Not Yorkist but Anti-Lancastrian: HenryDespenser, Bishopof Norwich,137 0-1406
RICHARD ALLINGTON-SMITH
CHANGES OF DYNASTY are times for settling old scores and righting old wrongs. Nevertheless the first Parliament of Edward IV cast its net widely when it looked back over sixty years and rehabilitated two lords who had been attainted in 1400. In 1461 it solemnly recited that at that time certeyn persones of evill riotous and cedicious disposicion, joyned in rumour and rebellious novelryes, tirannyously murdred with grete cruelte and horrible violence in an outerageous hedy fury the right noble and werthy lordes John Montagu late erle of Salisbury and Thomas late Lorde 1e Despenser.‘ It may be that the Montague connection was more in the legislators' minds than that of Despenser. Even so, although Isabel Despenser, last of her line, had died in 1440, over twenty years before, the lands she had inherited were still very much a living issue. Derived originally from the De Clare earls of Gloucester she had received them after the attainder of her father Thomas and the early death of her brother Richard. Through Isabel’s second husband, the famous Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, they had come via their daughter Anne to the even more celebrated Rict Neville, also Earl of Warwick, the Kingmaker.2 To him the removal of any attainders, however antiquated, would be a distinct advantage. Certainly it is stretching points to see the Despensers as proto-Yorkists, but anti-Lancastrians they cenainly were; although the first contact between the two families is hardly creditable to the Despensers. In 1322 Edward II’s favourite, Hugh Despenser the Younger, backed up by his father Hugh Despenser the Elder, were deeply implicated in the downfall and death of Earl Thomas of Lancaster. When those two fell in turn and suffered barbarous execution in 1326 their descendants were fortunate enough to be treated with consideration and forbearance by Edward 111. He was repaid with devoted and gallant service by Hugh the Younger’s sons Hugh, who fought at Sluys, Crécy and Calais, and Edward, who lost his life at the siege of Vannes in 1342. The next generation of Despensers, represented by Edward’s prolific family of
16 six boys and a girl,3 was led by his eldest son, also Edward, one of the most celebrated and chivalrous knights of his day. This Edward fought at Poitiers, in the unsuccessful campaign of 1373 as constable of the army, and with equal distinction in Prussia with the Teutonic Knights and in Italy in a crusade (so-called) against the Visconti of Milan. His monument — the Kneeling Knight - in Tewkesbury Abbey has been one of the triumphs of English monumental art ever since it was set up after his death in 1375.4 The centre stage was now taken over by Edward’s youngest brother Henry, Bishop of Norwich from 1370 (when he was only twenty-six) to 1406. Without doubt Henry was one of the most extraordinary characters to be found in England, or anywhere else, during the later Middle Ages. Destined, as a younger son, for the Church he demonstrated such talent in things military that he was almost as famous as his brother, Edward, when Pope Urban V stepped in and solved the problem of his vocation by providing him to the see of Norwich.5 Whereas Edward Despenser and John of Gaunt had co—existed without great difficulty — apart from an awkward law-suit fought over lands in 1366‘ — Henry seemed unable to prevent himself from offending Richard II’s mighty uncle. While John of Gaunt’s role in the Peasant’s Revolt was less than distinguished, Henry excited admiration or loathing (depending which side you were on) by the way in which be crushed the rising in the eastern counties and executed its leader, Geoffrey Litster.’ Worse still, when in 1382 John of Gaunt was anxious to drum up support for another expedition to Spain, he found himself worsted by the martial Bishop, whose offer to lead a crusade to Flanders against the supporters of the anti- pope was preferred by the mercantile interest in parliament, anxious as it was about the “threat to the English wool trade” from ever-increasing French incursions into the Low Countn'es." The ‘crusade’ was a failure, for reasons not all discreditable to Despenser, but the antagonism between the Bishop and John of Gaunt was now deep-seated. It was not helped by the murder in 1392 of Edmund Clippesby, one of the Duke’s leading supporters in East Anglia, a deed in which Bishop Henry was held to be deeply implicated.9 And in 1399, when Henry Bolingbroke supplanted Richard II and became Henry IV, things became worse still. The courageous Bishop, whose loyalty and independence of mind had not declined with advancing years, was one of the few who declared for Richard I], though it did him no good and earned him a short term of imprisonment.lo His nephew, Thomas (Edward’s son), was unfortunately something of a throwback to those earlier Hughs who had so misled Edward H. He was among King Richard’s closest circle of friends and had been rewarded with the earldom of Gloucester, to which the Despensers laid claim through their De Clare inheritance. Henry IV withdrew it when he assumed power, as he did with other honours conferred by Richard, and almost inevitably Thomas became implicated in the rebellion of the duketti in 1400. Attempting to flee he was caught and finally lynched by the inhabitants of Bristol, hence the colourful language used by parliament in 1461 when his attainder was reversed." As for Bishop Henry he had no option but to accept the new state of affairs. At the instance of Archbishop Arundel and parliament he became reconciled to Sir Thomas Erpingham, who had taken his place as the leading power in East Anglia.'2 The Despenser challenge to the new dynasty, such as it was, had petered out and the old Bishop spent the remainder of his days in blameless activities including (a
17 modern touch, this) a return to his old university of Oxford to take up a new scholastic interest.‘3 One Despenser did, however, serve Henry IV. Edward and Henry’s nephew, Sir Hugh Despenser of Collyweston, was acting as tutor to the future Henry V when he died in 1401.” Sixty years later, however, it was Despenser lands that undergirded the great lord who supported Edward IV in overthrowing the Lancastrian dynasty in the person of Henry’s weak and unworldly son. More than that, the Kingmaker’s possessions passed through his daughters Isabel and Anne into the hands of their husbands George, Duke of Clarence and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the future Richard III.
NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Complete Peerage, vol. 4,pp.280-81 2. M. McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, Oxford 1959, pp.52,58. E.F. Jacob, The Fifteenth Century, Oxford 1961. p.329. 3. The sons were Edward, Hugh, Thomas, Philip, Gilbert and Henry, who was born after his father‘ death. - The daughter. Joan, was a nun at Shaftesbury. Of the many references relating to these the most important are: for Hugh CPR 1367-70, p.58; for Thomas CPR 1364-7, p.57 and Calendar of Inquisition: Post Morlem, vol. 15. 1-7 Richard II. London 1970, pp.138-9; for Philip CPR 1377-8], p.452 and CPR 1381-5, p.283; for Gilbert and Joan Inquisition Pas! Monem, 1-7 Richard II, pp.235-6. 4. Jean Fmissart, Chronicle, ed. Kervyn de Lenenhove, 25 vols., Brussels 1867-77. vol. 8,p.280 (for his service in France in 1373). For a comment on his death see Geoffrey Brereton, ed., Froissurl, Chronicles, Harmondswonh 1968, p.192. 5. John Capgmve, Chronicle of England, ed., F.C. Hingeston, Rolls Series, London 1858, p.226. Calendar of Papal Letters 1362-1396. p.83. CPR 13674370. p.459. 6. Anthony Goodman, The Exercixe of Princely Power in Fourteenth Century Europe, Harlow 1992, p.45. . 7. Thomas Walsingham, Historic Anglia-arm, ed., H.T. Riley. Rolls Series. London 1863-1864. vol. 2,pp.6-8. 8. For the 1383 crusade see Norman Housley, The Bishop of Norwich’s Crusade, May 1383, History Today. May 1983, pp.16-20. 9. Roger Virgoe, The Murder of Edmund Clippesby. Norfolk Archaeology. vol. 35 (1973), pp.302-7. 10. Dictionary of National Biography. vol. l4,pp.410-12. 11. Jacob, The Fifteenth Century, p.25. 12. Rolls of Parliament, vol. 3,pp.456-7. [3. Herbert B. Workman. John Wyclif,‘ Oxford 1926, vol. 2,p.70. 14. Christopher Allmand. Henry V. London 1992, pp. 19, 21.
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