Henry VI

King of England (r. 1422-1461, 1470-1471)

• Born: December 6, 1421
• Birthplace: Windsor, Berkshire, England
• Died: May 21, 1471
• Place of death: London, England

As the realm recoiled from the confusion of a continental conflict and a civil war, Henry VI, the third and last Lancastrian king of England, abrogated his role as an effective monarch and became a pawn of his relatives and great nobles.

Early Life

Born at Windsor, and the only child of England’s Henry V and Catherine of France, Henry of Windsor found himself to be a fated figure in the events of the Hundred Years’ War between England and France and the subsequent Wars of the Roses, which pitted England’s rival noble factions, the Lancastrians and Yorkists, against each other. After the death of Henry V on August 31, 1422, he ascended the throne as Henry VI, the third Lancastrian monarch of England. When his maternal grandfather, Charles VI, died a few weeks later, Henry was also acclaimed king of France. Henry’s lifelong naïveté colored his almost forty-year rule, and his reign marked the pinnacle of royal impotence, giving credence to the well-known text from Ecclesiastes, “Woe to thee, O land, when the king is a child.”

Head of a dual monarchy before his first birthday, Henry VI ruled for sixteen years under the regency of his father’s brothers. John, duke of Bedford, an efficient administrator and capable soldier, oversaw France; the less competent Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, served as regent in England. A fierce rivalry erupted between Gloucester and the chancellor, Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester and the king’s great-uncle. The two intrigued against each other, and their bickering disrupted the machinery of government and weakened the war effort abroad. Despite their differences, the uncles maintained the fiction of personal government, but the influence of an infant sovereign was negligible. At the age of two, Henry gave permission for his own chastisement, assuring his staff he would bear no grudges. The king’s boyhood appearances, however, remained few and were confined to ceremonial acts, such as the opening of Parliament, his coronation at Westminster Abbey in 1429, and the French crowning in 1431. For the most part, he lived in comparative seclusion in the Thames Valley.

Although he hunted with falcon and hawk and had his own suits of armor, the bilingual young king preferred to spend his time reading religious tomes and the historical writings of English priests. A meek and devout boy whose piety bordered on smugness, Henry grew into a well-meaning but incapable recluse, better suited for the monastery than for the monarchy. His greatest oaths consisted of “forsooth and forsooth” and an occasional “St. Jehan grant mercis,” and nothing, not even stampeding horses and collapsed tents, roused him to profanity. Benevolent to the point of lunacy and oblivious to the sway of politics about him, the tall, studious Henry VI remained throughout his life the perfect pawn in the hands of his relatives and great nobles.

Life’s Work

In the autumn of 1437, just before his sixteenth birthday, Henry VI ended his minority and began to issue warrants under his own seal. He traveled about the kingdom and involved himself in endowing a grammar school at Eton, establishing King’s College at Cambridge, and authorizing a library for Salisbury Cathedral. The demands of the royal office rankled, and he soon allowed the nobles to resume the direction of affairs of state. As the power of the English monarchy declined, the prosecution of the war against France became a pivotal issue in politics. Beaufort, as well as his nephew Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, and their ally William de la Pole, earl (later duke) of Suffolk, favored peace. Though Bedford had died in 1435, Gloucester and Richard, duke of York, next in line for the throne, wished to continue the war.

Ignoring Gloucester, Henry VI chose to end the conflict, which had gone badly after the 1429 French victory at Orléans, led by Joan of Arc. Since Beaufort was old and Somerset incompetent, Henry depended on Suffolk, whom he showered with offices and lands. Suffolk governed the court and in 1445 won a two-year truce in the war by arranging the marriage of Henry VI to Charles VII’s niece, Margaret of Anjou . An assertive, capable beauty, the new queen assumed the necessary role of authority and persuaded her gentle husband to surrender Maine to the French and to reduce the English garrisons in Normandy. Gloucester and Beaufort both died in 1447, leaving Suffolk and Margaret in power and the duke of York biding his time. Losses in Normandy in 1449 and 1450 soon made Suffolk unpopular, and the House of Commons sought his impeachment. Six months later, Jack Cade led a force of thirty thousand discontented Kentsmen to London, yet their rout did not end the country’s unrest.

Royal authority continued to decline throughout the 1450’s. The year 1453 proved particularly traumatic. In July, England experienced its final military humiliation in the Hundred Years’ War with the loss of all continental territory except the city of Calais; in August, Henry suffered a total mental and physical collapse. In the face of disaster, Parliament named the duke of York lord protector, but Yorkist control lasted only as long as the king’s madness. When Henry regained his senses in December, 1454, Margaret, who had given birth to a son two months earlier, and her Lancastrian associates recovered their influence over royal administration. Confronted with an heir to the throne and a forceful queen, York, aided by his cousin Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, took action and the struggle for power erupted onto the battlefield.

At St. Albans in May, 1455, a Yorkist army defeated the Lancastrians in a battle that traditionally marks the beginning of the Wars of the Roses. Somerset died in the conflict, the king was wounded by an arrow in the neck, and York seized the opportunity to retake the protectorship as Henry suffered a second mental collapse. York did not hold power long, for the king regained a semblance of sanity in 1456 and the queen regained control at court. The next four years marked a period of Royalist reaction. Because of political tension in the countryside and growing tumult in London, the royal court resided primarily in the Midlands. Henry now became a pathetic shadow of a king, but he did strive intermittently for reconciliation with his opponents, offering them pardons. Morbidly preoccupied with death, Henry spent several months planning his vault and having workmen mark his exact measurements on the floor of Westminster Abbey. The direction of the affairs of state lay with the masterful Margaret, who prepared for war with the Yorkists.

In 1460, York, disgusted by the puppet king, claimed the throne as his birthright he was descended from Edward III’s third son, while Henry’s claim came from kinship with the fourth son. The civil conflict now began in earnest, with the fortunes of war fluctuating wildly. The Yorkists triumphed over the Lancastrians in July; Henry was taken prisoner and forced to acknowledge Richard to the exclusion of his young son. In December, the Lancastrians succeeded in a battle in which York met his death. In February, 1461, the Lancastrians won again, gaining for Henry his freedom, but in March, Warwick and the new duke of York, Edward, decisively defeated the Lancastrians in a savage seven-hour battle during a blinding snowstorm. The Lancastrians never recovered from this defeat, and Warwick the “kingmaker” successfully placed the duke of York on the throne as Edward IV . Henry VI spent the next three years in exile in Scotland; his movements during this period hardly reveal him to be a sane individual. He returned to take part in an abortive rising in 1464 but a year later was captured and taken as a prisoner to the Tower of London, where he remained until 1470.

As the Lancastrian menace lessened and peace appeared permanent, the friendship between Edward and Warwick paled. When Edward chose his own bride, ignoring his chief adviser’s plans for a French marriage, Warwick joined the Lancastrian cause and aided Margaret in an attack on his former ally. Edward fled to the Continent. On October 3, 1470, Henry VI, a shuffling imbecile, left the Tower to be proclaimed monarch again by the kingmaker. Recaptured by Edward in April, 1471, Henry accompanied his Yorkist foe to Barnet, where the Lancastrians again tasted defeat and Warwick died. Another failure at Tewkesbury brought about the death of the prince of Wales, the capture of the queen, and the end of the Lancastrian cause. Henry VI died in the Tower, probably at the hands of an assassin, on May 21, 1471. His body was placed in an obscure grave in Chertsey Abbey and then reinterred at St. George Chapel, Windsor, in 1484.

Significance

The reign of Henry VI, England’s last Lancastrian monarch, has a number of dramatic ironies. Henry VI has the distinction of being the youngest ruler to ascend the English throne. He was also the only English ruler to be acknowledged by the French as the legitimate king of France and to receive coronation at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Because he was less than a year old at the time of his succession to two thrones, there was no time in Henry’s memory when he was not a monarch, and he knew no effective role models for the task of governing. He also assumed his majority earlier than any of his predecessors and successors, and his thirty-nine-year reign provided ample opportunity for flaws to magnify themselves. Furthermore, Henry’s rule coincided with, and contributed to, a debilitating civil war that cost him his throne. In the dynastic revolution that followed, he was briefly restored, thereby becoming the only British king to have two separate reigns.

Henry was well-intentioned, with some laudable aspirations for improving relations with France, fostering educational advantages, and rewarding friends and servants. As intelligent and as thoroughly schooled as his contemporaries, he never lost his youthful reliance on others to make decisions for him. He was also far too compassionate toward lawbreakers and lacked the ability to sense the implications of their activities. Henry VI’s mental breakdown in 1453-1454, followed by his recovery and a subsequent relapse in 1455, vitiated any further possibility of effective leadership. An almost total dependence on others marked the last fifteen years of his life. Henry VI died a demented, pathetic figure who was denied even his fondest dream, burial at Westminster Abbey. Later efforts to canonize him provided posthumous praise. In death, Henry VI realized the potential he never achieved in life.

Bibliography

Chrimes, Stanley Bertram. Lancastrians, Yorkists, and Henry VII. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965. General survey of the political and dynastic history of fifteenth century England with emphasis on constitutional issues. Denies that there was true war in the Wars of the Roses and insists that the conflict was a struggle for power based on dynastic rivalries. Makes an excellent supplement to William Shakespeare’s historical plays.

Dockray, Keith, ed. Henry VI, Margaret of Anjou, and the Wars of the Roses: A Source Book. Stroud, Gloucestershire, England: Sutton, 2000. A collection of primary sources produced by and relating to Henry VI and his queen. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Gillingham, John. The Wars of the Roses: Peace and Conflict in Fifteenth Century England. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981. Maintains that the Wars of the Roses were, in reality, three separate wars and that the first one (which the author dates from the 1450’s to 1464) was caused by Henry VI’s shortcomings and his inability to hold France or govern England. Suggests that Henry’s mental collapses may have been a case of catatonic schizophrenia.

Griffiths, Ralph A. The Reign of King Henry VI: The Exercise of Royal Authority, 1421-1461. Rev. ed. Stroud, Gloucestershire, England: Sutton, 1998. The definitive study of Henry VI and the entire spectrum of political life during his reign. Discusses relations among political groups, financial concerns, administration of justice, and foreign affairs. Portrays the last Lancastrian king as a well-meaning incompetent, and questions if, after the mental collapse of 1454-1455, Henry VI ever again had the capacity to carry out his official responsibilities. A major contribution to fifteenth century English historiography.

Gross, Anthony. The Dissolution of the Lancastrian Kingship: Sir John Fortescue and the Crisis of Monarchy in Fifteenth-Century England. Stamford, Lincolnshire, England: P. Watkins, 1996. Set of three interrelated essays, together with a substantial introductory essay, on Fortescue’s life and career. Attempts to understand the political instability and outbreaks of civil war during Henry VI’s reign as a function of genuine philosophical differences between competing theoretical principles of government, and not merely as the Machiavellian maneuverings of self-interested nobles hungry for power. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Hicks, Michael. The Wars of the Roses, 1455-1485. New York: Routledge, 2004. Detailed history of the military campaigns of the Wars of the Roses, and the reasons behind them. Includes nine strategic maps, illustrations, bibliography, and index.

Jacob, Ernest Fraser. The Fifteenth Century, 1399-1485. Reprint. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Comprehensive and authoritative account of the fifteenth century in all its complexities and paradoxes. Provides more information than stimulus and has a detailed but dated bibliography. Contains no analysis of the character of Henry VI.

Kendall, Paul Murray. Warwick the Kingmaker. New York: W. W. Norton, 1957. Excellent and well-documented account of Warwick as a public figure. In a colorful format, follows the tangled relations between factions in fifteenth century England. Glimpses of Henry VI reveal an insane king who existed in an animal-like stupor. Presupposes extensive background knowledge.

Lander, Jack Robert. Crown and Nobility, 1450-1509. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1986. Traces struggles for supremacy between the Crown and the nobility in the latter half of the fifteenth century and contains a historiographical essay on period studies. Questions the stories of Henry VI’s 1455 mental breakdown as the reason for the duke of York’s second protectorate and sees events in the light of York’s possibly treasonable desire to have the throne.

Smith, Lacy Baldwin. This Realm of England, 1399 to 1688. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1976. A very readable, general account of English history from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Includes a basic narrative of the fifteenth century “curse of disputed succession” and identifies Henry VI as a cipher more qualified for the Church than the Crown.

Storey, Robin Lindsay. The End of the House of Lancaster. New York: Stein and Day, 1966. Finds the causes of the Wars of the Roses to be far more than conflicting hereditary claims to the throne. Places emphasis on the role of the nobility, who were concerned with getting and keeping real estate, not realms. Indicates that Henry VI had small capacity for kingship before his mental breakdown in 1454 and certainly none after that date.

Watts, John. Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Detailed structural analysis of the political system in place during Henry’s reign. Attempts to understand how the chaotic civil wars broke out, and how Henry was able to stay on his throne for so long despite such intense political instability, and despite his own mental instability. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.