History of the English People, Volume III: The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540Green, John Richard
History
History of the English People, Volume III: The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540
Green, John Richard
Great Britain -- History
murdered duke's partizans; and in their furious antagonism Armagnac and
Burgundian alike sought aid from the English king.
[Sidenote: Prince Henry]
But the fortune which favoured Henry elsewhere was still slow to turn in
the West. In the opening of 1405 the king's son, Henry Prince of Wales,
had taken the field against Glyndwr. Young as he was, Henry was already a
tried soldier. As a boy of thirteen he had headed an incursion into
Scotland in the year of his father's accession to the throne. At fifteen
he fought in the front of the royal army in the desperate fight at
Shrewsbury. Slight and tall in stature as he seemed, he had outgrown the
weakness of his earlier years and was vigorous and swift of foot; his
manners were courteous, his air grave and reserved; and though wild tales
ran of revels and riots among his friends, the poets whom he favoured and
Lydgate whom he set to translate "the drery piteous tale of him of Troy"
saw in him a youth "both manful and vertuous." There was little time
indeed for mere riot in a life so busy as Henry's, nor were many
opportunities for self-indulgence to be found in campaigns against
Glyndwr. What fitted the young general of seventeen for the thankless work
in Wales was his stern, immoveable will. But fortune as yet had few smiles
for the king in this quarter, and his constant ill-success continued to
wake fresh troubles within England itself. The repulse of the young prince
in a spring campaign in 1405 was at once followed by a revolt in the
north. The pardon of Northumberland had left him still a foe; the Earl of
Nottingham was son of Henry's opponent, the banished Duke of Norfolk;
Scrope, Archbishop of York, was brother of Richard's counsellor, the Earl
of Wiltshire, who had been beheaded on the surrender of Bristol. Their
rising in May might have proved a serious danger had not the treachery of
Ralph Neville, the Earl of Westmoreland, who still remained steady to the
Lancastrian cause, secured the arrest of some of its leaders. Scrope and
Lord Nottingham were beheaded, while Northumberland and his partizan Lord
Bardolf fled into Scotland and from thence to Wales. Succours from France
stirred the king to a renewed attack on Glyndwr in November; but with the
same ill-success. Storms and want of food wrecked the English army and
forced it to retreat; a year of rest raised Glyndwr to new strength; and
when the long-promised body of eight thousand Frenchmen joined him in 1407
he ventured even to cross the border and to threaten Worcester. The threat
was a vain one and the Welsh army soon withdrew; but the insult gave fresh
heart to Henry's foes, and in 1408 Northumberland and Bardolf again
appeared in the north. Their overthrow at Bramham Moor put an end to the
danger from the Percies; for Northumberland and Bardolf alike fell on the
field. But Wales remained as defiant as ever. In 1409 a body of Welshmen
poured ravaging into Shropshire; many of the English towns had fallen into
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