Free 1415: Henry V's Year of Glory by Ian Mortimer Page B

his official diplomatic ones, and was not part of the conspiracy at all. As we have seen in his will, written only a month earlier, he did not just pretend to be religious, he was deeply devout. His absence at several key meetings – most notably that at Hamble in the Hook on the 29th – shows that he was not a leader of the plot. From the evidence we have it is clear that he was inveigling himself with the conspirators in order to learn when and where they were planning to strike, just as the duke of York had done in 1400. As Scrope himself put it, if he had ‘heard a grounded purpose’, he himself would have come to tell the king. 87
    Henry ordered the conspirators to come to him at Portchester Castle; the guards who carried this message to Cranbury no doubt were instructed to accompany them. Scrope was also located and asked to speak to the king. He came that evening, possibly of his ownvolition, although other members of his household were later arrested. 88 He told the king everything he knew, naming all those whom he believed would have joined the conspiracy, including several Lollards. Henry sent an urgent message to the mayor of London warning him of the danger and urging him to keep the city safe, perhaps alarmed by the Lollard link. 89 He also issued a commission to make enquiries into the plot, to find out who was implicated and what they hoped to achieve. The commissioners were four earls, four barons and two royal justices. They were collectively to report on 2 August, having enquired into
all kinds of treasons, felonies, conspiracies and confederacies committed or perpetrated in the aforesaid county by whomsoever and in any way, and to hear and determine the same treasons, felonies, conspiracies and confederacies according to the law and custom of our realm of England. 90
    It is difficult to appreciate what emotions the king must have experienced over the course of this one day. Any apprehension or sense of divine commitment arising from his confidence that he would be sailing on the following day must have been dashed against the shock of the conspiracy; and of course the consequent feelings must have been mixed with further frustration that he was going to have to postpone the expedition yet again. And now, with an enquiry underway and several treason trials to be held, he could not say when he would be able to set out.

Epilogue
    The council of Constance continued to sit until 1418. In 1417, Benedict XIII was finally deposed and Martin V elected pope for the whole of Christendom. Pope John XXIII was then released from prison. He died in 1419, just a few months after the new pope had appointed him Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum. Gregory XII remained a cardinal and became bishop of Porto. He lived out his days at Ancona, dying in 1417. Benedict XIII went to his grave maintaining that he was the one true pope, dying at Peñiscola in 1423.
    Charles VI remained king of France until his death in 1422. His estranged son, the dauphin John, duke of Touraine, died in 1417, having been poisoned. Charles was succeeded by his next son, Charles VII. It was this Charles who reunited the French and was crowned king of France by Joan of Arc in 1429.
    John the Fearless was murdered during a meeting with the dauphin Charles on the bridge at Montereau in 1419. His death did not end the civil war, however. His son Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, openly sided with Henry V in his war against Charles VI, having an alliance with the English that lasted until 1435.
    Henry himself led a second great expedition into France in July 1417. Thereafter he spent only four months of the remaining five years of his reign in England. In 1419 he took the city of Rouen and thereby secured control of most of Normandy. By the Treaty of Troyes (1420) he was given the hand in marriage of the French princess, Katherine, and was acknowledged as heir to the kingdom of France after Charles VI’s death. But he died of dysentery one month before the