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Extract from our translation of the 'Deeds of King Henry V': "[31st July 1415] And while he was subsequently waiting in his castle of Porchester [Map] for his passage through the marsh, behold, God, wishing to test the constancy of His chosen one, allowed him to be tempted and struck again, even by another dreadful hammer of turbulence. For our adversary the Devil, who always envies every good intention, entered into the hearts of certain men of Cambridge who were near him, namely, Lord Richard[1], the Earl of Cambridge, his own first cousin, Henry, Lord le Scrope[2], who was closer to him, and who had scarcely been a third person in the royal secrets, as well as Thomas Grey[3], a famous and noble knight, if he had not been stained with this mark of betrayal. Their cruel madness and insane cruelty, corrupted by a lust for domination, but rather by the allure of promises or gifts from the French[4], conspired not only to impede his proposed journey but also to plot the destruction of the king's life in a manner too atrocious and inhuman. But He who sits above the cherubim and sees the depths, and knows how vain the thoughts of men are, soon delivered the just from the wicked, and revealed the iniquity of Judas and the treachery of the evil ones through Lord Mortimer, the Earl of March[5], whose innocence they had aimed at in this deadly plot. And immediately for this reason, silently and wisely among the other lords, by the king, as if called to counsel, and captured in the same castle and brought to the port of Southampton, on the following Monday, the fifth day of August in the year of Our Lord 1415, a public sentence of confession was pronounced, and the aforementioned lords, Richard, Earl of Cambridge, and Thomas Grey were punished by beheading. And the aforementioned Henry le Scrope, because he was a more familiar enemy, was subjected to great disgrace, and due to the infamy of his charges, was dragged through the middle of the town to the place of execution and beheaded."
Note 1. Richard of Conisburgh, 1st Earl of Cambridge, 1385-1415. Younger son of Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York, son of King Edward III. His brother Edward, 2nd Duke of York, was killed at the Battle of Agincourt.
Note 2. Henry Scrope, 3rd Baron Scrope of Masham, 1373-1415. Treasurer of England and a Knight of the Garter, and had been on such intimate terms with Henry as to have occasionally shared his bed.
Note 3. Thomas Grey of Werke and Heaton, 1384-1415.
Note 4. The three conspirators were charged with selling their king for French gold; Richard Rede's Chronicle. [Bodl. Rawlinson MS. C. 398.]: "They sold the king himself to the Franks for one million of gold, and immediately proposed to kill him and his brothers." The charge, however, is incredible. Their main design was evidently that set forth in the verdict of their jury: "They conspired that they would lead Edmund, the Earl of March, indeed with the permission of the Lord King, into the parts of Wales, and they sought to have him claim the supremacy of the Kingdom of England, in the event that Lord Richard, recently deceased King of England, the second after the Conquest, had died, and that they would make a certain proclamation in the said parts of Wales, in the name of the aforementioned Earl of March, to declare him the heir to the crown of England." [Rot. Parl. iv. 65.] In this view Leland coincides. [Coll. i. 701.] Sir Thomas Grey was executed first, on the 2nd of August. At the trial of the two peers, the Duke of Clarence acted as Henry's vicegerent; the forms of law were partly attended to, but the constitution was violated. The lords were not, in effect, tried by their peers. [Carte, ii. 679.] If the Earl of Cambridge's confession can be relied on, the Earl of March must have been, at one time, a consenting party to the conspiracy, and, indeed, he obtained a pardon on the 7th of Aug. [Fœdera and Ellis' Letters, 2nd series, vol, i.] It is remarkable that Henry VI remitted part of the sentence of Sir Ralph Grey, "on account of the loyalty of his grandfather, Sir Thomas, to the king's most noble predecessor, [Richard] in whose cause he was beheaded with the Earl of Cambridge at Southampton."
Shortly after his return from Agincourt, Henry bestowed fifteen manors in the county of Richmond, Yorkshire, and a house near Paul's Wharf in London, which were forfeited to him by the Lord Scrop of Masham, to Sir Henry Fitzhugh. Sir Henry afterwards exchanged them for an annuity, and yielded a rose in return. [Privy Seal Writs, Tower, 5th Hen. V] Henry appears to have been grateful to the Earl of March for his disclosure of the conspiracy, About the time of the Emperor Sigismund's visit to England, he gave him and his countess a most handsome present, viz. all the goods, to the value of 800 marks, found in a ship called the Mary, "which are forfeited to us, because they were shipped by certain merchants of the port of Galway in Ireland, to go to Zealand, Middelburgh, Flanders, or to our city of Harfleur, and nennye [a strong negative] to our staple of Calais." [Privy Seal Writs, Tower, 4th Hen,V] N.B. It was an offence, punishable by the Admiralty Court, for any mariner to convey any goods belonging to the staple [i.e. wool or hides] to any other port than Calais. [Nicolas's Royal Navy, ii. 205.] The Earl of March had been brought up, for some time, with John, afterwards Duke of Bedford, and Philippa his sister, under the care of Sir Hugh de Waterton, at the Castle of Berkhamsted. [Rot. Pat, 5th July, 3rd Hen. IV m. 10. Page 2] In Nov, 1409, the Prince of Wales received a grant of 500 marks a year for the maintenance of the Earl and his brother. [Fœdera, viii. 608.] "A sincere friendship afterwards existed between the earl and the sovereign who supplanted him.
Note 5. Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl March, 1391-1425. He was a grand-son of Edmund Mortimer, 3rd Earl March and Philippa Plantagenet, daughter of Lionel, 1st Duke of Clarence, second son [excluding those who died young] of King Edward III. According to the rules of primogeniture Edmund had a better claim to the throne than King Henry V who was descended from John of Gaunt, third son of King Edward III. Edmund's sister Anne married Richard of Conisburgh [see above; executed for his part in the Southampton Plot] by whom the House of York claimed the throne of England. The Earl of March was pardoned for his role in the conspiracy on the 7th of August 1415.
