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Richard II, Henry, London and the price of fish. (Info from chapter 12, 1399: The Lancastrian Conquest, published January 2027) This image shows the future Henry IV showing off the captive Richard II to ‘Londoners’ shortly after leaving Chester and is an authentic record in the sense that it is a C19th line drawing copy of a coloured original which appears in Jean Creton’s chronicle as set down in the Duke of Burgundy’s book (Harley 1319) of 1405. Historians have a tendency to interpret this event as proof of Henry’s popular support in England and, whilst it points to something, it doesn’t quite prove that – it needs a more careful investigation. Henry et al later received the formal submission of the City a couple of miles from its gates but Creton’s image depicts certain Londoner’s who have taken the trouble to ride out and intercept Henry a long way from the capital and we would like to know who they were and who they claimed to represent, and what business they thought they had with the Duke of Lancaster. London was a homogenous polity in that it had an internal governing structure but within that overarching idea of ‘London’, the capital was a boiling pot of competing interests. Henry showed no hesitation in heading towards London as if he knew that it would be the best place for whatever he had planned. He had allies there; those that had welcomed the execution of Nicholas Brembre in the Merciless Parliament of 1388, but that was 10 years ago. Could he count on enough support from them to overawe any naysayers if he returned to Westminster for another bloody parliament, or a deposition? Froissart’s version, which occupies the last chapters of his Book IV, is historically wrong but it is historically interesting – he was given the ‘whole story’, which he incorporated wholesale, by a Lancastrian spokesman. For this spokesman, the events of 1399 were based on London: Londoners had asked Henry and Arundel to return, they had landed at Plymouth with a French army (quickly dismissed) and they went straight to the City. Froissart’s account is completely London-centric, nothing happens north of the Thames, which tells us that for someone, it was a reasonable explanation to give Europe’s foremost political journalist. We do know that the parliament-that-never-was of 30th September was packed with ‘commoners’, alongside the M. Ps from the rest of the country, and that he made himself king, so we know that Henry was correct in assuming that he held London in his pocket. What we want to know is what drove the ‘commoners’ to support him. Richard II’s critical political mistake, perhaps the single act that doomed his reign, was his decree made en route to Milford Haven that restored the Fishmonger’s monopoly in London. Abolishing it had been the key policy of John of Northampton’s populist movement in London since the early 1380s. It had been restored in the later 1380’s but re-abolished in the Merciless parliament. Richard II’s restoration of the monopoly could only have infuriated those in London who sympathised with Northampton’s brief ascendancy, and those who resented paying the Fishmonger’s premium, and that was a lot of people. The oligarchs, such as Dick Whittington, who liked to think they controlled London, could not be sure that the gates of the City would hold against Lancastrian forces without and a street-fighting faction within. To protect their interests, the oligarchs admitted Henry and the anti-Fishmonger/ neo-Northamptonites, leaders of which had ridden out to Henry, ensured that whatever he did in Westminster was cheered to the rafters. Henry IV abolished the Fishmonger’s monopoly in his first parliament.