by Teresa Cole
On 5 October the cortège set out again, and travelled by slow stages through Abbeville, Hesdin and close to Agincourt before reaching Calais, where it was met by a fleet of ships assembled for the purpose, and carried across the Channel to land at Dover at the end of October. From here the sad procession made its way to Canterbury, Rochester and Dartford on its way to London, services being held in each place.
This time the crossing of London Bridge was not the triumphal celebration of earlier days. Accompanied by mayor and aldermen, bishops and abbots, and escorted by representatives of all the guilds of London, the coffin was taken through streets cleaned for the purpose to St Paul’s Cathedral. Here another service was held and again the coffin remained overnight.
On Friday 6 November there was one last journey, from St Paul’s along sombre thoroughfares, where no doubt every citizen crowded to get a view, to Westminster. On a black funeral carriage bearing banners and devices representing the Trinity, the Virgin, St George, St Edmund and St Edward, the coffin and effigy were laid, draped in black velvet and other costly cloths. It was accompanied by a great multitude of clergy, members of the chapel royal, lords, knights and members of the late king’s household. Prominent among them were close friends and doughty fighters such as Richard, Earl of Warwick, who had been with the king since the early days of campaigning in Wales, and many others who had served him for a dozen years or more.
At Westminster Abbey the coffin was received into the church and laid before the high altar, close now to its final resting place. A short service was held and then a vigil kept overnight by monks from the abbey. Next day a solemn Requiem Mass was celebrated, and amid much ceremony the king was finally laid to rest, behind the high altar, close to the tomb of Edward the Confessor, and close, too, to the tomb of Richard II where he himself had overseen the burial of that unhappy king.
One part of the ritual, described as customary, would seem very strange to modern eyes. At some point in the ceremony a fully armed knight bearing the king’s coat of arms and with a crown on his head rode up to the altar on a warhorse and was symbolically stripped of weapons and armour. The meaning would have been clear to the onlookers. An anointed king, a sacred person, was a knight for Christ on earth. Now, however, his fight was over and he must go into eternity without these trappings of knighthood and royalty.
And when at last the ceremony was over and the body of the king sealed up in its final resting place, it must have been with some trepidation that those who were left turned away to take up the roles allotted to them in the new order. Henry had made a will on each occasion when he had departed for France, adding his last thoughts in a codicil when close to death. The contents are revealing not only of the king’s mind, but also of his assessment of the qualities of the people to whom he was entrusting his son and his kingdoms.
The two surviving Lancaster brothers, John, Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, were the two most entitled to assume responsibility for both, but they were very different in character and in capacity. John, capable, loyal and dependable, had been acting the role of trustworthy lieutenant since his early teens. Perhaps if Henry had had only one kingdom to think of, things might have turned out differently. He had, however, the expectation of two, and in fact Charles VI had died on 21 October while Henry’s funeral cortège was winding its way slowly up through France.
Of the two kingdoms it seemed likely that France would be by far the most troublesome, particularly as Henry had made it clear that he wanted the struggle to continue until all of that land recognised the Treaty of Troyes. John, therefore, was given the task of subduing France, and was appointed regent of France, on behalf, now, of his baby nephew, and specifically Governor of Normandy. There is a suggestion that Henry might at the last have recognised that obtaining all of France was a step too far. Further instructions given to his brother stipulated that he should make no treaty with the Dauphin that involved giving up Normandy.
Similarly he was told that the Burgundian alliance must be preserved at all costs. He even suggested that Philippe of Burgundy should become regent of France if he showed he wanted the job. (He didn’t.) True to this and to the requirements of the Treaty of Troyes, John duly married Anne, Philippe’s sister, the following year. Though this sounds rather like a shotgun marriage, records tell us that John and Anne had a very happy, though childless, marriage until she died of the plague in 1432.
It is interesting that the only Lancaster brother not given early responsibility was the one who would turn out to be the least reliable. His loyalty was never in doubt and he had shown himself capable enough in military matters at the siege of Cherbourg, with a particular interest in the new artillery weapons. Selfish and wilful, however, are some of the kinder adjectives that have been applied to Humphrey of Gloucester. These character flaws would appear to have been well known to his older brother, but with John having his hands full in France it was necessary that Humphrey should have responsibility for England. No doubt Henry felt that the solid administration he had left behind in the hands of long-serving, capable councillors would cause few problems. His qualms show through, however, in the rather ambiguous proviso that Humphrey should always be subject to John – a proviso that allowed the council to consistently refuse to give him the title of regent that he so craved.
With the care of his son, too, Henry seems to have shown some reservations. Though Humphrey was given the role of protecting and guarding the new king, his upbringing and education were to be the responsibility of Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, with parts to be played by a whole range of friends and servants of the late king including Bishop Henry Beaufort, the Earl of Warwick and Sir Walter Hungerford. Sadly, though the greatest care was taken in educating the king, instilling into him all the virtues and skills required of a Christian prince, the outcome was probably not at all what his father would have intended.
The executors of Henry’s will – Bishop Henry, Humphrey of Gloucester, Thomas of Exeter and the chancellor, Thomas Langley – were charged with a number of other tasks. The king directed that his debts should be paid and it was Bishop Henry Beaufort who became responsible for this, possibly in the hope or expectation that he might recover some of the money he had, over the years, lent to the Lancastrian cause. It was an onerous task, some debts going back as far as the reign of Henry IV, while much was still outstanding from the Agincourt campaign. Some twenty years passed before all the liabilities were untangled and satisfied, and some of the royal jewels and precious ships that Henry had intended to leave to his son had to be sold in order to do so.
It was Bishop Henry again who took responsibility for the construction of the chantry chapel that the king had requested to surround his tomb. The tomb itself, paid for by Queen Katherine, was of Purbeck marble, on top of which on a bed of wood was laid an effigy of the king. Mostly wooden and plated in silver gilt, the head, sceptre and orb were originally solid silver. This was stolen in 1546 and the head is now a modern replacement made of resin. Around this tomb was built the chapel, with an altar and statuary reflecting the king’s devotion to the Virgin and to the English saints who had been his predecessors in wearing the crown, St Edmund and St Edward. Carved around the outside are scenes from the king’s life including his coronation and a representation of a knight in battle. For many years the saddle, shield and great helm belonging to Henry were displayed above the tomb, and these are still preserved, together with a sword which may be his, at Westminster Abbey.
The size of this chapel would have been impressive at the time when it was completed around 1450, though now it is dwarfed by the Tudor extensions beyond at the eastern end of the building. The fragility of the nearby tomb of the Confessor makes visiting difficult, and in fact, despite all the efforts of his family and friends to make a fitting monument, the casual visitor might miss the chapel entirely, the only view of the king now presented to the general public being that of the soles of his feet.
As one might expect, the wil
l contained many legacies to religious bodies and for Masses to be said for his soul, and there were gifts of horses, books, jewels and other effects for family members and others close to him. Provision was made for his widow’s dower from the Duchy of Lancaster and from estates in France. Money was left for gifts to the poor, some in particular to be distributed each year on the anniversary of his death when prayers should be said for him. It seems that this practice was continued for over a hundred years until the time of the Reformation.
Finally in the will Henry pardoned his enemies and in turn asked forgiveness of those he had wronged, directing that, where possible, restitution should be made to them. Chief among these ranked his stepmother, Joan of Brittany, who had a few years earlier been accused of practising witchcraft against her husband, Henry’s father. By some accounts it was her chaplain who accused her, though others say it was Henry himself who had her arrested and held in captivity while he seized her dower and other revenue to help finance his campaigns. If the latter is true he was certainly in need of her forgiveness, and she was immediately set free and had her revenues restored to her.
Such magnanimity did not extend to the high-ranking prisoners still in the keeping of the king. It would be another eighteen months before King James of Scotland would be returned by negotiation to the homeland he had not seen since he was a boy of eleven. He took with him then as his wife Joan Beaufort, niece of Bishop Henry and the Duke of Exeter, and immediately set about trying to impose on his own kingdom the ‘good governance’ and sound administration he had witnessed in practice in England.
As for Charles of Orleans, the will directed that under no circumstances was he to be returned to France until Henry’s own son came of age and was able with good advice to make the decision himself. In fact he was finally freed amid great controversy in 1440, having spent the interim languishing in fairly comfortable captivity, composing poetry and love letters to his wife, one of which is recognised by some as the earliest example of a valentine.
The early and untimely death of Henry V gives us one of the great ‘What ifs’ of history. What if Henry had lived even a little longer – time enough to outlive his father-in-law and be crowned and anointed King of France? Would that have led to the total collapse of the already demoralised Dauphinist party? If not, in a little longer still could he really have achieved the total conquest of France? It seems even Henry himself might have begun to doubt that possibility at the end of his life, though that might have been as a result of the debilitating nature of his illness. Henry in full strength and vitality generally believed that anything he wanted to do was possible.
What if he had lived long enough to have a hand in the upbringing of his own son, maybe to have further sons, and to instil in them his own sense of discipline and single-mindedness? How would he have reacted to the events that unfolded in France in the late 1420s? We don’t know. We can never know, but the possibilities are intriguing.
What is clear is that he was held in such esteem by those he left behind that they spent the rest of their lives trying to carry out his wishes. In another time or place there would have been no chance of a nine-month-old baby being acknowledged as king. Now with no whisper of dissent everyone set out to do what he could to secure the child’s inheritance, and ‘What would Henry have done?’ became a guiding principle. Unfortunately without Henry’s strong hand there to guide them it quickly became obvious that they could not at all agree about what it was he would have wanted them to do.
The supreme skill of Henry V as a leader of men is shown in the way he had managed over a long period of time to blend a disparate group of strong personalities into a harmonious team. Without him the cracks began to show almost immediately. At the very first parliament, sitting only two days after his funeral, the division between Bishop Henry and Humphrey of Gloucester became apparent, a split that would only grow wider over time. On the one hand the council and the nobility did not know and trust Humphrey as they had his brother. On the other he felt he was not being given the rights and powers due to him as a royal prince and guardian of the new king.
In France the death of Charles VI may in fact have tipped the balance away from rather than towards the English cause. The Treaty of Troyes was by and large accepted in the northern parts where John of Bedford immediately had Henry VI declared king, but south of the Loire loyalties remained with the Dauphin. Even in the north there was some feeling that it was more natural for the son rather than the grandson to inherit, especially when the latter was an unseen, unknown babe in arms. If nationalist feeling had grown in England in the last half-dozen years, at least the seeds of it were also present in French soil.
Initially, however, things in France seemed to be going well. Bedford acted with his usual efficiency to see that the policies set in motion by his brother were carried through as smoothly as possible. It has been suggested that many of the French actually preferred him to Henry who was seen as remote and aloof. The return of the Scottish King James to his kingdom, along with his Beaufort wife, in general took from the stage the many Scots who had been reinforcing the French, and there was even an extension to the territory ruled by the English in the next few years. After the victories at Crévant and Verneuil it seemed that the Dauphin might be doomed to be forever ‘King of Bourges’ (as he was contemptuously called after the place where he held his court) rather than King of France.
The Burgundian alliance was badly shaken, however, by the activities of Humphrey of Gloucester. In March 1423 he secretly married Jacqueline of Hainault, who had by now obtained a decree annulling her previous marriage from the no-longer-recognised Pope Benedict. As if this did not cause enough shock and scandal in Burgundy, he then set about raising an army to invade and recover control of her hereditary lands in Holland and Hainault, which were still under the control of her former husband, the cousin of Philippe of Burgundy. Although John of Bedford managed to patch things up with the Burgundians the alliance was never as strong again.
The greatest challenge to the English, however, came not from Humphrey of Gloucester or from the Dauphin, but from a peasant girl, Joan of Arc, who now appeared at the court of the Dauphin in 1429. By this time Bedford and his commanders, having achieved some notable successes, were besieging the great city of Orleans, while Dauphin Charles seemed to have lost all confidence in himself, and even in his claim to be the rightful heir. Within a few months, however, Joan of Arc, inspired as she claimed by messages from God, had restored his confidence, taken an army to relieve the siege of Orleans and even had him crowned King Charles VII in the cathedral of Rheims on 17 July 1429. Hurriedly a coronation was arranged in England for Henry VI one month before his eighth birthday, but events in France were deemed too volatile for him to be crowned King of France in Paris at the time.
The star of Joan of Arc shone very brightly but briefly. Persuaded to continue beyond her original inspiration, she took an army to the very gates of Paris before her first setback, and only then, when it had retreated and disbanded, was the young Henry VI rushed over to Paris to be belatedly crowned King of France. The coronation was an almost entirely English affair, the crowning being carried out by Henry Beaufort, now finally a cardinal, and the state banquet that followed seems to have been something of a shambles.
The jealousy of the former advisers of Charles VII soon led to the betrayal of Joan of Arc, who was captured by the Burgundians in 1430, sold to the English and put on trial for witchcraft. The French court declared her to be ‘excommunicate and heretic’ and ‘infected with the leprosy of heresy’ and she was burnt at the stake in Rouen in May 1431. Characteristically Charles VII made no move to save her.
If John of Bedford had thought that would end the problem he was mistaken. Once again the nationalist spirit in France had been stimulated. In England, too, there were further problems between Humphrey of Gloucester and the Beauforts. It seemed that whenever Bedford was in France there were troubles in England, and whenever he was in England there were
troubles in France. The English parliament begged him to remain and take charge of the council, but when he did so raids and rebellions sprang up like a rash over the territories of northern France.
In 1433, following the death of his wife Anne, Bedford married again, once more hoping to shore up the weakening Burgundian alliance by taking as a bride Jacquetta of Luxembourg, niece of Philippe of Burgundy’s chief captain. In fact this had the opposite effect, Philippe claiming to be outraged that his sister’s death had been so briefly mourned and that he had not been consulted on the match. From about this time Philippe began making contact with the French, eventually engaging to bring the English to negotiate for peace. The negotiations took place at Arras in 1435 but came to nothing, the English being only prepared to offer a truce until the young king came of age in some nine years’ time. The outcome, however, was the loss of the Burgundian alliance, with Philippe now finally accepting Charles VII as his rightful king.
The end of English power in France was not immediate but it was now inevitable. There were still some victories to come but the tide was running strongly against them. It was said that France, which had been given away by a woman (Isabeau), was won back by a maid (Joan of Arc). The death of John of Bedford in 1435 was a serious blow, as was that four years later of Richard, Earl of Warwick, who died at Rouen while acting as lieutenant of France and Normandy. The Earl of Salisbury had been killed at Orleans in 1428 and a whole generation of strong military leaders was coming to an end. Their replacements were not of the same calibre.
In England a peace party led by Cardinal Beaufort and William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, was in the ascendency, despite the fierce opposition of Humphrey of Gloucester whose power was waning fast. In 1440, despite Gloucester’s vehement denunciations, Charles of Orleans was at last set free, and soon after Suffolk was proposing a marriage between Henry VI and a French princess as a further step towards peace. Margaret of Anjou was selected as close enough but not too close to the French throne. She was the daughter of Renée, younger brother of the Duke of Anjou and second son of the redoubtable Yolande of Aragon, and she had been largely brought up and trained by her grandmother.