The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [34]
In 1412, Henry IV declared war on France, a war he could not hope to prosecute, although he was planning to lead an army into Aquitaine. Walsingham wrote: ‘I believe that he could have taken France if the strength of his body had equalled the strength of his spirit.’
On 20 March 1413, the King walked painfully to the shrine of St Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey, where he knelt to pray. Suddenly, he collapsed in agony with a seizure. His attendants carried him into the nearby Jerusalem Chamber, so called because of the tapestries depicting the history of Jerusalem which hung there. When he could speak, Henry recalled that he had once expressed a desire to go on a final crusade and die in Jerusalem.
They laid him on a pallet by the fire, but in spite of the warmth he complained that his arms and legs felt cold. Guilt seems to have weighed heavily on him, for he was heard to whisper, ‘Only God knows by what right I took the crown.’ The King’s confessor arrived and begged Henry to repent of the murder of Archbishop Scrope and his usurpation of the throne. Henry replied that he had already received absolution for the killing of Scrope: as for usurping the crown, his son would never let him abjure it.
He was obviously dying. Custom decreed that the crown be placed by his side on a cushion of cloth of gold, and it was brought at once. By then the King appeared to be dead and a napkin was laid over his face. The Prince of Wales had been summoned; he entered the chamber and picked up the crown, about to place it on his head. At that moment the King stirred. He talked for a while with the Prince and was heard to say that he repented of ever having charged himself with the crown of England, for it had proved too heavy a burden for him. At the last he made his peace with his son, and died blessing him.
Henry IV was buried behind the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral, near to the tomb of the Black Prince and the shrine of St Thomas à Becket. Later a fine tomb was erected to his memory, on which were placed marble effigies of Henry and his second wife, Joanna of Navarre, who outlived him by twenty-four years.
Henry left England more prosperous and in a more settled state than he had found it: while he had achieved nothing that brought glory upon himself, he had successfully vanquished his enemies and driven baronial opposition underground, and, although there were still those who regarded him as an upstart whose right to the crown was dubious, his son succeeded unchallenged to the throne.
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The Flower of Christian Chivalry
On Passion Sunday, 9 April 1413, Henry of Monmouth was crowned as King Henry V at Westminster Abbey. Becoming king had a profound effect on him: Walsingham states that ‘as soon as he was made king he changed suddenly into another man, zealous for honesty, modesty and gravity, there being no sort of virtue that he was not anxious to display’. His biographer, Titus Livius, says that he reformed and amended his life. Elevated to kingship, he abandoned his dissolute young friends and paid heed to the experienced men of affairs on his Council. His main objective at the beginning of his reign was to distance himself from his father’s style of government and thereby earn fresh popularity and support for Lancaster.
In youth Henry had led a debauched life. The evidence for this cannot be discounted, although it may have