Henry VI of England

• 1. Introduction

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  Henry VI of England lay in his tomb at Windsor Castle until 1910, when his remains were exhumed and examined. The skeleton stood 5 ft 9 in tall. The skull was damaged and unusually thin. Where the right arm should have been, someone had placed the fore-leg bone of a pig. At first, the damage to the skull looked like proof of a violent death. Bones alone rarely settle such questions, and this body had been moved before, so the evidence was inconclusive. That uncertainty suits a king whose reign still divides opinion. He is remembered less for what he did than for what happened around him. How did a baby come to rule two kingdoms? Why did a gentle, devout man preside over a collapse that pulled England into civil war? And why did ordinary people later pray to him as a saint?

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• 2. Child King

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  The 1st of September 1422 was the day after Henry V died, and it made his only son king of England. The boy had been born at Windsor Castle on the 6th of December 1421. No one younger has ever succeeded to the English throne. On the 21st of October 1422, his grandfather Charles VI of France also died. Under the Treaty of Troyes of 1420, the infant became titular King of France.

  His mother, Catherine of Valois, was 20 years old and the daughter of the dead French king. English nobles regarded her with real suspicion. She was kept from taking a full part in raising her son.

  On the 28th of September 1423, the nobles swore loyalty to a king who was not yet two years old. They summoned Parliament in his name and set up a regency council. Henry V's brother John, Duke of Bedford, became senior regent and directed the war in France. While Bedford was away, another brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, governed England as Lord Protector and Defender of the Realm. That office was narrow, limited to keeping the peace and calling Parliament. Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester and a cardinal from 1426, held an important seat on the council. When Bedford died in 1435, Gloucester claimed the regency for himself, and the rest of the council contested it.

  In 1428, Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, became the boy's tutor. His father had been a leading opponent of Richard II's rule. From 1430 to 1432, the physician John Somerset also taught the king and looked after his health. Somerset stayed in the royal household until early 1451, when the House of Commons petitioned for his removal. The Commons accused him of a "dangerous and subversive influence over Henry VI".

  Charles VII was crowned at Reims Cathedral on the 17th of July 1429, and England answered in kind. Henry was crowned at Westminster Abbey on the 6th of November 1429, aged 7. On the 16th of December 1431, aged 10, he was crowned again at Notre-Dame de Paris, as Henry II of France. No other English king has been crowned in both countries.

  Soon after a ceremony at Merton Priory on All Saints' Day, the 1st of November 1437, the nearly 16-year-old king gained some independent authority. This was confirmed on the 13th of November. His interest in administration had shown earlier. In 1434, the place named on royal writs changed from Westminster, where the Privy Council met, to Cirencester, where the king lived. He took full royal powers at the end of 1437, when he turned 16. That moment fell during the Great Bullion Famine and the start of the Great Slump.

  His mother had meanwhile married Owen Tudor and borne him two sons, Edmund and Jasper. Henry later made his half-brothers earls. Edmund went on to father the future King Henry VII of England.

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• 3. A Bride for Peace

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  Shy, pious and averse to deceit and bloodshed, Henry took up government in 1437 and let a few noble favourites dominate his court. The French war divided them. Since Joan of Arc's victories in 1429, the House of Valois had been gaining ground. Henry leaned toward peace, so he backed the circle around Cardinal Beaufort and William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, who agreed. Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and Richard, Duke of York, wanted the war to go on. They were ignored.

  A royal marriage looked like a way to strengthen England's foreign ties and ease the road to peace. In 1434, the English council proposed that Henry wed a daughter of James I of Scotland, but nothing came of it. At the Congress of Arras in 1435, the English floated a match with a daughter of Charles VII of France. The Armagnacs refused even to consider it unless Henry gave up his claim to the French throne. A 1438 proposal involving a daughter of King Albert II of Germany also failed.

  The Praguerie revolt of 1440 brought better prospects, as French lords pushed back against the growing power of their monarchy. In about 1441, Charles, Duke of Orléans, recently ransomed, suggested Isabella of Armagnac. She was the daughter of John IV, Count of Armagnac, a powerful southwestern noble at odds with the Valois crown. Orléans hoped to force Charles VII toward peace. An alliance with Armagnac would have helped protect English Gascony and might have drawn other French nobles to the English side. The offer was taken seriously between 1441 and 1443. Then a massive French campaign against Gascony in 1442 disrupted the ambassadors and frightened the count. The deal fell through over trouble commissioning portraits of the count's daughters. In 1443, Charles VII's men imprisoned the count as well.

  Cardinal Beaufort and Suffolk then steered Henry toward Margaret of Anjou, niece of Charles VII. Reports of her stunning beauty helped win his agreement. Suffolk went to negotiate. Charles consented on one condition: he would skip the customary dowry and instead receive the province of Maine from the English. The Treaty of Tours in 1444 set out these terms. The handover of Maine was hidden from Parliament, because everyone knew it would anger the English public.

  The wedding took place at Titchfield Abbey on the 23rd of April 1445, one month after Margaret's 15th birthday. She arrived with a household made up mostly of Henry's own servants, not people from Anjou. That enlarged the royal household, and it grew again after their son Edward of Westminster was born in 1453. Costs rose, but so did the court's chances to hand out patronage.

  Henry had wavered over giving up Maine. He knew it was unpopular, that Gloucester and York would oppose it, and that Maine was vital to defending Normandy. Margaret was determined that he should see it through. When the treaty became public knowledge in 1446, the anger fell on Suffolk. Henry and Margaret resolved to protect him.

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• 4. Dukes and Mobs

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  In 1447, the king and queen summoned Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, to answer a charge of treason before Parliament. Margaret had no tolerance for any hint of disloyalty to her husband, and such suspicions were quickly brought to her. The move was driven by Gloucester's enemies. They included Suffolk, whom Margaret held in great esteem, the ageing Cardinal Beaufort, and his nephew Edmund Beaufort, Earl of Somerset. Gloucester was placed in custody at Bury St Edmunds and died there before any trial. A heart attack was the probable cause, although contemporaries whispered of poison.

  With Gloucester gone, Richard, Duke of York, had perhaps the best chance of succeeding to the throne. He was the most powerful duke in the realm. As heir general of Edward III, he had, according to some, a better claim than Henry himself. Instead, he was shut out of the court circle and sent to govern Ireland. His rivals Suffolk and Somerset were made dukes, a rank then usually kept for close relatives of the king. Somerset went to France to command the English forces, a post York had held and expected to keep.

  By 1447, the Commons had turned on William de la Pole, now Duke of Suffolk. The monarchy had grown steadily less popular. Law and order were breaking down, corruption was spreading, royal land was going to court favourites, the crown's finances were in trouble, and territory in France kept slipping away. Suffolk was widely seen as a traitor, and Parliament impeached him while a London mob demanded his blood. He admitted to Henry that he was alarmed. Henry was forced to send him into exile. Suffolk's ship was intercepted in the English Channel, and his murdered body was found on the beach at Dover.

  Henry's own mind was giving way by the late 1440s. Historians point to the arrest of Duke Humphrey in 1447 as a possible sign of paranoia. They see possible grandiosity in his sweeping plans for King's College in 1446 and for Eton Chapel in 1449. By 1449, many critics doubted that he could rule. The nature of the illness is still debated. Suggestions range from schizophrenia to a severe catatonic breakdown or a depressive episode.

  In 1449, Somerset reopened hostilities in Normandy, although he had earlier been a leading advocate of peace. By autumn he had been pushed back to Caen. By 1450, the French had retaken the whole province that Henry V had won at such cost. Unpaid soldiers drifted home and added to lawlessness in the southern counties. In Kent in 1450, Jack Cade led a rebellion under the name "John Mortimer", apparently in sympathy with York. He made his base at the White Hart Inn in Southwark. The white hart had been the emblem of the deposed Richard II.

  Henry came to London with an army, but Cade had fled. The king kept most of his troops back and sent a small force after the rebels. Cade ambushed it at the Battle of Solefields, near Sevenoaks, and then occupied London. The rebellion achieved nothing, and London was retaken after some days of disorder. The credit belonged mainly to Londoners themselves, not the army. It still showed how high discontent was running.

  In 1451, the Duchy of Aquitaine, English since the time of Henry II, was lost. An English advance in October 1452 retook Bordeaux and met with some success. By 1453, Bordeaux fell again. Calais alone remained in English hands on the continent.

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• 5. A Silent King

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  In 1452, the Duke of York was persuaded to come back from Ireland, take his seat on the council, and end bad government. His cause was popular, and he soon raised an army at Shrewsbury. The court party gathered a force of similar size in London. The two sides faced each other south of London. York presented a list of grievances and demands, among them the arrest of Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. The king first agreed, but Margaret stepped in to prevent it. By 1453, Somerset's influence was restored and York was isolated again. The court was further strengthened by the announcement that the queen was pregnant.

  In August 1453, Henry heard that his army had been routed at the decisive Battle of Castillon. Soon afterwards, he suffered a mental breakdown. For more than a year, he was completely unresponsive to everything happening around him. One account says that at 31, a sudden fright left him so weak that for a year and a half he had "neither sense nor reason capable of carrying on the government". Another says he was "smitten with a frenzy and his wit and reason withdrawn." He did not even respond to the birth of his son Edward, six months into the illness.

  Meanwhile, York had won a powerful ally in Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick. Warwick was one of the most influential magnates in the country and possibly richer than York himself. In 1454, York was named Protector of the Realm. The queen was shut out completely, and Edmund Beaufort was held in the Tower of London. York's supporters spread rumours that Edward was Beaufort's son rather than the king's. Otherwise, York's months in charge went on tackling government overspending.

  Around Christmas Day 1454, Henry regained his senses. The nobles who had grown in power during his reign were already starting to take matters into their own hands.

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• 6. Roses at War

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  The Earls of Warwick and Salisbury had risen high under Henry, and they now backed the rival House of York. First they supported York's claim to control the government. From 1460 they supported his claim to the throne itself, pointing to his better descent from Edward III. It was agreed that York would become Henry's successor, even though York was the older man.

  Henry tried to calm the quarrel. In 1457, he created the Council of Wales and the Marches for his son, Prince Edward. In 1458, he staged the Loveday in London as an arbitration event. Neither stopped the slide into open war between the houses of Lancaster and York.

  At the Battle of Northampton on the 10th of July 1460, Yorkist forces captured the king. Margaret, who had also been on the field, escaped with her son and fled through Wales to Scotland. There she found refuge with Mary of Guelders, queen regent and recent widow of James II, and began raising support for her husband.

  Margaret returned to England at the end of the year with an army. At Wakefield on the 30th of December 1460, the Duke of York was killed. At the Second Battle of St Albans on the 17th of February 1461, she defeated Warwick, who held the king in custody, and freed Henry. He was said to have laughed and sung while the battle raged around him.

  Six weeks later, on the 29th of March 1461, York's son Edward beat the royal forces at Towton. Henry had been deposed that March, and Edward took the throne as Edward IV. Henry and Margaret slipped away from him and escaped into exile in Scotland.

  With Scottish help, Margaret travelled to the continent to seek more support. Lancastrian resistance in the north of England carried on mainly under her leadership, but it met little success in the field. An English embassy sent to Scotland through Warwick on Edward's behalf weakened Henry's standing at the Scottish court. Mary of Guelders died on the 1st of December 1463, and Scotland then actively sought peace with England. The exiled king crossed back into England to try his fortune among loyal nobles in the north and in Wales.

  After defeat at the Battle of Hexham on the 15th of May 1464, Henry was a fugitive in his own land. Sir John Pennington sheltered him at Muncaster Castle. Legend says Henry left behind a Venetian glass bowl as thanks. It is called the Luck of Muncaster, and it is said to guarantee the Pennington family's prosperity as long as it stays unbroken.

  Later Henry hid at Waddington Hall in Lancashire, the home of Sir Richard Tempest. There "a black monk of Addington" betrayed him. On the 13th of July 1465, Yorkist men, including Sir Richard's brother John, entered the house to arrest him. Henry fled into nearby woods but was caught at Brungerley Hippings, the stepping stones over the River Ribble. He was taken to the Tower of London. A poem long credited to him from his imprisonment appears in almost identical form in William Baldwin's 1559 work The Mirror for Magistrates, a collection written in the voices of historical figures.

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• 7. The Brief Return

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  Queen Margaret, in exile in Scotland and later in France, wanted the throne back for her husband and her son, Edward of Westminster. Alone, she could do little. Then Edward IV quarrelled with two of his chief supporters, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and his own younger brother George, Duke of Clarence. At the urging of Louis XI of France, they formed a secret alliance with Margaret. Warwick married his daughter Anne Neville to Margaret and Henry's son. He then returned to England and forced Edward IV into exile. On the 3rd of October 1470, he restored Henry VI to the throne, an event sometimes still called the readeption. Years in hiding and then in captivity had taken their toll on Henry. Warwick and Clarence ruled in his name.

  That return lasted less than six months. Warwick overreached by declaring war on Burgundy. Its ruler, Charles the Bold, gave Edward IV the help he needed to take back his throne by force. Edward landed in early 1471 and was reconciled with Clarence. Warwick was killed at the Battle of Barnet on the 14th of April. On the 4th of May, the Yorkists won a final decisive victory at Tewkesbury, where Henry's son Edward of Westminster was killed.

  Henry was sent back to the Tower of London, and when the royal party reached London, he was reported dead. Official records say he died on the night of the 21st of May 1471. His opponents had probably kept him alive until then, rather than leave the Lancastrians a far more formidable leader in his son. Once the last prominent Lancastrian supporters had been killed or exiled, Henry became a burden to Edward IV. The common fear was that another noble might use the mentally unstable king for his own ends. Edward IV was re-crowned the morning after Henry's death.

  The Historie of the arrivall of Edward IV, a chronicle favourable to Edward, says Henry died of melancholia. Many suspect that Edward ordered his murder. Sir Thomas More's History of Richard III states outright that Richard, then Duke of Gloucester, killed him. More may have drawn this from Philippe de Commines' Mémoires. Henry's remains were later found with light brown hair matted with what appeared to be blood.

  Modern tradition places the death in Wakefield Tower, part of the Tower of London. No evidence supports that, and it is unlikely, since the tower was then used to store records. His actual place of death is unknown. All that is certain is that he was held somewhere in the Tower.

  He was first buried at Chertsey Abbey in Surrey. In 1484, Richard III had the body moved to St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. There, a book of reported miracles would soon be compiled.

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• 8. Saint, Scholar and Stage

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  John Blacman, Henry's personal chaplain, described the king as a man without "any crook or uncouth." Many later readers saw something harsher: a weak, inept ruler whose failures led to the Wars of the Roses. They contrast him with his father, the victor of Agincourt. Historian Bertram Wolffe challenged the picture of a merely saintly and unworldly man. He suggested Henry did rule personally, but with poor judgment and little political skill. John Watts stresses how Henry's own preferences and style of rule fed the instability. Other historians see a pious, generous king who inherited an unstable crown, because Richard II had been deposed.

  His one lasting achievement was fostering education. He founded Eton College, King's College, Cambridge, and All Souls College, Oxford. He continued the architectural patronage begun by his father. King's College Chapel and Eton College Chapel are examples, as is his completion of his father's foundation of Syon Abbey. Most of his commissions were late Gothic, or Perpendicular, churches with a monastic or educational foundation attached. Each year on the anniversary of his death, the Provosts of Eton and King's lay white lilies and roses at the spot in Wakefield Tower where, by tradition, he was murdered as he knelt in prayer. Those flowers are the emblems of their two colleges. A similar ceremony takes place at his resting place, St George's Chapel.

  Miracles were attributed to Henry, and people informally treated him as a saint and martyr, calling on him in times of adversity. Henry VII of England encouraged this anti-Yorkist cult as dynastic propaganda. A volume of his reported miracles was compiled at St George's Chapel, Windsor, and Henry VII began building a chapel at Westminster Abbey to house his relics. Some miracles carried a political edge. In one, a young girl suffering from the King's evil was cured because her parents refused to bring her to the usurper Richard III. By the time Henry VIII broke with Rome, canonisation proceedings were under way. Hymns to Henry survive. Until the Reformation, his hat was kept by his tomb at Windsor, and pilgrims put it on to ask his help against migraines.

  The stories grew vivid. He was said to have raised the plague victim Alice Newnett from the dead, appearing to her as she was being stitched into her shroud. He saved a man wrongly condemned for stealing sheep by placing his hand between the rope and the man's windpipe. The man was revived in the cart carrying him away for burial. Henry could also punish. He struck John Robyns blind for cursing "Saint Henry", and Robyns was healed only after a pilgrimage to the shrine. A devotion tied closely to the cult was bending a silver coin as an offering. Katherine Bailey, blind in one eye, was told by a stranger at mass to bend a coin to King Henry. She promised to do so, and her sight returned as the priest raised the communion host.

  His shrine was enormously popular as a pilgrimage destination in the early decades of the 16th century. As the need to legitimise Tudor rule lessened, the cult faded.

  Around 1593, William Shakespeare, and possibly others, completed the Henry VI trilogy, roughly 121 years after the king's death. The plays cover the years from Henry V's funeral in 1422 to the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. They were very popular in Elizabethan times. Shakespeare's version never mentions the king's madness, which is thought to have been a politically wise omission. Elizabeth I's family was descended from Henry's Lancastrian line. Instead, the Henry of the plays is a pious, peaceful man unfit for the crown. He spends much of his time in contemplation of the Bible and wishes to be anyone but a king. He is weak-willed and easily led by Margaret and her allies, and he cannot defend himself against York's claim. His only act of his own will comes just before his death, when he curses Richard of Gloucester.

  Fiction has returned to him too. Lady Georgiana Fullerton's 1867 novel A Stormy Life is about his marriage to Margaret of Anjou. Rose Schuster's 1912 novel The Triple Crown focuses on his insanity. Philip Lindsay's 1934 novel London Bridge Is Falling shows how he reacted to Jack Cade's Rebellion. On screen, James Berry played him in a 1911 silent short of Richard III, and Miles Mander in the 1939 film Tower of London. Terry Scully took the part in the 1960 BBC series An Age of Kings. David Warner played him in the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Wars of the Roses, filmed in 1965-66. Peter Benson played him in the 1983 BBC versions of the plays. In 2016, Tom Sturridge played Henry opposite Benedict Cumberbatch's Richard III in the second season of the BBC series The Hollow Crown.

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