act in conjunction with the commons at their request. The Beauforts were coming quickly to the front. Henry's eldest sons were mere boys. Practically destitute of friends or ministers of weight, accepted rather than welcomed by the baronage, he turned naturally to his own kinsmen for support. The Beauforts, whose origin left them dependent upon the crown, gladly gave their royal brother what he asked. John Beaufort, reduced to his earldom of Somerset in 1399 for his former support of Richard, was restored to favour and rewarded in 1400 with the

' Rot. Pari., iii, 426.

confiscated estates of Owen Glendower, and in 1401 was appointed captain of Calais and chief negotiator with France. In 1402 he was sent to escort the King's daughter Blanche to Cologne for her marriage to the Emperor's son. Late in 1402 John and Henry Beaufort were commissioned to fetch the King's second wife, Joan of Navarre, widow of the Duke of Brittany ; and when at last, after a first failure to land in Brittany at all, they succeeded in conveying the queen-elect across to Falmouth, storm-tossed but safe, it was the Bishop of Lincoln who married the royal pair in Winchester Cathedral on February 7th, 1403, old Bishop Wykeham being too infirm to take part in the ceremony. If this marriage was " part of a scheme for strengthening the English interest in France," 1 it was a failure. Beaufort little dreamed that forty years later he would come to find in the cathedral of Winchester his only solace for the utter failure of a still greater project of English supremacy in France.

The state In 1401 Henry had entrusted the chancellorship to

of England. Edmund Stafford, Bishop of Exeter, Richard's last chancellor. On February 28th, 1403, Stafford was replaced by the Bishop of Lincoln. On March 2nd the visitation of St. Mary's Hospital in the city was committed to two royal clerks because " the King's brother the chancellor of England, to whom the visitation of the King's hospitals pertained according to his office," was occupied on urgent business. It was indeed an arduous task that lay before the young chancellor. Difficulties were thickening round the King. His position was the precarious position of a practically elective sovereign, and he had to strain e\'ery nerve to keep a " sufficient majority of the

NATIONAL DISTRESS 11

nation at his back. " ^ He dealt leniently on the whole with the partisans of the late King, and though the keeper of Pontefract Castle, where the hapless Richard died so mysteriously, was Sir Thomas Swynford, the son of the King's stepmother Katharine, Hemy cannot be charged with personal responsibility for that timely death. He humoured the parliament which was his real master, and he gave a qualified assent or at least a tactful refusal to the demands which the commons made in the direction of parliamentary independence. Arundel and the clergy were conciliated by the anti-Lollard legislation of 140L Yet in 1402 the first flush of national enthusiasm had died away, and Henry was in sore straits. His invasion of Scotland in 1400 had led to an incessant border warfare. His premature severity turned a feud between Glendower and an English lordmarcher into a war for the national freedom of Wales. His negotiations with France proved barren or humiliating. Meanwhile the financial needs of the crown fell heavily upon every class of the community. Reaction broke at last into disorder. In May, 1402, the bishops and lords in each county, Beaufort amongst them, were commissioned to deal stringently with offenders " who told many lies in divers parts of the realm in taverns and other congregations of the people, preaching among other things that the King had not kept the promises he made at his advent into the realm and at his coronation and in parliaments and councils that the laws and laudable customs of the realm should be conserved." - Beaufort's commission as Bishop of Lincoln extended over the counties of Lincoln, Leicester, Buckingham,

1 Oman, Polit. Hist, of England, 1377-1485, p. 154.

2 Patent Rolls, 1402, May llth.

The

Chancellor in Council and in Parliament.

Bedford, Oxford, Huntingdon, Northampton, and Rutland. In July, 1402, he was commissioned along with the chancellor of Oxford to deal with the Welsh students who " assembled nightly in divers unlawful congregations for the purpose of rebellion," ^ probably encouraged by the defeat of the royal troops in Wales a month before. When parliament met in October, 1402, Bishop Stafford was full of the distress in the country. He tried to make much of the honour implied in the Emperor's invitation to the King to take part in the healing of the papal schism, and of the victory won by the Percies over the Scots at Homildon ; but he confessed, " God has inflicted punishments in divers manners upon this realm."

Such was the situation that Beaufort had to face early in 1403. While Henry was fighting hard against Glendower and the Percies, Beaufort was hard at work as chancellor in London, where his convenience was met by the assignment of \'\'althamstow and Old Stratford as places of residence for him. In October the King wrote to thank chancellor and council for sending prompt supplies to the Duke of York, who had succeeded John and Thomas Beaufort in command of the newly reco\'ered fortress of Carmarthen, where a French squadron had come to aid the Welsh. In November Thomas was promoted to the admiralship of the northern fleet. The war was, however, still a serious struggle when the chancellor faced his first parliament on January 14th, 1404. He made his opening speech, contrary to custom, on the first day. ' ' He had no cheering tidings to impart, and so perhaps he sought to get through an awkward duty in a thin house." ^ His report was

' Patent Rolls, 1402, July 18th.

^ Ramsay, Lancaster and York, i, 69.

THE CHANCELLOR'S STATESMANSHIP 13

certainly discouraging. The recent revolt of the Percies had a plausible pretext in the grievances of the nation. Wales was still stubbornly resisting ; hostilities had broken out in France ; and money was wanted everywhere. The speaker of the commons roundly asserted that it was not the military activity but the economic mismanagement of the King that was responsible for the national distress ; and the commons unfolded an array of complaints to which the King's needs compelled him to assent. Foreigners were to be removed from the King's household, and its expenditure to be reduced, and the King was to publish the names of those ministers who were to form " his great and continual council." The commons pointedly warned the chancellor and the treasurer that if the grievances were not promptly redressed, parliament might be dispersed by news of invasion " or in some other way " and not meet again. Henry's financial integrity has been vindicated ; the commons were actuated by " ignorant impatience of all taxation in a time of great national need.''^ A word may be added here in defence of the chancellor. It has been the fashion to deride the political sermons which he like other chancellors preached at the opening of each session of parliament. His texts were often far-fetched and his exegesis forced, but his thesis was mostly sound statesmanship, and, after all, rhetoric is no proof of insincerity. In this parliament he took for his text, " In the multitude of counsellors there is safety," and drew an elaborate picture of the realm as a body in which the right side represented the spiritual estate, the left the temporal, and the limbs the commonalty. The head, he left it