A website companion to the book
‘John Strecche Canon of Kenilworth: the Life and Times of a Medieval Historian’
Strecche tells the stories of some lesser known aspects of the Agincourt campaign, which he learnt from combatants returning from France to King Henry’s Court at Kenilworth Castle, and recounts the heretical beliefs and dreadful deaths of the Lollards.
Strecche (pronounced ‘stretch’) was a Canon of Kenilworth Priory before it was elevated to the status of Abbey. It is recorded that he was Prior of the Cell at Brooke from 1407-1425 and two manuscripts by him survive in the British Library. The text here is from his ‘History of England’, Additional MS 35295. Most of Book Five has been transcribed by Frank Taylor, remaining in Latin. My translations are nearly literal in order to give some flavour of Strecche’s way of writing. Part One of Book Five comprises eleven chapters about Henry IV: Part Two comprises 27 chapters about Henry V and is the main subject of this website.
Chapter 1: Henry’s Coronation by Archbishop Thomas Arundel at Canterbury in April 1413, followed by two days snow and hail, as happened in the days of Lear (‘Leyer’) the British King who founded Leicester (‘Leyercester’) where Henry built a Great Hall for his first Parliament. (Like all medieval chroniclers, Strecche regards similarity between names as significant). Henry reburies Richard II in Westminster Abbey – ‘May he rest in eternal peace’.
Chapter 2: (A parochial story): “In the first year of the reign, in a village called Marston in the county of Warwick, about All Saints Day, in the small garden of a certain matron, a raven made a nest in a pear tree, laid eggs and produced three chicks ready to fly. But from these three chicks of hers, she pushed one out of the nest and at the root of the tree with her beak pecked the ejected chick, disembowelling it and killing it. Contemplating which, many people declared it an omen”. (Is he hinting at the action of some nobleman he dare not name? Relating omens is a common device of chroniclers to avoid responsibility for their writing, as is ‘many people say..’). There follows an account of the persecution of Lollard heretics (see later in this Site).
Chapter 3: Henry sends ambassadors to France to propose his betrothal to the daughter of the king of France. They return with insults (see Brian Jackson pages 27-29, or Hilton page 44, or Shakespeare ‘King Henry V’ Act1, scene ii).
Chapter 4: Details of the preparations for War and the arrival at the port of Harfleur.
Chapter 5: Few details of the siege of Harfleur, except for the deaths of many English soldiers “who unwisely consumed unripe grapes and too much fruit” (in fact, dysentery).
Chapter 6: Few details of the march to Agincourt, the battle and the return to Calais and England.
Chapter 7: The Parliament at Leicester.
Chapter 8: The Valmont Raid. While Henry is in England, the garrison at Harfleur is desperate for supplies. Strecche vividly narrates the feats of a raiding party, which he must have heard from participants returning top Court at Kenilworth. The story would have excited the novices he taught in the Priory, as well as confirming their belief in the power of God, graciously exercised towards Englishmen. Here is his account (folios 268 to 269):
"Concerning the valiant raiding party of the Duke of Exeter, Captain of Harfleur.
Lord Thomas, Duke of Exeter, uncle of Henry Vth, was Captain of the town of Harfleur while Henry fought at Agincourt and returned to England. In the fourth year of Henry’s reign and the year of the incarnation of Our Lord 1417, in the month of March about the feast of St Cuthbert, he secretly left Harfleur after a good meal with a thousand and forty men at arms and archers and hastened to the town of Valmont which was thirty miles away.
On the ninth day, his force entered the town, pillaged it and set it on fire. Hurrying back with their booty, not far from the town, they met the Count of Armagnac and his force of fifty thousand armed men. In a loud voice, he said he would let them go under severe terms: they were to chose a knight to be ransomed, and an archer to have his right hand severed. Our Duke, in a voice every man could hear, refused to consent, preferring to die in battle rather than permit such mutilation. Hearing these words, his band rose up wrathfully and began the battle. The result was that four hundred English men were killed in the field by misfortune, but three thousand of the Count’s men rapidly fell. By the grace of God, the Duke won the day and hurried away to Harfleur with his men, having abandoned all their booty and horses.
They marched all day, weary and footsore, with the Count and his army always following alongside. About the hour of Vespers, the Count unexpectedly attacked them and began a fight that lasted until nightfall. In this conflict, under God’s protection, none of our band was wounded or killed, but two thousand of the French perished. When darkness fell they ceased to do battle. During the night, the Duke conferred with two knights and decided it would be no dishonour to attempt an escape, since they were exhausted by the labour of warfare and had been without food and drink for a day and a night. So that night the Duke and his band set off to walk to Harfleur across the sands of the seashore.
The Count, realising this, followed them with his great army along the coast. When the sun rose, they were at Chef de Caux and the Count attacked for the third time. The English stayed on the sands, being too weak to flee and some were wounded by crossbow bolts. Then five thousand of the Count’s knights mercilessly descended from the heights on to the Duke’s men trapped on the sands below, but through the will of God they could find no firm foothold and hurtled on to the rocks by the shore. Seizing their chance, the English slew them with battle axes and stripped them of spoils and threw their bodies into the sea. After this, they ascended the heights and fought the Count’s army at the top, forcing them to rapidly flee the field of battle.
The sounds of the clashing armour reached Harfleur and the cavalry there rushed out and pursued the Count with his army in flight and many thousands were slain by the sword. Then both the returning Duke, and the Captain of the garrison entered the town in triumph with much booty. Some had their wounds dressed and all were fed and rested."
Strecche gives his students the year of Our Lord and the year of the King’s reign with his customary precision, though in this case not accuracy, as the raid took place in 1416. His estimates of the strength of the forces, and of the casualties, especially the French, are clearly not realistic.
Winning the day, but abandoning all their booty, supplies, and horses, was rather a hollow victory and subjected the Duke’s horsemen to the ordeal of a thirty mile march on foot. First they trekked through the dense oak-beech forest of Les Loges, then they took to the shingle below the chalk cliffs to the west of Étretat and onward to the treacherous clay cliffs of Chef de Caux. This could be compared with attempting to march from Lulworth Cove to Kimmeridge Bay in Dorset - but further!
The raid is analysed in detail by Lt.Col.Byrne in his brilliant and scholarly book ‘The Agincourt War’. He has visited the shore and found it to be mainly inhospitable shingle - sands in the sense of Slapton Sands in Devon. A search on Multimap website based on Fécamp leads to a map at 1:500000 which shows most of the places mentioned. Burne has identified the town sacked as Cany-Barville: it is 15 km from Valmont and Valmont is 35 km from Harfleur (the silted up port replaced by Le Havre in 1517). As a military man, Lt.-Col. Burne writes ‘The deeper I study it, the more I am impressed by the achievement of this devoted little band of English soldiers. For pluck, endurance and sheer doggedness, for coolness, discipline and hitting power when cornered - this epic of Valmont stands with scarcely a rival in the whole of the Hundred Years War’.
Chapter 9: A fleet relieves Harfleur.
Chapter 10: Opening the tombs of the Founders of Kenilworth Priory (Jackson pages 19 and 20, Hilton pages 9 and 10).
Chapter 11: Henry’s second campaign. Sparse details of many towns captured.
Chapter 12: (Remainder of Chapter 11, Chapter 12 and beginning of Chapter 13 missing: possibly the campaign of the Duke of Clarence.
Chapter 13: A narrow escape at the Siege of Louviers:
“Now a great good fortune befell Henry King of England. On a certain day the King went to the tent of the Earl of Salisbury to converse privately with him on certain matters. Whilst the King was standing talking in the Earl’s tent near the main tent post, he bent his head down just as some ballista gunners from within the town shot out a stone, which shivered the post, where the King was standing with his head bent, into splinters, and thanks be to God the King escaped. Then the King gratefully gave thanks to God who had saved him. After the capture of the town, the King hanged eight of the gunners from gibbets. A ninth gunner was reprieved by the intercession of a cardinal”. (Orsini).
Strecche must have heard about this narrow shave from nobles visiting Kenilworth.
Chapters 14, 15, 16: The Siege of Ponte de l’Arche. He describes two incidents which show the games played in medieval warfare. These leaders of men were behaving as if war was chess, but at least they were on the field of battle, putting their own lives at risk. The rules for siege warfare were laid down in Deuteronomy 20:10 and out of his great piety Henry usually obeyed them. The town was taken by superb military strategy, described by Lt.Col.Burne (see References).
Chapters 17 – 21: The siege of Rouen. The details are those of many other Chronicles (see Burne pages 129-134): Strecche devotes nearly a quarter of his Book Five to this siege.
Chapter 22: The Uprising of the Citizens of Rouen:
“The siege being over, King Henry resided in his castle from the Feast of Saint Wolstun to the Feast of the annunciation and it was believed that peace and quiet were firmly established.to the Feast of the annunciation and it was believed that peace and quiet were firmly established. At the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, King Henry purposed to make his devotional offering of a candle at the monastery of Notre Dame in the city. But some citizens, gathering together in deceitful treachery, armed themselves and plotted against the King, to kill him in the aforesaid monastery. By the Grace of God their traitorous plot did not remain hidden from the King and he forestalled their evil design and fell upon them with an armed band: he rushed in while they armed themselves in a secret place preparing to kill him. Even while they were plotting these evil deeds, the King seized all of them and incarcerated them. From them, fifty of those in positions of authority and power, the King sent to England and imprisoned them in various castles. As a fine for their offence, the rest – each day before eating – collected, howsoever they could, twenty shillings and paid it over to the King. This payment continued for 36 weeks, to the punishment of the malefactors and the profit of the King of England.”
Chapter 23: Brief, and according to Frank Taylor, inaccurate, accounts of the sieges of Vernon, Mantes and Pontoise.
Chapter 24: The Earl of Warwick negotiates the betrothal of Henry to Katherine, the daughter of the King of France.
Chapter 25: The siege of Melun, return to England and coronation of Queen Catherine.
Chapter 26: Tour of England: Bristol, the south and west of England, and return to Henry’s “delightful castle of Kenilworth and manor of the Pleasaunce which the King himself created out of marshland”. Thence to Coventry, York, Beverley and Lincoln. Here he “receives news that Thomas, the Duke of Clarence, was slain at Ponte Largo”. Strecche writes a short sermon on Death (see Hilton page 43).
Chapter 27: The Queen returns to England for the birth of the future Henry VI.
The Death of King Henry:
Henry captures Meaux but in the castle at Vincennes he dies of fever
“Which all the labours of his doctors and physicians were powerless to prevent. May almighty God have pity on his soul. Amen. In praise of King Henry V the author of this History composes and publishes the following elegy:
This King Henry, ever favoured in War
Was King of the English, their light and glory.
Julius in disposition, Hector in valour, Achilles in manliness,
Augustus in manner, with the eloquence of Paris.
This other Solomon, perceptive in judgement:
This Troilus with humanity in his heart.
Alas, the rules of the game which cruel death plays,
That such a King should succumb to such a disease.
If death had come to Henry V armed, in the manner of a soldier,
I believe Henry would have been the victor,
For this King was never overcome in war
But a favoured Victor wherever he stood.”
So ends Strecche’s Chronicle, with the poetry that historical rhetoric demands. There is a paradox in this pious cleric writing vivid descriptions of the bloody battles of the Hundred Years War. I believe Strecche was a teacher of novices in his Priory and used these anecdotes to enliven their instruction in the power of God. Did he invite the warriors in Kenilworth castle as visiting lecturers to be entertained lavishly in the Prior’s lodgings?
Chapter 2: (remainder) The Lollards and Sir John Oldcastle
*I can only guess at this rhyme: King Henry did offer him an olive branch in the form of a pardon.“At the next Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord, the Lollards, living in London and elsewhere, treacherously plotted the death of King Henry V. A great multitude of them congregated secretly in Harringay Park near London to rebel against King Henry and they were intent on weakening the authority of the Church and injuring the Faith. This treachery was made known to our King and a strong force entered the Park surreptitiously in the dead of night. Coming across these traitors before they were able to gather, the King took some at dawn, slew them and scattered others. Then great fear broke out amongst the Lollards and they acknowledged the King as their ruler. But in that year he hunted down the said traitors in villages and towns, as they lay low in caves and grottos and secret houses, took many of their sect and punished them by binding them in chains.
Hearing about this, Lord Cobham, Sir John Oldcastle, a strong supporter of Lollards and a traitor to the King, fled to that part of Wales near Shrewsbury and Oswestry and lay hidden, heedless of the prophecy in rhyme ‘He who seeks renown above the stars should not cut down the olive branch’* At length, by the will of God, in the fourth year of Henry’s reign, the said John Oldcastle was captured in the town of Welshpool by loyal subjects in Wales. He was taken to England and in the presence of John, Duke of Bedford, sentenced to death as a traitor and a Lollard. And by command of the King, he was hanged, and drawn, then suspended in a frame and burnt to ashes.
Before he was hanged, he said to the Duke of Bedford, and publicly to all the people around ‘I shall arise unharmed on the third day’. But I have heard that he did not rise again , so I think that he perished after a long and arduous journey of error. Indeed, before his death, out of pure charity, Duke John urged him to renounce his false beliefs and let his sins be confessed to a priest. To which he defiantly replied ‘If Saint Paul the Apostle were to be here in the flesh, I would not be confessed by him, nor by the mother of Christ, nor by any other of the Saints. Because they are able to do nothing. They cannot pray for God’s pardon on my behalf: all sinfulness is accountable to God alone’. Thus the false heretic ended his life outside the Faith.
But after his death, certain of his disciples secretly gained access to the place of the burning, hoping for the resurrection of the vile martyr. There they discovered in one spot his ashes, with which they smeared their eyes. As a sign of the false holiness of such a martyr, these disciples totally lost the sight of their eyes: those who could formerly see prayed for sight for the love of their martyr, but returned home blind, with lamentation and grief.
This happened in the field beyond the former chapel next to Tyburn Gallows in London, the 16th Kalends of July, A.D.1417, in the fourth year of the reign of Henry V.
Wherefore you must read this verse below:
‘When the Old Castle was burnt to death, he fell from the realm of heaven, his entire heresy totally ruined’.”
This website originated as a supplement to the book
G.M.Hilton (2004) ‘John Strecche Canon of Kenilworth: the Life and Times of a Medieval Historian’. This can be bought from Browsers Bookshop, Talisman Square, Kenilworth.
The Latin text for this supplement is taken from
Taylor, F. ‘The Chronicle of John Strecche for the Reign of Henry V’ in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library of the University of Manchester, 1932, pp.137-187.
This Journal is held by most Universities and big City Libraries.
Other references in this article
We are meeting John Strecche, the famous historian, in the Gatehouse of the Priory at Kenilworth, Warwickshire: it is June, 1426. His Prior, Thomas Kidderminster, has unusually allowed him to relax his vow of humility and tell us about his life and works.
Father John, how long have you lived in the Priory of St Mary, Kenilworth?
Well, I came here as a novice when I was twenty, and I am in my sixties now. But I studied for a degree at Oxford for three years, I have been all over Warwickshire to minister in parishes connected with our Priory, and I have just retired from being Prior of Brooke, so you could say I am a widely travelled man.
Where is Brooke?
Sixty miles away, in the county of Rutland. Our priory owns a small Cell or daughter priory there. Only six canons or so - most of them sent there for a while because they were being troublesome here.
Not a very pleasant place, then.
On the contrary, I enjoyed it, and served eighteen years as Prior there. I was given a good horse and the hazardous journey gave me some excitement. I had peace to write my books and came back to Kenilworth once or twice a year for important celebrations. You may have read Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. I met him when he was in the service of John of Gaunt and he describes a monk who is in charge of a Cell - I think he is having a joke at our expense.
A monk - a canon? What is the difference?
A canon is a fully ordained priest, able to celebrate Mass in local churches. A monk is not usually ordained and is usually restricted to living in his monastery. But we all take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
So how did you come to be a writer of history?
At Oxford we had to learn rhetoric: history and poetry are branches of rhetoric, and I was very interested in them. I learnt to invent the speeches of great men and write poems in their praise. I became very proficient in copying manuscripts rapidly and brought back to Kenilworth a precis of the great Polychronicon by Ranulph Higden. My Prior put me in charge of young novices. They needed a book of history to read after I had given them lessons, so I put together my extracts from Higden and inserted some chapters about the history of our priory. I made a decorated coloured front page: I wasn’t allowed to put my name on it - but if you look carefully, the sentence at the bottom is an acrostic which spells it out. If anyone takes the trouble to puzzle it out, I shall be punished in the Chapter House for this.
Your book starts with the history of the Siege of Troy: surely this isn’t English History?
In a way it is. After the Siege, the Trojans wandered around the Mediterranean, until some landed on the shores of England. At Totnes, to be exact. And to prove it, there is a big stone in a street there with the footprint of Brutus, the great grandson of Aeneas.
What is your favourite book (apart from the Bible, of course)?
It has to be Nigel Wireker’s ‘Mirror of fools’. It is a story in verse about an ass who goes in search of a longer tail. I liked it so much I copied it out for my novices. It’s very witty - pokes fun at monastic orders, which is very good for us. And my novices enjoy it too: they have drawn little sketches in the margin. One shows a bald bearded canon with a wart on his nose. I was angry at first (pardon my sin) but then I was rather proud (oh dear, another sin): to think that there I am, wart and all, looking at my readers through centuries to come.
Other than Saints and religious people, who would you say is your greatest hero?
Undoubtedly, King Henry Vth. who, sad to say, died four years ago. I first met him when he was brought to Kenilworth as a boy of fifteen, gravely wounded in the face at the Battle of Shrewsbury. Through the power of our prayers, and the herbs gathered in our physic garden, he lived to revisit the Castle many times and plan his campaigns in France. I was honoured to administer the Sacrament to him on several occasions and I have written one of my poems in his praise, and as a conclusion to my History of England.
Don’t you find the rules of your monastery irksome?
Being woken in the middle of the night for the Office isn’t exactly fun! But on the other hand, we are very well looked after by many servants. I confess I am a little too fond of the good meals we get: well cooked, nicely served up in a clean refectory: we even have table cloths - and woe betide us if we spill our food or beer on them! Pure water is piped from a spring on the hill, and drains carry waste water rapidly to the Finham brook. Visitors to Kenilworth would far rather stay in the Priory guesthouse than in the noisy, dirty, smelly Castle.
In your homily at the end of The Story of Albina you describe women as ‘torch-bearers for Satan’ . This seems a dreadful accusation.
You must understand that women embody terrible temptations to our young men who have vowed to be celibate. It is true that some are models of great virtue - indeed our Priory is dedicated to St Mary. We even admit women to the monastery - under strict conditions - to change and launder our linen and mend our clothes. But, as you will have read in my books, they are also very persistent. If control is relaxed who knows where it will end? Perhaps married priests. Even women priests!
Do you by any chance have a Mission Statement?
Our Mission Statement is much older, and I dare say much clearer, than most modern Institutions. It is to worship God and to say perpetual prayers for our Founders. Our great Priory was founded in 1119 (I have written a poem about that, too - mad about poetry, that’s me). I was privileged to be in the Chapter House in 1417 when the tombs of the Founders were opened for restoration. They were repainted so that generations to come may contemplate their generosity and saintliness face to face. As surely as night follows day, as surely as the Sun goes round the Earth, so our Priory will last until Judgement Day.
The great Bell is tolling for your next Office and I know you must go now. Thank you for your kindness and patience in answer to my questions.
I have enjoyed talking so freely. Peace be with you and may the Lord have pity on my soul.
Some time after this interview, about 1447, the Priory was raised to the status of Abbey. But in 1538, the Abbey was Dissolved by the rapacious King Henry VIII and only the Gatehouse where we talked to John Strecche, and a 14th century building survive to any extent. A canon’s stall and parts of the great bell tower are in the Cotswolds.
It is some consolation that two of Strecche’s manuscripts were rescued from the furnaces melting the lead off the roofs. They are kept in the British Library in London and there is a microfilm of one (Add.MS.35295) in Warwickshire County Record Office.
Further information can be found in the book by Geoffrey Hilton, ‘John Strecche, canon of Kenilworth: the Life and Times of a Medieval Historian’ which is the chief source of this website in Strecche’s honour. The book examines his beliefs, piety and prejudices by reference to his manuscripts and to the mythe of the history books he read.
Copyright(c) 2008, Geoffrey Hilton. All Rights Reserved