The Rest Is History - 486. Henry IV: Warrior Princes and Fat Knights (Part 2)

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

The year is 1403, and the Usurper King, Henry IV, faces a seemingly insurmountable challenge to his rule. He has been brought the news that his old friend, Harry “Hotspur” Percy, has betrayed him, and plans to lead his army against the King. Meanwhile, to the West, the revolt in Wales continues, at its head the formidable welsh king Owain Glyndŵr. And even in Scotland, where Henry IV thought he’d settled things down by silencing the terrifying Earl of Douglas, there is more trouble: a kitchen boy is claiming to be Richard II. And having made it halfway up to Scotland with his army to quell the newfound unrest, Henry IV must turn around, and march his men towards Wales, to face Hotspur at Schrewsbury... Join Tom and Dominic as they dive into the biggest revolt against Henry IV’s rule, the making of his son and heir, Prince Hal, and the fate of the real Sir John Falstaff, abandoned by his dear friend Hal. _______ *The Rest Is History LIVE in the U.S.A.* If you live in the States, we've got some great news: Tom and Dominic will be performing throughout America in November, with shows in San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Boston and New York.  *The Rest Is History LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall* Tom and Dominic, accompanied by a live orchestra, take a deep dive into the lives and times of two of history’s greatest composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Tickets on sale now at TheRestIsHistory.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. As thou art to this hour was Richard then, when I from France set foot at Ravensburg. And even as I was then is Percy now. Now by my sceptre and my soul to boot, he hath more worthy interest to the state than thou, the shadow of succession. For of no right, no colour like to write, he doth fill fields with harness in the realm, turns head against the lion's armoured jaws, and being no more in debt to years than thou, leads ancient lords and reverend

bishops on to bloody battles and to bruising arms. So it's 1403. Henry IV has been brought the news that his old comrade, Harry Hotspur, Harry Percy, is in revolt against him. So is Owen Glyndaur in Wales. There is trouble in Scotland. It is all kicking off. And at this moment, Tom, Henry IV has summoned his dissolute son, Prince Hal, from a tavern in Cheapside. And he says to him, listen, you are like Richard II. You are like that drip that I had to kick off the throne. And Harry Hotspur, your arch rival, your nemesis, is like I was back then then he is poised to take over and look at what degradation you have brought our family to with your carousings with full staff and all this

in our hour of need in the hour of darkness but tom's being a bit unfair isn't it yeah you think this is a bit harsh don't you it's a bit it was certainly in the context of the play because the prince of wales prince how i mean he tells his dad, look, I'm going to, I'm going to meet Hotspur in battle. I'm going to kill him and I will redeem all this on Percy's head. So in other words, all Percy's great achievements, they will then accrue to me. Yeah, but who would believe that? All he's been doing is drinking for the last like six years or something. Well, he pulls it off in the play. But I think it's also unfair in reality because as we mentioned in the previous episode, Henry IV part one, the prince isn't actually the

same age as Hotspur. I mean, that's what Henry IV is saying, but actually Hotspur was older than Henry IV himself. And not only that, but the prince really hadn't been hanging out in taverns. He's been having this very, very grueling apprenticeship in Wales. So on the 12th of July, when Henry IV has brought the news of Hotspur's rebellion, and he's in Nottingham on his way up to Scotland, Henry, his elder son, the Prince of Wales, is two months off his 17th birthday. And he has essentially been fighting the Welsh for three years. So at the age of 14, he'd been sent to Chester, which had been an absolute hotbed of Ricardian support.

It's the great place for longbowmen in England. So a place that Henry needs to kind of make sure is behind him. Then he's had Owen Glyndaw's revolt. Owen Glyndaw has proclaimed himself Prince of Wales. So a direct rival to Prince Hal. And the two Princes of Wales have started kind of hammering at each other. And on the 1st of April 1403, the Prince, who by that point has become of age, is given official command of the war. And he's shown himself, even though he's only 16, he's pretty good. I mean, he's a pretty proficient commander.

So he's, we mentioned in the last episode, he's wasted Owen Glyndaw's manors in the northeast of Wales. He's relieved sieges of Harlech and Aberystwyth Castle. And I think also this is full of moment for the future his future career he is getting to grips with the fact that you can't fight battles without money you know the sinews of war are gold and even as he's fighting he's also started writing letters to his father saying look we need more money and he writes to henry the fourth and says we have made all the pawning we may of our little jewels to defray the debts. So he's putting his jewels where his mouth is. He's really understanding

that war is about logistics as well as about strategy and tactics. Now, it is true that in this apprenticeship, Henry IV has a very, very good guardian who is Thomas Percy, the Earl of Worcester, who is the uncle of Harry Hotspur, the younger brother of Northumberland, and he is on hand to kind of guide the young prince. I don't think it alters the fact. Yeah, it doesn't alter the fact that he's a very, very impressive young man already. So for two years, he's been in the field and he's been getting to grips with not just battlefield tactics and stuff, but basically the organization, the political organization and economic organization that goes into warfare. And those will be enormously important for him when he becomes Henry V, as we will see next week. And takes the fight to a more formidable enemy.

Yeah. And as Henry V, of course, he will fight a great war and he will face stupefying odds. And now, in the summer of 1403, he is also facing terrifying odds because Hotspur has turned against Henry IV, has turned against the House of Lancaster, has arrived in Chester, just to the north of where the Prince of Wales is in Shrewsbury. And Hotspur is proclaiming that King Richard is alive, that he's the rightful king, which means that the young prince is in deadly peril of being cornered. So if that's the case, right, Hotspur is saying, for understandable reasons, time to get rid of the usurper. King Richard is alive.

I will lead the crusade to put him back on. I know crusade is the wrong word, but anyway, I will lead the campaign to put him back on his throne. Does he have a Richard II? Does he have a pretender in his baggage? Because that's going to be a problem if he wins. So there is this pretender up in Scotland, the kitchen boy who is claiming to be Richard II. But there is also young Edmund Mortimer, who is being kept in silken captivity in Windsor, who, in the opinion of many people, has a better claim to the throne than Henry IV. And Hotspur is married to Edmund Mortimer's aunt.

So there is a family link between Hotspur and the potential new king. And I think almost certainly the Hotspur is planning to put this young boy on the throne. But then what would he do about his claim about Richard II being alive? I think he'd probably bury it. The reason he's making that claim is he's in Chester, where everyone in Chester absolutely loves Richard II. Richard II had always lavished great favour and attention on Chester. And the other reason he's doing that is that the people in Chester, as you said, they have this tremendous record of longbowmen. And this is what Harry wants to recruit. It's a region with a long record of service in France in the Hundred Years' War, under Edward III, under the Black Prince.

And in fact, the key figure in helping Hotspur to recruit men in Cheshire is a guy called John Massey, who's a knight from Tatton, who'd served with the Black Prince. And he comes and he joins Hotspur with his two sons. He brings lots of retainers with him. So that's brilliant. But of course, Hotspur has also been serving in Wales, where he had been very keen on accommodating Welsh aspirations rather than opposing them, as Henry IV had done. So there are people in Wales also who are very willing to rally to his cause.

So even though he had turned up in Chester with only 160 men, he brought them from Northumberland, he very soon has an army numbering in the thousands, maybe 5,000, 6,000. Right. So this is looking pretty bleak for Prince Al, right? His father is a long way away because his father's been marching north. Yeah. So where is he? He's in the Welsh marches or on the border somewhere. No, he's in Shrewsbury. In Shrewsbury. But that is the Welsh marches. Yeah. He's camped out in Shrewsbury. Yeah. And compounding his danger is, of course, I just said that his guardian,

his second in command, is the Earl of Worcester, Hotspur's uncle. And it's not yet clear what his take is. The Prince of Wales is relying on him to stay loyal, but he doesn't. So as Hotspur has recruited, you know, he's raised his army

and is now advancing south from Chester towards Shrewsbury, which is only about, what, 40 miles south, I think. And as he's doing this, the Earl of Worcester slips out of Shrewsbury. He has taken up 800 archers from the prince's retinue with him. So the prince is now even more denuded, even more stripped of men, basically only has about 1,000, maybe 1,200 men with him. And about a thousand, maybe 1200 men with him. And he's got this vast army descending on him. And when the rebels approach the outskirts of Shrewsbury, um, late on, uh, uh, the 19th of July, 1403, there's nothing really that the prince can

do to oppose them. You know, Hotspur's army is able to kind of lay waste a few outskirts, things like that. But there's nothing that the prince can do. He's defiant. And he's 16, right? Yeah, he's almost 17. He's very young and he's facing this enormous army. Now, if he gets captured, that's very bad. It's probably, you know, terminus for him.

He will be dispatched. The situation looks incredibly bleak, except there is one ray of sunshine, one advantage that the Lancastrians have. And that is because the Percys do not know where Henry IV is. They think he is in London. And London is too far away. Yeah. Multiple days march.

Yeah. For Henry to come and relieve Shrewsbury. But in fact, as we said at the end of the last episode, he's been marching northwards to Scotland and the news had reached him in Nottingham. And the moment he gets it, he starts marching towards the Welsh marches. So on the 19th of July, even as Hotspur's troops are massing on the outskirts of Shrewsbury, the King is about 30 miles away in Lichfield. And he has brought news that his son is in desperate peril.

And so they make a massive forced march through the night. And by the 20th of July, Henry's army has arrived outside Shrewsbury. The prince is able to join up with him, and the two armies are facing each other. And Hotspur realizes that his intelligence has been faulty. He drops back, retreats a few miles northwest. The king's army advances northwest to follow him, camps out in the vicinity of a great abbey to the northwest. And they're now about seven miles apart that evening.

And then the next day, the next morning, the 21st of July, which is a Saturday, the two armies slowly advanced towards each other till they were within sight of each other, but not within the reach of their arrows. Amazing scenes, Tom. So as yet, they're not ready to clash. And the king and Worcester, they hold a parley. This happens in the play, Henry IV, part one. And the Percy's bottom line is that Henry stand down and accept Edmund Mortimer as king. So there's your answer as to who they want. They're not really going for Richard II.

They're going for Edmund Mortimer. And obviously there's no way that Henry IV can accept this. They're wasting their lives making that offer. Absolutely. I mean, he's Henry IV can accept this. They're wasting their lives making that offer. Absolutely. I mean, he's never going to accept that. At the same time, the Percys can't really trust the king when he says that he'll forgive them. They know that he will finish them off very quickly if they do that.

But Worcester nevertheless continues the negotiations and it becomes increasingly clear to Henry that Worcester is essentially playing for time. And the reason for that is that because it's a Saturday, if Worcester can keep the parley going until dusk, the following day will be a Sunday and it's forbidden by the church for armies to fight on the Sunday. So you'd then be looking at Monday and it's possible that even more reinforcements might come by that time, maybe from Owen Glendower, maybe from the North, maybe from Chester,

who knows. And so Henry IV isn't having any of this because he probably outnumbers the rebels who are what, five, six thousand. He probably outnumbers them two to one. Nevertheless, the rebels do have advantages. So they have all these archers from Cheshire, and they're the best archers in England. They have highly seasoned commanders.

So they've got Hotspur. They've got Worcester. And they have the Earl of Douglas, who was a terrifying Scottish nobleman who'd been taken prisoner by Hotspur a year earlier, but has now come down with him and is keen to have a crack at the English king.

Why not? They basically said to him, you know, let's bury the hatchet and why don't you give us a hand? Yeah. Just to give people a sense. So they're on the higher ground. Yes. And as a structure native myself, I have to say the battlefield of Shrewsbury is an excellent

battlefield to visit. Tom? It is, yes. It's got a tremendous farm shop. It has a bird of prey center, if you like birds of prey. And on the other side of the road is the 2 Henry's Pub and Grill. So that's nice. And I think you can get hot spur honey, can't you?

You can get all, it's all black branded stuff. It's a great farm shop complex. Nice butchers, very good stuff in jars. Love it. And they've got a little exhibition. Yeah. It's actually a very good exhibition about the battle. And you can see the lay of the land, can't you?

You can see the hill. You totally can. And you can see why, you know, Henry might have hesitated at the thought of advancing up it because it's potentially treacherous ground, not just because it's high, but because there's a pea field. And these peas, there are lots of stakes

that have been driven into the ground and the peas have kind of grown up around. These stakes protrude maybe four or five foot out. So they are quite a barrier as well. But Henry decides, you know, he can't afford to let things dangle. So towards the hour of Vespers, so that's, you know, looking, I mean, it's quite late in the day. The sun is setting.

He decides he has no choice to attack and he cries out in the name of God, take the banners forward. And the Royal Army advances. And the thing that is terrifying for both sides, but perhaps particularly for the Royalists who are having to do the attack, go uphill, they're faced with all these stakes, is the fact that this is the first time that an English army has faced Longbowmen. Yeah. The Cheshire Longbowmen, the best in England. And therefore the world. So you're probably facing the most terrifying military force in the whole of Christendom. And this is clearly a terrifying prospect. Yeah. These are the archers who had

wiped out the French at Crecy and Poitiers. Only the year before they'd wiped out the flower of Scottish chivalry at Humbleton Hill. And now the Royalists, Henry IV's army, the Lancastrians are clunking their way up the hill through the peas, past the stakes, and the arrows are just raining down on them. And Thomas Walsingham, this chronicler who we've been drawing on throughout our episodes on this period, key source for the Peasants' Revolt, among other things. He has this very atmospheric description of what happens to Henry's army. Men fell on the king's side as fast as leaves fall in autumn after a hoar frost. So people are just, you know, in the royal line are falling the length of it.

And the right side of the royal line buckles, doesn't it? And they begin to break. Yeah, it does. So the king is in the middle. Yeah. The king with his big banner, standard. And Prince Hal, what's happened to him? He's over on the left and a terrible thing happens to him, Tom. Yeah. So he is hit in the face by an arrow. And whether it goes through the slit in his visor or whether he's opened up his visor to try and get a sense of the topography, you know, a helmet on your head. It's kind of very close and oppressive, but either way, the arrow pierces his left cheek just below his eye and it remains embedded in the bone. And amazingly, he doesn't retire from the battle. I mean, I find it hard to believe that he

continues fighting or directing the battle. Although there are chroniclers who say this, but his division and the king's division, they do not collapse and they hold firm. And now increasingly it's Hotspur who has the problem because his archers have begun to run out of arrows. And here is a lesson for the young prince, even though he's got an arrow in his head, Don't run out of arrows. Hotspur's flank also has begun to disintegrate because very Rupert of the Rhine, they followed the fleeing Lancastrians down the hill. And so Hotspur's own line is starting to disintegrate. And they're outnumbered. And the weight of numbers on Henry's side is starting to

bear down. So essentially, Hotspur realizes he's only got one option of victory, and that is to charge and kill the king himself. So that's very Battle of Bosworth, isn't it? Yes, exactly. And so had, you know, we said this in the last episode, had they succeeded in killing Henry IV, then Henry IV's memory would be very much that of a Richard III. So Thomas Walsingham writes, Henry Percy, leader of the opposite army and the Earl of Douglas, the fiery Scott, than whom no one was ever more spirited in spite of the rain of arrows and the dense bodies of horsemen, urged their men against the king's person alone and concentrated all their arms on him.

Two problems. There are various people who've been dressed up in the king's surcoat. So it's not immediately clear where Henry IV is. And this is, again, very good in Shakespeare's play. Douglas is rushing around, kind of killing people. Another king, they grow like Hydra's heads. So they're doubles, basically. It's like Vladimir Putin with his doubles. Yes, they're doubles. But also, by doing this, he's pulling people away from the line that had been facing the Prince of Wales division. And that leaves them open to an attack on the flank by the Prince of Wales men. So they kind of crunch into the side of Hotspur's line.

So now he has no choice but to kill the king because otherwise he's going to be wiped out. And it becomes increasingly clear that Percy and his men are not going to win because Dominic, as dusk gathers and the moon comes out, there is an eclipse and the moon is blotted out. The moon is blotted out. And this is a clear sign that the Percy is going to lose because the Percy livery badge is a crescent moon. I'm sure this definitely happened, Tom. Of course it did. Of course it did. And then in the fighting, Hotspur is killed by whose hand is not known, Walsingham writes.

But in Shakespeare, I know from Shakespeare that it was Prince Hal. But actually if Walsingham says, we don't know, it could have been Prince Hal. Well, it couldn't because Prince Hal has a massive great arrow in his head. But you've said that. Now, Edward Hall, who I believe implicitly, says, The Prince Henry that day helped much his father,

for though he were wounded in the face with an arrow, yet he never ceased either to fight where the battle was most strongest or to courage his men when their hearts were daunted. And I believe Edward Hall implicitly. So you don't believe in eclipses, but you believe that a bloke with an arrow in his skull would be charging around the battlefield. I believe if he is the greatest warrior king in England's history, and he has a history of such conduct, then I absolutely believe it.

Yeah. Well, we will see. We'll come to Henry's wound in a minute. But the level of carnage at Shrewsbury is terrifying. So as we said, this is the first time that rival English armies have been facing Longbowmen and the slaughter is terrible. So maybe 2,000 bodies, perhaps more, are buried in a mass grave. A further 3,000 have suffered terrible wounds, often terminal.

So far more people will die. That's just a regular morning's work in the French Revolution. Well, as in the French Revolution, contemporaries are particularly shocked by how many members of the nobility have been wiped out. Oh dear. You know, that doesn't normally happen. Yeah. Among the nobility who've been killed, of course, is Hotspur himself. So his body is salted to preserve it. And it's then exposed in Shrewsbury marketplace and it's wedged between two millstones and it's then quartered and the various quarters are sent round, you know, the various four reaches of England and his head is chopped off and it's impaled over one of the gates in York. Uh, Worcester is executed and his head is stuck up on London bridge. Douglas, he's already been

captured once after falling off his horse and getting an arrow in his eye. And now he falls off his horse again. And this time he crushes one of his testicles, which is very painful. On a rock? Is it on a rock or a stone or something? Yeah. That seems very unfortunate. So he's had a terrible year. But so also, of course, has the poor Prince of Wales. So we have an account of the operation and the wound that he'd suffered from this surgeon who got summoned from London, a man called John Bradmore, who left an account of it. So he said of the wound, he was struck in the face with an arrow beside the nose on the left side, which arrow entered from the side and the head of the said arrow after

its shaft was extracted, remained in the back part of the bone of the head to a depth of six inches. Yeah. So again, I put it to you as this makes it all the more impressive that Henry was fighting with such vigor. Yes, it does. Okay. Yeah. And this is Bradmore's account of how he removed the arrow. I prepared in you some little tongs, small and hollow with the width of an arrow. A screw ran through the middle of the tongs. I put these tongs into an angle in the same way as the arrow had first entered, then placed the screw in the center, and finally the tongs entered the socket of the arrowhead. Then by moving it to and fro, little by little, with the help of God, I extracted the arrowhead. And having then extracted the arrowhead, he apparently massages therapeutic ointments into Henry's neck. Do you know, Tom, I said to you before we started

that Henry V reminds me of Alexander the Great. And didn't Alexander the Great, he had an arrow in his side or something, didn't he? And that had to be removed. But not beneath his, I mean, not into his skull. I mean, I just be removed. But not beneath his, I mean, not into his skull. Yeah. I mean, I just find it astonishing that Henry survives this. I mean, it's an awful wound. And you know the famous painting of Henry V where he's done in profile?

Oh, yeah, with his ridiculous haircuts. I kind of wonder whether the wound was, I mean, left scarring that's not mentioned. I mean, it must have been terrible. He would be proud of such a scar, Tom. Terrible injury. I think he would. And any Englishman would be proud of such a scar.

I mean, what's amazing is that sepsis doesn't sit in. Yeah. He manages to pull through, but I think he's out of action for several months after this. So let's go back to Henry IV. Henry IV has won this amazing battle. Yeah. He has crushed Hotspur. Douglas's testicle has been crushed.

Yes. And he's dead. Worcester, who you played in a's testicle has been crushed and he's dead. Worcester, who you played in a play, he has been impaled. Well, his head. His head's been impaled. But this has not settled the issue, has it? Because England are still out there rampaging around Wales. So what's going on with him?

So Shrewsbury is 14-14-03 and 14-04 is pretty much the high watermark of Glendower's rebellion, of his success. So by 1404, he's got the support of the Welsh pretty much across the social classes and from pretty much every part of Wales. So in 1404, he holds his first parliament at Macintyth. You can go to that building. I've been there, Macintyth. Very nice. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Bishops been there, Mahanthleth. Very nice.

Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Bishops are starting to defect to him, you know, accepting him as king. Yeah. And, you know, it's all looking good for him. Meanwhile, in the north, Henry marches up and he's confronting Northumberland. Northumberland comes to him and says, look, I didn't know anything.

I had no idea this was going on. Yeah, of likely story came as a total surprise I'm shocked shocked and Henry decides okay if that's what he's saying fine I'll choose to believe him and pardons Northumberland but makes a point of stripping back Northumberland's powers and offices and giving them to the Earl of Westmoreland to be a kind of rival balance of power. That's quite smart politics, isn't it? Very smart politics. I mean, I think Henry IV is your kind of guy, Dominic. Yeah.

You know, he's a shrewd survivor. Yeah. Thanks, Tom. Very adept at the art of politics. Let's get into you. This is very nice. Yeah, he's exactly the kind of man I think you admire him. I do admire him. I admire him a lot. We've done about 7,000 episodes. I know exactly the kind

of people who you like and admire. So Henry has decided that because he's got to deal with Wales, England is still seething, the Scots are on the border, he can't afford basically to take Northumberland out, even though he's clearly guilty as hell. And in 1405, so two years after Shrewsbury, a kind of bombshell document comes out. And this is called the Tripart Indenture by historians. And it's published by Eoghan Glyndwr. And by its terms, England and Wales are to be divided into three. So Eoghan Glyndwr and by its terms England and Wales are to be divided into three. So Eoghan Glyndwr

is to get Wales and Dominic all your region. Trotshep, all that. So all the English counties are butting Wales. Wow. So there'll be a kind of

greater Wales. So you would have been brought up as a Welshman. I am a quarter Welsh so it's perfectly possible. Northumberland is to receive the North and the Midlands and Edmund Mortimer, who will be crowned King, is to get the rest. So Southern England. And obviously this goes down like a cup of cold sick with Henry IV. Now the

question is, is it authentic? There's absolutely no evidence at all, actually, of Northumberland having gone down to Wales to negotiate this. So I think the consensus is that it's basically Welsh propaganda, that it's England practicing the dark arts, trying to set Northumberland against Henry. And it works because Henry IV is absolutely furious. So he chucks more money to the Prince of Wales, who's now recovered from his arrow wound. And the Prince kind of piles back into Wales, very successful. He's recapturing strongholds that the Welsh have taken. He's instituting economic blockades. So again, that understanding that economics is a part of warfare, crucial part of waging war in the late Middle Ages, which as Henry V, he will demonstrate an

absolute mastery of. By 1407, Glyndwr's position in southern and central Wales is crumbling. By 1409, the prince has reconquered pretty much the whole of the principality. And in that same year, Edmund Mortimer, the son-in-law of Glyndwr, is killed in battle. Glyndwr's own wife and two of his daughters are captured and taken to the tower. And though Glyndwr remains at liberty, effectively, he's now a man on the run. He's being hunted down. But it's a tribute to the hold that he has had on Welsh affections that he's not handed over. He's never caught.

We don't know when he dies, but he remains on the run for good. Meanwhile, Henry himself has marched north to deal with Northumberland. He comes to York and at York, he's opposed by an army of some 8,000 men commanded by a guy called Richard Scroope, who is amazingly the Archbishop of York. So Henry, very cross about this, negotiates with the Archbishop of York. So Henry, very cross about this, negotiates with the Archbishop of York, agrees terms, agrees to a truce. Scrooge stands down his army. Henry promptly arrests him, has him charged with high treason. The Archbishop is convicted of high treason. He's dragged out into a field and beheaded. So that is that. And again, I imagine that that's the kind of robust approach to troublesome clerics that you give thumbs up to, wouldn't you?

I would. I once played Thomas Beckett, as you know, got a very displeasing review in The Scotsman. But I'm very familiar with the work of troublesome clerics, and I think you just have to be tough, Tom. And actually, do you know what? Henry IV and Henry V, they're brilliant. I love Henry IV and Henry V because I admire people who are good at politics. They're really good. They win. Henry IV has a horrendous inheritance. He comes out ahead. Henry V, if you look at Henry V in Wales, for example, that campaign could have gone horribly wrong for him.

He could have been ambushed or whatever. But actually, he plays his hand. He pulls through. Yeah. It's kind of the- Dominic, just to emphasize. Yeah. I mean, Henry IV has already had a couple of black marks that he's a usurper and a regicide.

But he's now a man who has killed an archbishop. Who cares? And the paradox, of course, is that he's actually a very, very devout man. Not the kind of man that you would say would be the first English king to put an archbishop to death. But it is what it is. Yeah, he did it and he was quite right to do it. Well, or was he? Because it's possible that it has a devastating effect,

that the wrath of God is visited on him. And I think we'll find out whether that's true or not. After the break. After the break. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews,

splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com.

That's therestisentertainment.com. Can honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honour? A word. What is in that word? Honour.

What is that honour? Air. A trim reckoning. Who hath it? He that died on Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. Tis insensible then, yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Ah, therefore I'll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon. And so ends my catechism. So that's Sir John Falstaff. In fact, the critic Harold Bloom, he was Shakespeare's greatest character, the character who invented what it was to be human.

Don't you agree? I mean, I really think he is. I do agree. Yeah. I think he's brilliant. That speech, he gives that speech at the Battle of Shrewsbury. He is a total coward.

He's a ridiculous figure, a fat man, total coward, very Billy Bunter, crossed with Flashman. He lies down, pretends to be dead, and then after the battle, he kind of jumps up and he says, oh, and I killed Hotspur. And it's a very amusing scene. And actually, it's a brilliant speech because very unusually, for a dramatist of his period, Shakespeare is giving Falstaff lines with which a lot of the audience would probably deep down agree

that all the talk of honour that Henry V so supremely embodies is actually just hot air. What is honour? Air, a trim reckoning. Who hath it? He that died on Wednesday. You know, that it actually counts for nothing. I mean, that's an extraordinary thing for Shakespeare to have written, I always think. Yeah. And the genius of it is that in Henry IV plays, this has an appeal for Prince Hal, the man who will grow up to become Henry V. It's seductive. In a way, Falstaff is mocking everything that Henry V will become.

He is mocking the idea of glory, of honor, of military achievement. He's scorning chivalric and military ideals. And it is incredibly funny. But it is also, I think, I mean, I don't think the audience is meant just to identify with Falstaff. No, no, no. Falstaff himself, he's a thief. He's a liar. He's a man who deliberately recruits people who are not qualified to fight and who will therefore die and pockets the money.

So in a way, he famously becomes the symbol of everything that Prince Hal has to reject to become Henry V. So there's this famous line where Falstaff is talking to Prince Hal and he says, for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being as he is old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry's company, banish not him thy Harryry's company banish plump jack and banish all the world and prince how famously says to himself i do i will the thing there is that uh full staff is pretending to be henry the fourth and he's sat on the the throne isn't he with the sort of crown on

yeah and prince how is playing himself talking to his father yeah and again for people who've never seen hen IV plays, we recommended Chimes at Midnight with Orson Welles as Falstaff. The role he was born to play, and this is brilliantly done in that film. So do check that out if you haven't seen it. So the other thing, of course, about Falstaff

is he never actually existed. Right. So, I mean, in a way, you know, the question is, where does he come from? And basically he comes from Shakespeare's imagination. And perhaps that's why he is, I think, in a way, you know, the question is, where does he come from? And basically he comes from Shakespeare's imagination. And perhaps that's why he is, I think, Bloom is absolutely right, Shakespeare's greatest creation. But he doesn't come entirely from Shakespeare's imagination because there are roots to Falstaff. So let's, in the second half, talk about the one character who is emblematic of the reign of Henry IV,

who you say didn't exist, John Falstaff. Yeah, he didn't exist. There was somebody called John Fastolf, wasn't there? Yes. Later on, he features fighting against Joan of Arc and he did become a byword for cowardice because he was accused of running away at a battle in the late 1420s. Yeah, unfairly. So he seems the obvious antecedent to Shakespeare's Falstaff. Yeah. So he does get accused of cowardice. He complains about this. He demands basically a kind of an inquiry and the inquiry does exonerate him. But you know, the taint lingers. Fastoff then goes off to East Anglia where he amuses himself in his old age by

engaging in rows over property with the Pastons. The most famous letters of the 15th century. The character of Sir John Falstaff, and clearly the name John Falstaff comes from this guy, John Fastolf. But in the original version of the play, he was called Sir John Oldcastle. And Shakespeare only changes that name after getting pressured by one of Oldcastle's descendants, who's a figure of some power. And so the question is, who was Sir John Oldcastle? And Sir John Oldcastle, the historical John Oldcastle, was indeed a friend of the Prince of Wales, of Prince Hal, as Shakespeare portrays him. But he was not a coward. He was a very proficient soldier who had fought in Wales alongside the prince and become a

very close companion in arms to the prince. But in Shakespeare's play, when Prince Hal becomes Henry V, he banishes Jack Falstaff. He rejects him. Tragic scene. I know thee not, old man. Yeah, terrible. And he goes off, you know, he leaves the taverns behind and he goes off to conquer France. The historical John Oldcastle is also spectacularly repudiated by the prince after he becomes Henry V. So John Oldcastle ends up being imprisoned in the tower.

He then escapes it. He ferments a rebellion against Henry V. He escapes into the badlands of the Welsh Marches, Dominic, your neck of the woods. He gets captured. He gets brought back to London. He gets brought to just off Charing Cross Road, just by Foyle's bookshop. They put up a scaffold and they light a fire underneath it. And Sir John Oldcastle is hanged while simultaneously being burnt. So, I mean, none of this goes into Henry V. You may wonder what has Sir John Oldcastle does. And there is a clue in Henry IV part two, because

Shakespeare in an epilogue, he talks about Falstaff and he says that, you know, in the sequel, which will be about the reign of Henry V, Falstaff shall die of a sweat Like a fever. And then he adds, for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. Shakespeare is saying, this guy isn't Sir John Oldcastle because Oldcastle died a martyr. And why did Oldcastle die a martyr? The reason is that he was seen by Shakespeare's contemporaries as being a proto-Protestant. Sir John Oldcastle, Dominic, was a Lollard. So the Lollards. Let's talk about the Lollards a bit.

We have mentioned them before. They turned up in the Peasants' Revolt. Historians still argue about the Lollards. Did they exist or were they a little bit like the Cathars, a kind of invention of the authorities who conflated a lot of dissenters or marginalised heretics? But you think they did exist? Well, I do because they're also called Wycliffeites. And they take that name because

they are inspired by the teaching of a man who definitely existed, who was an Oxford scholar called John Wycliffe, who'd been dismissed from the university in 1381 for heresy. A Balliol man like Rory Stewart and Ted Heath. A Balliol man. And he preached a kind of very radical, again, proto-Protestant kind of anti-clericalism. He denied the authority of the Pope. He demanded that the church be stripped of its property and possessions. So that was something that had obviously appealed to the rebels in the Great Revolt. Very hostile to icons, to pilgrimages, to clerical celibacy. He doesn't believe in purgatory. So again, a presaging of

the Reformation. And also a presaging of the Reformation at its most radical, there's a denial of the fact that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are turned literally into the body and the blood of Christ. And the reason for this, as in the protestant reformation is a sense that it's not the church but the bible yeah that should be the kind of the great central driving force in their lives and there'd been a decades-long campaign against them you know this is why wickliffe gets um kicked out of oxford gets dismissed yeah there's a kind of ongoing campaign to try and extirpate this this heresy but henry the fourth's reign sees a kind of ongoing campaign to try and extirpate this heresy. But Henry IV's reign sees a kind of escalating campaign. So in 1401, a chaplain called William Sautry is burned for

his views on the Eucharist, his denial of the fact of the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine. And he's the first heretic to be burned in England for 70 years. And this is really being pushed by Parliament. So eight days after this guy is burned, they pass a statute that they call for the burning of a heretic, which essentially licenses the royal authorities to target the Lollards more fully. Okay, so why is there this crackdown?

Is it because this proto-Protestantism in a time of great political turmoil, you know, high political turmoil, is gathered strength because authority is maybe under question or is broken down in some way? I mean, we're not that long after the Black Death, by the way, or the Peasants' Revolt. Or is it because there's a new mood of intolerance towards stuff that previously might have just gone unpunished? I think it's partly because Parliament is in a position to require Henry to take steps that they want to. And there's a lot of opposition to the Lollards in Parliament. But I think it's also because there's been an incredible outbreak of heresy in Bohemia. The Hussites, and Jan Hus, who in our episode on Luther, we talked about

again as a kind of a precursor of Protestantism. And Huss had been very, very strongly influenced by Wycliffe. So I think there's an incredible anxiety as the Hussite rebellion starts kind of kicking off. There's a big anxiety that this might happen in England. But having said that, it's not like there's a sudden great wave of burnings. So the next person to be burned in England for lullaby, it's not for nine years. And it's a tailor from Evesham called John Bradby, who's condemned for declaring that the Eucharist is of less value than a spider, since a spider is a living creature. And he says this in his trial and it's recorded in the transcript of the trial that as he says this, a large black spider appears on the heretics lips. Um, and,

uh, Bradley tries to wipe it away and the spider scuttles over his face and then vanishes down his mouth by alien. So that definitely happened. I mean, that's definitely, well, I, well, it was convincing enough that the poor guy gets handed over to the secular authorities and he gets taken to Smithfield, uh, you know, outside the city of London and he gets chained to, um, to a stake, great heap of faggots piled up around him. And he gets ringed by a great throng of people that includes the Prince, Prince Henry. And the pyre gets lit and the flames start kind of licking and heading towards this poor guy who's chained to the stake. And he cries out and the prince thinks maybe he wants to recant.

And so he orders the flames to be put out and he offers this poor tailor, I'll give you a life pension of three pence a day if you'll recant. Good offer. And the tailor refuses. Mad. So he gets burned, turned to ashes. And the prince watches it. And people may be wondering, well, why is the prince attending this execution?

And I think undoubtedly it's to signal his backing for the measures taken by the church. But what about his kind of personal take on this? And I think there are two possible alternatives that would explain that. The first is that he is a committed persecutor of Lollards. Henry is very devout, very orthodox. In 1415, by which time he's become, of course, Henry V, it's the year of Agincourt. There's a Frenchman who says, this king looks more like a priest than a warrior. And he's named by the Lollards, the priest's king. So there's a Frenchman who says this king looks more like a priest than a warrior. And he's named by the Lollards the priest's king. So there's a sense that he is perhaps more committed to the campaign against Lollardy

than his father. Some of the academics who've written about Henry V recently have really played that up. The fact that he is really, really pious. Yeah, he is. And is absolutely committed to religious orthodoxy in a way that a lot of other medieval kings, maybe they mildly cared, but they didn't care that much. Whereas he is, there's some austerity about him in the fifth, isn't there? There's kind of moral austerity to him.

There is, but there's also something perhaps that Shakespeare was in the end making play with a sense that before he became king, perhaps his attitudes to it was more complicated. Because remember, Sir John Oldcastle, who is the most notorious Lollard of his age, this is a guy who ends up leading a kind of Lollard rebellion against Henry V. I mean, he's not just mildly Lollard. He's full blown. His last words before he gets burned are a prophecy that he's going to rise on the third day. So, I mean, he's all in as a heretic. And so it is kind of weird that this very devout, this very orthodox prince should be friends with such a man. And what sharpens the sense of mystery is that the House of Lancaster historically had actually had a record of sympathizing with Wycliffe's teachings.

So people who listened to our episode on the Peasants' Revolt may remember that we talked about how John of Gaunt, Henry V's grandfather, had been Wycliffe's patron and Henry IV's confessor, a guy called Philip Reppingdon. So the person who Henry IV is turning to in his deepest hours of need, his moments of particular spiritual anguish, he'd been a follower of Wycliffe, even though he'd recanted this. Nevertheless, he's very familiar with Wycliffe's theology and teachings. And it's evident that in the previous episode said Henry is questioning as a Christian. He's not a passive Christian. He's interested in all kinds of doctrine and theology and spiritual practice. He owns a copy of the Bible in English, for instance. He stands up for academic freedom in Oxford. He's very committed to the idea that the church needs reform. In his own personal life, he's committed to the kind of simplicity of behavior

that is typical of, if you like, soft loladi. So I just wonder whether there's a hint in the prince's friendship with old castle of how it ultimately comes to be interpreted as being a kind of king who on ascending the throne repents of something that he feels a bit embarrassed about, a bit ashamed about and banishes, you know, all his former companions. That totally psychologically would make sense that he had flirted with this stuff maybe, or he'd been... I don't think he'd ever... Not flirted, that's the wrong way. He'd been curious about it maybe. He'd been soft on someone who was... Yeah, it's Keir Starmer and Jeremy Corbyn. I know thee not, old man.

Yeah. That's exactly what it is, Tom. Yeah. But if so, I think that's not the only explanation for the full staff story and everything and the idea that Henry V had been a great enthusiast for riot as a young man. Because there's also a clue, I think, in another very famous story that is told about him as the Prince of Wales,

which happens just before Henry IV dies. So the 20th of March in 1413, Henry IV is on his deathbed, and he's lying in bed bed and beside him on a pillow is the crown and the prince is outside and the king's attendants think that henry has breathed his last and so they go out and they tell the prince you know you are now the king you are now henry the fifth and so he goes in and he sees the crown and he picks it up puts it on his head kind of wanders off to go and start being a king and then it turns out Henry IV isn't dead and he kind of sits up and says where's the crown and he's told oh the prince of Wales has gone off with it and

he's furious and he summons the prince back and the king says to him and how my son do you have any right to it for as you well know I never had any and the prince answers him you held it with your sword my lord and for as long as i live i shall do the same and the king replies very well then the rest i leave to god and i pray him to have mercy on me and these are his last words and then he he dies now this is a story that is told about 20 years after the events it purports to describe it also smacks of the kind of story that is told about 20 years after the events it purports to describe. It also smacks of the kind of story that is told about kings in all cultures. It's a great story, though. So Christopher Ormond, who's written a brilliant biography of Henry V, I mean, he says of this

story, there's never smoke without fire. That's, I mean, for an academic, that is the most shocking line. Oh, well, there's no smoke without fire. It probably happened. I mean, come on. You know, this is a great scholar, Dominic. Let's not diss him. What this story draws attention to is that actually in the final years of Henry IV's reign,

he is a very sick man. And he'd been a sick man long before his death. And you were a great enthusiast for murdering archbishops, chopping their heads off. I'm all over it. But contemporaries blamed this illness of Henry IV on his crime in beheading an archbishop. I'm going to tell you now, that's not how illnesses work. Dominic, it is. They were mistaken. It is, because on the 8th of June, 1405, which is the very day that the archbishop has been put to death, Henry IV rides out of York. He's heading up north to go and sort out Northumberland.

The wind starts screaming, clearly the marker of the anger of God. Rain starts scudding in. And so Henry diverts. He goes off to a manor, the manor of Greenhamerton, and he's put up in the best bed in Greenhamerton. They light a fire. He goes to sleep. And then in the middle of the night, he starts screaming, Traitor! Traitors! You have thrown fire over me! And his servants come running, and they find that he's absolutely, you know, his face is burning up. His skin is full of pustules. And from this point on, he is incredibly sick.

So what do you say to that? I don't know. I mean, it's obviously just total gibberish and tosh, isn't it? That's absolutely not. I mean, I can well believe, because he does have this disease that keeps recurring, right? A skin disease. Yeah. So Adam of Usk, our old friend, the Welsh prince, says it's a festering of the flesh and dehydration of the eyes. And if that's not a punishment sent by the Almighty, I don't know what is. I think people do have festerings of the flesh who have not executed archbishops. I mean,

that to me seems like a giveaway, right of people in the french revolution right mirabeau mara um pretty much all the characters we discussed actually had faces like craters of pustules none of them had executed archbishops or not yet executed archbishops anyway yeah so so listeners can decide so contemporaries say that it's leprosy and this is what in shakespeare's play henry the fourth is described as suffering from we don't really know what it was. Do we know, do academics have a theory about what it actually really was? No, they don't. Because I think there's a general trend now to think that it's quite dangerous to try and use medical records from the past. Partly because they're so inexact and partly I think because it may be that there are kind of illnesses that are no longer current yeah you know they've mutated or changed or whatever whatever it is i

mean it it keeps recurring so um in 1408 henry the fourth collapses at mort lake and he's confined to bed for a month january 1409 he has a relapse thinks he's dying and for the rest of it you know the four years that follow that until he does finally die, his health is very, very precarious. But Tom, you don't need to go on about archbishops to explain why this is. I mean, when we described his character, he's been to the Baltic, he's been to the Holy Land, he's led a very, very active, stressful, you know, action-packed life. It's not implausible that as he reaches kind of middle age,

late middle age, his constitution cracks and he begins to pay the price for all his adventures. Yeah, but equally, it might be the hand of God. I mean, either way. Yeah, it might be. Either, well, let's just, you know, leave it open. He's very ill. And so Chris Gibbon Wilson, in his biography of Henry IV, says after 1406, especially after 1408, when he has his relapse, Henry's kingship gradually shaded into Lancastrian family government. And the reason that this is possible is that Henry IV has not just Henry, his eldest son, but three other sons as well. And these are very, very competent people.

So K.B. Macfarlane, the great historian of the 15th century, really knows what he's writing about. It says that they were the most bookish group of royal princes in medieval England. So they're very literate. They read and they think. But I mean, certainly the three eldest. So Henry, Thomas and John, and the youngest one, Humphrey,

who will go on to found a famous library. But Henry, Thomas and John are very, very seasoned. They've done a lot of fighting. They're very habituated to how you get things done and they are on hand to keep the show on the road. So in this context, it's unsurprising perhaps that there would be tensions between a very sick Henry and the Prince. And certainly in the last two years of Henry IV's life, there do seem to be tensions. It seems that Henry IV's favorite son was actually Thomas, who becomes the Duke of Clarence. And Henry's enthusiasms are deliberately ignored by Henry

IV. And so I think that that's where this story of him coming in and trying on the crown works out. So he's ill, he's on his last legs, but he dies in 1415. 1413. With his dynasty secure, with the realm stable, stable. Yeah. Finances, you know, they're never brilliant, but they're in a better shape than they could have been. A lot better than they were. Yeah. His son is able to succeed effectively unchallenged. Yeah. You could argue that this is a remarkable act of political management. Yeah. That he had a really tough gig in 1399.

And 16 years later, he's done a bloody good job to be where he is. I think you absolutely can. I mean, it really is a formidable record. I think very few people who did what he did, usurp the throne, kill a king, kill an archbishop, would have survived to die in his bed and be succeeded by his son. Yeah. And leave a very, very stable, effective system of government. It's him who dies in the Jerusalem chamber, isn't it? That's right. Yes. You know, he traveled to Jerusalem before he became king

and he dreamed of going on crusade. And the story goes that it had been prophesied that he would die in Jerusalem and he thought it meant the city and the Holy Land, but it ends up being this room called Jerusalem in Westminster Abbey. And so he dies there. But I think as well as the fact that he leaves behind an astonishingly stable system of government, there is also a sense that his reign has been very troubled, that it's been a dark time and people do invest their hopes in the young Prince of Wales, who is now Henry V, and hope that his coming to the throne will presage kind of better, nobler, more glorious times. And again, I think that that is something

that Shakespeare is picking up in this whole story of Falstaff and Henry rejecting him. So should we finish this episode by, do you want to read Henry V's rejection of Falstaff? Because I think it's one of the great speeches in all of Shakespeare and it's the perfect curtain raiser for the series that we'll be doing next week when we look at the reign of Henry V, which has at its centre, of course, the great victory over the French at Agincourt. Well, I think we're all looking forward to that. But just before we get to Agincourt next week, let's have a little bit of Hal and full stuff. So thank you very much, Tom.

That was a, dare I say, a tour de force. Merci. I know thee not, old man, full to thy prayers. How ill white hair's become a fool and jester. I have long dreamed of such a kind of man, so surfeit-swelled, so old and so profane. But being awaked, I do despise my dream. Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace. Leave gormandising. No, the grave doth gape for thee thrice wider than for other men.

Reply not to me with a full-born jest. Presume not that I am the thing I was. For God doth know, so shall the world perceive, that I have turned away my former self. So will I those who kept me company. Goodbye. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly

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head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.