by Dan Jones
From October all through the winter of 1421–2, Henry led an operation to besiege Meaux, a small town a few miles north-east of Paris. Meaux was heavily fortified and its defenders put up a fierce resistance. The siege began late in the year, lasted for more than six months, and was a miserable experience for both sides: the garrison was slowly starved while the besiegers outside suffered the horrible privations of winter warfare. It was a long and ugly way to fight a war, but if Henry was to force the whole of France to observe his rights under the treaty of Troyes, he would have to break the most entrenched of the resistance to his rule.
Towards the end of May, Catherine returned to France to visit her husband, leaving her baby son at home in England, under the care of his nurses. She spent a few weeks at his side, along with her parents. But it was clear as summer arrived that not all was well with the king. At some point, probably in the squalor of the siege of Meaux, Henry V had contracted dysentery. The ‘bloody flux’, which brought the agonies of intestinal damage and severe dehydration to the sufferer, was very often fatal, and Henry knew it. He was an experienced soldier and would have seen many of his men suffering the same fate. Henry was cogent and pragmatic enough as the illness worsened to make a detailed will, outlining his wishes for the political settlements in England and France after his death. He died in the royal castle at Vincennes between two and three o’clock in the morning on 31 August, a little more than two weeks short of his thirty-sixth birthday. With the same bewildering swiftness that had characterised his life’s every action, England’s extraordinary warrior-king was gone. At home a baby not quite nine months old was set to inherit the crown, the youngest person ever to become king of England.
If the new king were to live beyond infancy – and of this there was no guarantee – England would now face the longest royal minority in its history. Precedent was not promising. Three English kings since the Norman Conquest had inherited the crown as children, and all had endured very difficult times. Henry III was nine years old when he became king in 1216, and in his early years he was dominated by overbearing ministers who used royal power to enrich themselves and their followers. Edward III had been thrust upon the throne at fourteen in 1327 after the forced abdication of his father, Edward II, and for the next three years power had been greedily and murderously wielded by his mother, Isabella of France, and her feckless lover, Roger Mortimer, until they were deposed in a bloody palace coup. Richard II was the most recent king to have inherited the crown as a child, in 1377, when he was ten years old. An attempt had then been made to govern as if the boy-king was a competent adult. It was a dismal failure. Within four years of his accession England’s government had almost been brought down by the Peasants’ Revolt – the great popular rebellion of 1381 – and Richard’s subsequent path to adulthood was beset by political faction and upheaval. He bore the psychological scars to his death.24 The book of Ecclesiastes expressed perfectly England’s experience of immature monarchs: ‘Woe unto thee, O land, when thy king is a child …!’25
Matters grew even more complicated when, on 21 October 1422, Charles VI died. He was fifty-three and probably died from causes connected to his longstanding illness. The infant Henry of Windsor was now not merely the new king of England. He was also, under the terms of the treaty of Troyes, the heir to the English kingdom of France, a political entity that was still the subject of a furious war. The French king’s body was laid to rest in the mausoleum at the abbey church in St Denis. His queen Isabeau would continue to live in the Hôtel St Pol in what was now effectively occupied Paris. Once a powerful, if controversial, force in guiding the realm during her husband’s bouts of lunacy, her political days were now over. The English spread scurrilous (and most likely false) stories of her outrageous promiscuity and claimed, all too conveniently, that the dauphin was not really the son of Charles VI. As far as the conquerors from across the sea were concerned, the death of the mad king left them in charge of France. At Charles VI’s funeral, Henry V’s eldest surviving brother, John duke of Bedford, had the sword of state carried before him, a gesture intended to demonstrate that he was now, as his nephew’s representative, the effective power in the realm.
Yet for all the grandstanding and triumphalism, there was no getting away from the truth, which was that the first king of the dual kingdom was a tiny, helpless baby. An unprecedented and extremely delicate military situation would have to be managed for nearly two decades without a competent hand to guide the way. Only disaster, surely, could await.
2 : We Were in Perfect Health
Boy-kings were not unknown in the fifteenth century, but they presented a realm with many difficult questions. A king who was a baby, a toddler, even a young man was perfectly able to reign, but he was not in any practical sense able to rule. At nine months old, Henry VI had been accepted unquestioningly as rightful and legitimate king. Yet until he came of age, or began to show enough discretion to start taking part in government, it would be necessary to make all the decisions of his public and private life on his behalf. As a child, the king was incapable of choosing his officials and servants or giving direction in war and justice, and insufficiently competent to make critical decisions about succession, on which the security of England rested. Yet these matters could not be ignored for eighteen years until the boy became a man.
This problem had been anticipated, in part at least, by his father. As Henry V lay dying in August of 1422, he had gathered his companions around him and given them instructions for the care of his son and his kingdom after his death. Codicils to his will established that responsibility for the young Henry VI’s person would fall to his great-uncle, Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter. The duke was to have overall governance of the royal person, with responsibility for choosing his servants. In this, he was to be assisted by two men who had been conspicuously loyal to the old king: Sir Walter Hungerford, a long-serving steward to the royal household, and Henry, Lord FitzHugh, a trusted chamberlain. One or other was to attend the king at all times. (They were later succeeded in their positions by two more soldiers who had been loyal to the old regime: John, Lord Tiptoft and Louis de Robesart.) But when it came to the practicalities of raising a tiny child, a mother knew best. Catherine de Valois – herself only recently out of childhood – played an equally important role in her son’s early life and upbringing.
Catherine’s household was institutionally separate from her son’s, but in practice they overlapped a great deal. The dowager queen’s household finances supplemented those of her son and Catherine was influential in his choice of servants. As a baby, Henry VI was attended chiefly by women: he had a head nurse called Joan Asteley, a day nurse, Matilda Fosbroke, a chamber-woman, Agnes Jakeman, and a laundress, Margaret Brotherman; little is known about any of the women, but it is impossible to imagine that Catherine had no say in their selection, for they would spend far more time with the boy than she did. When Henry was two years old, Catherine’s former servant Dame Alice Boutiller was appointed as royal governess, with an official licence from the king’s council to chastise Henry from time to time, without fear of reprisals if and when he took offence at his necessary discipline. Even when the king grew older and more men were added to his company, Catherine’s hand was still visible. In 1428, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, took over responsibility for Henry’s education, with a mandate to imbue him with the qualities of chivalrous, knightly kingship. But Henry’s confessor, George Arthurton, and the head knight of his chamber, Sir Walter Beauchamp, had both been former servants in the queen’s household.1
The young dowager queen held extensive lands and properties throughout England and Wales – including the vast Welsh castles of Flint, Rhuddlan and Beaumaris, the imposing fortress of Knaresborough in Yorkshire and, further south, Hertford Castle, Leeds Castle and Pleshey in Kent, and Wallingford, an ancient royal castle that had been extensively repaired and fitted out for her comfort and benefit. She divided her time between her favourite residences, but for the most part,
she stayed near her son in the magnificent royal palaces of the Thames valley, and particularly at Windsor, Westminster and Eltham.
Eltham, in Kent, a favourite royal residence for more than a century, affords a glimpse of the young king’s early life. It offered space, grandeur, luxury and comfort for Queen Catherine and plenty of intriguing corners for a toddler to explore. It was surrounded with acres of parklands, and landscaped gardens planted with vines. Stone bridges arched elegantly across its moats and led to a network of outbuildings: the young king could stumble upon the cooks at work in the kitchen and buttery, the comforting scents of the morning’s bread drifting up from the bakery and the more exotic foreign flavours of the spicery. The palace had come into royal hands in 1305 and had been significantly redeveloped three times since the 1350s. In the early years of Henry’s reign, yet more money was spent ensuring that it offered all the clean and modern facilities needed to raise a young king.2 Smart wooden apartments with stone chimneys were joined by cloisters to a grand private chapel. Catherine could entertain her guests at night in the hall and a specially constructed dancing chamber, while the king’s household kept to his rooms, centring on a private chamber warmed by two roaring fires and lit by stained-glass windows, decorated with birds and grotesques and the personal symbols of Henry’s paternal grandfather, Henry IV. Royal badges and crowns surrounded the old king’s motto: soueignex vous de moy; remember me.3 In this chamber, and others like it around the palaces of England, young Henry began his path to manhood and kingship: playing with toys and jewels given to him as gifts at New Year, taking his academic lessons from his tutor, the Oxbridge scholar and medical doctor John Somerset, learning devotions by rote from his prayer book, laughing on feast days at court entertainers like Jakke Travaille or the performing troupe called the Jews of Abingdon, learning to play the two musical organs he possessed, and receiving early instruction in the martial arts, while wearing his specially built ‘little coat armours’ and wielding a long sword. In private, Henry lived the life not of a king, but of a young prince – raised and taught and loved and entertained and (occasionally) punished much like other royal boys before him. Yet in the public sphere of kingship, things were far more complicated.
England was a realm whose government spun like a wheel around the hub of the king’s person. Institutionally, it was sophisticated, mature and complex. The king was obliged by his coronation oath to consult his senior noblemen on matters of state, either through a formally composed council or the more informal means of taking counsel, or considered advice, from the great men of the land as he saw fit. When taxes were required, he had to work in partnership with the realm via the gatherings of lords and commons that met when he called a parliament. Justice was dispensed by increasingly professional public servants answerable ultimately to the court of chancery, and public finance was managed through another ancient and very bureaucratic institution, the exchequer.
But although it was big and complicated, English royal government was not a machine that could operate of its own accord. Indeed, the machine’s smooth operation, and by extension, the fortunes of the realm at large, still depended fundamentally on the personal competence of the king. The magic ingredient that made royal government work was the absolute freedom of the royal will, and it was by exercising his royal will that the king could settle disputes between the great men of the realm, correct abuses and corruption in the system, and generally give a sense of leadership and direction to the country. Thus, a confident, decisive, persuasive and soldierly king like Henry V was able to govern a united and peaceful realm. By contrast, a wavering, untrustworthy king without luck or skill on the battlefield and bereft of good judgement, such as Richard II had been, could swiftly see his rule unravel and disorder tear apart the realm.4
Self-evidently, it was impossible for a child to fulfil this part of kingship, which marked the essential difference between reigning and ruling. Yet from the very day that England learned of Henry V’s death, there was an astonishingly sophisticated and united effort by virtually the entire English political community to operate the young king’s power responsibly and carefully on his behalf.
On his deathbed, Henry had given instructions that led to his eldest surviving brother, John duke of Bedford, taking responsibility for French affairs.5 This was uncontroversial: Bedford was the heir presumptive to the French crown, a sober, pious, hard-working man, a canny politician and an effortlessly impressive lord, who projected princely magnificence in everything he did. More controversial were the measures Henry had proposed for government at home in England. One of the codicils to Henry’s will suggested that his youngest brother, Humphrey duke of Gloucester, would be appointed as tutela during Henry VI’s minority. It may well have been that this term implied simply that Gloucester should have personal responsibility for the education and upbringing of the new king. However, it was also possible to interpret the term to suggest that Gloucester would wield full regency powers in England, accountable only to the king himself.
Many in England would have approved of this interpretation, for in the country at large Gloucester was held in high esteem. He was a literate and cultured man, with knowledge and interests in every direction, from English, French and Italian poetry and the humanist learning of Italy to alchemy, which was then popular in educated circles. He employed foreign scholars as his secretaries, spent large sums on patronising and promoting artists and writers, collected books and fostered a learned, courtly atmosphere in his household. Moreover, he was a veteran of the battle of Agincourt, and the beautiful Jacqueline of Hainault, whom he married in 1423, was a princess generally beloved by the people of England. He held implacably aggressive views on foreign policy and, although these were not shared by many of his fellow noblemen, Gloucester was seen in London as the champion of mercantile interests and someone who would stand up for native traders.
Yet for all these qualities and his undeniable popularity among the English, Gloucester did not command the devotion of everyone around the new king. Although he was a deep drinker of high culture, he could also be pompous and self-regarding. In his military career he had pursued an image of chivalry, but he was decidedly less impressive than his three elder brothers: for while Henry V had been a peerless commander and a magnetic character, Thomas of Clarence a suicidally brave soldier and John of Bedford a sober strategist, Gloucester tended to place mindless belligerence above all other tactical considerations. His desire for popular worship alienated others who had a claim to power as well, and made him a curiously shallow leader. Meanwhile, his pretensions to chivalry would founder in 1428 when he callously cast aside Jacqueline of Hainault, having their marriage annulled in order to take up with one of her ladies-in-waiting, a smart and seductive baron’s daughter by the name of Eleanor Cobham. Like his older brother Bedford, Humphrey duke of Gloucester cultivated a reputation for stateliness and grandeur. His simply rang hollower.
It was perhaps no surprise, then, that when the conditions of Henry V’s will became known, a concerted effort was made to prevent Gloucester from taking up the personally dominant position in government that he craved. This resistance was led by Bedford, in alliance with other lords of the royal council. In December 1422, during the first parliament of the new reign, Gloucester was summoned to be told he had been awarded the title of ‘Protector and Defender of the kingdom of England and the English church and principal councillor of the lord King’. Even if it sounded grand, this title was designed to be strictly limited, and it would lapse whenever the more senior Bedford visited England. Neither Gloucester nor anyone else was going to be a lieutenant, tutor, governor or regent. The duke was simply the pre-eminent man in what would prove to be a very carefully constructed conciliar protectorate – the first such experiment in English history, and one which acted under a very singular fiction. Government was carried out on Henry’s behalf, but it also continued as if the child-king was in fact a fully functioning public figure.
Gloucester was bitte
rly disappointed. Not even the large salary he received in his new role could mask the fact that he had been passed over in a manner that suggested not even his own brother, with whom he maintained generally good relations, considered him fit to govern England independently. Yet to his credit, Gloucester did not withdraw from politics or begin to think of rebellion. Despite the sting of personal rejection, he appears to have recognised the same facts that had struck everyone else close to the English crown: that Henry V’s death left England in a very dangerous position and that without a collective attempt to create a stable form of minority government that could last for a decade or more, the realm could very easily end up in the same disastrous condition as that which had afflicted their French neighbours across the sea. Seen in this light, the decision to pass over Gloucester in favour of a form of conciliar rule serving the conceit that the baby king was a genuine ruler was both a piece of wholly artificial constitutional backbending and a stroke of brilliance.
*
King Henry VI presided over parliament for the first time at Westminster in the autumn of 1423, when he was not yet two years old. A medieval parliament had no power of its own to speak of, save that derived from the sovereign, whether he was a baby, a grown man or a dribbling geriatric. On Friday 12 November, therefore, Queen Catherine prepared to bring her son from his nursery at Windsor down through the affluent towns and villages that stood on the north bank of the Thames, to Westminster, where he would meet representatives of his subjects in the time-honoured fashion. Windsor was grander than Eltham, a fairytale castle imbued with all the pious chivalric trappings of English kingship: a moated and walled forest of towers and turrets, with glorious painted chambers and sumptuous living quarters, as well as the magnificent chapel of St George, home to the Order of the Garter. It was from this tranquil place that in the second week of November, the twenty-three-month-old king – a toddler now, with the beginnings of his own will – was about to be removed.
