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By Root 1275 0

Valois. Her father, Charles VI of France, had been insane for most of his adult life, and there were parallels between Henry VI’s life and Charles VI’s. Both had become king in childhood, both had been dominated by powerful uncles, and both grew up to be weak and indecisive. Charles had suddenly become insane in 1392 when, during an attack of raging mania, he had run beserk with a lance and killed four people before being overcome by his attendants. His madness had taken a different form from Henry’s, for he had been continually subject to violent fits and delusions, sometimes believing he was made of glass and would shatter if touched; at other times he announced that his name was George, and seemed unable to recognise his wife and children.

Charles’s illness was spasmodic, and he did have periods of lucidity. But when he was in the grip of insanity he foamed at the mouth, refused to wash, and quickly became filthy, infested with vermin and covered in sores. Like a dog, he would eat his food from the floor, using his hands and teeth. Walsingham says he ‘never recovered completely, for he suffered fits of madness which recurred every year at the same season’. His illness had led directly to civil war between the factions at his court, and clearly there were fears that this would happen in England in 1453 as a result of Henry VI’s insanity.

An anxious Council wasted no time in summoning a whole host of doctors. Henry’s chief physician, John Arundel, was a specialist in mental illness, being Warden of the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem (later known as ‘Bedlam’) in Bishopsgate, an asylum in which nearly half the inmates were ‘out of their senses’, and which, by this period, was specialising in treating the insane. Mediaeval doctors understood very little about mental illness, but they did distinguish five types: phrenitis (acute inflammation of the brain), delirium (abnormal behaviour accompanied by fever), mania (violent behaviour), melancholia (depression and loss of interest in life), and amentia (loss of mental faculties). Madness was believed to result from an excess of black bile, one of the four humours that mediaeval doctors believed governed the body, an imbalance of which led to illness. Diagnosis was based on observation of the external symptoms. However, having diagnosed what was wrong with the patient, doctors were often at a loss to know what to do for him. Mad people who were not violent were usually left at liberty within the community, often the butt of cruel taunts or ridicule; violent patients were locked up. Legally, the King had custody of all mad persons. Now he was apparently one himself.

The King’s doctors tried everything within their limited power: bleeding, head purges, ointments, syrup cordials, suppositories, removing the King’s haemorrhoids, gargles, laxatives, baths, special waters, electuaries – medicinal powders mixed with honey or syrup – and even cautery. None of these often painful processes had any effect. Henry was described by the physicians as being non compos mentis, a term applied when the onset of mental illness took place sometime after birth. But there was every hope, they assured the Queen and Council, of his temporary or permanent recovery. Perhaps, they suggested, the King was possessed by devils. Accordingly priests were called in to exorcise any evil spirits that might have taken possession of the royal mind, but to no avail. After all the treatments had failed, the Council authorised the King’s doctors to bleed him as often as they thought necessary in order to let the evil humours out of his body, and apply various head poultices or any other remedy that occurred to them or seemed appropriate.

Henry VI’s illness was to prove calamitous in several ways. It put an end to all hopes of unity between the opposing factions in government. It brought the Queen, with her poor understanding of English politics, prejudices and customs, to the forefront of power. It deprived the country of its head of state, however ineffectual. It removed, for a time, the last check on the rapaciousness