The New Murrey and Blue blog

This is from Chris Given-Wilson’s (Emeritus University of St. Andrews) biography of Henry IV published in 2016 by Yale University Press: “The cost of entertaining him [Manuel] and his fifty-strong household for two months was a heavy burden, and in the end the emperor departed with no more than than L2,000 [sorry, I don’t have a key for the British pound] Richard II had promised to his envoy some years earlier but never paid. In exchange, Henry kept for himself the money donated to the crusade in collecting-boxes set up in churches around England, the sum of which probably exceeded L2,000 even if gathering it in was no easy matter.” (Page 180)

Widely admired historian Given-Wilson feels Henry had the makings of a great king and was much better suited to the job than his cousin Richard whom he characterizes as grasping and vindicative in line with most historians (and also a thief of the Lancaster patrimony–no hint of it being reclaimed by Henry when his exile sentence was up). No doubt Henry deserved to keep the money donated in all the English churches by common parishioners because of his own heroic crusading background and the expenses he had to dole out on entertainment. In late 1399 Henry had not only his own enormous Lancaster patrimony but also everything Richard had, so he was remarkably wealthy when he promised to rule wisely and frugally and keep taxation low. (Many people mistakenly thought he promised not to tax them at all) It must have been a nasty surprise for some Englishmen within a very few short years when Henry’s money was gone and taxes soared even higher than when Richard ruled. Given-Wilson points out that Henry wisely spent lavishly on what we would now call Public Relations (foolish waste when done by Richard) but Henry also did something very clever: he declared that the Duchy of Lancaster was his private income and not to be used for public (i.e. royal) expenditures. Which it is to this day! So he could keep his Lancastrian followers paid (more or less) even when the royal exchequer was empty.

LikeLiked by 1 person

You are very welcome! The professional historians’s reviews for Prof. Given-Wilson’s biography of Henry IV were glowing (as were the reviews for Prof. Nigel Saul’s book on Richard II) but nowhere did anyone mention Prof. Anne Curry’s findings or those of Prof. Christopher Fletcher. And of course the inimitable late Terry Jones’ book, Who Murdered Chaucer, is beyond the pale!

LikeLike