The Service of the Dead

York, 1399. England is rife with rumor, tense with suspicion, and months away from invasion by the exiled Henry Bolingbroke and his supporters. The historical figures seeded among the fictional characters in the Kate Clifford mysteries are caught up in the crisis as it affects York. The stage is set for betrayals and murder.

Much ink has been spilled over the causes of the crisis between King Richard II and his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke – Earl of Derby (in 1398, Duke of Hereford) and eldest son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Muddying the waters is the contrast between how much was documented about Richard’s life prior to 1399 as opposed to what was recorded about his cousin, Henry; Richard became king while in his early teens and was thenceforward always in the public eye, whereas Henry spent his youth and early adulthood in relative obscurity, overshadowed by his formidable father. What we do know about Henry is that he excelled at tournaments, though he had little to no experience in battle. That does not tell us much about his character at thirty-two, his and Richard’s mutual age in 1399.

Years earlier, a group of powerful barons, calling themselves the Appellants, had risen up in protest against Richard’s policies and his favorites at court. Henry had joined them. This was both a personal and a political betrayal – Henry had grown up in Richard’s household, and many believed that the king, as yet childless, meant to honor the wishes of his uncle, John of Gaunt, in declaring Henry the heir to the throne if he did not, in time, sire a son. The Appellants could use Henry’s presence in their ranks to threaten Richard – we have in hand your heir, ready to take your place if we deem it necessary. Henry eventually returned to court, and regained his royal cousin’s affections. But one wonders just how much trust existed between them. In the novel I have Kate professing what appears to have been a popular notion, that Henry had gone back to court to reason with his cousin.

A decade later, Henry (now Duke of Hereford) repeated to his father, John of Gaunt, a tale of a plot against him that implicated the king. I will not go into the detail here – it is carefully laid out in Nigel Saul’s Richard II.[1] Suffice it to say, Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, warned Henry of a rumor that King Richard meant to overturn the pardons he had given after the earlier rebellion. Even further, he might reverse an order dating to the reign of Richard’s great-grandfather, Edward II, that had reinstated the Lancastrian inheritance after Thomas of Lancaster’s rebellion in 1314. This reversal would wipe out the wealth and lands of a number of barons, but especially Gaunt, and, after him, Henry as the heir to the duchy. Belatedly realizing that Henry would warn his father, who would then approach the king, Norfolk attempted to ambush John of Gaunt. Upon his failure, the two, Henry and Thomas, were brought before the Parliament, where Thomas denied it all. Parliament ruled that the issue between the two men should be decided in “the court of chivalry.” On September 16, 1398, Henry and Thomas presented themselves at the lists in Coventry. And just as Henry made the first advances toward his opponent, King Richard rose up and cried, “Hold!” The upshot: he exiled both of them, though Henry would be permitted to return, in time, and claim his inheritance.

Shortly after Henry went into exile, his father died, and it was rumored that Richard had changed his mind. Henry’s inheritance from Gaunt would be forfeit. In mid-March 1399, the court verified the rumor. King Richard intended to distribute the Lancastrian lands among the barons currently in favor. No one expected Henry, now considered by most to be Duke of Lancaster, to accept that without a fight.

Hence the tension building in England.

In May 1396, King Richard II granted to the city of York a charter giving it the status of a county. Essentially, it afforded the citizens full internal self-government. Such privilege came at a price, but the affluent merchants and guild members considered it a satisfactory trade, and a familiar process. The crown regularly contracted loans with the wealthy citizens; indeed, by the second half of the 14th century, this was such standard practice that groups of merchants in Bristol and York devised a way to share the risk among themselves by making these loans as corporations rather than as individuals. It was a risky business, lending money to the crown, which was perennially in debt. King Richard’s grandfather, Edward III, borrowed with such abandon that he brought down several Italian banking families, which is why the king now looked to his own subjects, the prosperous merchants who relied on smoothly running mechanisms of state for their trade, for loans. So in 1399, as the tension between the king and his powerful cousin grew, the merchants were understandably edgy.