The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [44]
As a king, Henry V had been extremely successful: he had kept the peace at home by governing with firmness, justice and mercy, and had united his people behind him in a common endeavour. His victories had added lustre to the name of Lancaster, and he had restored the prestige and authority of the Crown. In fact, his achievements were regarded by his contemporaries as little short of miraculous, and his early biographers wrote extravagantly flattering accounts of him, thus giving rise to the legend of a hero-king that found its greatest expression in Shakespeare’s play and has influenced writers of English history to this day. Only now, in the twentieth century, are some of the less palatable truths about Henry V acknowledged.
His death was an unmitigated disaster for England. So much of France remained to be conquered and, even with a leader such as Henry, the enterprise would have been a forbidding task: ruled by an infant king, however diligent his regents, England could not hope to win the war, for her resources could not support it. Henry V had won much, but at enormous cost, and even in his lifetime there had been complaints. Parliament had become less ready to vote funds and had refused to grant further taxation; he had had to rely on loans to finance his campaigns in later years. This brought the Crown near to bankruptcy and burdened it with crippling debts. Henry had been unable to pay even his servants’ wages; how, then, was the completion of an English conquest of France to be financed?
Henry V’s reopening of the Hundred Years War had been intended to launch England into a new era of prosperity and glory. Instead he had saddled her with decades of expense and humiliation, which would ultimately bring about the ruin of his house. Even the dual monarchy established by the Treaty of Troyes was a precarious institution that Henry might not have been able to maintain, had he lived. The French people resented it, and large parts of France were as yet unconquered. In fact, the activities of Henry V in France did more than anything else to foster the growing sense of nationalism in that kingdom.
After his death, it was inevitable that divided opinion about the continuance or otherwise of the war with France would ensure that the English magnates would group themselves into factions: those in favour of following the late king’s example and prosecuting the war, and those who believed that a peaceful end to it was essential. These differences would institute half a century and more of government by factions, which in itself would undermine law and order and the stability of the realm and even of the Crown itself. Worse still, the throne had now passed from a strong and respected man to a helpless baby, consigning England to the uncertainties of minority government. Not for nothing was it commonly said, ‘Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child.’
5
The Child King
Henry VI succeeded his father at the tender age of nine months on 1 September 1422. On 11 October his grandfather, Charles VI, ended his miserable existence on earth, and Henry was proclaimed King of France also, in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Troyes. In France, however, most people refused to acknowledge him, holding that the Dauphin should succeed his father. For the moment, though, the English held the upper hand, for Burgundy was all-powerful in France, and Burgundy was a staunch friend to England.
Henry V had expressed the fond wish that his son would one day go to Constantinople and ‘take the Turk by the beard’, and there were fervent hopes in every quarter that the infant king would grow up to emulate the auspicious example of his father. As the chronicler William Worcester