PRINCE HENRY AND THE CHIEF JUSTICE
The first part of Henry’s public life, the period of his lieutenancy
of Wales and the Welsh border, has now been dealt with. We may pass on
to the second, which may be roughly described as extending from the
beginning of 1409 up to his accession to the throne. On February 28th,
1408–9, he was appointed Constable of Dover Castle and Keeper of the
Cinque Ports. After this we find no mention of his personal presence
in Wales, though, as has been mentioned, he continued to hold the
office of Lieutenant of that principality. He seems to have resided
chiefly in London or at the seat of his new duties. This, then, seems a
convenient opportunity of discussing the famous story of his insolent
behaviour to the Chief Justice, his punishment, and his submission.
Shakespeare, indeed, would seem to place the incident in the first
period of the Prince’s life. In the first act of the second part of
_Henry the Fourth_, Falstaff’s page says to his master, when the Chief
Justice enters, “Here comes the nobleman who committed the Prince for
striking him about Bardolph.” This, therefore, puts it back to some
time before the battle of Shrewsbury, which, it will be remembered, is
supposed to have been fought just before the beginning of the second
drama. This is manifestly impossible. If there were nothing else to
disprove it--and the Prince’s age, barely fifteen, would be itself
sufficient--there is the fact that he resided continuously in Wales.
The incident, if it be a fact, must be assigned to the time when Henry
was living in or near London.
We may notice, before proceeding, the curious carelessness in the
great dramatist which makes the Prince strike the Chief Justice “about
Bardolph.” Bardolph is one of the boon companions of Falstaff. The
Prince never expresses anything but contempt for him.
A few lines from the famous scene may be quoted. The King, then newly
seated on the throne, asks the Chief Justice, who has come to offer his
homage,
“How might a prince of my great hopes forget
So great indignities you laid upon me?
What! rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison
The immediate heir of England!”
And then, after hearing the defence, he goes on:
“You are right, justice, and you weigh this well;
Therefore still bear the balance and the sword:
And I do wish your honours may increase,
Till you do live to see a son of mine
Offend you and obey you, as I did.
So shall I live to speak my father’s words:
_Happy am I, that have a man so bold,
That dares do justice on my proper son;
And not less happy, having such a son,
That would deliver up his greatness so
Into the hands of justice._”
No more picturesque incident, it must be allowed, has ever been used
to “point a moral or adorn a tale.” We cannot wonder that it has
become one of the commonplaces of history, or of what passes as
history. What, then, is the foundation of the story; or, if it has no
foundation, what is its origin?
It appears for the first time in _The Boke named the Governour_ of Sir
Thomas Elyot, a philosophico-political treatise, published in 1531. The
story as he tells it runs thus:
“The most renowned Prince, King Henry the Fifth, late King of
England, during the life of his father was noted to be fierce
and of wanton courage. It happened that one of his servants whom
he well favoured, for felony by him committed, was arraigned at
the King’s Bench; whereof he being advertised, and incensed by
light persons about him, in furious rage came hastily to the bar,
where his servant stood as a prisoner, and commanded him to be
ungyved and set at liberty, whereat all men were abashed, except
the Chief Justice, who humbly exhorted the Prince to be contented
that his servant might be ordered according to the ancient laws
of the realm, or if he would have him saved from the rigour of
the laws, that he should obtain, if he might, of the King, his
father, his gracious pardon; whereby no law or justice should be
derogate. With which answer the Prince nothing appeased, but rather
more inflamed, endeavoured himself to take away his servant. The
judge, considering the perilous example and inconvenience that
might thereby ensue, with a valiant spirit and courage commanded
the Prince upon his allegiance to leave the prisoner and depart
his way. With which commandment the Prince, being set all in a
fury, all chafed, and in a terrible manner, came up to the place
of judgment--men thinking that he would have slain the judge, or
have done to him some damage; but the judge sitting still, without
moving, declaring the majesty of the King’s place of judgment,
and with an assured and bold countenance made to the Prince these
words following:--‘Sir, remember yourself; I keep here the place
of the King, your sovereign lord and father, to whom ye owe double
obedience, wherefore, eftsoons in his name, I charge you desist
of your wilfulness and unlawful entry here, and from henceforth
give good example to those which hereafter shall be your proper
subjects. And now for your contempt and disobedience go you to the
prison of the King’s Bench, whereunto I commit you; and remain ye
there prisoner until the pleasure of the King, your father, be
further known.’ With which words being abashed, and also wondering
at the marvellous gravity of that worshipful Justice, the noble
Prince, laying his weapon apart, doing reverence, departed and went
to the King’s Bench, as he was commanded. Whereat his servants
disdaining, came and showed to the King all the whole affair.
Whereat he awhile studying, after as a man all ravished with
gladness, holding his eyes and hands up towards heaven, abraided,
saying with a loud voice, ‘O merciful God, how much am I, above all
other men, bound to your infinite goodness; specially for that ye
have given me a judge who feareth not to minister justice, and also
a son who can suffer semblably and obey justice?’”
This narrative is circumstantial enough, though it gives no note of
time. On what foundation, then, does it rest, for we can hardly suppose
it to be a pure invention? There certainly appears to have been a
tradition which attributes some such misconduct to the Prince. Some
few years after the appearance of Sir Thomas Elyot’s book, one Robert
Redman or Redmayne wrote a book which he entitled _Historia Henrici
Quinti_. He thus expresses himself:
“He was removed from the Council (_Senatus_), and access to
the Court was forbidden to him. His reputation was checked in
mid-course, because he struck the Chief Justice, whose function it
was to solve suits and decide causes, when the said Justice had
committed to prison one from whose companionship Henry derived a
singular pleasure.”
Here the offence is the same, but the punishment is different. Of
the alleged removal of the Prince from the Council it will be more
convenient to speak hereafter.
Of Richard Redman we know nothing beyond what may be learnt from the
internal evidence of his chronicle, and this amounts to little more
than that he was a scholar well versed in Latin literature; that he was
inclined to the Reformed opinions; and that he wrote somewhat earlier
than the middle of the sixteenth century. It seems, however, that there
was a Redman who was present at the battle of Agincourt, and who on
one occasion was joined in a commission with Gascoigne, the hero of
the story. It has been suggested that this Redman was an ancestor of
the chronicler, and that he derived his story from a tradition current
in his family. Of this we can only say that it is not impossible, not
forgetting, however, that such a tradition may indeed have existed and
yet not have been true.
Finally, Thomas Hardyng tells us that the punishment of removal from
the Council was inflicted upon the Prince by the King, but does not
mention the offence which was thus visited. Hardyng was a contemporary;
indeed, as he was born 1378, he was very nearly of the same age as
Henry. So far his testimony is valuable, though his account of the
incident seems to have been written quite late in life. But, as the
Prince’s offence is not specified, it has but a very indirect bearing
on the question.
On the other hand, an examination of the records of the Court of the
King’s Bench shows that there is no entry to be found in them of any
committal of the Prince. It has been pointed out that the summary
committal to prison of an offender, as described by Elyot, was not the
course of proceeding at the time. This, however, may be waived. The
Prince may have been tried by a jury impanelled on the spot, and sent
to prison when found guilty by them; and for this course of proceeding
a more dramatically effective committal by the presiding judge may have
been substituted. But the incident must, one would think, have been
recorded in one way or another, and the absolute silence of the rolls
and year-books of the Court affords a strong presumption that nothing
of the kind ever occurred.
But on looking back to the records of an earlier time, we find that on
one occasion a Prince of Wales had been guilty of contempt of Court and
had been punished for it by his father. In the thirty-fourth year of
Edward the First, one William de Breora, having had judgment pronounced
against him by Roger de Hegham, one of the Barons of the Exchequer,
“climbed in contemptuous fashion upon the bar, and with grave and
bitter words found fault with the said judgment and also insulted the
said Roger as he was leaving the Court.” The Court proceeded to punish
him for this offence, and rested its action on what had recently been
done in a similar case.
“Such acts,” it says, “namely, contempt and disobedience done to
the servants of our Lord King, as to the King himself and his
Court, are exceedingly odious. This was lately manifested when the
said King removed his eldest and dearly beloved son, Edward, Prince
of Wales, from his house for nearly the space of half-a-year,
because he had spoken gross and bitter words to a servant of the
King; nor would he suffer him to come into his presence till he had
satisfied the aforesaid servant of the King in the matter of his
offence.”
There can, I think, be little doubt that we have here the germs of
the story which Shakespeare afterwards so effectively used. It has
been acutely pointed out that several phrases in Elyot’s narrative
have the appearance of having been translated from the Latin; and
the theory is that some chronicler compounded the various incidents
as they had occurred or were supposed to have occurred, and combined
them with the story which is told in the _Governour_, and which has
been immortalised by Shakespeare. It should, perhaps, be added that
Gascoigne had shown in a very striking way his independence of spirit.
After the suppression of the northern insurrection in 1405, the King
directed him to pronounce sentence of death on the two leaders, Richard
Scrope, Archbishop of York, and Thomas Mowbray, Earl Marshall, who
had been captured and probably tried and condemned by some kind of
court-martial. Gascoigne, who was Chief Justice (he had been appointed
to the office in November 1400), refused to do so. He declared that
as to the Archbishop, neither the King nor any of the King’s subjects
could lawfully put him to death; as to the Earl Marshall, he had the
right to be tried by his peers. Independence in a judge has always been
especially dear to Englishmen. To a monkish historian--and almost all
the historians of the time were monks--such independence could not show
itself in a more praiseworthy fashion than in asserting the exemption
of ecclesiastical persons from the jurisdiction of lay courts.
Gascoigne, then, would be a genuine hero, and, as with other genuine
heroes, a great amount of myth may well have grown up about his true
story.
It only remains to examine the conclusion of the legend, as Shakespeare
tells it. The young King is there represented as assuring him of his
favour, and promising to continue him in office.
We find him acting as a judge in Hilary term 1413 (January and
February). Henry the Fourth died on March 20th. His successor summoned
a new Parliament by writ bearing date the 23rd day of that month, and
among the persons summoned was William Gascoigne. But on March 29th
William Hankford, a puisne judge of the Common Pleas, was appointed to
Gascoigne’s office. On July 7th of the same year there is recorded a
payment made to him, as late Chief Justice, on account of salary and
annuity. It is quite possible that he voluntarily resigned his office.
We do not exactly know his age, but he must have been advanced in
years. He had been practising as an advocate as early as the year 1374,
which may well throw back his birth as far as 1340. In this case he
would be seventy-three at Henry’s accession, and seventy-three meant
much more then than it does now. He died in 1419. It may be mentioned
that in 1414 a royal warrant gave him for life four bucks and four does
out of the forest of Pontefract. On the whole, the evidence in the
matter has an absolutely neutral effect. It disproves, indeed, anything
like a display of magnanimity on Henry’s part; but then there does not
seem to have been any occasion for such magnanimity. Gascoigne may have
been removed from his office, a common enough practice in the days when
such offices were held at the royal pleasure, or he may have resigned.
That he was continued in his office by the young King is certainly a
fiction. There can be little doubt that the same may be said of the
whole story.