Southampton Plot
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The Southampton Plot of 1415 was a conspiracy against King Henry V of England, aimed at replacing him with Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March.[1] The three alleged ringleaders were Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge, Mortimer's brother-in-law; Henry Scrope, 3rd Baron Scrope of Masham (whose uncle Richard le Scrope had been executed for his part in a 1405 revolt also supporting Mortimer's right); and Sir Thomas Grey of Heton. They were charged with plotting to murder Henry at Southampton before his embarkation into France; revolts in favour of Mortimer by Lollards under Sir John Oldcastle in the West Country, and by the Percies in the North, would follow.
The nominal principal, the Earl of March, informed King Henry of the plot on July 31, claiming that he had only just become aware of it. Richard, Scrope, and Grey were promptly arrested. The trial took place in Southampton, on the site now occupied by the Red Lion Inn. Grey was put to death on August 3 and the two peers on August 5, both in front of the Bargate. The executions were carried out according to class: Richard, Earl of Cambridge, and Henry, Lord Scrope of Masham, were beheaded; Sir Thomas Grey, a commoner, was drawn and quartered. Satisfied, Henry sailed for France on August 11.
This plot features prominently in William Shakespeare's play Henry V.
With the death of the Duke of York, the Earl of Cambridge's elder brother, at the Battle of Agincourt later that year, Cambridge's son Richard Plantagenet became heir to the title, which would eventually be returned to him after Henry V's death. Through his mother, he also inherited the Mortimer claim to the throne on the Earl of March's death; later in life Richard would use this claim to try to dethrone King Henry VI.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Mortimer was the great-grandson of Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence, the third son of King Edward III. Henry V and his father Henry IV derived their claim from Henry IV's father John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, fourth son of Edward III. By strict primogeniture, Mortimer had a greater claim to the throne than King Henry, and his father had been acknowledged heir to the throne by King Richard II.
[edit] Other reading
- Barker, Juliet (2006). Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle. United Kingdom: Abacus. ISBN 978-0349119182.
- Curry, Anne (2005). Agincourt: A New History. United Kingdom: Tempus Publishing. ISBN 978-0752428284.
- Mortimer, Ian (2009). 1415: Henry V's Year of Glory. London: The Bodley Head. ISBN 978-0224079921.
- Pugh, T B (1988). Henry V and the Southampton plot of 1415. United Kingdom: Southampton University Press. ISBN 978-0854322800.
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