As Burgundy and France discussed their alliance, Bedford died at Rouen on the night of 14–15 September 1435. Six days later the Treaty of Arras was signed by Philip and Charles, heralding the end of Lancastrian domination in France. When Henry VI heard the news he wept uncontrollably.
Bedford’s death, following hard upon the victories of Joan of Arc and Burgundy’s desertion, wrecked English fortunes in France and signalled the collapse of the Plantagenet empire. It also spelt tragedy for England because no one but Bedford could hold in check the rivalry and ambitions of Gloucester and Beaufort. After his death their constant elbowing for power became more intense, particularly since Gloucester now replaced his brother as heir-presumptive to the throne, and felt that this should ensure him appropriate precedence.
There was also the problem of who should replace Bedford in France at this critical time. There were few men of his calibre and this was not a decision that could be made in undue haste. Meanwhile, Gloucester’s views prevailed, and the remaining English armies descended on the occupied territories in France with a ferocity calculated to terrify the rebellious inhabitants into submission. This scorched earth policy cost the English little in expense but a great deal in the longer term, because it made the French doubly determined to get rid of them.
The events of the autumn of 1435 prompted the young King, now nearing fourteen, to voice his own views on policy and take a greater interest in politics. Beaufort and Suffolk managed to convince him that his father’s policy could not be sustained any longer and that peace was the only realistic solution.
Early in 1436 the Council decided that York should replace
Bedford as Governor of Normandy and Regent of France. Although he was young he was the premier magnate of the realm and his rank demanded high office. The appointment would hopefully satisfy his ambitions and prevent him from trying to meddle in politics in England. However, York lacked experience in military matters and received little support from the Council or Parliament, the latter consistently failing to grant him sufficient funds. Instead, he was expected to finance his men, his campaigns and his administrative costs out of his own pocket. He enjoyed little success against the French, who re-took Paris in April 1436, driving out the English whose authority was now confined to Normandy, Gascony, Aquitaine and the Calais Pale. All York gained was military experience, though this would stand him in good stead in the years to come.
As if all this was not bad news enough for Henry, in 1436 he realised that his mother was dying, probably from cancer. Some time that year, pregnant with her last child, Queen Katherine withdrew to the Abbey of Bermondsey, a foundation much favoured by royal and noble ladies, to be nursed by the sisters there. Suffolk was entrusted with the care of her children by Tudor, and the King was kept informed of her progress. There is no evidence to substantiate later allegations that the Council had just discovered the Queen’s marriage and had her incarcerated at Bermondsey as a punishment.
However discreetly her withdrawal to Bermondsey had been managed, the royal family could not escape scandal entirely. Bedford’s young widow, Jacquetta, created a furore in 1436 when she married a Northamptonshire squire, Richard Wydville, who was far below her in rank and had only his looks to commend him. The gossip died down eventually, and the couple settled at Grafton, where they produced sixteen children. History, however, had not heard the last of the Wydvilles.
At Bermondsey, Katherine’s health deteriorated fast. On 1 January 1437, knowing she was approaching what she herself described in her will as ‘the silent conclusion of this long and grievous malady’, she made her last testament. In it she did not refer to Owen Tudor or their children. Instead, she nominated Henry VI as her executor and asked him to ensure ‘the tender and favourable fulfilling of my intent’, which is not specified, but which he must have known about. Almost certainly he had visited her during her illness, and almost certainly her request alluded to her children and perhaps her husband.
The Queen gave birth to a daughter who did not long survive, and then on 3 January, having endured pitiful suffering, she died. The
King was enthroned in Parliament when they brought him the news. Katherine was buried with royal honours in the Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey, but the fine tomb raised to her memory by her son was destroyed when the chapel was demolished to make way for the Henry VII Chapel in 1509, and thereafter her corpse remained above ground in an open coffin as one of the curiosities shown to visitors. In 1669 the diarist Samuel Pepys saw it and daringly embraced and kissed it, ‘reflecting that I did kiss a queen’. In the eighteenth century Katherine’s bones were still firmly united and thinly clothed with flesh resembling tanned leather, and it was not until 1878 that they were decently laid to rest beneath an ancient altar slab in Henry V’s chantry chapel.
After Katherine’s death, Owen Tudor sought to return to Wales, but was overtaken by Gloucester’s men and imprisoned in Newgate. His offence is nowhere recorded, and in fact the whole matter was kept very secret. It may be that the Council, having been reluctant to move against Tudor while the King’s mother was alive, now wanted him punished for compromising her honour. This is the reason given by Vergil, writing in the reign of Tudor’s grandson, Henry VII. But the Council’s discretion was in vain, for while Tudor was in Newgate, news of the arrest quickly became public knowledge, as did his marriage to the late queen.
Katherine’s children by Tudor were now given into the care of Katherine de la Pole, Suffolk’s sister, who was Abbess of Barking. Edmund and Jasper, and perhaps their sister who later took the veil, went to live at Barking Abbey in Essex, and the Abbess was paid £50 for their keep. She provided them with food, clothing and lodging, and both were allowed servants to wait upon them, as befitted their status as the King’s half-brothers.
By the end of 1437, the Council, divided by squabbling factions, had ceased to rule effectively, and the corruption and inefficiency that had already pervaded local government in many areas were beginning to affect central government also. Suffolk’s influence over the royal household had extended to the Council, where he had grouped about him a nucleus of lords committed to peace with France, headed by Cardinal Beaufort, who had long been its advocate. The war had depleted the treasury, and the Crown now stood on the verge of bankruptcy, its revenues having fallen by more than a third. The King owed £164,815 to his creditors, and could not pay it, for his annual income was then only £75,100. Nor was the Council able to devise any solution to these problems.
Matters were no better in France, where it was predicted that it
was only a matter of time before the English were expelled from the territories they still held. York, with the help of the great military strategist, John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, had managed to drive a French force out of Normandy, and the Council, knowing his term of duty was due to end in April 1437, asked him to stay on. York did not consider the financial inducements sufficient, and was angered by the government’s failure to repay monies owed to him, and he refused and came back to England. Once again, the Council faced the problem of who was to take command in France.
Henry VI had now, at the age of sixteen, not only to confront these troubles but also to assert his authority over the lords of the Council, who had for so long held the reins of government. On 12 November 1437 he declared himself of age and assumed control. With the ending of the minority, the Council reverted to its traditional role of advisory body to the King, even though its powers had been immeasurably strengthened by fifteen years of autonomy. Once he had established himself, Henry VI reappointed all its members to the positions they had formerly occupied, making each conditional upon the holder agreeing not to settle weighty matters of state without first consulting the King. Henry’s coming of age released Warwick from his duties as governor, and he was appointed the King’s Lieutenant in France in place of York, holding this office with honour until his death in 1439.
Although the young King firmly supported Beaufort’s peace policy, he was neither prepared to relinquish the French lands still held by England nor the title of King of France. He was too weak and inexperienced to stand up to Gloucester, especially when the Duke warmed to his favourite theme, the sacred duty of fulfilling the wishes of Henry’s mighty father. To bolster his position, Henry tried to buy support by bestowing extravagant gifts and grants of land and money on those whom he believed to be his friends. The Council, alarmed at his profligate generosity, was soon warning him against excessive liberality and reminding him of the need to conserve money.
The appearance in England at this time of a strong and determined ruler might have saved the situation, with the power of the nobles being diverted to other causes, law and order being effectively enforced, and even the war with France successfully prosecuted or brought to an honourable conclusion. Henry VI was not a strong king and never would be; nor was he ever interested in winning military glory. Therein lay the tragedy of the House of Lancaster.
I
n 1910, Henry VI’s skeleton was exhumed at Windsor. Examination showed that he had been a strongly built man, about 5’9″ tall, with brown hair and a small head. The portrait of him in the Royal Collection at Windsor, which dates from about 1518–23 and is probably a copy of an original from life, shows a chubby-faced, clean-shaven youth in a black gown furred with ermine and crimson sleeves, a gold collar and a small black bonnet. One contemporary described him as having a childlike face, and this portrait bears out that description.
In the National Portrait Gallery another portrait shows him in later life, with a far more angular and care-worn face. He had heavy-lidded eyes and a full underlip, and was inclined to stoop and bow his head.
In youth he enjoyed dressing in fashionable clothes, on one occasion appearing in a purple chaperon or cloak, a large round headdress with tippet, and a light blue gown known as a houppelande which swept the floor and had tight sleeves, a high scarlet collar, padded shoulders and a crimson belt with a gold buckle. As Henry grew older, however, he came to believe that rich apparel was a worldly vanity, and appeared wearing broad-toed shoes like those of a countryman, a long gown with a round hood like that of a burgess, and a long tunic, every item of a dark grey colour. His courtiers complained that he dressed ‘like a townsman’, and his commons, who expected their sovereign to look and dress like a king and to carry himself with regal bearing, made similar criticisms. So little did Henry care for his clothes that in 1459 he presented his best gown to the Prior of St Albans. His embarrassed treasurer then discovered that the King had no other gown suitable
for state occasions, and no money to purchase another, and had to buy it back for fifty marks. Henry was not pleased.
John Whethamstead, Abbot of St Albans, described Henry as a simple and upright man. Commines calls him ‘a very ignorant and almost simple man’; even John Blacman, who wrote a hagiography of Henry at the behest of Henry VII, uses the word ‘simple’ to describe him, and in 1461, Whethamstead accused Henry of ‘excessive simplicity in his acts’. In each case the word
‘simplex’
should be translated to mean gullible or guileless; it was not until the seventeenth century that the word ‘simple’ was used to describe a half-wit or idiot. Nevertheless, gullibility was not a desirable quality in a king: Waurin says that all the evils that befell England during Henry’s reign were due to his simple-mindedness.
Although Henry had been comprehensively educated, was well-read and had a love of learning, he was not particularly clever. John Hardyng describes him as being ‘of small intelligence’. He lacked perception, and on one occasion even pardoned four nobles convicted of treason, along with three others who had plotted to kill him.
He had a strong sense of fairness and, wishing to see justice available to all, ensured that he was accessible to his subjects: ‘Upon none would he wittingly inflict any injustice,’ wrote Blacman. Once, Henry was riding through London when he saw a blackened object on a spike above Cripplegate and asked what it was. Told it was a quarter of a traitor who had been false to him, he commanded that it be removed, saying, ‘I will not have any Christian man so cruelly handled for my sake.’ Yet he showed no such qualms when he voluntarily witnessed the massed hangings of thirty-four rebels in 1450.
In general, though, Henry was a kindly soul, gentle and generous, honest and well-intentioned, and too humble and virtuous by far successfully to rule a country sliding slowly but surely into political anarchy. He never lost his temper, looked after his servants well, and was not interested in acquiring riches, his prime concern being the salvation of his soul. When a certain nobleman presented him with an expensive ornament of gold filigree, he hardly glanced at it, much to the donor’s chagrin. Indeed, Henry’s qualities were manifold, but they were not the qualities required of a sovereign.
There was nothing in Henry’s early years to indicate that he might be mentally unstable, but during early manhood he suffered from spells of excessive melancholy and depression which hindered his ability to lead a normal life. In the 1440s he was described as being ‘not steadfast of wit as other kings have been’, and prior to 1453, the
year in which he suffered his first really incapacitating mental illness, several of his subjects were hauled before the justices, charged with having referred to the King as a lunatic, or even as being childish, for which they were punished. Given the state of England at that time, they might have been forgiven for believing such things. Henry VI was no lunatic, but we must conclude that his mental health was never very stable.
Henry’s piety is legendary, yet the question now has to be asked: was he as pious as later writers, who supported Henry VII’s bid to have him canonised as a Lancastrian saint, would have it? The answer is probably not.