As Henry talked with Chichele, both men might have considered that Henry’s policies in Ireland and Scotland had been equally effective. As it appeared to them, Sir John Talbot had proved a good choice as King’s Lieutenant of Ireland. Talbot was a consummate soldier, and had rapidly overwhelmed the Irish rebels and the English lords who had tried to find their own path between the English government and the native Irishmen. Like Henry himself, Talbot had seen outright war as the way to take control, and by the end of 1415 there were few men left who dared to stand against him. In Scotland, the duke of Albany was still negotiating for the return of his son, Mordach; and this policy had clearly succeeded in breaking the ‘Auld Alliance’ with France, for the time being at least. The only concerted attack by the Scots on the northern border counties during the year had been the simultaneous double raid into Westmorland and Northumberland in July. The latter had been soundly defeated by Sir Robert Umphraville; and although the earl of Douglas had succeeded in burning Penrith, there had been no significant follow-up attacks while the king was in France. Henry’s appointment of two reliable commanders to take charge of the East and West Marches had proved sound, and his policy of giving a free rein to the earl of Westmorland to act as an unofficial supervisor of the north was both subtle and successful.
Henry and Chichele might have been more concerned about the situation in Gascony. It was on Henry’s mind that he had done so little for his southernmost domain. And over the year the duchy had come under pressure both from external assailants, such as the attacks led by the duke of Bourbon, and from internal disloyalty, such as that of the lady of Lesparre. But in truth Henry did not care very much. For him, Gascony was a low priority. He did not understand the politics of the region, and he knew that it was of little direct use to him in building his war machine. Its prime function, in his eyes, was to supply his household with wine. And there was little danger the merchants of Bordeaux would stop selling wine to England. Until such time as there was a disaster of some sort, affairs in Gascony could be left to manage themselves – which is exactly the policy that many Gascon lords wanted Henry to adopt.
Henry and Chichele would have been far more positive about the implementation of religious policies, especially with regard to the Church. Over the year they had heard about the Holy Roman Emperor forcing the council of Constance to take a strong line against the three popes, so that, one by one, they had all lost authority. Henry may have failed to gain a diplomatic alliance with Sigismund but in religious affairs the two men shared a vision of the reunited, reformed Church. If the news from Narbonne had now reached England, it would have seemed that the third and last pope had now been deposed in all but name. Soon there would be a new pope, and a reform of the whole Church, taking into consideration the programme of forty-six points that Henry himself had commissioned from the University of Oxford. On top of this, the English delegates had succeeded in maintaining the independence of England as a nation, so Henry was now the king of the only state to be represented as a nation in its own right. He had a voice at Constance like no other monarch – even the Holy Roman Emperor had to face opposition within the German nation from other German princes and dukes.
The domestic religious policy was less of a cause for celebration. Sir John Oldcastle was still on the run. He had failed to comply with Henry’s threat to revoke the pardon for all the Lollards if he had not submitted before the council in April. As a result there had been more heretics burnt. Nevertheless, as far as Henry could see, his domestic religious policy was by no means unsuccessful. It had received further backing from the council of Constance in the declaration that to celebrate the memory of John Wycliffe was itself a heretical act, and in the decision that burning Wycliffe’s followers was justifiable, as demonstrated by the sentence against Jan Hus. Hence the trial and burning of John Claydon (which Chichele had personally supervised) was justifiable, as were similar trials and sentences against other Lollards – even those who never lifted a finger against the king. Such extreme judgments had no doubt helped to suppress any Lollard rising during his absence in France; and Sir Richard Beauchamp, lord of Abergavenny, had been able to defeat Oldcastle very quickly. On a personal level, Henry had further established his credentials in constructing two religious houses at Sheen – the only disappointment was the failure of the Celestine house. Apart from this minor setback, Henry was not only a spiritual king, he was seen to be a pious man and the protector of the Church. The only worrying aspect was that Lollardy was not going away, despite the dire punishment. As it must have seemed to Henry, the war of the orthodox faith against Wycliffe and his followers would be a long one, like that against Glendower, and he would need to be prepared to face the threat for many years to come.
Apart from Lollardy, Henry probably felt he had only one significant problem at the end of 1415. Money. His war effort had plunged the kingdom into debt. Parliament and both convocations had been generous, and yet the royal treasury was denuded of valuables. Henry had had to authorise the pawning of many items. The crown of England was in pawn. Huge amounts of royal treasure were in the hands of abbots, bishops and town authorities as security for the repayment of considerable loans. A second year had passed in which he had failed to settle his father’s debts. Customs from ports and other sources of royal revenue were increasingly having to be assigned at source, in order to ensure the creditor could be paid. Scrope’s manors and possessions had been distributed, even though this was unlawful; and still Henry had massive ongoing debts. On top of all those commitments identified in the budget of June 1415, it would in future be necessary to find several thousand pounds more every year to pay for the defence of Harfleur, including the wages of the captain and soldiers and provisions. How frank the acting treasurer was with the king is not known; it is perhaps worth noting that Rothenhale was removed from the post and Henry’s erstwhile chamberlain, Hugh Mortimer, appointed in his stead on 10 January 1416. But if either Rothenhale or Mortimer had told Henry the real state of his finances, it would have been obvious that Henry was in serious financial difficulties. Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and the earl of Salisbury were still pressing for the payment of wages to those who had fought at Agincourt in the parliament of 1418, three years later. Most of the artefacts that Bishop Courtenay had handed over as security were not redeemed at the time of Henry’s death in 1422; and many were never returned.
All the above – successes as well as a failures – would have been overshadowed by his victories in France. He had planned the French campaign meticulously and carried it off to his enormous advantage. He had succeeded in keeping the French divided among themselves: even after Agincourt, the factions were bitterly opposed to one another. He had demonstrated in the siege of Harfleur that he could seize a fortified town at will, just as Edward III had done at Calais. And he had shown he was right to lead the army to Calais and risk battle, for he had won a great victory. Indeed, that victory justified everything: every controversial decision, every doubt about the legitimacy of his claim to be king of France, and thereby every doubt about his right to the throne of England. It justified his decision to arrest and try Scrope for treason and his very policy of waging war in the first place.
That victory had left him a changed man.
As Henry partook of the Christmas feast, he could reflect that he had proved himself. He had demonstrated he had the vision to confront a major problem and could deal with it successfully. He could plan, he could persuade and he could win. Moreover, he had proved himself not only as an earthly commander but as one who was favoured by God. After this there could be no more championing the ‘hog’ Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, as the rightful king of England or of France – whatever the legalities of his claim to the throne. All such thinking was expunged at Agincourt: from now on there could only be one king of England – Henry – because that was patently God’s will.
Henry had also proved himself in the eyes of all the other leaders across Europe. He was no longer the son of c
hivalric-but-sick Henry IV; he was a triumphant king in his own right. They had to take notice of him. If God was on his side, then Henry’s authority carried that much greater weight with regard to international politics as well as religious affairs. In due course the French complained about the significance given to the English nation at Constance, but the reason for their outbursts was that Henry’s prestige had disproportionately increased the authority of the small kingdom of England. In 1416, when the Holy Roman Emperor came to England, Henry did not ride out to Blackheath to welcome him (as his father had done to welcome the emperor of Byzantium). He sent men ahead to greet Sigismund at every stage, and sent the citizens of London ahead to meet the emperor on Blackheath; he himself only rode out a mile from London, proudly forcing the emperor to come to him rather than vice versa.
That was how Henry had changed in other people’s eyes. What had changed within him was an awareness of all this. He now had confirmation of what he had long believed: the rightness of his spiritual authoritarianism. Loyalty was still important to him; he was still as vulnerable as he ever was; and describing him, one would still use the words ‘circumspect’, ‘solemn’, ‘conscientious’, ‘firm’, ‘proud’, ‘virtuous’ and ‘intense’ but now one would add ‘divinely favoured’. He had not only proved to everyone else that he had God’s blessing, he had proved it to himself too. Henry was conscious he had been handed something exceedingly precious, and, being aware that precious things are fragile, he did not treat it lightly but carefully treasured it. Like a glass vessel of great value, his divinely favoured status had to be looked after with scrupulous care, lest it slip and shatter. There was nothing back-slappingly good-humoured about his victory; there was nothing self-congratulatory. The victory was not his or even that of the English archers. As he himself said, Agincourt was God’s victory. Whatever his fellow Englishmen might have thought, he did not do it for them or for England. He did it for God.
This explains his solemnity after Agincourt, why he showed no humour or joy in his triumph, leading his prisoners through London with a fixed expression. It was not just that he had lost several of his closest friends. His sobriety in the post-accession phase of his life, when he had worked so wholeheartedly towards the war, had now given way to religious solemnity – he really did believe himself to be a warrior of God. Fusoris had not been imperceptive in remarking that the duke of Clarence was more warrior-like and that Henry V was more like a priest. Henry had that sanctity, and believed he had a sacred role, and his victory had confirmed it. What Fusoris had not understood – what he could not have foreseen – was that Henry’s priestliness would drive him to eclipse even his brother’s martial reputation.
Now, and perhaps only now in the wake of Agincourt, Henry began to realise that the task he had been given did not stop at proving his claim to England by proving he was divinely favoured. He had set himself on a path that required him to carry out God’s work – through war, and the subjugation of the evils which had beset France. There could be no turning his back on the fact that divine approval carried responsibilities as well as privileges: it had been granted for a reason, and might be withdrawn at any minute. He had to continue to demonstrate his pursuit of God’s favour through the pursuit of God’s work, and that meant the rest of his life would be devoted to God’s justice, war and prayer. There would be no rejoicing, no self-indulgence, no flirtation with women, no complacency, no great building projects, no toleration of Lollardy or any other heresy. Any sign of weakness might incur God’s displeasure and the reversal of his fortunes.
On Christmas day 1415, as Henry lifted the wassail cup, and turned to the archbishop of Canterbury, he had become what today we call a religious fundamentalist – or, to be precise, a militant Catholic fundamentalist. As he later described himself, he was ‘the scourge of God sent to punish the people of God for their sins’.49 Everything on Earth was subject to God’s will, and he himself, as God’s willing instrument, was prepared to wield all the destructive power he could to exercise that will. Of course, he was liable to be accused of tyranny by those who did not believe in his right to interpret God’s intentions; but they were among the minority. For most people in England and, indeed, across Europe, Henry was doing God’s work, and doing it well.
Some people, it is said, make a pact with the devil in order to achieve their desires. Henry had made a pact with God.
Epilogue
The council of Constance continued to sit until 1418. In 1417, Benedict XIII was finally deposed and Martin V elected pope for the whole of Christendom. Pope John XXIII was then released from prison. He died in 1419, just a few months after the new pope had appointed him Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum. Gregory XII remained a cardinal and became bishop of Porto. He lived out his days at Ancona, dying in 1417. Benedict XIII went to his grave maintaining that he was the one true pope, dying at Peñiscola in 1423.
Charles VI remained king of France until his death in 1422. His estranged son, the dauphin John, duke of Touraine, died in 1417, having been poisoned. Charles was succeeded by his next son, Charles VII. It was this Charles who reunited the French and was crowned king of France by Joan of Arc in 1429.
John the Fearless was murdered during a meeting with the dauphin Charles on the bridge at Montereau in 1419. His death did not end the civil war, however. His son Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, openly sided with Henry V in his war against Charles VI, having an alliance with the English that lasted until 1435.
Henry himself led a second great expedition into France in July 1417. Thereafter he spent only four months of the remaining five years of his reign in England. In 1419 he took the city of Rouen and thereby secured control of most of Normandy. By the Treaty of Troyes (1420) he was given the hand in marriage of the French princess, Katherine, and was acknowledged as heir to the kingdom of France after Charles VI’s death. But he died of dysentery one month before the French king, leaving all his titles to his nine-month-old son, Henry VI. By the time of his death he had exhausted the crown financially, fallen out with his uncle Henry Beaufort (whom he prevented from becoming a cardinal), and seen his brother Thomas, duke of Clarence, killed in the disastrous battle of Baugé (1421).
The custody of the realm during Henry VI’s minority fell to John, duke of Bedford (d. 1435), and Humphrey, duke of Gloucester (d. 1447). They vied for power with their uncle Henry Beaufort (d. 1447), who finally became a cardinal in 1426. All three fought over Henry’s legacy – which almost immediately became legendary. With an increasingly idealised legend to live up to, and with his powerful guardians exercising a controlling influence over both him and his realms, Henry VI was doomed. His reign was a succession of political disasters. Harfleur was recaptured in 1435. Rouen fell to the French in 1449 and the duchy of Gascony was lost in 1453, leaving the town of Calais the only English possession in France.
The Lancastrian dynasty founded by Henry IV died out in 1471, when Henry VI was murdered on the orders of Edward IV – the grandson and heir of Richard of Conisborough, earl of Cambridge, and the great-nephew and heir of Edmund Mortimer, earl of March.
Conclusion
‘Take him all round and he was, I think, the greatest man that ever ruled England’: scholars have been mindful of McFarlane’s words ever since they were published in 1972.1 Christopher Allmand, referring to them in the early 1990s, suggested that the debate had some way yet to run, key points being the wisdom of making war against France, Henry’s persecution of the Lollards, and his morality in killing the prisoners at Agincourt – all of which left him open to criticism.2 However, he concluded his study of Henry V with the words, ‘a careful consideration of his whole achievement reveals much regarding Henry’s stature both as man and king. From it he emerges as a ruler whose already high reputation is not only maintained but enhanced’.3 Anne Curry writing in the year 2000 was of the opinion that, although academics might have tried to discredit this image of Henry as ‘the greatest man who ever ruled England’, none to date had managed it.
‘For every bad thing one can say about Henry V, there are dozens of good things to say in his defence,’ she claimed. As she put it, Henry remains ‘the golden boy of fifteenth-century history’.4
I do not subscribe to this ‘golden boy’ view of Henry V. ‘Cold steel’ would be a better metaphor. While his organisational skills were extraordinary, and his determination to prove himself in war is awesome, his principal achievements were due as much to good luck as good judgment; and his perspective in pursuing his ambitions was prone to two fundamental weaknesses. The first of these weaknesses was the ill-defined objectives and time limits of his vision: he plunged England into a potentially endless and unnecessary war for the sake of demonstrating the legitimacy of his dynasty. The second weakness was his religiously inflated ego. He strikes me as a deeply flawed individual, undermined by his own pride and overwhelmed by his own authority. I find him less politically flexible and less tolerant than his father, Henry IV. I find him less cultured than Richard II; and I find him inferior to Edward III as an exponent of kingship in a number of respects – as a lawmaker, as a strategist and as a cultural leader. Only in matters of faith did he significantly outstrip his predecessors; but even this had its downside, especially for those whom he allowed to be burnt at the stake. I admire his determination, courage, organisational skills, tenacity, leadership ability and his sense of duty; but I find little else to admire and much to dislike.
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