When Henry first set foot in France on St George’s Day 1430, to take seisin of his inheritance there, ten years had passed since the treaty of Troyes. This had provided for the grandiose dual monarchy which was to be the outcome and justification of his father’s renewal of the age-old war with the Valois kings. Since Henry’s accession, the regent, John duke of Bedford, brother and uncle of kings, had maintained his nephew’s ‘right’ there as the sacred duty imposed upon him by the dying Henry V. From the beginning of his regency he had striven hard, by proclamation and pictorial propaganda, to prevent the struggle in France being regarded in its true, natural light as a contest for supremacy between two kings. Severe penalties were laid down for anyone within Henry’s obedience who referred to the enemy as ‘the French’, rather than ‘the Armagnacs’, or gave a royal title to him ‘who calls himself the Dauphin’. The official view of the rightful nature of Henry’s title as king of France was expressed in a French poem of 1423. This was written at Bedford’s command by Master Lawrence Calot, one of the leading Anglo-Burgundian notaries and a royal secretary, to accompany a pictorial representation of Henry’s descent in the eighth degree from St Louis IX, both through his father and his mother.
This pictorial genealogy and the poem both represent the fact of the new dual monarchy, first realized in the person of Henry VI. The strength of Henry’s claim to the French throne on the English side is emphasized. Through his father, he is shown as a direct descendant of Philip IV, whereas on his mother’s side he is shown as descended from a nephew of Philip IV. The portrayal of fleur-de-lys as well as leopards as background to the medallion of Edward III and his successors suggests that these kings of England were also rightful kings of France. According to the picture, Henry’s grandfather Charles VI of France had no son, and the existence of other descendants of St Louis, the Houses of Orleans and Bourbon, was similarly ignored. The poem and genealogy was hung together in Notre Dame13 and probably in other churches throughout the English obedience. They show that Henry’s French claim was presented to the public as founded on an established right of inheritance and it is therefore quite incorrect to assume that the claim to the French throne, based on direct descent, had been abandoned after Henry V was nominated ‘heres Francie’ in the treaty of Troyes. The French poem was translated into English by John Lydgate, on the earl of Warwick’s instructions, in the autumn of 1426, while he was acting as Bedford’s lieutenant.14 A splendid copy of the picture is preserved in a book of romances presented to Margaret of Anjou by John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, in 1444.15 This enables us still to contemplate this genealogy as its original designer urged the reader of this poem to do. In the words of Lydgate’s translation:
Verily liehe as ye may se,
The peedegre doth hit specifie,
…
This figure makith clere domonstracione
…
That this Henry
…
is justly borne …
For to be kyng of Englond and of Fraunce.
The other most effective means of impressing the fact of the dual monarchy on the minds of his subjects was to strike an entirely new coinage. During previous English occupations of France, including Henry V’s, the pattern of the Valois coinage had invariably been followed in English-held territories. In the new circumstances of Henry VI’s succession, the Anglo-Gallic issue were completely redesigned, as early as November 1422. The pattern followed for these was a coinage which had been designed to mark the union of Flanders and Burgundy in the House of Burgundy in 1387, now copied to celebrate the creation of the dual monarchy of England and France in Henry’s person. It consisted of silver blancs and demi-blancs and gold salutes and angelots. Common to all of them were twin shields of arms of England and France, with the firm traditional positions of the Virgin and Angel reversed on the salutes so that the Angel of the Annunciation, on the viewers’ right, behind the arms of England, announced to the Virgin (France), on the left, the coming of a saviour who was, of course, the infant Henry VI.16
Bedford’s vision of Henry’s inheritance was given substance by his great victory at the battlefield of Verneuil in 1424. From that point English France consisted of most of the Ile de France, including Paris, and of Normandy and Gascony. In addition their Burgundian ally controlled Picardy and Champagne. The early acquisition of Maine and Anjou then also seemed imminent, and on 10 August 1425 Bedford took the capital of Maine, Le Mans. Yet another milestone seemed to have been passed when in 1427 Duke John of Brittany decided to renounce his allegiance to the Dauphin Charles. English troops had penetrated to his capital, Rennes, and had roundly defeated Charles’s Breton constable, Arthur of Richmond, on the Breton marches. The struggle for power between the Constable and Charles’s favourite, La Trémoïlle, paralysed the French war effort. Temporary set-backs apart, Bedford, by 1427, seemed poised to execute a great final plan of conquest, to capture Angers and the whole of Anjou and Maine, to go on through Poitou and Saintonge and so link up with English Gascony.
Thus, two years before the young Henry was summoned to France, as Bedford himself later told his boy nephew, ‘all things there prospered’ for him in his quarrel with his enemies.17 The events which led to the premature, personal appearance of the nine-year-old king on French soil in fact stretched back no further than the sudden check administered to English fortunes before the walls of Orleans in the spring of 1429. The decision to besiege Angers, taken in the Grand Conseil in Paris, probably in May 1428, had been abandoned meantime.18 The alternative siege of Orleans, ‘taken in hand God knoweth by what advice’,19 according to Bedford, on 12 October 1428, came to unexpected grief. The ablest English general, the earl of Salisbury, prime mover in the change of plan, was mortally wounded on the fourth day of the siege and died on 3 November. It had involved attacking the patrimony of Charles duke of Orleans, an English captive since the battle of Agincourt, and this was contrary to the rule of chivalry.20 It had alienated the principal ally of the English, Philip duke of Burgundy, who was thereby prevented from occupying Orleans in the role of trustee, as proposed by Charles’s bastard brother.21 Consequently he removed his 1,500 soldiers from the combined army. Bedford himself, for reasons not fully explained, never approached nearer than Chartres.
It was in a letter which the continual council in England received shortly before 15 April 1429, complaining of numerous desertions from Salisbury’s army, voicing his misgivings about the outcome of the siege and asking for further reinforcements, that Bedford declared the opinion of the Grand Conseil that the young king should be speedily crowned in France. Even though the reason he gave for proposing this step was simply the need to take the homage and cement the allegiance of his French subjects, it was probably rumours of plans for the coronation of the Dauphin Charles at Rheims which then prompted Bedford to press the English council at home to make urgent arrangements for the solemn crowning of his boy nephew there. The jolt which his letter gave to the council in England shows that the fixing of any date for the English coronation for the young king had not then been considered at all.
The death of the English commander at Orleans in November and the lack of a resolute successor, followed by the first appearance of Joan of Arc there on 29 April 1429, sapped the purpose and drive of the English expeditionary force which had been sent out by the English council to be the instrument of final conquest. William de la Pole, the earl of Suffolk, the new commander appointed by Bedford, raised the siege early in May, dispersed his forces under several commanders and was himself defeated and captured at Jargeau on 12 June, while Scales, Talbot and Fastolf suffered a crushing humiliation on the field of Patay on the 18th. The crowning and anointing of Charles VII with the sacred oil of Clovis at Rheims, which Bedford probably feared, became a reality on 18 July. The siege of Paris itself was imminent.
Henry VI’s arrival in his second kingdom thus certainly did not happen in a due course of well ordered events. It was part of Bedford’s plans to reverse the sudden d
ecline of the English fortunes in France from the spring of 1429. Five years later Bedford described a rapid sequence of events slipping out of his control: he instanced the loss of Rheims, Troyes, Châlons, Laon, Sens, Provins, Senlis, Lagny, Creil, Beauvais and the substance of the counties of Brie, Beauvoisin and part of Picardy, all of which were declaring allegiance to the newly crowned Charles VII and spurning English offers of men and supplies. There were mundane, practical reasons for this sudden, unexpected collapse of the English armies, but Bedford, in retrospect, was clear that it was fundamentally due to the advent of the Maid, Joan of Arc. ‘The great stroke’ upon Henry’s people, he told the young king, was ‘caused in great part as I trow of lack of sad belief and unlawful doubt that they had in a disciple and limb of the fiend called the Pucelle that used false enchantment and sorcery’.22 Only the timely arrival of Henry’s great-uncle Cardinal Beaufort with some 3,000 men, diverted to France from a second crusade against the Hussites, at the urgent plea of the council in England, and in defiance of Pope Martin V, saved the fall of Paris.23
Beaufort’s unexpected re-entry into his nephew’s affairs had been made possible by this sudden reversal of English fortunes in France. His enforced exile from England had been sweetened by permission to accept the cardinalate, but in the eyes of the papacy that was to be no unconditional elevation. He was to become a real soldier of Christ. The colour of his cardinal’s robes, Pope Martin informed him, was to remind him that he must be willing to shed his blood for the church. Freed of all his English commitments, except for the mere matter of his Winchester bishopric, he had to shoulder the burden of a papal legate militant in Germany, Bohemia and Hungary, charged to exterminate the Hussite heresy.24 Initially he met with failure there, defeated on the battlefield of Tachau with a small personal army, recruited in English France, and a huge, but incoherent mass of German troops. This compelled him to return uninvited to England, equipped with a papal licence to preach a crusade and to raise an effective, professional English army for a second attempt.
The reappearance of his uncle in England, with his authority enhanced as cardinal and papal legate, was naturally most unwelcome to Duke Humphrey, who now chose to attack him by attempting to deprive him of the basic source of his riches, the lucrative bishopric of Winchester, which he still held in commendam with his cardinalate. The young king was made to declare with his own mouth at Westminster on 17 April 1429 his great-uncle’s suspension from exercising the bishop’s office of chaplain to the Order of the Garter within his diocese at Windsor, on St George’s Day in the following week.25 No financial help for a renewed crusade came either from the clergy in convocation, or the royal council, who more than halved the permitted size of the forces he sought to raise.26 But these still amounted to 250 spears and 2,000 archers, considerably more than the council had themselves been able to muster in response to Bedford’s urgent appeal for reinforcements for the flagging siege of Orleans.27 On the very day the council gave permission for the raising of Beaufort’s new crusading force, Talbot, Scales and Fastolf met their disaster at Patay.
Greatly to his credit at this moment of national crisis, patriotism now overcame the cardinal’s papal loyalties. A collusive compact with the council, sealed at Rochester on 1 July 1429, ensured that Bedford, not the pope, would have his own services and those of his crusaders. To save his public face and reconcile his conduct with his higher duty, a messenger was sent at once to Bedford, ordering him to requisition Beaufort’s army on its passage through France.28 Thus it was only at the price of his career in papal service that Beaufort averted the loss of Paris. The exiled cardinal had therefore undoubtedly earned himself a role in his nephew’s dual coronation,29 as well as reinstatement to his seat in the council.30 Other services quickly consolidated his return to royal favour: his personal loans for the king’s affairs in little more than a year before January 1430 amounted to nearly £24,000 and he surrendered, out of pawn, the finest of his spoils from the crown jewels, the Rich Collar of gold, at less than he gave for it,31 to grace the king’s person on his French expedition.
The royal council was now perforce divided into two parts. Most prominent in the section to accompany Henry to France were the earl marshal, the duke of Norfolk, and the earls of Huntingdon and Warwick who, together with the earl of Stafford, also provided the largest contingent of troops. But the principal councillor going abroad with the king was Henry Beaufort himself, who agreed to act ‘at the great and busy prayer and instance’ of Gloucester and the rest of the council, to be paid at the rate of £1,000 a quarter.32 Gloucester may have been glad to get him. out of the country again, but Beaufort improved the occasion by expatiating on the dangers of dissensions among the king’s councillors and captains, stipulating that he would immediately return to England if any such disagreements made his task difficult.33 The duke of Bedford received real, immediate demotion as a result of Henry’s advent in France. Although being allowed to retain Alençon, Anjou and Maine at the king’s pleasure, he automatically lost his regency from the day on which the king landed.
There can be no doubt that the collective council, as assembled in England on the eve of Henry’s departure, considered itself about to take over the whole direction of affairs in France when Henry was transferred there. Questions raised and answered for the benefit of their departing members under Beaufort’s presidency, and recorded in their proceedings, ranged over all the likely problems to be encountered and provide a unique insight into the thinking of Henry’s leading advisers on the highest matters of policy in the spring of 1430. Each separate part of the council in England and France was to be sovereign in its decisions, subject to overall consultation in matters touching both.34 What forces should be raised to accompany Henry? Should they all go out at once or by stages? My lord of Gloucester nor anyone else dared put a limit to what was necessary for the king’s safety, but they all knew that everything the kingdom of England could do had been put in hand and a departure date fixed. Should he be taken direct to Rheims for his coronation or to Paris, where a coronation would be a great confirmation of obedience in his subjects? Bedford, the cardinal, and others of his blood present there, must decide in the circumstances of the moment, but if Rheims was attempted Louviers and Rheims itself must be taken first, and all the country behind his advance secured.
How should possible fighting allies be treated, for example, the dukes of Burgundy and Savoy? How would the finance for 600 spears (and presumably the requisite number of supporting archery) in France be managed? Who would pay the officers of the Parlement, the chambre des comptes and others of the realm of France? Their costs must be kept to the minimum and would have to be raised locally. How long would the king be absent? Six months? Financial necessity might compel his return after that period as support beyond it could not come from England; it would be up to the council there to raise it locally if necessary. He would need to leave a lieutenant behind him in France when he returned. Who should this be? Bedford, of course, if he would undertake it. If the pope’s envoy, the Cardinal de Ste Croix, came to treat of peace, what then? The king’s tender age at present made the conclusion of a peace impossible, but a good and reasonable truce would be acceptable, unless a means could be found to victory by further war. Continuous war could not possibly be maintained, so how could the conquest be pursued? By granting to individuals who had the resources to undertake it all the lands they might conquer, subject to the king’s over-riding authority to acquire them subsequently by exchange. The English obedience was known to be stuffed with walled towns and castles, both royal and private, with their garrisons all living off the land. How could the burden on the inhabitants be alleviated and the danger of some of them falling into enemy hands by averted? They must be surveyed by the council there and all but the most essential ones slighted.35
Such was the English council’s appraisal of the hazards facing Henry’s coronation expedition to France. In the event Rheims proved inaccessible and Paris itself had to be preser
ved for the coronation at all costs. By the time Henry VI landed, as a result of the military reverses of 1429, except for isolated garrisons north, east and south of Paris,36 the English occupation had been withdrawn to the duchy of Normandy and part of the Vexin, the adjacent English-held areas of Maine and Anjou and some of the county of Perche. At this hour of crisis it was vital to establish Henry V’s heir on French soil and to strengthen his rights by the symbolism of coronation. In the difficult military conditions prevailing, an expedition on as grand a scale as his father’s first Agincourt campaign was essential. Loans and parliamentary grants of tonnage and poundage, wool subsidies and direct taxation from his loyal English subjects on this his first and only military venture produced some £120,000, by far the highest grants and receipts since 1418.37 Professor M. R. Powicke has demonstrated how the whole political community was thoroughly involved in person, as well as purse. Sixteen peers, including seven dukes and earls, thirteen other great captains and twenty lesser ones are known to have contracted for 1,352 men-at-arms and 5,593 archers. Of the twenty lesser captains fifteen were parliamentary knights. For comparison the great muster of 1415 had produced 2,262 men-at-arms and 6,275 archers and the armies of the conquest between 1417 and 1421 by the same reckoning 1,771 men-at-arms and 5,031 archers.38
In spite of all this strength, achieving the coronation was a long-drawn-out affair. Three months were spent assembling in Calais, followed by a whole year at Rouen. During this time Joan of Arc was captured by John of Luxembourg at Compiègne in May 1430. Beaufort could again claim personal credit here for he had won over John of Luxembourg to fight on the English side during a rapid embassy to Burgundy in anticipation of the coronation expedition.39 The witch and sorceress of France, in English and Norman records, was now tried by the church40 and burnt at the stake under the authority of the English council. Finally the great chevauchée from Rouen to Paris was at last undertaken in November. Seventeen separate, successful ‘journeys’41 alone made the safe conducting of the king as far as Paris possible, in which several notable places, including Château-Gaillard and Louviers, were captured, though Melun was lost.
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