SOUTHAMPTON has witnessed many great events in its time, but few which made a greater impact on history than those of 1415.

This was the year of Agincourt, when “gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here”, as Shakespeare puts it.

The glory of Agincourt belonged to King Henry V, yet events in Southampton almost denied him his greatest triumph. In fact they almost denied him his kingdom and his life.

Imagine the atmosphere as the king’s army converged on the south coast in the summer of 1415.

In Southampton and Portsmouth a fleet of 1,400 vessels was assembled — ships and boats of every description, mostly requisitioned, some even foreign merchantmen which had chanced to put in to some English port at the wrong moment.

From time to time the king himself looked in on the ports to inspect the preparations.

On Southampton Common, Swanwick Heath and in the fields around Portsmouth, thousands of archers and men-at arms were mustered.

In the towns and villages of southern Hampshire great herds of cattle grazed, enough to supply the king’s men with beef for a winter.

All over England millers worked around the clock, grinding the corn which would feed an army.

But while the ordinary people prepared for war, certain men in higher circles were plotting to overthrow the king.

The Earl of Cambridge, Lord Scrope of Masham and Sir Thomas Grey planned to install a rival claimant to the throne, Edmund, Earl of March.

One contemporary account suggests they were motivated by “the lucre of money” and were in the pay of the French, whom Henry was about to attack.

The plotters met by the Itchen Ferry and described their plan to March, who happened to be Cambridge’s brother-in-law.

His initial response may or may not have been favourable. But his survival instinct proved stronger than his ambition and he duly reported the plot to the King himself.

According to tradition, the ensuing trial was held at the Red Lion in Southampton High Street.

A jury found all three conspirators guilty and they were sentenced to death.

Grey, being a commoner, was beheaded by the Bargate (then known as the North Gate) and his head sent northwards for display on the gates of his home city of Newcastle.

Scrope, the Lord Treasurer and one of the king’s closest friends and advisers, and Cambridge claimed the right of trial by fellow peers, but the second verdict merely repeated the first.

Cambridge, being of royal blood, was allowed to walk to the block at Bargate and was later buried “head and all” at God’s House Chapel. Scrope – considered the most treacherous of the trio – was dragged to the place of execution on a hurdle and his head subsequently displayed on the gates of York.

The trials had delayed Henry’s departure by a few days, but on August 11, “fair stood the wind for France”

and the king sailed from Southampton in his flagship Trinity Royal.

He captured the key port of Harfleur, but then the midsummer heat fanned the flames of disease, decimating the English forces.

Thousands of sick and wounded were sent home leaving an army which was heavily outnumbered.

The survivors headed for Calais, but were confronted at Agincourt by a force three times their number.

The odds were stacked against them and it seemed foolhardy to proceed. But the King of England was not for turning.

He had a makeshift stockade built of sharpened stakes, then made some provocative sorties to draw the enemy into an open field between two woods.

When the mounted French knights charged, they had little room to swing their weapons and became bogged down in the wet ground.

They became arrow fodder for the English archers and those who were not killed, wounded or driven back were captured and held for high ransoms.

It was a great and glorious victory and it took place on October 25, 1415 — St Crispin’s Day.

It also led, two years later, to the re-conquest of Normandy, the defection of Burgundy and, in 1420, the Treaty of Troyes, which reestablished English dominance over the French crown.

And those who were a-bed in England in 1415 were forced to “hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks That fought with us upon St Crispin’s Day”.